Week 3

Date: 2-17-12

Arrival Time: 8:40 a.m.

Departure Time: 11:40 a.m.

Total Time This Day: 3.0 hrs

Total Time to Date: 9.0 hrs

Activities/Observations:

• The first session consisted of individual instruction, one child who is six years of age and was working on improving their artic and language skills.
• At this session, the child worked on completing the CELF-4 Test, which stands for Clinical Evaluation of Language Function Test.  The speech pathologist begins by starting with the first section of the test, which consisted of her giving directions to the student and the student was to follow those directions to the best of their ability.  For the portion of the test, there is a picture on the student’s page and the directions are associated with this picture, which usually included an object or people.  The student struggled with this; they had an easier time with the questions that included shorter directions.  The next portion of the test focused on finishing sentences.  The speech pathologist would point to a picture (there are two pictures on a page) and would say a sentence and then she pointed to the next picture and would start another sentence and the student would have to finish it.  For example, “This bird is blue.  This bird is_____.”  The student did well with the portion of the test; they understood what was going on in the picture and was able to verbalize it (sometimes the sentence structure was incorrect).  The next portion of the test is called copy cat.  The speech pathologist says a sentence and the student is supposed to repeat exactly what the pathologist says to the best of their ability.  The focus of this is sentence structure.  For each sentence the student gets a rating:  ok results in a 3, one error results in a 2, two to three errors results in a 1, and four or more errors results in a 0.  The student started out with mostly threes and as the sentences got harder, the student got twos and then further down the student received mostly ones and zeros.  The next portion of the test is a picture that is given to the student.  The speech pathologist then gives the student a word to make a sentence with (i.e. play).  The student looks at the picture to help them think of what to say.  The student did well in verbalizing pictures for the most part; sentence structure showed difficulty, though some were good. The next part of the test focuses on word classification.  There are three pictures on a page; the speech pathologist says the names of each picture and then asks the student which two words go together the best.  The student also tells why they go together.  The student either gets a 1 or 0 for both receptive and expressive language.  Student also has to say the names of the two pictures to receive credit and also the reasoning for their similarity.  Student does well with recognizing the pictures that are related.  Student did well overall with this; part of the time the student struggled with the sentence structure and the other part the student did well with it.  The next part of the test focuses on vocabulary.  The speech pathologist shows the student a picture and asks what it is and the student has to give the correct name.  The student did this portion with about 50 percent accuracy.  For the last part of the test, the speech pathologist tells the student to point to a picture; she forms the directions into a sentence.  There are several pictures and the student has to pick the picture that best describes the sentence.  For example, “The girl took some flowers to her mother.”  The student did 100% accuracy. 
• The second session consisted of individual instruction, one child who is seven years of age and has been diagnosed with behavior disorder (IEP team is considering adding speech and language to the child’s diagnosis). 
• At this session, the child worked on completing the CELF-4 Screen, which consisted of 3 sub tests.  This testing session began with a sub test that worked with finishing sentences.  The speech pathologist would point to a picture (there are two pictures on a page) and would say a sentence and then she pointed to the next picture and would start another sentence and the student would have to finish it.  For example, “This box is blue.  This box is_____.”  The student did well with the portion of the test.  The next sub test consisted of showing the student two pictures and asking the student how the two pictures are related.  The student did well with this test.  The last sub test targeted directions.  There is a picture on the student’s page and the directions are associated with this picture, which usually included an object or people (the directions are verbally given by the speech pathologist).  The student did all but one of these correctly.    

Analysis:

• Activities
• I thought that all of the testing was handled well.  When there was a student who wasn’t on task or had a hard time focusing, the speech pathologist found a good way to engage and motivate the student in the testing. 
• 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. 
• When a student tries to look at the answers to the test while taking it repeatedly, the speech pathologist takes away the skittle that is given to the student for good reward.  Since this is a long test, the student has the opportunity to earn a skittle for each section of the test; this allows for further motivation to refrain from cheating to take place. 
• Assessments
• There was one main form of an assessment used today. This form of assessment was testing. As the student tested using non-verbal and verbal communication, the speech pathologist recorded the results on a form. 
• Reflection
• Again, I learned much from this observation opportunity.  I learned about different techniques and strategies that can be used when issuing lengthy tests to keep students engaged.  Also, I learned that you have to pay attention to students’ engagement when testing; if they are not performing to their capability due to whatever factors, that should be weighed in comparison with the length remaining of the test to determine whether or not they should be tested another time.  Furthermore, I learned about a test that is often used in speech and language pathology to test children for an overall clinical evaluation, which is often used to assist in determining whether a child needs to be given speech and language services through session of treatment or whether a child is no longer in need of speech and language services. 
   
• NOTE:  As previously mentioned in other posts, there are no official state issued standards that are used in the schools for speech pathology curricula. .