Here in the Chicago office that houses Communication Therapy and Chicago P.L.A.Y. Project we are very excited about our work using iPad apps with children with special needs! We have plenty of information to share with you, no matter where you are.
In the Chicago area?
Consultations: Not certain if the iPad is the perfect tool for your child or student? Considering purchasing one as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device but unsure if your child will “take to it” – and which voice output app to purchase? Set up an appointment at the clinic by calling 773-988-0820 to schedule a visit! We’ll show you the best of what’s out there and try apps with your child – and you’ll get our recommendations in writing.
Workshops: Bring us to your school, clinic, or organization for one of our popular “I Have an iPad…Now What?” workshops where we share everything from our favorite tried and true apps to tips on using them with kids – plus peripherals like styluses, paintbrushes, and the best cases for kids! For information on where we will be presenting to the general public next, watch this board. And if you’d like to have us come to you, call us at 773-988-0820 to schedule.
Outside Chicago?
In addition to using these terrific apps with our own clients, we are committed to sharing current information about technology with interested families, clinicians, and teachers around the world.
Readers can find our useful, up-to-the-minute information in many online locations today!
3. Pinterest – Sometimes words aren’t enough – we like pictures, too! Follow the Communication Therapy PInterest boards, where you’ll get visuals of our favorite peripherals, apps, and even upcoming iPad App workshops!
4. Twitter – Communication Therapy has nearly 900 Twitter followers at this time – follow us and you’ll see why! We share great articles and other important information related to AAC, iPads, Autism, and Speech Language Therapy.
5. iPad Apps for Autism: A Spreadsheet of Reviews and Recommendations – Created by Shannon Des Roches Rosa with review contributions by Corina Becker and Communication Therapy’s Jordan Sadler, the Spreadsheet was noted in the New York Times Gadgetwise blog as one of the best sources of excellent apps online!
Today was the long-awaited Neighborhood Parents NetworkDevelopmental Differences Resource Fair. The first of its kind in Chicago, the Fair – free to parents – featured a room full of exhibitors that included private practitioners (speech, OT, developmental therapists, music and art therapists, social workers, psychologists) as well as representatives from some local large public organizations such as the Chicago Public Schools Office of Special Education and Supports.
Specialists were available to talk to parents about their programs and services and had the opportunity to answer initial questions in a face-to-face manner that is not often available to parents. Further, clinicians were able to network with each other through the course of the four hour event.
Jordan Sadler, MS, CCC/SLP was assisted at the Communication Therapy table by staff therapist Erin Vollmer, MS, CCC/SLP, and undergraduate intern Kate Gilday. It was a pleasure to meet so many parents and discuss their child’s needs and the best services to meet them.
We want to thank three developers of high quality, child-tested iPad apps for donating codes to us for this event. A huge thank you goes out to Injini, Mobile-Education Store, and BeeVisual. Winners have been notified by email and those who weren’t chosen have received emails with links allowing them to purchase the featured apps if they’d like.
Here’s what we raffled off today:
Injini’s Child Development Suite for iPad – A collection of high quality learning games for the developmentally young. Beautifully designed app that targets cause and effect, patterns, early receptive language, and much more! This is a favorite among our young clients and really wowed the crowd at the Fair today. Children loved exploring it while we chatted with their parents!
BeeVisual’s ChoiceWorks universal app – We were able to give away 5 codes for ChoiceWorks today, and this was another very popular app at the event. New on the app scene, ChoiceWorks is an inclusive app that allows the user to create individualized schedule boards, help a child with self-regulatory skills like waiting or taking turns, and deal with challenging emotions. It’s beautifully designed and intuitive for new users. Parents of my clients are also loving the companion books that go with each activity, which are terrific social stories!
From Mobile Education Store, we gave away codes for three different apps that we use consistently in our language therapy sessions and find to be excellent:
LanguageBuilder – Helps children ages 3-10 improve sentence formation and improve receptive and expressive language development.
