observations

Last spring I was able to observe a real life SLP in her work setting (an elementary school).  It was fascinating!  I loved her room and how she handled her groups.  Being in an elementary, she was not able to do one-on-one therapy.  But she still gave the kids as much one-on-one as she could.  Her room had three computers with various language skill building exercises. She also had these: 

and books for each phoneme that the children could practice with, to themselves. For those who are unfamiliar with these, they are sometimes called a whisper phone.  The child puts it to their ear/mouth like a phone and they practice their phoneme.  This will enable them to hear themselves and hopefully self correct as needed.  Based on where they were with a particular phoneme, they would practice at isolation, syllable, word or sentence level.

There were also these:


and the phoneme books. And based on how many times they said an assigned phoneme they would possibly receive a reward/treat.

It was very fun to see the different tools she used to help the children with therapy while still offering some one-on-one time.

As the children come into the classroom, she would tell them where to go and which phoneme to practice and one child would be with her. And they would rotate during the time in her classroom. At the end, all of the children and the SLP would play a short game together. At the end of the game the children were expected to congratulate each other on playing a good game (good sportsmanship!) and then give one other child a sincere compliment. It was all very fascinating.  They were able to learn how to play games and not worry so much about winning or losing, but having fun.  They were able to increase their social skills by complimenting each other and by having to pay attention enough to each other to offer a sincere compliment.  I will definitely be implementing some of these activities in my own classroom when I am done with school!