Have a good chuckle but think while you’re laughing...

Nov 29, 2014 by

A few weeks ago I saw this “Buzz Word Bingo Card” floating around Facebook.  So much of this buzz word bingo had to do with measuring what students have learned rather than how/what students are being taught.  I assumed that that was why it made it on some of the funny education and anti-common core pages.  Does any buzz word here actually tell you anything about what the students are learning?  I’ll let you generate your own opinion on that.  Now compare this buzz word bingo card to the one below. Here is the Buzz Word Bingo that teachers might have shared in the late 1960’s.  Granted someone would have had to recreate it and run it off on on mimeograph machine (which were still used until the early 80ies).  It is important to note that using the...

read more

Thanksgiving Humor

Nov 28, 2014 by

Thanksgiving Humor

I found these Thanksgiving themed jokes floating around Facebook this week.  Even though it’s after Thanksgiving I am going to use these (or some of these) in therapy this week.  I believe they’re still relevant because the students just experienced Thanksgiving and with any luck remembered some of the details.  I am big on teaching how to recognize and understand humor.  Understanding humor is a huge part of social pragmatics.   I often have an objective focusing on humor written into my student’s ed plans. If students can’t “get it” they are often left behind both within the social realm and as curriculum/materials becomes more challenging.  Subtleties in language are all around us, from tv to textbooks.  Some kids “get it” easily and naturally and some do not.  Most of our language disabled kids...

read more

Have school Speech Language Pathologists lost their focus?...

Sep 28, 2014 by

Have school Speech Language Pathologists lost their focus?

When I went to school my courses focused primarily on child development, language acquisition, understanding how the brain worked (and didn’t work), remediation techniques for articulation and language and learning about disabilities that resulted in a language delay or impairment. We didn’t just learn about working with kids or adults but all ages and disabilities. My coursework was clearly based on a medical model but I was trained to work in all settings. Throughout my career, I’ve carefully evaluated my students, identified their strengths and weaknesses through testing designed specifically to assess language functioning across receptive, expressive and pragmatic areas. Based on my testing, I wrote goals that focused on improving “language” abilities. I always felt that my purpose was to target and improve underlying language skills. The goal was to improve language abilities...

read more

SMART Goals..It’s that time of year...

Sep 9, 2014 by

SMART Goals..It’s that time of year

Beginning of the school year and it is time to think about SMART goals again. Over the years I’ve posted a few articles on the subject.  An SLP named Holly just posted two comments with some very good ideas to this previous post What is your SMART Goal. One of my SMART Goals focused on parent education around language development along with suggestions to enhance language development at home.  I did this through a series of articles written for our school newsletter.  If you want to do something similar don’t reinvent the wheel, you can purchase copies of these articles on my TPT site. Your school newsletter and your smart goal   Last but not least, Share Your SMART Goal.   SMART goals are pretty difficult to come up with so share your ideas or even complete...

read more

The Fantastic Speech Therapy Blog List...

Jul 2, 2014 by

Hi Everyone, It’s been awhile but I finally added a few more sites to my SLP blog list.  Welcome to the following blogs The Sassy Speech Chick Stages Learning Apps For Speech Therapy You can link to my entire page of SLP blogs at https://theschoolspeechtherapist.com/slp-blogs/.  I am always looking to add new and interesting blogs to highlight.  If you’re a blogger and believe you have something unique let me hear about it.  Comment below....

read more

Your School Newsletter and Your SMART Goal...

Apr 6, 2014 by

Your School Newsletter and Your SMART Goal

For the past year and a half I’ve worked for a school district a couple days a week.  When you work very part time in a school you usually get to slip under the radar for many things.  SLPs in my position are sometimes even considered consult types.  You tend to miss a lot of information on procedures.  Anyway, SMART goal writing finally caught up with me.  I was there during the initial explanation of SMART goals at the beginning of last year so I wasn’t totally unprepared.  I had an idea of what I wanted to do and have actually been implementing  my ideas.  I even had a rough draft of my goals.  Last week I was finally asked to input my goals and it was extremely simple. My one specific professional goal...

read more