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:
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. .