StoryBuilder – Helps students ages 6-10+ improve paragraph formation and integration of ideas, improve higher level abstract thinking and inference skills. Great for working on narratives.
ConversationBuilder – Teaches multi-exchange conversations with peers in a variety of social settings to students ages 6-10. “Freeze frames” social scenarios for kids to consider what they would say or do to enter into play or conversation.
More recommended apps and iPad peripherals are yet to come in the next couple of months!
Nearly two years ago, my good friend Christa Dahlstrom (whom I met initially through her excellent blog Hyperlexicon) approached me tentatively over brunch. It seemed she had an idea to share, and she was looking for advice. As it turned out, Christa’s idea was to write a children’s TV show, one that would help children like her own son Ben learn to improve his social-emotional development in a new way.
You see, many kids – like Ben – learn language in its gestalt form: in “chunks”. They learn it through books and videos they find compelling, reading and watching over and over and over, and memorizing what they hear. Many, but not all, later repeat that language in real-time social interactions with other people. This is called delayed echolalia (here is a great post from blogger MOM-nos on her son’s stages of echolalia). Still other kids like to re-enact scenes they’ve watched or read, enlisting other children and adults to play the roles of the characters. And, finally, there are a great many children who simply find it easier to process information that is presented both verbally and visually in a high affect way that makes them laugh. When they can watch it more than once, all the better.
Ben’s mother had thought for a while that it would be incredibly beneficial if there were a show that her son found compelling which actually gave him strategies and models for appropriate social interactions – that he could watch with his parents and reenact, that his teachers and classmates could watch together and learn from, that his social skills coaches could watch with him and role play. Imagine the results if a child’s whole team were to use the same vocabulary and draw from the same examples! And what if we added episode guides for the adults, with suggestions for expanding beyond each episode with role-playing exercises and other interactive ideas to extend the learning into real-time social interaction? It was clear that this was an idea with wings.
There are products targeting social emotional teaching on the market. But, thus far, there’s nothing quite like the show Christa has created. Flummox & Friends is a live-action show that uses humor and playfulness and teaches without talking down to kids. When I read the first script I laughed out loud over and over and had a strong urge to send it to everyone I knew. We all recognize the difference between mainstream movies made for children that adults enjoy watching with our kids and those that we try to avoid. I knew right away that this would be a show parents would really have a great time watching, too. Families of kids who are on an atypical path of social-emotional development will watch, learn, and laugh together watching Flummox & Friends.
Liesl Wenzke Hartmann, MA, CCC/SLP of Communication Therapy San Francisco and I agreed to consult to the project as curriculum consultants and have worked closely with Christa to see that Flummox & Friends reflects therapeutic best practices and explains concepts in a way that our years of experience have proven works with children.
After many months of writing, rewriting, curriculum development, and consultation, the team has released a Kickstarter fundraising site in order to raise the money to shoot the pilot episode of Flummox & Friends. We have 42 more days to raise $30,000 and while we are off to a very strong start with many generous backers, it remains that this is a huge sum of money. I encourage each of you to visit our site, watch our short video – where you can get a glimpse of the show and a summary of our developmental, play-based philosophy – and help us out by backing our project and sharing it with other parents, educators, therapists, and anyone who has an interest in children with all kinds of minds.
Donate! “Like” us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Children everywhere will benefit.
Guest post by Tamara Kaldor, Developmental Therapist, Director of Chicago PLAY Project
A child’s “communication toolbox” is best strengthened through a multi-disciplinary approach. It is exciting for me to be able to collaborate with my colleagues at Communication Therapy + Friends who truly understand that communication skills go beyond spoken words and vocabulary building.
It takes all of a child’s mental and physical abilities to communicate effectively so they can play with peers and participate in the school environment successfully. As a Developmental Therapist, I focus primarily on helping children’s social-emotional development through play and I also provide inclusion support for children in school and community programs. My goal as a therapist is to help every child develop the skills they need to form joyful and meaningful relationships and to be successfully included. This is done primarily through play. Play is important developmental work for all children. Through play, children learn to use non-verbal communication skills, negotiate with peers, communicate their ideas effectively, and play out their fears and fantasies safely.
