Week 6

Date: 4-10-12

Arrival Time: 10:00 a.m.

Departure Time: 11:00 a.m.

Total Time This Day: 1.0 hrs

Total Time to Date: 16.0 hrs

Activities/Observations:

• The first session consisted of group instruction; both children are 4 years of age.  Both students are working on improving their articulation skills.
• The session began with a craft with making a bunny. The speech pathologist would say a phrase targeting sounds to be focused on and the child would then have to repeat the sentence that the speech pathologist had just said five times.  The speech pathologist has the child repeat the sentence this many times in order to make sure that the child knows how to say the sentence correctly using targeted sounds.  If the exercise is done correctly, then the child gets to glue a part of the bunny together.  The speech pathologist records the results by tallying the number of correct productions for each child.  Both children did quite well with this activity. 

Analysis:

• Activities
• I thought that the activity utilizing the bunny craft was a new and interesting approach to treatment, which I hadn’t seen with the previous speech pathologist, but I thought it was effective and something I would probably use myself one day. 
• As far as instructional approaches go, the students’ session in a group, but the children are working with the speech pathologist one at a time.
• I do think that the child who is not working with the speech pathologist needs something to do as they are quickly done putting their piece of the craft together and are simply sitting and waiting; this works with some children, but not all children will sit nicely, not to mention they are not gaining much from sitting. 
   
• The classroom management used was effective.
• This speech pathologist used a sticker system for classroom management.  Each child has a sticker “board” and if the child works hard during the session with the speech pathologist, then they get to put a sticker on their “board.”  Once their “board” is full they get to take it home with them. 
• In the activity that was done with the children, the speech pathologist used the craft as a reward; which is a great idea for children who love to do crafts.  She used the craft to drive students to practice correct use of sound production, and then the student would get to put a piece of the craft together as a reward. 
• Assessments
• There were a few forms of assessment used today’s sessions.  One of the main forms of assessment was observation; the speech pathologist and the speech pathologist’s para-professional would observe the student’s and their participation in the activities in addition to their ability to work on their target sounds or other goals made before the activity. 
• Another form of assessment used today was when the pathologist recorded the findings of each student’s performance and participation with other notes into a log in the student’s file. 
• The other form of assessment used today was when the speech pathologist tallied the correct production of a target sound for each student per round. 
  
  
• Reflection
• It was very interesting for me to observe today, as I was observing a new speech and language pathologist; as opposed to when I started out with the previous speech pathologist, I now had something to compare the new experience to.  I learned about new approaches that could be used for activities and materials within a treatment session with children in an early childhood center setting.  I also learned about some alternative, but also good assessment and classroom management techniques.  Now observing two speech pathologists in schools, I have learned that the pathologists often have limited space to utilize as they work with children. This pathologist as well as the last has advised me to get a wide range of experiences within speech and language pathology and through the observations I have begun to see why; there are so many different clients with variety in diagnosis’ within simply one area of speech and language pathology, such as early childhood education in schools.   
   
• NOTE:  As previously mentioned in other posts, there are no official state issued standards that are used in the schools for speech pathology curricula. .

Week 5

Date: 2-29-12

Arrival Time: 8:30 a.m.

Departure Time: 11:30 a.m.

Total Time This Day: 3.0 hrs

Total Time to Date: 15.0 hrs

Activities/Observations:

• The first session consisted of group instruction; both children are 7 years of age.  One student was working on improving their artic skills and the other student was working on improving their artic expressive language skills.
• The first child was to focus on oral nasal contrast and /r/ sound; the second child was to focus on /l/ and /v/ sound, as well as syntax noun-verb agreement. 
• For the student that is working on /r/ sound, the speech pathologist starts out by saying an /r/ sound word and the student does their best to repeat the word with the correct production of the sound.  The beginning of the sound is prolonged (i.e. rrrr), but this is necessary to get the child’s tongue used to the new position for the /r/ sound.  The student does well with this exercise.  The second student , whom is working on production of /l/ and /v/ sounds, is looking at a book with lots of pictures, which is supposed to help create conversation using the targeted sounds for the child.  The student works well with her /v/ sound production in conversation.  She had good production of a majority of the time; the student probably had a finishing percentage of 70% accuracy. 
• The second session consisted of group instruction; one child is 5 years old and the other child is six years old.  One student was working on their artic language skills and the other student was working solely on their artic skills. 
• At this session, the students did an activity with a bingo card.  The students began by picking a picture card out of the bucket, provided by the speech pathologist, and they then would verbalize what they drew and then they also had to verbalize where the picture card was to do (i.e. fish is classified as an animal on the bingo card).  In summary, students used classification to match similar pictures together incorporating the use of verbalization of words/sounds. 
• The third session also consisted of group instruction; both children are ten years old.  One student was working on their articulation skills and the other student was working on their oral motor skills. 
• The first student is working on the /r/ sound in conversation; the second student is working on /s,z/ sounds in conversation and the speech pathologist is to watch for jaw deviating to the side. 
• Students both use conversation, for which they each get to select a topic of their choice, to work on and use their target sounds with.  The speech pathologist uses the “taking a sample” chart/sheet to record correct and incorrect articulation of student’s target sounds within words that are spoken.  The student who isn’t currently speaking, is in charge of tallying the correct production of the target sound that their peer makes; this is good for the student because it helps to improve their listening skills overall and so that they are better able to detect their own correct or incorrect production of a sound when they are verbalizing. 

