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. .