Communication Toolbox: Non-verbal communication
I want to focus on why non-verbal communication skills are one of the most important tools a child must develop and learn how to use effectively.
Much of how we communicate (about 85-90% of our day) is through non-verbal communication and it is also the first level of language that ALL children develop– before spoken words. Non-verbal communication is extremely important for young children to master because the ability to read facial expressions, gesture (e.g., pointing), communicate with a peer while being active on the playground, or express their emotions appropriately is what helps children to develop their earliest friendships during playtime. To learn more about why non-verbal communication skills enhance a child’s communication skills and school performance read this excerpt from Dr. Stanley Greenspan on the importance of non-verbal communication from Playground Politics: understanding the emotional life of your school-age child
When will my child talk?
ALL children must develop some non-verbal communication skills before they will utter their first words, whether they do so verbally or through augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). For many children we work with, we must first start by strengthening their non-verbal communication skills before we can work on speech goals. We realize this is disappointing for many families to hear, but non-verbal communication is an important developmental milestone. It cannot be skipped over. Sometimes we have to climb down the developmental ladder before we can go up at full strength. The stronger a child’s non-verbal skills are, the better communicator they will become. Without a strong foundation, the developmental ladder that all children must climb will be very rickety.
The body also plays an important role in language development. Beyond having strong mouth muscles, there is a close correlation between the brain learning how to read the signals that the muscles are firing throughout the body and language production. Getting in some good body work with Cara Lindell at Kinetic Konnections (also a colleague at Communication Therapy + Friends) or a qualified Occupational Therapist (OTR/L), can sometimes be the key to getting the body in sync so children can develop their full language capacities.
Get Moving!
I can’t urge families enough to not only get down on the floor and play, but to also get climbing on the jungle gym at the park. I often hear parents report back to me that their child is the most verbal when they are swinging, climbing, or going down the slide. When possible try to include some non-verbal gestures with your child at the playground.
Play Dumb
The strategy of “playing dumb” can often help a child use their toolbox of communication skills to get their needs met. The goal of “playing dumb” is to encourage your child to expand their communication tools and the length of the time they interact with you. Here are some tips on how to “play dumb”:
* Therapists don’t just keep things in boxes, locked cabinets, or up high to keep our offices tidy. We try to get as much communication and problem-solving into our interactions with children as possible. We want to make them work for it! You can do this too! If your child needs help with an activity and is stuck using the same communication strategy they depend on to get your assistance or attention, try to expand the interaction and support their use of non-verbal communication and reading cues by:
1. Slowing down and being patient so that your child can read your cues, process the information, and respond;
2. Exaggerating all of your facial expressions and gestures, e.g., making a puzzled face and shrugging your shoulders;
3. Not responding right away until he/she is pointing, pulling you over to the activity, or uttering some words (using at least one means of communication that is different from his/her fallback methods);
4. Going up the slide or getting into the swing yourself and seeing if your child will communicate that you are doing the wrong thing. This will often elicit a lot of laughter!
5. Saying “Hmmm . . .I don’t know what you want right now…”
If your child seems close to a “meltdown” due to frustration, try saying softly, “I know you are trying to tell me what you want. You are working so hard. Let me try to help you,” and try giving two choices to see if your child will point to one of them.
Mealtime Ideas
A fun snack/dinner time non-verbal activity: At your next meal or snack time try practicing your family’s non-verbal communication skills by asking for a glass of water, requesting others to pass a favorite food around, or playing a simple game of “Go Fish”. Try expressing your disappointment or excitement without words (think: miming) and see how far you get. Remember to have fun and laugh as you go along. Your child will also see that she/he is not the only one who is frustrated when they are not being understood. It is challenging, but it will help your child learn how to read non-verbal cues that she/he will need on the playground and in the classroom.
