How to successfully manage a caseload
July 5, 2010
Here is a pdf. of a powerpoint presentation on successful management of a caseload for those of you that requested it. For those of you that are around the state, it is something that we present on staff development days if you want us to come over in August.
Scott
Fourth of July Therapy Materials Ideas
June 28, 2010
This website has activities for the 4th of July. Thought I would share.
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/fourth-of-july/
Developmental Norms for any Home Language
June 21, 2010
The attached document is a list of all developmental norms that you would expect for any child, regardless of home language.
apples-to-apples-for-speech-and-language
Comparison on SLP tests in Spanish
June 21, 2010
This attached document is worth its weight in gold (which isn’t much I guess considering it’s a pdf.!). It’s a comparison of all the tests that are available for speech and language. Check it out.
Scott
Presentation on improving the referral process
June 14, 2010
For those of you that are interested, here is a presentation that we have been giving to school districts to help improve the referral process.
Improving the Referral Process Powerpoint
Checklist for Children with Dysfluencies for Teachers
June 7, 2010
No more teacher, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.
Schools over but I came across this. It is a checklist to help teachers qualntify fluency concerns.
Dysfluency Checklist for Teachers
Speech Sound Disorder Definition and Description Chart
May 26, 2010
This a chart that allows you to
- identify which speech disorder your student might have
- identify which treatment that research has shown to be effective
-sound-disorder-definition-and-description-chart
Supporting Research for Ethics Studies
May 17, 2010
Hi all,
Here is some of the research that we used in our Ethics study and participation
ethical-Ethical Considerations with a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Population
How do we improve referrals that we are getting from teachers?
May 10, 2010
Getting good referrals for speech and language evaluations is not always easy. In a perfect world, every referral would result in qualifying a child with an impairment. Teachers are often frustrated and overwhelmed by the process. Here is the form that we have been using in the schools to improve the process and make life easier for our teachers.
Referring Children for Speech and Language Concerns
How do we better diagnose our speech kids?
May 3, 2010
We’ve been talking a lot lately about how to better diagnose and serve our speech disordered students. Dodd, who we find to be very useful, divides students into 3 phonlogical groups and then articulation. This following study does a really important thing; while they only divide students into two groups (speech only and speech with learning disabilities), they have the end game in mind and are focused on how the disorder will affect academic abilities and outcomes.
http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/phonology/pubs/PUB6.pdf
Artic Norms in Spanish and English
April 26, 2010
Spanish and English Artic Norms
This chart shows the differnces in the age of master of different sounds in isolation. The numbers are the ages and the sounds in those blocks are the sounds that a child should be working on at that age. All the sounds below the child’s age they would have been expected to have mastered.
Models of Reading Development
April 19, 2010
Thank you for all the interest and positive responses to our reading presentations. Here is a pdf. with a collection of reaading acquisition models proposed by different researchers.
Best,
Scott
Why do we have new ethics requirements?
April 12, 2010
Why have ethics? What has our field decided, here in 2009 that you need to sit here and study about ethics? Why weren’t you here last year? What has changed if anything?
ethics classes.”
In 2002, the United States ranked #20 in most ethical countries. Behind countries like Denmark, New Zealand, and Finland. This was out of 163. On this information, people doing business with and in the United States generally feel that they are getting a fair deal. But the fact of the matter is that the United States ranked 14th in 2000, before the wave of corporate scandals made the business pages. 214
When I think of ethics or a profession, I immediately think about lawyers. Let’s take a look at some examples from the field of lawyers:
A study of California lawyers bar association stated that they were sick of the decline in honor in their work and were “profoundly pessimistic.” Two-thirds said that lawyers “compromise their professionalism as a result of economic pressure.”
A study by the Maryland Judicial Task Force had similar findings. Lawyers felt their profession had degenerated so badly that “they were often irritable, short-tempered, argumentative, and verbally abusive.
Lawyers in Virginia were asked whether the increasing problems in professionalism were attributable to “a few bad apples” or to a widespread trend. They overwhelmingly said this was a widespread issue.
Lawyers in Florida reported that a “substantial minority [were] money grabbing, too clever, tricky, sneaky, and not trustworthy.”
“At present, several state bars and professional organizations are scrambling to shore up their professional ethics. Some are increasing courses in college and graduate schools, and others are requiring brush-up ethics classes.”
So what can we do? We want to be ethical but how can we change the downward trend?
Word and Nonword Repetition in Bilingual Subjects
April 5, 2010
I thought that this was a pretty neat article on word repetitions in children who are bilingual. Here is the abstract and the article can be found on the web.
Abstract:
Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of
the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study brain activation patterns using positron emission
tomography (PET), in which we compared word and nonword repetition in 10 right-handed native
English-speakers (L1) who were proficient in their second language, French (L2), which was learned after
method with intersubject averaging and coregistration of magnetic resonance and PET images. A comparison
of CBF changes when repeating words in L2 with those seen when repeating words in (L1)
demonstrated that the pattern of CBF was similar across the two conditions, with several significant CBF
differences in the vicinity of the left insular cortex, ventral premotor region, and in the striatum. We
hypothesize that these regions are activated when subjects are required to repeat known words, showing
increased activity when there are increased articulatory demands imposed by speaking L2. Comparisons
of nonword repetition in L1 and L2 revealed increased activity for L2 in the left ventral premotor region
and in the cerebellum; rCBF increases were also observed in these regions in both L1 and L2 with
increased number of syllables and increased articulatory complexity, suggesting a role for these regions
in the complex motor control needed for the production of novel sequences.
