Yo-Yo of a Week

I hit some major lows this week, it all changed with ONE session this morning. 

I have two new walk-in preschoolers (age 3) on my caseload. I have not worked with 3 year-olds in a while and I forgot how much you need to prepare for them! 

In our school we have a no excuses policy for ourselves and the students, so *tisk tisk* and slap on the wrist for myself! haha.

This morning I pulled out about every activity for articulation that involved moving around on the floor, just in case.   The first student comes in (who has been a bit challenging to get to know) and asks me to close my eyes. He slips a bracelet onto my hand that he made with his mom!  Adorable!

I work in a very low income area (90+% of students get free or reduced lunch) and to get a little present even if it's a picture or letter is awesome, let alone a cool personalized bracelet! I wore my new bracelet all day. 

Beyond that, the boys had a GREAT time with the Super Duper /s/ fishing game. They only wanted to play this! Talk about making therapy easy and fun for the day. The boys even insisted that I fish with them. We got in multiple multiple trials, matched the fish, tried different poles that I have. 

Today was a good day.

Stuck at work=objective binder post!

I had 3 IEPs today, a BEST meeting and then came back to my office  to wrap up for the day. I stayed late.

Well, for my brain it was too late. I am literally stuck at work! I opened my car, got in, looked at my key ring and my car key somehow fell off my clip. Instead of problem solving (Hey lady, you UNLOCKED THE CAR, duh!). I get out of the car to go look for it on the ground and lock myself out of my car with ALL my stuff in there.

Luckily the office was open. They gave me a key to my room and let me call my awesome fiance. Who is on his way now...in horrible traffic.

What now? I caught up on the office type stuff (hole punching, putting files away), but I can't do much because everything is on my laptop and all the files I need are in my car.

Now that I have basically run out of things to do, I am going to show you my objective binder!  I made this out of a binder I found at a teacher "junk" store called RAFT (more on this later). The binder is from a bank I think because it has VISA symbols on it. It stands up using Velcro that came on it. I am sure you SLPs could figure out a way to make one with a normal binder. 

When our principal does evaluations she likes to see that the objective of the lesson is very clear. Well for speech and language students, it is! It's their IEP goals! I like to flip to a generic page in my binder that targets what we are doing that day.

I found the "Today I am", "So that I can:" and "I'll know I've got it when" from pinterest. A gal was using them in a pocket chart format. For me, flipping to a page works much better than trying to find little cards for the pocket chart.  I have a page for each area of speech and language, including social skills. I may need to make a teachers pay teachers store for this! What do you all think?

This page has "completing progress reports!" I take data all the time, but I like doing some rotations towards progress report season. I work with one student intensely and check goal progress; while other students are doing floor activities and rotate. I like to remind students of WHY they come to see me and that progress reports show teachers, parents and themselves how much they have learned!

Besides using this objective chart, I use my "help box" (see previous post) to write a schedule of activities on the board. Hope this helps some of you!

And we're back!

Like many school SLPs I went back to work today after a long lovely 2 week vacation! Hope your first day back was splendid. I spent mine assessing students to get ahead and changing my schedule around a bit. I will be back to my regular speech and language therapy groups tomorrow.

I wanted to share something with all of you (instead of favorite apps, a girl can change her mind can't she?) that I find helpful in my speech room.

THE HELP BOX

I had students constantly asking "What are we doing today? When is it sticker time? When do I come to speech? or What day is it?"

I went to an Autism training called SCERTs Model-it's a model of assessment and intervention for students with Autism that specifically focuses on Social Communication, Emotional Regulation and Transactional Support. If you have not attended this training I highly suggest you do! Emily Rubin, MS, CCC-SLP is an amazing speaker and this training changed my approach to students with Autism and opened my eyes to some new research.

The one thing not so Autism related that I gathered from this training was the use of a "Help Box".

My Help Box includes:

• Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow dates-sometimes I pair this with a calendar so students can understand the concept of time and when they come to speech etc. 
• The week of school
• The word of the week given to use by the district-but I might change this to include vocabulary words. 
• A big open box for schedule of speech lesson-this changes depending on groups and sometimes I just alter a few words. 
• Last is always Sticker Time! 
• I also included a space for No Excuses, Stop and Prove it, SLANT and Zero Tolerance 

Here is what it looked like when I left work today...

 (sorry about picture quality...taken on my phone!)

Having a schedule to refer to helps me because I have a written lesson plan on the board to record in my plan book. It also helps me because all I have to do it point to it when the student asks a repetitive question and teaches them where to look for resources. I find that my students with and without Autism like having a schedule! They have one in class, so why not in speech? Both my SAI and I have one to keep things in our special education room similar.

Do you have a Help Box in your speech room? What does it look like? How well does it work for you? I would love to hear comments or questions!