Happy Halloween

Enjoy these Halloween Speech Games and Activities!

www.speechtherapygames.com/FREEBIE.htm

www.speakingofspeech.com/Thematic_Materials.html#Halloween

Daily Speech Activities

Speech therapy is most successful when parents become involved and reinforce target speech skills at home. It may be helpful for parents to pick daily routines as a good time to have their children practice using their "new" speech. Meals and bedtime occur regularly and can provide great learning moments. Associating speech with familiar routines helps children to generalize developing articulation and fluency skills. Other possible activities could include cooking, riding in the car, doing chores, and playtime.

Remind children that they will be focusing on using clear speech during the activity. Have them think of words or phrases related to the activity that they can concentrate on pronouncing. Listen carefully and praise their efforts and success. ("That was a great 's' in 'spaghetti'!") Give a gentle reminder if you hear an error and ask them to repeat the word. (" I heard 'paghetti.' Can you say it again?") Have them repeat it only once even if they still pronounce it incorrectly. Try to praise more often than you correct. The goal is to have them become aware of their speech production and reinforce the target speech pattern so it will increase. Most importantly; Have Fun!

Focus on Text Strategies

All students at Prairieview and Lakeview are learning to comprehend, discuss, and write a variety of texts. The two basic types of texts are narrative and expository. The main purpose of narrative text is to tell a story. Narrative text has beginning, middle and end, characters, plot or conflict, and setting. Usually, narrative texts are written from the authors imagination. The main purpose of expository text is to inform or describe. Authors who write expository texts research the topic to gain information. The information is organized in a logical and interesting manner using various expository text structures. The most common expository text structures include description, enumerative or listing, sequence, comparison and contrast, cause and effect and problem and solution.

In speech and language classes throughout the year we will practice identifying text types and parts of narrative and expository selections, use appropriate vocabulary to describe reading passages, and develop our own oral and written texts. Academic language activities like these will provide wonderful opportunities to practice articulation and foundational receptive and expressive language skills. Comprehension and production of text is imperative for school success as well as becoming lifelong learners.

Speech Fluency Program

A few of Mrs. DeYoung's students are receiving speech therapy to increase speech fluency. The speech fluency program involves six steps. In the first step children have been discussing the terms fluency and disfluency. Next we have identified different types of disfluencies. No one is perfectly fluent all the time. Some disfluencies are normal. The goal of therapy will be to reduce atypical stuttering disfluencies that interfere with communication. In the third step we are practicing easy forward flowing speech in the therapy environment. The children may need to be introduced to some techniques to begin words in an easy relaxed manner. The fourth step will be practicing easy speech in the presence of disrupters. Later the students will practice easy speech in real-life situations. Finally, students will maintain the use of easy speech with less intervention from the therapist.

Students are encouraged to review therapy handouts and practice using smooth easy speech
at home.

SQ3R Strategy

SQ3R is a stategy to help learners understand and remember information in textbooks. It is a great tool for reading a text or studying for tests that parents can use with their children. SQ3R stands for

• Survey: Look over titles, headings, illustrations, and summaries to get an overview of the chapter.


• Question: Think of questions that may apply, that a teacher might ask, or that may appear on a test. (Students can develop good questions by turning subject headings into questions.)


• Read: Read one section at a time, finding answers to those questions.


• Recite: Say answers aloud (or in writing).


• Review: Go over the main points by explaining them to someone in your own words.

The SQ3R strategy encourages students to think about what they are reading and focus on main ideas and important concepts. Try it!

Read Together

Shared book reading is a literature based language intervention that works well with children with language difficulty. Literature based intervention is an effective way of teaching students language and literacy skills. Speech-language pathologists who use this method don't actually teach reading skills, or decoding skills. Instead, they focus on the underlying language that underpins all literacy. Text-based intervention has a strong contextual base. This is important, because learning abstract language concepts within a familiar context helps to alleviate the problems associated with decontextualized language.

Shared book reading's primary goal is for an adult to use a story book as a therapeutic tool to improve language knowledge and use. This is done by using the text and illustrations in a picture book as the source of language stimulation. The language is essentially examined and parsed in detail using the text and pictures in a children's story book. The number of language goals that can be gained from one passage in a well written children's book is quite amazing.

It's enjoyable to use text-based language intervention. The students tend to enjoy it too. That's because they get to think and learn about literacy and language in a new way that is interesting to them.

For more information, see www.Speechlanguage-Resources.com

Speech RtI

Students at Prairieview who have previously received Speech Response to Intervention (RtI) have been rescreened. Parents are being notified by letter if their child continues to qualify for the Speech Sound Improvement groups. Please complete the consent form included in the letter and return it to Mrs. DeYoung. Lakeview Speech RtI students will be rescreened next week.