It’s been interesting straddling both sides of speech therapy: 

Being a speech pathologist who only treats speech sounds
AND being a parent of a child with speech difficulties.

It has sure changed how I speak to and train parents, has allowed me to adjust my expectations, and be more compassionate and understanding of how the challenges!

Are you someone on both sides?

#speechdelay #speechdelaykids #speechsounds
You learn bite-sized speech stuff from me EVERY DAY 🤗 Imagine how far you will grow clinically as an SLP when you learn for four hours with me!!!

I ♥️ minimal pairs - COMMENT “master” and let’s just go on this adventure where you finally nail at least one phonological intervention!

#ebpslp #minimalpairs #speechpathology #schoolslp #preschoolsp #speechdelaykids #speechdelay
Have you experienced this? A cue that works for one student won’t work for another?

Instead of trying to make a cue fit a child, I’m more about being flexible and guided by the child and how they learn!

This means I need to know lots of cues, and match the right ones to each of my kids. Agree… disagree…. Other thoughts??

#speechsounddisorders #speechsounds #articulation #speechdelay #speechdelaykids
Comment “master” because you at least need to know how in-depth this course is… and how much you really don’t know about minimal pairs!!!

So, make 2025 the year you really master a phonological intervention 👊🏽💪🏼👌

#Adventuresinspeechpathology #phonology #minimalpairs #speechsounds #ebpslp #speechsounddisorders #schoolslp #preschoolslp
If I can admit that there was a LOT I didn’t know about the minimal pairs approach… can you?

Combining the evidence with 18 years clinical experience, I want this to be the last PD you’ll ever have to take on this therapy approach.

Register now 👏🏼 link is in our bio or type this link: bit.ly/MMP_AISPCourse

#ebpslp #speechdelay #speechdelaykids #speechsounddisorders #speechsounds #preschoolslp #schoolslp
We have tips, tips, and more tips!!!! If this cue doesn’t work to encourage a clear “ch”, don’t forget we wrote the Ch Sound Handbook where you can find 100+ more ideas 💡 

#articulationtherapy #articulation #speechsounds #slpath #speechtherapy #speech #speechpath
All it takes is 5-10 minutes to screen for possible facilitative contexts (words that encourage a clear production of our target sound), but this can set you up for INSTANT success!

If you took my free SLP Summit talk, then you saw these screeners in action! Why waster weeks and months with no progress when it doesn’t have to be that way?

#articulationtherapy #articulation #speechsounds #speechsounddisorders #schoolslp #earlyinterventionslp #earlyinterventionspeech #adventuresinspeechpathology
We’ve bundled and discounted our THERAPY CHANGING facilitative contexts packets to get faster progress in articulation therapy 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼

If you watched by free SLP Summit presentation, then you’d know how quickly the students in my case studied progressed when we found words that encouraged clear sounds!!

https://bit.ly/FacilitativeContextsBundle_TPT

#speechsounddisorders #articulationtherapy #articulation #speech #Adventuresinspeechpathology

Why you should STOP using conversation topic cards

stop using conversation topic cards

Be honest here. How often do you have an extended conversation about your favorite food? I mean sure, you might get three exchanges maximum, but then it pretty much falls flat, right? Conversations naturally bend and move. They are fluid. And this is why conversation topic cards are my pet peeve because we DON’T memorize trivial questions like this. We use what we know about someone and the conversation springs from there.

I don’t believe that conversations are easy to teach.

They are hard. Really hard. And they are really complex. There are SO many skills and things to remember. And I’m sorry but whipping out a deck of conversation topics is not going to do those ‘work on conversation skills’ goals justice.

Just Google the word ‘conversation’ and you will see what I’m talking about: a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.

It’s a great definition and I love the part about an ‘exchange’.

Maybe conversation is your end goal and you just didn’t realize it. Maybe you need to work on a lot of little goals to get you to where you need to be. Think about it from a language point of view. If you were hoping to increase your student’s ability to tell a narrative, you wouldn’t just keep getting them to tell you stories. No, you would look at a framework and the individual skills needed to get you there.

Well then why aren’t we treating conversation skills like this?

So, I’m going to share two big things that I teach and really look for in the context of conversations: asking questions and making comments. Let’s think about it a little more.

Questions– I’m not talking about ‘what’s your favorite color?’ type questions here. Those questions really don’t go anywhere. The point about asking questions is to find out more information and connect with someone… then the conversational topic can occur naturally. So, these are the question things that go through my brain:

  • Can the student ask a variety of questions – what, where, who, when, why?
  • Do they understand the purpose of asking questions (such as to clarify or find out more information?
  • Can they initiate, or do they need visuals?
  • Do they know different ways to ask one question type (e.g. ‘what?’)
  • Can your student use follow up questions?
Use visuals for conversation prompts

If you have a love of colored craft sticks, then I have a new use for you: Question prompts! This is usually my starting place for students who don’t even know the right type of question to ask BUT have the language skills to formulate questions. Simply stick different question types onto craft sticks, hold them up throughout your conversation as an initiation prompt… then fade away once your student understands how, when and why to ask questions. Now just pause for a minute and think. Focusing on ‘questions’ could literally be a whole term of therapy. Maybe even more. And this is just scratching the surface because we haven’t even started to look at using comments.

Comments – I cannot tell you how many times I engage with teenagers who have age appropriate language skills, know how to ask me questions and then when I make statements or tell them something pretty cool, they just sit there. And stare at me. And it’s really quite awkward.

And it’s because they aren’t commenting. They aren’t responding to what I’m saying. They aren’t giving me some signal that I should elaborate, that they are interested or that they even care. It’s like dead air.

But here’s the thing… there are different types of comments that you should be using depending on the situation. Do your students know the situation? Do they know that you shouldn’t respond ‘okay’ when you tell sad news such as “I went to a funeral on the weekend”, or just stare at you when you tell them you are about to go on holidays?

If your students can identify the emotion, or the feeling of the message, then hopefully they can match that with an appropriate comment. Phew. That’s pretty in-depth, right? So, I like to really explore commenting and visuals are obviously my best friend in this situation because they can help scaffold and support so much.

Teach comments for different feelings

I hope that you can see why those decks of conversation cards can be null and void in the grand scheme of conversations. There are bigger things to work on and your students have to really understand the mechanics and dynamics of a conversation to say that they are properly participating. Now there ARE more areas, this won’t be your conversation ‘cure’. There’s all that nonverbal stuff that I haven’t even upon touched yet. Take a closer look at my Conversation Supports for Questions & Comments for more step-by-step goals, activities, pre and post measures and of course: VISUALS! My go-to reference (and framework) for working on conversations is included in the Thinking About You, Thinking About Me text by Michelle Garcia Winner.

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