Speech Sound Disorder Chart
April 5, 2010
Hi everyone,
Here is a “tree” that we built to help identify which type of speech disorder a child might have. We are going to post a bunch of stuff from our recent presentation
Free Speech Therapy for Bilingual Adults
March 29, 2010
Bilinguistics is partnering with UT to complete a research study of bilingual adults who could benefit from speech therapy. Please let anyone know if they meet the criteria.
admin@bilinguistics.com
CEUs on Bilingualism?
March 22, 2010
Hi-
I am emailing in reference to classes for CEU’s. Will you please put me on a mail list for upcoming conferences? What CEUs are available on Bilingual issues.
Hi Robin,
Thanks for your interest in our courses.
Yes, we will put you on our mailing list. We have online CEUs that are available all the time. You can access them at http://bilinguistics.com/online_ceus.php
Ellen Kester
Bilinguistics at TSHA in Fort Worth
March 15, 2010
Hi everyone!
For those of you that we have not met yet who are going to TSHA this year, we will have a booth on the display floor. Please stop by and introduce yourselves and say hi!
Ellen and Scott will be presenting a really great Ethics presentation that has gone over really well with SLPs here in Central Texas. It has a lot of great research from human behaviourists and psychologists. Very interesting presentation.
Scott and Mary will be presenting on treatement of Speech Disorders. It is full of videos and therapy examples. It was recently presented in Central Texas and the crowd continues to respond with success stories for using the information in therapy.
See you there!
Any locals let us know where the good food in Fort Worth is.
Treating Inconsistant Phonology
March 8, 2010
Hi Scott, I enjoyed your presentation at AASLP! I’ve got some questions about the teaching of consistency to the inconsistent deviant category you discussed. I work with 0-3, would you recommend teaching sound/word discrimination and same/different in targeting consistency to little ones? Did you say that incorrect productions are acceptable as long as there\’s consistency? Any additional tips/info. would be appreciated! Thanks!
Hello Ann,
I am happy that you enjoyed the presentation. I put this question out to our group during our weekly meeting in order to get everyone’s feedback. Here is what we came up with.
1.
The initial goal when dealing with the Inconsistent Deviant (IDPD) group is consistency. So yes you could accept consistent-incorrect productions. For instance, if a child was completely inconsistent but then began reducing final syllabless (phonological) or saying words without initial consonants (Consistent Deviant), in essence you have caused them to begin to produce patterns which is a huge success. What I have seen so far is that this is a really short event in the process of saying the word correctly. Within a single session a child can begin saying an inconsistent word (elephant = epunt, pentalep, empatunt) consistently (epunt, epunt, epunt), and then correctly at the syllable level (e-le-fan-t).
2a.
Connecting this to the second part of your question is the idea of what to use in therapy. The word choices from this study I think would apply to a 0-3 year-old child:
Dodd and colleagues (2004) detail an intervention program where the child, parents and teacher selected a list of 50 words that were functionally “powerful” for the child. Words commonly included were people’s names (family, teacher), pet names, places (e.g. school, toilet, shops), function words (e.g., please, sorry, thank you), foods (water, drink, chips, Cheerios), and child’s favorite things (teddy, games, Dora). *Increasing intelligibility for these words motivated the use of consistent productions.
2b. “would you recommend teaching sound/word discrimination and same/different in targeting consistency to little ones”
Here are my thoughts but let me know if you have success with anything because I am just wrapping my mind around this.
The above cited study said this: “MAY also benefit from phonological contrast therapy once consistency is established.” The assumption with a phonological kid is that all the sounds in isolation are present. With your age group you have to clearly identify IF the child is truely IDPD because there is a lot of accepted inconsistency at age 0-3. After identifying the 50 target words, you can make 3 attempts per word and record the child’s production. You should see inconsistency across most word types.
Tx: A careful inventory of the child’s current consonant and vowel inventory may provide a clue as to beginning words (or approximations) that may be possible. Word choices should take into account words and functions that a child would want to communicate.
*[words are] chosen because of frequency [and how often they are] used in functional common situations—not according to word shape or segments.
This therapy approach resulted in greater change in children with inconsistent speech disorder compared to more traditional approaches (Crosbie et al., 2005)
In summary:
- Aim for consistency of a set group of words
- Choose small syllable sizes
- Choose words that contain the sounds they have in their age appropriate repertoire
- Choose words that are HIGHLY functional
- Target the whole word and begin phonological contrast therapy once consistency is established
This supports a bilingual approach because targeting the phonological plan in either language will carry over to both languages. Because you not remediating the phoneme but you are remediating the inconsistency so this is what transfers between the languages.
I would love to hear your results, successful or not. The child that I showed at the end of presentation made those gains because I completely abandoned phonological strategies and did this whole-word thing. I’m kind of becoming an after the fact believer and am still working on MY consistency with the therapy!
Best Regards,
Scott
The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3
March 1, 2010
Here is an amazing article that shows the influence of early communication and the affect of the communication style of the family. This is so supportive of the Functional Model–Input=Output and this has huge implications for bilingual language development as well.
http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/pbs/The_Early_Catastrophe_30_Million_Word_Gap_by_Age_3.pdf