Tamara Kaldor has extensive experience working with the DIR®/Floortime™ therapy model and supporting families and educators as they use the model successfully at home and in inclusive school programs. In addition, Tamara advocates with families for children in school and community programs. She is the only licensed provider in Chicago of The P.L.A.Y. Project, an effective, affordable, and evidence-based intervention for children with autism and other developmental delays, based on the wonderful DIR®/Floortime™ model developed Dr. Stanley Greenspan.
Parents play an important role in the DIR/Floortime model. For any therapy model to be truly effective, it must be intensive. The National Academy of Sciences recommends at least of 25 hours of intensive intervention per week for children diagnosed with autism and other significant developmental delays. However, for many families this is just too expensive and can seem overwhelming to do themselves. The P.L.A.Y. Project specializes in coaching parents, sitters, and other team members to be a child’s play partner in their most natural environment, home, and move a child up the developmental ladder.
A dear friend of my family suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. One of the few remaining ways to reach him is through favorite songs, especially when performed live by familiar voices. Sometimes his response is happy- a “Yeah man!” that springs from his days of being a soulful musician. Other times it’s sorrowful and brings about moans and tears. The sadness may be a small recognition of what’s been lost or what is no longer accessible, or it may be something else entirely. We can’t be sure why his responses vary the way they do- why the same song that induces smiles and exclamations one day can inflict pain the next. What we do know is, whether negative or positive, it’s music that spurs his response. It’s music that allows his wife and his kids a glimpse of the vibrant man they remember. I think about him often and wonder at the power of song.
Music is emotional by nature. It has long been a part of human ceremonies- both celebratory and mournful. Songs have a unique way of helping us express our feelings and invite others to join us in our emotional state. The first dance at a wedding reception is a perfect example. We express joy through singing familiar celebratory songs and moving our bodies. It feels good to have others come together in this way–that’s why the ritual continues. And it wouldn’t be the same without music.
As a speech-language pathologist, a musician, and an instructor of children’s Music Together® classes, I’ve had many opportunities to witness how music affects both children and adults. It can capture a child’s attention and light them up, even when little else does. Making and sharing music with people in your life can bring you closer, offer support in hard times, and spread joy in happier ones. I’m constantly learning more about the power of music and it never ceases to fascinate me.
This post is an introduction to a series of entries about the importance of music and its deep connection to human cognition and emotion. As I specialize in working with children who have difficulties with communication, there will naturally be a focus on the therapeutic effect music has on children’s development of speech, language, and social/emotional skills. But as I continue to read and learn about the broad effect that music has on all of us (socially, emotionally, cognitively), I may share some broader findings with you as well. My hope is that this post will develop into an ongoing discussion where readers share their own experiences with music and connect with a greater community. Please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus an entry on and I will do my best. I’d love to hear from you.
Laura Allison, MA, CCC/SLP is both a certified, licensed speech-language pathologist who works at Communication Therapy/Chicago, and a certified Music Together® instructor who teaches multiple classes at Merry Music Makers each week.
The introduction to this series of posts can be found here.
Articulation, or speech sound production, is the part of a speech-language pathologist’s job that the public is most aware of. When we tell the majority of lay people what we do for a living, they assume we spend our days working with kids on their /l/, /r/ and /s/ sounds, and when children are referred to us due to concerns about language development, we often have a lot to explain about the breadth of our expertise. No matter what our areas of expertise, most of us spend at least some of our time working with children on articulation.
There are some terrific iPad apps dedicated to assisting children in their articulation development. While there are many apps that families can use at home to improve their children’s communication, these dedicated apps are more appropriate for use under supervision of a trained clinician in a therapy session.
Why would a speech-language pathologist work on articulation using an iPad? For one thing the device makes the clinician’s job substantially easier in that it holds a great many pictures, replacing the boxes of (typically) outdated picture cards that often sit on our shelves, and it makes it very simple to collect and share data. Further, kids are highly motivated by the interactive, hands-on nature of the device. However, there is absolutely no reason to purchase more than one dedicated articulation app for your clients – choose carefully to make sure that the app you invest in will work for the majority of the kids you see.