Analysis:

• Activities
• I thought that all of the activities were handled well.  I used to not think that the opposing student tallying the other student’s correct production of the target sound was all that helpful for the child who is tallying, but I now see the importance of the task, as it greatly benefits the student in their listening skills concerning others that they are conversing with as well as their own independent listening skills; this task will only further benefit the student in their ability to hear and understand correct production of a sound.  I thought that the bingo activity was very creative and the children really seemed to enjoy the game; I also think that this activity could be adapted and used with quite a large range of ages and objectives for treatment.  I also thought that having one of the students in the first session prolong the /r/ sound in order to initiate correct production, is a good idea; but I think that this should only be used as a last result, as it could be hard to phase the child out of this habit. 
• The classroom management used was effective.
• As I was observing the same speech pathologist, all of the classroom management techniques and implementations that were recorded in the previous observations still hold true.
• A task that was used in many of the sessions, but can also be noted as part of the class management, would be the tally system, where the child who is not working on their targeting sounds focus on tallying the number of correct production of target sounds that their peer makes; this keeps the student busy and engaged.   
• Assessments
• There were a few forms of assessment used today’s sessions.  One of the main forms of assessment was observation; the speech pathologist and the speech pathologist’s para-professional would observe the student’s and their participation in the activities in addition to their ability to work on their target sounds or other goals made before the activity. 
• Another form of assessment used today was when the pathologist recorded the findings of each student’s performance and participation with other notes into a log in the student’s file. 
• The other form of assessment used today was the “taking a sample” sheet that the students in the third session were in charge of keeping track of their correct, incorrect, and almost correct production of sounds/words. 
  
  
• Reflection
• I thought that today had a good variety in activities and techniques for treatment through the sessions.  I was able to gain more ideas and examples of different materials and activities that I could utilize in my future as a speech and language pathologist.  Furthermore, I found it very interesting to observe a student who has a jaw deviation, which influenced his production of his language, which almost went unnoticed; it was great to see the variety in diagnosis’ and treatments in order to expose me to different treatments of diagnosis’ that I may encounter and learn about as a speech and language pathologist. 
   
• NOTE:  As previously mentioned in other posts, there are no official state issued standards that are used in the schools for speech pathology curricula. .

Week 4

Date: 2-22-12

Arrival Time: 8:30 a.m.

Departure Time: 11:30 a.m.

Total Time This Day: 3.0 hrs

Total Time to Date: 12.0 hrs

Activities/Observations:

• The first session consisted of individual instruction, one child who is four years of age and was working on improving their artic expressive language skills.
• At this session, the child worked on marking final position consonants, syllables, and words; /s/ and /z/ in syllables and pronunciation of two syllable words.  The speech pathologist began by taking stickers (which included a variety of pictures) and pointed to that sticker to have the student utilize target sounds (i.e. leaf).  Next, the student verbally picks a sticker and verbally tells what the sticker is and where the student is going to place it (the student was to put the sticker on a body part of another person in the room).  I noticed that the student was able to identify when she said a sound correctly that has been a target sound for them.  In conjunction with this activity, the speech pathologist brought out a stuffed animal in order to target sounds and create conversation with the student.  Next, the student went around the room to each person and asked, “You want it off?” and then the student proceeded to remove the stickers from the people and the stuffed animal.  The next activity that the student participated in consisted of drawing lines on a dry erase board.  The student would make a sound while erasing; /sh/ was the target sound.  Colored lines were used in this activity to create conversation and focus on /sh/ and /sp/ sounds.  I noticed that the child can easily correct sounds produced when the student is able to slow down.  However, when the student gets to talking quickly, her words are not enunciated well and the sounds seem to blur together. 
• The second session consisted of individual instruction, one child who is six years of age and has been diagnosed with speech language. 
• At this session, the child worked on completing the SPELT-3 Test, which standards for Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test, and the Goldman Fristoe 2, which is known as the test of articulation.  The Goldman Fristoe test starts out with the speech pathologist showing the student a picture and then the student has to say what the picture is (i.e. This is a house).  The speech pathologist looks for correct articulation of specific indicated sounds.  The student did well and only made 9 errors.  Next, the student worked on the SPELT-3.  The speech pathologist began by showing the student a picture and asked the student questions (i.e. “What is this?” or “Where is the girl?”).  The student also did well with this and only made three errors. 

Analysis:

• Activities
• I thought that the speech path handled the activities well with the student who was unintelligible in conversation; in just that session I could already see her production of words becoming more clear and recognizable when she slowed her speech down.  Also, when the student was not interacting well with an activity, then the speech pathologist did a good job of changing it so that she could receive more effort from the child; I thought this was both very creative and effective, particularly due to the child’s age.  I also thought that all of the testing was handled well.
• The classroom management used was effective.
• As I was observing the same speech pathologist, all of the classroom management techniques and implementations that were recorded in the previous observations still hold true. 
• Assessments
• There were a couple forms of assessment used today. One of these forms of assessment was testing. As the student tested using non-verbal and verbal communication, the speech pathologist recorded the results on a form. 
• Another form of assessment used today was observation for the child in the first session; as she did her activities, the speech pathologist observed and at the end of the session, the pathologist recorded her findings and other notes into a log in the student’s file. 
• Reflection
• What I love about observing this speech pathologist is that I always seem to learn something new or experience something exciting whether the activities are similar or different from my previous observations.  This visit I learned about different techniques and strategies that can be used to keep the younger children engaged in activities (such as switching up the materials or lesson to fit the child’s current interests).  Also, I learned how important slowing a child’s speech down can be in the treatment process; this makes sense, but to understand this and to see it in action are two different experiences.  Furthermore, I was given a couple more examples of materials that can be used for activities in speech and language pathology, which is always helpful, as I know teachers “steal” ideas from one another often. 
   

NOTE:  As previously mentioned in other posts, there are no official state issued standards that are used in the schools for speech pathology curricula.