Offer to Present To a Class

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, and let’s be honest, at the end of the school year classroom teachers are always willing to have others come into their classrooms and present. This is your chance to do teach kids about their hearing and preventing hearing loss, or to talk about what stuttering is. Maybe you play bring in your giant mouth puppet and talk about basic physiology & anatomy for speech, or play a Bingo game about hearing devices. Think about the speech, language, and listening challenges where you work, and where you feel like you could offer a teacher or classroom some support. Better hearing and speech topics are relevant to all of your students!

Create a Bulletin Board or Door Display

If you’re the creative type, creating a bulletin board or door display might be the perfect way to celebrate Better Speech and Hearing Month (BHSM). You could explain what speech language pathology is, or to help others understand speech & language disorders. You could create an overview of different disorders, or dive deep into one area of expertise. ASHA usually offers a bunch of different media during Better Speech and Hearing Month that you can download for free. If a door display or bulletin board seems like too much, have your students color some Better Hearing and Speech month coloring pages, or put up some of the posters or signs that ASHA provides.

Share info with Your Colleagues

If you have regular staff meetings where you’re asked to share, or a monthly newsletter, Better Hearing and Speech Month is the perfect time to talk up speech language pathology, and share your knowledge and expertise. Signs and symptoms of a language delay might be a great place to start, or a specific topic your colleagues are always asking questions about (or you wish they were asking questions about!) Even a quick email highlighting some of the things you’ve accomplished during the current quarter or year might help to increase their understanding of speech language pathology and the profession.

Send Something Home

Better Hearing and Speech Month is the perfect time to reach out to your families and send home the signs and symptoms of a language delay, or how to find early intervention services. Think about the things you want your families to know, but maybe don’t have time to communicate during your sessions. Preventative strategies or ways families can be supporting younger siblings with their speech and language are also a great idea for a brochure or handout you send home.

Share on Social Media

If you have a social media account, May is the perfect time to share those speech and language facts, checklists, or other tidbits you’ve been saving. It might be a blog post on a communication disorders topic you’ve been thinking about, or a checklist of early listening skills. Maybe you create a graphic talking showing how loud certain sounds are, or a “Did you know?” post highlighting some facts and figures about communication disorders.

However you share, don’t let the month of May and Better Hearing and Speech Month pass you by. It’s our chance to show our families, colleagues, and supervisors just how valuable our work is, and how knowledgeable we are about communication and communication disorders.

The post 5 Activities & Ideas for Better Hearing and Speech Month appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

If you’ve worked with middle & high school students, you know they might not be as excited to work on self advocacy skills as younger students. Of course that’s a broad generalization, and some are, but for the most part, you have to be a little more persuasive. They might think they already know everything there is to know about self advocacy, or that they’re stellar self advocates, or that it just doesn’t matter.

Regardless of how they feel about it, it’s often your job to help your middle and high school aged deaf and hard of hearing students with self advocacy. So how do you get them to buy in?

Make it Relevant

I know we’ve all heard it before, but it’s good to remember that when our self advocacy skill instruction and activities are relevant to our students’ lives, they’re more likely to buy in. The more we tailor our self advocacy materials and activities to their interests and real lives, the more they’ll pay attention, even if reluctantly. So consider your students–their interests in and outside of school, the challenges you know they’re having with self advocacy, life skills they’re working toward, or whatever self advocacy skills would most benefit them.

Get Their Input

The need to be independent and self-directed in middle and high school is strong, and involving students in determining the self advocacy goals you’ll work on is a great way to increase buy in. Share a self advocacy checklist with them to avoid the “I don’t know” when you ask them what skills they’d like to work on. Even just looking at a list together helps them become aware of what those self advocacy skills are, whether or not they give their input. If they do give you input, take it! You might have other IEP goals you need to address as well, but honoring their input by using it to design instruction shows that you care about them and their goals.

Keep It Open Ended

You know how sometimes middle and high schoolers (okay, especially middle schoolers) can be contrarians, countering every point you make with a statement proving you wrong? Keeping your self advocacy activities open ended can help. You may not get every contrarian on board, but you set yourself up for more success with open ended self advocacy activities like open ended self advocacy scenarios than you would with a more didactic approach. Having open ended and genuine conversations about self advocacy can also help students see that being an advocate isn’t just an activity we do in school, but rather an actual life skill they’ll use for many years to come.

