Sometimes I make weird challenges for myself. This weird challenge turned into an enlightening experiment. With this being my first year in an elementary setting, I do not have many materials to work with for therapy. I have slowly accumulated, made, borrowed, etc., but like any SLP, I'm always looking for more :)
One of my professors in grad school used to say that we should be skilled enough SLPs that we could hold a meaningful speech and language therapy session with a shoe as our only therapy material (shout out Dr. Ritzman). That has stuck with me, and I take that as a challenge. While all the materials, games, books, cards are fun, they are not necessary. So...I challenged myself to use one deck of articulation cards with pictures and the Monkeying Around game with 11 of my speech groups. It was a blast! Let me share my experience:
1. I picked a deck of articulation cards...no specific articulation sounds or language skills in mind. I did this to encourage my students to think a bit harder and work a bit harder to use their speech sounds with the deck I picked. For example, a student working on /r/ given the picture of "glue" needed to think of descriptive qualities of glue in order to use their target sound of /r/..."really sticky". For my students working on language goals, they used the picture to shape their sentences or descriptions, etc.
2. I picked a game that does not require a lot of time or directions. Monkeying Around is easy because students are given a monkey for responding to the target question. Students LOVE this game.
3. Once the student got into the groove of the game, I challenged them to work even more efficiently and produce quicker sentences while still maintaining good quality. I also remind them, "Make sure to do your work with intention"