ArtikPix
The articulation app I have been using the most in my work this past year is ArtikPix. ArticPix allows you to customize the flashcards you use in practice and then in a matching game. The graphics are simple drawings, similar to Mayer-Johnson symbols. After selecting target phoneme(s), the clinician can select which word position will be practiced (e.g., you can create an activity that includes /s/ in initial word position and medial /l/). When the child taps the screen, the word is clearly pronounced. The child can tap a microphone icon to record him or herself repeating the word, and then listen to it. This immediate feedback is wonderful. The clinician then taps the smiley face or frown face to collect data on accuracy. There are “yay!” and “awww…” sounds that correspond with these, but you can also turn those sounds off in Settings. However, the child can see how you judged their production and with older children, I’ll ask them to rate their own productions that way. The latest update of ArtikPix allows the clinician to collect data easily for up to four students in a group. The app saves your data for each child (and any notes you have added on that session). You can share results by email.
For $29.99 you can purchase the “Full” version which comes with 21 card decks of 40 cards for each phoneme – there are close to 1,000 total articulation cards. Click here for a complete description. We did not purchase the full version at our office. We downloaded the free ArtikPix app and we purchase individual phoneme decks for $1.99 each as needed. It is possible to download extra decks of cards from within the app so it’s very quick and easy. Since we see a small number of children for speech sound production, this worked well for us, but if you are working with many kids who have a variety of error sounds, it would be more cost effective to purchase the Full version.
This app does not target phonological processes, but the developer created an additional app to address this. PhonoPix-Full can be purchased separately for $24.99.
Here is a video of a client working with one of my graduate student clinicians on his /l/ sound using ArtikPix:
Articulate It!
I recently purchased Articulate It! for my iPad. Articulate It! was developed by Smarty Ears, whose wide variety of apps are created by a speech-language pathologist. This app includes all English phonemes and over 1,200 photo cards. Similar to ArtikPix, the clinician can collect data and share it (but more easily, in a clear graph form, and you can opt to include the client’s recordings in your email). Additionally, the clinician can choose targets based on phoneme, phonological processes (e.g., fronting, stopping, initial consonant deletion, to name a few), or manner of articulation (e.g., fricatives, glides, nasals). Again, it is possible to set up this app for group therapy. The clinician has the option to write a note for each production of the target sound rather than a general note at the end of the activity. Another helpful feature of Articulate It! is that there are randomized transition sounds (which can be turned off if desired) so that the child isn’t made overly aware of his or her mistakes when data is collected. For some of the sensitive kids I work with, games that have a “wrong answer” sound are very anxiety-provoking. To take a look at this app, click here. It’s easy to use and quite intuitive.
This Articulate It! app is costlier, at $49.99, but it does provide targets for both articulation and phonological work in one app. The cost is only slightly higher than buying both ArtikPix and PhonoPix, and there are more features. We have begun to switch our clients over to Articulate It! and feel that it is worth the price.
Toontastic
While not designed to be a therapeutic tool, Toontastic is an app we find many, many uses for in speech and language intervention. It is one of our most beloved apps because we can work on such a wide range of goals with it – and it’s only $.99! In the area of speech sound production, I have found it to be a very fun and motivating way for kids to work on their sounds in a structured conversation or story-telling format. This link, for example, will take you to a story we created with a 4-year old client who was working hard on her “sh” sound. She asked to make a cartoon on the iPad and so we adapted the activity by helping steer her toward a theme that might have more “sh” sounds in it, and then working with her on filling in the story with the words we’d decided upon.
I will review this app further in my post on ways to work on language with the iPad, but the general idea is that the child chooses a background theme and characters (or draws their own!), and then uses the structured narrative arc to create and narrate his or her own story. After creating each scene, the child has an opportunity to choose appropriate background music that fits the mood of the scene (e.g., scary, happy, excited). For our older clients we usually incorporate all pieces of the story arc, but with younger children like this one we stick to a beginning, middle, and ending by deleting some steps within the app. Kids love it and it’s been a really fun way to move into less structured articulation practice! If the clinician and child want to share the story, it can be uploaded to the Toontastic website. Before doing so, I make sure that the child’s identification is protected.