Give Them Role Models

Helping our deaf and hard of hearing kids see they’re not alone is an important part of their self advocacy. As educators, we can help them see that they’re not the only ones on this journey. Introducing them to deaf and hard of hearing peers, adults, and others who are advocates, can help them find that community. Reading about disability rights and others who have come before them, and deaf people who have taken leadership roles can also help. If you’re planning transition activities anyway, taking extra time to introduce them to people who can help them is time well spent.

Make it Ongoing

We would never talk to our students about charging their hearing device’s batteries once and then stop, and self advocacy should be similar. We can make it an ongoing conversation that’s woven in to everything we do. When we talk about the school play coming up, maybe we mention accessibility. If they bring up a movie they watched recently, we ask about the captions. Keeping the conversation going in consistent, small ways, means that students are always (hopefully!) thinking and hearing about self advocacy skills, and embracing them as a way of life.

The post 5 Tips for Teaching Self Advocacy Skills to Middle & High School Students appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

Go Ahead and Write A Goal

If we’re really committed to being systematic about making sure phonological awareness skills are being addressed for students with speech sound errors, one of the best ways to do that is to list a phonological awareness goal on the IEP. It doesn’t have to take up much space, but just 1 goal related to sound/letter correspondence in addition to your articulation goals will make sure you get it done.

Having a goal on the IEP also gives you a natural opening to help teachers and parents understand that if a child can’t pronounce /r/, they might also have some trouble with the letter name, rhyming, writing /r/ words, etc. And bonus, you can ensure teachers and admin understand the relevance of your sessions to what happens in the classroom in terms of literacy instruction.

Spend a Minute or Two on Phonological Awareness at the Beginning of Your Session

Let’s say you’re working on initial /l/ in therapy. Before you begin with whatever articulation activities you have planned, spend just a minute or two on a phonological awareness task. You might ask your student to circle all the capital Ls they see on a page, or pick the pictures that start with the /l/ sound while you gather materials. Maybe you ask them to figure out if the /l/ sound they’re working on is a beginning, middle, or ending sound. By spending that minute or two on a phonological or phonemic awareness activity, you’ve helped enhance their knowledge of that sound and how it’s connected to words and print.

Incorporate Writing Tasks

If your students are old enough, incorporating writing tasks into therapy is a great way to make connections between speech sounds and literacy skills. Maybe at the end a session you ask the student to write down 3-4 words they want to practice at home, or you have them write about the best part of their day using as many words as they can that start with the articulation sound you’re working on. Having them write the letter or words with their sounds while they also practice producing the sound kills two birds with one stone. For kids who are hesitant to write, sometimes a stylus on a tablet or a fancy pen or pencil can help.

Use Classroom Materials as Therapy Materials

Ask your student’s classroom teacher if you can have a copy of their spelling words, or a reading passage they’ve been working on. If you can choose articulation word prompts from their spelling list or classroom reading, you’re again connecting that sound you’ve been working on with print, and enhancing phonemic awareness. Your student practices their articulation sound, hopefully gains some confidence with classroom materials, and strengthens the links between their oral language and literacy. It’s a win win.

Make it Automatic for Preschoolers

Preschool is the time when we usually introduce kids to early phonological awareness skills like rhyming. Make it a point to incorporate some rhyming fun with every preschool speech and language group you have. Working on rhyming helps students listen to the sounds in words, and to notice parts of words. Many preschoolers think rhyming is also great fun, and materials like rhyming books, songs, and finger plays are abundant. By explicitly incorporating rhyming with all of your preschool articulation and language kids, you’re setting them up for success. For kids who struggle with rhyming, you’re giving them extra practice and focus on the skill which we hope will make it easier going forward.

However you decide to incorporate phonemic and phonological awareness, as long as you’re intentional, you’ll be successful.

The post Addressing Phonological & Phonemic Awareness in Speech Therapy appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

Getting the best speech and language information from classroom teachers isn’t always easy, but it’s worth it. Here are some tips to make sure you’re making the most of the process:

Build Your Relationships Ahead of Time

This probably goes without saying, but building relationships with your classroom teachers is the first and best way to get good information from them. If you have a great relationship with them, they’ll be more likely to fill out referral forms or IEP input forms when you ask them, and you’ll probably get more thorough information from them. Build those relationships early by communicating early and often with them, doing what you say you’ll do, and being a team player. Not only will you create some new friendships, but you’ll also have teachers who are happy to help you when you need it.

