Because I am always amazed.....

I am someone who absolutely loves to learn for the sake of learning. I want to grow and I was not disappointed by the experiences I had at this year's NCSHLA's spring conference. It was wonderful. 

What did I attend?

• Visual Immersion System: Communication Enhancement for Autism Spectrum Disorders by Howard Shane
• School-Aged Stuttering: A Practical Approach by J. Scott Yaruss
• Don't Worry, Be App-y by Kimberly Lewis
• Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A Multi-Sensory Approach to Achieving Speech Outcomes by David Hammer
• How to Make a Cold Retelling Hot with Story Grammar Marker by Maryellen Rooney Moreau 

One of the best tips I learned came from Mr. Hammer's session. It's so simple that it makes you want to take a step back and say "well, duh!" or "Why didn't I think of that sooner?". He told us that he uses a piece of string (ribbon or shoelaces work well too) with a bead on the end to help students working on final consonant deletion. It gives them a multi-sensory reminder to put that sound on the end. They hold out the vowel as they slide their hand down to the bead/final consonant. I've been using this trick and it has made a real difference for my students.

I was also very impressed with Dr. Shane's idea of video modeling clips for students. He shows his clients little video clips of what he wants them to do with little manipulatives (like a little doll going up a ladder) instead of relying on live clinician models. Some students really respond better to this. While I don't have any students that I can try this with right now, I am definitely going to save this idea for my bag of tricks. 

It's a peacock invasion

I'm not quite sure why, but for some reason I always seem to end up getting several new girls on my caseload at the end of every year. The Peacock Princess activity is a mixture of several different targets that adds much needed variety to all of the more masculine-themed products. It includes alphabet matching (upper & lower case letters with diagraphs included)/phonemic awareness if you chose to print out more than one set of the letters; past & present tense verb agreement; pronouns with a sorting mat; naming; and a few cards for articulation review. 

I love that this is still one of my go-to materials even though I created it several years ago. You just never know what will stick around and what you'll find doesn't work as well as you hoped.

You can grab your copy here.