Vacation

Going on Vacation?

On a long care ride or relaxing in your living room, you can practice your child's language skills by playing a fun game! They won't even know that they're practicing.

Guessing game: Say three clues about an object and have your child guess what it is. It's round, it's usually orange and you throw it in a hoop.

Categories: Name a category and have your child name 3 items in the category. Animals, Fruits, Vegetables, Transportation, Holidays, etc.

Vocabulary: See how many items you can name around the space your in. See who can name or write down more after two minutes. Items around the kitchen, things you see outside, around the car, etc.

Commercial Break: Ok, they may want to watch a TV show. This is a good time to ask some questions. Who are the characters on this show? How are they feeling: happy, sad, excited? What do you think will happen next? Tell me what happened already. Let's make up a different ending.

Relax and have a Fun Vacation!

Executive Functions

Executive Functions

I was fortunate today to attend Advanced Training on Executive Functions presented by Sarah Ward MS CCC-SLP and Kristen Jacobsen MS, CCC-SLP. I learned a lot of new strategies and techniques and am excited to try them out in the classroom. Here are some highlights, but first:

What is Executive Functioning? 

According to the Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University, "executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions and juggle multiple tasks successfully." Our brains are not simply born with these abilities, we "are born with the potential to develop them." 

Normal Development

I learned today that our ability to make a mental image in our mind to anticipate the future is developmental. Here is a timeline of how far ahead one should be expected to anticpate time. 

2 years old: NOW

3-5 years old: 5-20 minutes

1st grade: Several hours

3rd grade: 8-12 hours

12-16 years old: 2-3 days

17-23 years old: 2-3 weeks

23-35 years old: 3-5 weeks

(Jacobsen and Ward, Cognitive Connections)

Strategies

As a speech therapist I can teach students to develop imagery, progressing from concrete to abstract images. Today I learned about a way to structure this thinking: Get Ready, Do, Done. There are also many scheduling and time management techniques to help a student monitor this process. 

More Information

You can learn more about Executive Functions as Sarah Ward will be presenting the SEPAC workshop on April 28, 2016 at the Horace Mann Auditorium. I would highly recommend this workshop!  

Franklin SEPAC

http://efpractice.com/

I can't wait to start trying out some of these new techniques and strategies to improve executive function skills in our students. 

-Mrs. Rocco MS CCC-SLP