In any therapy, the iPad is only as creative as you are.
Toontastic illustrates an important point about use of the iPad in speech therapy, which is that you can go light years beyond dedicated speech apps in therapy if you use your natural creativity as a clinician. If you are able to think outside the box without the iPad, you’ll be able to do the same with it. It is simply another tool in your toolbox. You can have as much success with apps that were never intended for therapy as with dedicated ones like ArtikPix or Articulate It! In addition to activities like Toontastic, you might engage a child in drawing a series of nice, long /s/ sounds while producing the “sssssss”, using a free app like Draw, or you could work with a young child on a puzzle in an app like Puzzld!, targeting all the /s/ words in it. The sky’s the limit!
Please feel free to share your experiences with these apps – and any others you’ve tried – when remediating articulation and phonology difficulties in a pediatric population!
Stay tuned for a summary of our favorite iPad apps for language remediation!
Jordan Sadler, MS, CCC/SLP, is a speech-language pathologist and has been the Director of Communication Therapy, P.C. since 2004. She loves finding new ways to bring the iPad into therapy sessions and helping families find useful apps for home and community settings.
Here at the Chicago office I’ve been experimenting with use of an iPad in my pediatric communication therapy work for about seven months now, and am very excited to share what I’ve learned. (I used the iPhone in my work for about a year prior to that, but its impact was minimal compared with the iPad.) As a developmental speech-language pathologist who believes that a foundation of trust and emotional connection that can only be forged through face-to-face interaction is central to the therapeutic process, I used to feel strongly that technology had no place in speech therapy. And perhaps, given the quality of what used to be available, I was right. But the creation of “iDevices” such as the iPhone, iPodTouch, and in particular the iPad, have been game-changers for me.
I will be writing a series of blog posts here, illustrating usage of the iPad for AAC (Augmentative & Alternative Communication), improved language and narrative skills, speech sound production, and general motivation. While there is a lot of buzz right now around the use of iPads with individuals with autism (with good reason!), I have been able to integrate the iPad into work on absolutely every type of speech/language goal my clients have, and highly recommend it as a therapy tool.
There are many excellent resources already online for those who are getting started, particularly for children with autism spectrum disorders. An ideal place to start is SLP Tahirih Bushey’s post called “iSupports for Children with Autism — Basic Concepts” on the Autism Games blog, in which she wrote a primer on what the various devices are and why they are useful for a child with ASD.
The next required stop for someone interested in this topic must be Shannon Des Roches Rosa’s blog, Squidalicious, in which she writes frequently about how the iPad has made an enormous difference in the life of her son Leo, who has autism. Take your time on this blog and read as much as you can. The link provided here takes the reader directly to a fantastic list of all of Shannon’s posts about the iPad (and links to other relevant articles), including upcoming events and speaking engagements she’s been involved in. There the reader will also find a link to a spreadsheet of apps that are recommended for iPad users with autism; I am one of the contributors to this spreadsheet and I think it’s a terrific resource for those who are parenting or engaged in speech/language therapy with those with autism spectrum disorders or other disorders of communicating and relating to others.
I would also highly recommend the GeekSLP website, where speech-language pathologist “techie” Barbara Fernandes shares a great deal of information about apps for iPad, iPodTouch, and iPhone for SLPs, teachers, and parents of kids with all types of speech/language challenges, not just autism. The reader will find articles, posts, and podcasts on this well-organized website that is chock full of frequently-updated information. I have particularly appreciated her recent Apps for SLPs document, which I have printed out and keep in the waiting area in my office for parents to peruse.
Next up: I will share with you my favorite speech therapy apps and show you how I use them!
