Communication Corner Speech Therapy

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Communication Corner Speech Therapy

Private Speech Therapy Services

Communication is at the heart of life experience.

03/03/2021

How to use memory strategies with Irregular Verbs:

VISUALIZE: use picture/scene (Word Vault Pro has good pictures for irregular verbs) or let them draw

REPETITION: model in sentence, read in context, have student create own sentence

ASSOCIATE: connect to their life e.g. Do you hear the school announcements every morning? Did you hear them this morning? Answer in a sentence. Yes, I HEARD them

GROUPING: help their brains chunk them into similar groups

02/23/2021

IRREGULAR VERBS

Have you ever tried giving a list of vowels to replace the present form vowel with? e.g. Which vowel sounds correct to change the word run as in if we talked about someone “running” yesterday? ron, ren, rin, ran, rune, rene, etc.?

*Using memory strategies to store irregular past tense verbs into long-term memory is very helpful! More detail of memory strategies in next post.

09/10/2020

Learning to Control Impulsive Behavior .

1. Identify the triggers for impulsive behavior
2. Agree on a rule for trigger situation. The rule should focus on what your child can do to co trip impulses. Pick a couple different options can put in place of unwanted behavior.
3. Talk about what you might do to signal to your child that you think he or she is on the verge of “losing control” so that he or she can back off or use one of the coping strategies agreed on (discrete visual signal like hand motion).
4. Role-play. (e.g. your are playing with your friends and one of them says something that makes you mad).
5. Practice the procedure daily or several times a week for a couple of weeks.
6. Use in real situation when your child is ready to put the procedure in effect.
7. Review how the process worked afterward.

Modifications/adjustments:.
*If impulsivity is a significant problem for your child, begin by choosing one time of day or one impulsive behavior to target to make success more likely.
* Be sure to praise your child for showing self-control. Social praise should always accompany any other kind of reinforcer.

08/18/2020

ANXIETY!!!.

Can you guys all feel it as people talk about what the new school year will look like? I bet our kids will use these strategies better if they see us using them 😉.

Learning to Manage Anxiety from “Smart but Scattered” .

1. Make a list of the things that happen that cause your child to feel anxious and see if there is a pattern e.g. performance anxiety.
2. Talk to child about what anxiety feels like so they can recognize the early stages e.g. butterflies in stomach, can’t turn brain off when trying to go to sleep.
3. Replacement Behaviors: 3-4 different things you can do to calm or divert from worries.
4. “Worry Board”-a) “I get worries when...(triggers)” b) “When I get nervous I feel...” c) “when I’m feeling worried or nervous, I can...(replacement behavior)”.
5. Practice. “Let’s play pretend” (hypothetical situations).
6. After practicing start using “for real” MINOR worries first.
7. Move to bigger worries after practicing minor.

Modifications/adjustments:.

1. Possible coping strategies: talking back to worries, challenging the logic of the worry, deep slow breathing, counting to 20, drawing a picture and putting it in a box or trash, music and dancing, search “relaxation for kids”, Book recommendation: “What to Do When I Worry Too Much” by: Dawn Huebner, PhD.
2. Desensitization: degree of anxiety is low enough that the child can get through it successfully. Critical Elemis in guided mastery are 1) physical distance and 2) time—in the beginning, the child is far removed and exposure is for a short time. Then distance is gradually reduced and time increased gradually.

07/24/2020

I know these topics may seem unrelated to speech therapy but many students in speech struggle with executive functioning because they have difficulty communicating which is why “I have important things to say,” has been a great general answer for everyone when I ask “Why do you come to speech?” Many of those important things is expressing why they feel a certain way. Quality practice will come when emotions are in control.

Temper and Crying...we are trying to apply the five point scale (shown in pictures). I am trying to have my kids tell me when they move to a 2 or 3 to avoid 4 and 5 more. Pick your own “What can I do?” activities.

Controlling their Temper
1. Identify triggers (categorize e.g. losing, told “no,” change of plans)
2. Teach what losing temper looks like, lost just a few “cannot do” behaviors when losing temper
3. REPLACEMENT BEHAVIOR: Spend most time identifying appropriate behaviors “What CAN I do” list.
4. Practice starting with easier triggers
5. Move to more challenging triggers.

Modifications/Adjustments
1. ****Model by your own example. We are Yusuf tot teach by example our whole lives but a reminder does not hurt.
2. Model-talking our loud to show what the child might be thinking of saying in hypothetical situation.

Inconsolable Crying
1. Make sure child knows that there are many circumstances when it is appropriate to cry.
2. Teach child that people who don’t know them as well may not know how to handle their crying. They may feel uncomfortable if they do not use words.
3. Use words to label feelings (I let my kids draw pictures when the emotions are too high to talk but eventually they have to talk for me to fully understand)
4. Practice explaining feelings
5. Validate feelings “I can see you are upset by _______. Not being able to _______ must be hard.”
6. “I will always listen and try to understand when you are ready to talk.”.

