No one ever told me that one of the most stressful parts of my job would have little do to with providing direct therapy to my students. But I got a serious truth bomb when my supervisor at my school clinical placement showed me the daily schedule…and I almost had a heart attack. A feeling…
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How do you address written language during speech therapy?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through my students’ writing samples and wanted to pull my hair out. Sometimes it’s such a disaster I don’t even know where to start. The grammar is a mess. Spelling errors are everywhere. And their writing is filled with words like “stuff”, “things”, or my personal…
How to teach your students to generalize, even if you’re doing pull-out therapy.
Generalization is like the Holy Grail for speech therapists. All we really want in life is for what we do in the therapy room to transfer to other settings. Yet for many of us, generalization is like a mirage that continues to elude us and our students. Part of the problem is that therapy can be…
The Power of Meta: Vocabulary Booster
When we treat language impairments, it can seem like we have the weight of the world on our shoulders. That’s why I’ve created The Power of Meta: Vocabulary Booster, a free 30-page manual for treating school-aged language disorders. When we’re working with students who have language issues, there are so many things we need to…
Are you an SLP working on vocabulary? If so, read this first.
Did you know that the average school-aged student learns between 3000 to 5000 words per year? That means they learn eight to 12 words per day (Biemiller & Boote, 2006). Most children are like little sponges soaking up new information. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for students with language disorders who have limited word knowledge. Students…
We’re not tutors, we’re speech-language pathologists
It’s that time again; you’re in the process of getting your caseload organized, grouping students, and touching base with teachers. This year is going to be different, you decide. You’re going to tackle those tricky language issues head on, before you get swamped with evaluations. You’ll figure out exactly what to do for those students…