Give Teachers Plenty of Time

No one likes feeling rushed, especially classroom teachers who already have a lot on their plates. Give them plenty of time to fill in referral forms or IEP input forms. Be clear about your timeline, and let them know when you’ll need the paperwork back. Highlighting or circling a due date, or who to return a form to, helps teachers find that information easily. Write down when you gave it to a teacher, and if you haven’t received it back when you need it, check in with them.

Make it Collaborative

One of the best ways to really get the information you need is to fill out your referral or IEP input form with the classroom teacher. Set up a time to spend 5-10 minutes together, and bring your referral or IEP input form with you. Start a conversation about what exactly you’re looking for, and fill in the paperwork as you go. It might seem simpler to just send the teacher a form, but sometimes doing it together is quicker an easier than playing email tag, replacing lost forms, and tracking down the information the night before your IEP meeting.

Thank Them

Like anything in life, or special education, you attract more bees with honey than vinegar. If you want to get the best speech and language information from your classroom teachers, thank them when they return the forms or when they send you referrals. Remember, we’re all in this together.

The post Getting the Best Speech and Language Information from Classroom Teachers appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

Find Your Purchases

First, you’ll want to make sure you’re logged in to your TPT account. Then, you’ll click on your profile picture in the upper right hand corner. Then, click on “My Purchases.”

This will take you to a list of everything you’ve purchased on TPT. You’ll be able to leave a review (and earn credits) on any paid purchase. You can leave reviews on free purchases (and as a creator, this is still greatly appreciated!), but you won’t earn yourself credits.

Leave a Review

Once you’re in your list of purchases, click on the “Leave a Review” button.

TPT has certain requirements for reviews, because they want you to leave “specific, constructive reviews.” And as a seller, I couldn’t agree more. Your reviews on my resources are SO valuable to me and potential buyers. Your feedback lets me know what you love (or don’t), and lets others know whether or not a resource is right for them.

View Your Account Balance

Once you’ve left a review on a paid resource, you will have earned yourself credits! You can check your credits by going back to your profile picture on the upper right, and clicking on “Account Balance.”

Your account balance shows how much you’ve earned from leaving reviews, that you’ll be able to put toward future purchases. You can see in the example below that when I took this screen shot I’d already spent all of my credits.

Use Your Credits for Purchases

When you’re ready to make a purchase, any credits you have earned will show up in your account. When you go to check out, they’ll be under the checkout button, and you can choose how much (or little) of your account balance you want to use on your purchase.

Leaving reviews on your TPT purchases not only helps sellers and potential buyers, it also help you save your hard earned money by reviewing items you’ve already purchased. And bonus, if you do it before a sale, your money goes even further.

The post How to Earn TPT Credits and Use Them For Your Purchases appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

When we think about teaching our kids about voting, I think some teachers and therapists shy away from it. No one wants to get into political discussions at school, and so sometimes we avoid it. But, hear me out, there are some many great reasons to teach our kids about elections and voting.

We Want Our Kids to Know What’s Going On Around Them

When you work with students with speech, language, and hearing challenges, you know that they often are missing out on conversations and discussions around them because they don’t understand what’s being said. And how often during election season are our kids left feeling confused, wondering what all these words and terms mean? When they hear their parents talking about “candidates,” or hear someone on TV mention “going to the polls,” does it sound like a foreign language to them? If we prep them with that vocabulary, they can feel like they’re part of the current events going on, instead of on the outside.

It’s a Rich Vocabulary Experience

When we teach kids what voting and election vocabulary, not only does it help them feel included, but it’s also rich vocabulary they can use throughout their lives. And if we teach it when elections are already going on, they have a built in context. When student council elections happen in the future, they’ll know what voting and elections are. When they’re asked to choose whether they’d like to have a class popcorn party or a movie, they’ll understand what voting is and why they’re being handed a ballot.

We Can Address Standards While We Address Speech, Language and Hearing Targets

Who doesn’t love killing 2 birds with one stone? Teaching election and voting vocabulary in speech therapy ensures we meet our vocabulary, language, listening and other goals, and we can support social studies, civics, and current events goals at the same time. And, if you loop in the content area or classroom teacher on what you’re doing, you might be able to earn some goodwill with them, knowing you’re both working toward the same goals.

