7th grade and the SLP

Aug 27, 2015 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

Yesterday I received a question that had to do with transition to 7th grade “I find it difficult to transition students from 6th grade to middle school, meaning targeting appropriate goals/etc. What are the areas you find critical to this age? Do you have a screening tool you give to your students? What are the main areas you look at to gauge success in junior high/middle school?” First lets talk briefly about 7th grade. 7th grade, no matter what middle school model your school has, is a significant bump up in academics, expectations, higher order language (understanding and usage, texts, adult usage, peers……) and higher order thinking. 7th grade is the year the speech and language students dismissed from therapy a couple of years ago will end up back on your radar. The reason...

How SLPs can deal with Middle School rudeness...

Jan 19, 2015 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

I received a question from a middle school therapist asking if I had any suggestions on how to deal with rude disrespectful students. No other information than that in terms of community, severity of students, size of groups or gender. From my 15 plus years of experience at the middle school level I think I relate to the situation she might be in. I’m going to assume her students are mainly boys and basically language/learning disabled students. Three things to consider. First, Speech Language Pathologists do not also have to be experts in behavior. We have enough on our plate. Second, the rules have changed just in the past few years and we are not always allowed to use our professional judgement on who will continue to benefit from therapy and who will not....

The Practical SLP: Middle School...

Jul 27, 2013 by Teresa Sadowski MA CCC-SLP

Back in 2007, when I was taking a computer course and needed to put some teacher training together I chose to write about the roles and responsibilities of the School Speech Language Pathologist. It was a nice introduction for the teachers and for those who paid attention, I think they learned something about our field. This was just before RTI, core curriculum and the new teacher evaluation process took over. Reflecting on what I wrote 6 years ago, our job hasn’t changed that much…..it’s just been added to. So take a look, please note the word “Practical” in the title. At the time when all these changes were looming I thought it was appropriate (and still do). The Practical SLP powerpoint 2007 copy Teresa...