Today I was working with a child on establishing correct production of /f/. She’d had been successful with this sound in our previous session but it wasn’t happening as easily this time. I was modeling like crazy, giving visual cues and verbal cues, using motivating contexts, still…no deal. It just wasn’t happening. Taking it in stride, I moved on to some other goals. As a therapist, you just have to know that motor planning is easier somedays than others, and every child has fluctuations in progress. I recited this to myself and focused my energy on the next activity: getting initial and medial sounds in two syllable words. We started playing with a piggy bank toy and she was on a roll requesting “money” and even “more money”. After about ten fabulous productions, she surprised me. I modeled the target phrase “more money” and, expecting another spot-on imitation, waited for her response. She looked at me and produced a picture perfect, clear-as-day /f/ sound. This of course was promptly followed by “more money!”
While her mom and I both laughed, I was reminded of something that’s very easy to forget. Kids are learning. All the time. They’re taking everything in – even when we don’t think we’re getting through. We might not see the results immediately. They might show up tomorrow, or next week. Everything you do provides a model for your child. Use it to your advantage and don’t get discouraged if you don’t see the results you hoped for right away. They’re in there…they’re just waiting for the right time to come out.
I recently attended the Social Thinking Provider’s Conference hosted by Michelle Garcia Winner and came away energized and excited about my work and the new tools I got to add to my therapeutic tool box. I thought I would share about one in particular that I am finding to be especially helpful for my students.
Story Grammar Marker, also known as Braidy the StoryBraid, is a teaching method for narrative language that was dreamed up by an SLP from the East Coast –Maryellen Rooney Moreau. It’s a technique for helping children learn to tell and write stories and can be adapted for kids in preschool all the way up to high school.
I’ve always known that narrative language was a struggle for many of my students but until this workshop, I hadn’t fully understood the scope of how important and relevant it is. During the workshop, my mind started whirring along, taking me back to all the times my students have come into their sessions and with excitement in their voice trying to share an experience they’d had last summer, last weekend, last night or just 5 minutes ago, but could not get the full story organized and out of their mouths. With detective work, fill-ins from parents and carefully crafted questions, I’ve often heard the full story eventually, but have never had a clear method for how to help my kids really organize their story and express it fully and independently. I started also thinking about how story telling is such a huge part of my relationships with my friends and colleagues, how I feel closer to those who can tell a good story, how I learn so much about others in my lives by the stories they share, and again the gravity of personal narrative language began to sink in.
The technique works like this: A braid of yarn signifies the Gestalt or big picture of the story. Visual markers hang off the braid to represent the major components of a story: the characters, setting, “kick-off” event, feelings, plan, actions, “tie-up” and subsequent feelings. This is by far the clearest representation of a story that I’ve come across. What’s more, MaryEllen explained so beautifully that the setting not only includes the “where” of the story, but what the character was expecting to happen. She explained that many stories happen like this: A character is having an expected day or a “ho-hum” day as she cleverly describes and “all of a sudden…” the “kick-off” event happens (something unexpected). Then the critical thinking part or “triangle” of the story happens. The character(s) will inevitably have feelings about that unexpected “kick-off” event and will then need to make a plan to deal with what just happened.
A colleague of MaryEllen’s spoke the next day at the conference and shared how she’s been using this work to help kids work through difficult situations at her school. She uses the braid to help the child calm down, get regulated and explain what happened to get them so upset. The child and therapist can then problem solve, finish the “story” in a new way, and then take the actions to remedy the situation – brilliant!
I’m really enjoying this new tool – I’m seeing that my students are getting it. They are so drawn to the braid tactilely and I can see the light in their eyes when they realize that there’s a visual cue there for all the questions they get peppered with when trying to tell a story. It really helps them hold language in their hands – instead of an invisible swoosh of words in the wind, flying up and around everyone’s heads. There’s nothing “ho-hum” about this technique!
You can learn more about this awesome teaching tool on the MindWing website.
Jordan Sadler, SLP, of the Chicago office has a new essay up this week on The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism blog. It’s an overview of what parents of children with autism spectrum disorders should look for in a great speech-language pathologist!
Please come on over and check it out, and while you’re there take a few minutes to read some of the excellent posts written by parents and professionals that are already up on this wonderful new resource for parents!
Communication Therapy Blog 