“Smart but Scattered” by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare

07/23/2020

Executive Functioning skills.

We all need them. Every age. These are great tools to provide for your children in the short amount of time we have them at home.

Response inhibition.
Working Memory.
Emotional Control.
Sustained Attention.
Task Initiation.
Planning/prioritization.
Organization.
Time management.
Goal-directed persistence.
Flexibility.

I read “Smart but Scattered” by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare about 18 months ago. I am going to share some highlights on this account. Swipe to see some of the different executive skills.

07/19/2020

All ages benefit from visual speech cues.

Infants and Adults Use Visual Cues to Improve Detection and Discrimination of Speech in Noise
Kaylah Lalonde and Lynne A. Werner

“Results revealed that the middle-aged and elderly subjects obtained similar benefit from visual cues in auditory-visual speech recognition.”

(Benefit From Visual Cues in Auditory-Visual Speech Recognition by Middle-Aged and Elderly Persons)
Brian E. Walden, Debra A. Busacco and Allen A. Montgomery

I do not want to add another stress to parents this year but I thought this may help someone. If you are able to provide a mask with a clear shield for a student and teacher going to school this next year it will help decrease communication breakdown and provide more opportunities for language skills to develop.

04/23/2020

I am not sharing to stress parents more during this quarantine but to encourage to work on phonemic awareness skills. What are phonemic awareness skills? (e.g. Pennington et. al., 2012; Snowling, 2000).

• Ask them what rhymes to ______.
• Read poems or books with rhymes.
• Ask them to separate words into sounds (Sound segmentation e.g. c-a-t).
• Ask them to put the sounds together (Blending sounds e.g. You pause between each sound on word and have them put it back together or sounding out words in reading).
• Ask them to clap the number of syllables in a word (syllable segmentation).
• Ask then if they can think of a word that starts with or ends with the same sound as another word.
• Ask then to repeat a word without the first sound. For example, you might say "now say 'bill' without the /b/", which students should respond to with "ill" (sound deletion).

You can make these things fun games rather than drill work.

02/10/2020

Ask for a Laryngoscopy if...

* recent surgical procedures involving the head, neck or chest;
* recent endotracheal intubation;
* presence of concomitant neck mass;
* respiratory distress or stridor;
* history of to***co abuse; and
* whether the patient is a professional voice user" (Strong Recommendation; p. S12).

Clinical Practice Guideline: Hoarseness (Dysphonia) (Update)
Stachler, R. J., Francis, D. O., et al. (2018).
Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, 158(1_Suppl), S1-S42.

01/21/2020

Here is just one possible sign. However, I strongly believe in a parents intuition if there are other concerns.

“There is evidence that reduced levels of social attention and social communication, as well as increased repetitive behavior with objects, are early markers of ASD between 12 and 24 months of age. Additional potential markers include abnormal body movements and temperament dysregulation" (p. S12). When parents or other care professionals express these concerns, "it is recommended that the child be referred for further autism screening and, as appropriate, for a more comprehensive developmental and diagnostic evaluation" (p. S12).

Source: Early Identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder: Recommendations for Practice and Research
Zwaigenbaum, L., Bauman, M. L., et al. (2015).
Pediatrics, 136(Suppl 1), S10-S40.

01/18/2020

Ever wonder what cognitive test to administer? Or ever watched a loved one have a test administered and wonder if it was a thorough enough evaluation for them?

“Overall, the sensitivity and specificity across [these four] cognitive screening tests (the Mini-Mental Status Examination, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination Revised, and the Rotterdam-CamCog test) did not differ...

Findings suggest there was "no clearly superior cognitive screening test approach and no evidence that newer or longer screening tests necessarily offer better test accuracy than established screens with shorter administration time" (p. 3016).

Source: Test Accuracy of Cognitive Screening Tests for Diagnosis of Dementia and Multidomain Cognitive Impairment in Stroke
Lees, R., Selvarajah, J., et al. (2014).
Stroke, 45(10), 3008-3018.
Go to Article

01/10/2020

Parents/guardians, you matter!!!! You are an essential part of all interventions!

* Group social skills interventions that included parent groups demonstrated LARGE effect size. Interventions that did not include parent groups demonstrated MODERATE effect size.

Generalizing skills other settings takes parent involvement.

The Effects of Early Intervention on Social Communication Outcomes for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis
Fuller, E. A., & Kaiser, A. P. (2019).
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Epub ahead of print retrieved April 18, 2019 from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03927-z.

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Farmington, UT
84025

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+18015136493

Website

https://candaceecarlisle.wixsite.com/ccspeechtherapy

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