Resources to Help You Teach about Voting and Elections

There are plenty of resources to help you teach your students about voting and elections. First, check with your civics or social studies teachers. They might have already made resources for you to use. PBS Kids also has a great website to help you navigate some of the content around voting. If you’re looking for resources to teach about voting and election vocabulary, check out my voting vocabulary resource, and this interactive Boom Deck about voting and election vocabulary.

And don’t forget, get out there and vote!

The post Why We Need to Teach Kids About Voting (Spoiler…it doesn’t have anything to do with politics!) appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

Breaking Jokes Down

When we help kids understand why jokes are funny, we enable our kids to participate in humor with their peers, which can bolster their social skills and their confidence. We can teach them that jokes have parts, like a set up and a punchline, and we can also teach them about some common types of jokes to build their background knowledge and understanding.

Here are 5 types of jokes we can explain to help students understand the jokes they hear:

1. Something Unexpected

Jokes that include something unexpected can be the most confusing. They’re also the type many young children tell. They don’t always make sense, but are often funny to the person telling them.

2. A Familiar Format

Jokes with a familiar format, like knock knock jokes, are some of the most predictable jokes. Once kids learn the format, they can tell lots of jokes of that type. Another great thing about teaching kids jokes like knock knock jokes is that you can also focus on other speech and language skills like turn taking, intonation for questions, and other skills.

3. Words that Sound Almost the Same

Teaching kids about jokes with words that sound almost the same is such a great way for them to hone their listening skills. When they are listening for similar sounding words, they’re working on conversation skills and their phonemic awareness.

4. Multiple Meaning Words

Many jokes rely on multiple meaning words for their humor. Teaching kids to think about and recognize more than 1 meaning for words will help them “get” these jokes. Not only that, but it also strengthens their vocabulary and word meaning knowledge at the same time.

5. Puns and Idioms

Puns and idioms might be more difficult in jokes for some kids, but once they know what the idiom or pun really means, the meaning of the joke becomes clear. Teaching kids to understand jokes with puns and idioms also helps you target those figurative language goals, killing 2 birds with one stone.

Do you want to know more about teaching kids to understand jokes? Check out my Understanding Jokes resource in my TPT store. It helps break down the parts of jokes, teaches what having a sense of humor is, and gives tons of examples for different types of jokes.

The post 5 Ways Jokes Can Be Funny: Explicitly Teaching Your Students to Understand Jokes appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

If you had a quarter for every time someone asked “So what does a speech language pathologist do?” you’d be retired on a beach somewhere, right? And I mean, I can’t blame them…we do a LOT. And it’s not super intuitive that a speech therapist treats such diverse needs as traumatic brain injury, swallowing, and R sounds. Am I right?

So how do we help others understand what exactly we do? Here are 5 ideas for helping those around you understand what a speech language pathologist does.

1. Decorate Your Space to Help Explain What Speech Language Pathologists Do

We all have spaces we probably want to look less clinical. Use that space to further your cause. If you work in a school, display posters that address the areas you work on like language, fluency, and articulation. If you work in an audiologist’s office, some posters of the ear or hearing devices might be appropriate. If you work with TBIs, maybe some posters about the dangers of concussions would work. But you get the idea–if you have some blank wall space, use it to your advantage.

2. Create a Bulletin Board About Your Speciality

I know, I know…you don’t have extra time to be making bulletin boards. It doesn’t have to be monthly, but think about special occasions or times of year, like Better Speech and Hearing Month, when you can show off your skills and knowledge as an SLP. You also don’t have to reinvent the wheel–search Pinterest or Google for ideas of what others have done, or even just post some pictures (with permission of course!) of a “Day in the life” showing what your job looks like day to day.

3. Use Your Social Media Accounts To Explain Being an SLP

If you use social media, take that opportunity to share. If being an SLP isn’t your main focus on social media, maybe use it sparingly or just occasionally. If you only share speech related content, consider posting a themed series about a specific area you treat, a day in your life, or your top tips for the areas you treat. Hesitant about the ins and outs of sharing on social media? Check out this ASHA article for professionals using social media.

4. Use Those IEP Meetings and Inservices

Every IEP meeting or professional development is an opportunity to help your colleagues understand your job as a speech language pathologist. The best part is they don’t even have to know you’re educating them while you educate families. You’re already explaining what it is you do in everyday language for families, so as long as your colleagues are paying attention, it’s an opportunity for them too. As you’re presenting or taking your turn in a meeting, make eye contact with everyone in the room. By engaging your coworkers as you talk, you make it clear that what you’re saying is important and they’re more likely to tune in as you explain your role as an SLP.

5. Invite People Into Your Sessions

Most of the speech language pathologists I know are extremely generous with their time and knowledge, and are happy to take on students and interns. Whether they’ve thought about it or not, they’re helping explain what it is speech language pathologists do by helping those students. Every time we invite a parent or caregiver to sit in a therapy session, we’re showing them our methods, knowledge, and profession as well. If we do a good job of communicating what we’re doing while we’re doing it, we are educating them on what speech language pathology is while we’re helping their loved one.

The post 5 Ways to Help Others Understand What You Do as a Speech Language Pathologist appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

Noise Induced Hearing Loss

Sound is measured in decibels, and sounds that are very loud can permanently damage hearing. Our ears are amazing structures, with tiny hair cells that help us hear. When these hair cells are damaged by loud noises, they can’t be repaired…that damage is permanent.

I used to do a demonstration in schools with pipe cleaners. If you take a bunch of new pipe cleaners in your hand and crush them from the top, they get all wonky and bent out of shape. No matter how hard you try to straighten them, it’s impossible. This is kind of like the hair cells in our inner ears, although very simplified.

When we, or our kids, are exposed to loud noise, whether for a short or long period of time, we risk doing damage to our hearing, and this is called noise induced hearing loss, since it’s hearing loss caused by noise.

How Loud Are They?

One of the ways kids are being exposed to noise, even at very young ages, is through noisy toys. My own kids were recently given a gift that ended up being very noisy. And as much as we’d like to avoid the noisy toys all together, sometimes these are favorites, or given by special gift givers.

The picture below shows one way we can monitor some of the noise coming from these toys. This is a picture of my Apple Watch, which is equipped with the Noise App (it’s a little yellow ear icon). When I put the watch right up to the speaker of the toy, it was reading between 95-100 decibels. For reference, other sounds around this level would be a subway, motorcycle, or siren for an ambulance.

If you don’t have an Apple Watch with a built in noise meter, look for a sound level meter app or noise monitor app. Before I had this Apple Watch I was using Decibel X to monitor noisy situations.

Now, my kids aren’t going to be putting their ears directly next to the speaker like my watch was, but even so, 95-100 decibels is way too loud for a toy!

Fixing Those Noisy Toys

So, what do you do about those toys that are just too noisy? If you can’t get rid of it or take the batteries out, covering the speaker with clear packing tape can help. In this case, I just cut a small piece of packing tape, slightly larger than the speaker, and then made sure to smooth it down so the edges wouldn’t be super visible to my kids (prompting them to try to pull it off).

As you can see in the photo, adding the clear packing tape took the decibel level at the speaker from 94 decibels down to 75, which is a big change. Also, since I know my children aren’t using this toy with the speaker up to their ears, I know the sound will be less as it reaches them and I feel a lot better about letting them use it.

The post Tame Those Noisy Toys appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.

But, I also think there’s a case to be made for teaching about holidays and incorporating them into therapy sessions after they’ve happened. As I’ve become more child-led and play-based, I’ve started to think about holidays differently.

Consider a student who has just come back from celebrating Thanksgiving with family. Instead of having to imagine what Thanksgiving might look like, she’s seen it. Instead of labeling pictures of food, he’s tasted it. And instead of pretending to play football after a big meal, they’ve experienced it.

Think about how much richer the dramatic play, how much deeper the vocabulary knowledge, and how many more connections a student might be able to make. Reading a book about an Easter basket will become more relevant after a student has seen one. Choosing their creepy preferences in a Halloween this or that is more meaningful when they understand the vocabulary. The same is true of St. Patrick’s Day activities after participating in a parade or discussing Christmas idioms after experiencing the holiday itself.

Obviously not every student will celebrate each holiday, and we need to be sensitive to that, but in communities where students are celebrating certain holidays, give some thought to “revisiting” a holiday in therapy after it’s happened. Maybe you even do both-a preview and a review. For most of our students, the more connections they make, the better.

The post A Case for Teaching About Holidays After They Happen appeared first on Mighty Voice Speech and Language Therapy.