Marisha

Marisha: Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I am so excited to introduce our guest today, Angie Merced. Angie is a Certified Life Coach by the Life Coach School, and a school based SLP. She lives with her husband and two little girls in Rochester, New York, and her passion is to rescue SLPs who are feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and trapped in a career that they're "supposed to love." If you don't relate to that, then I don't know.
I've just been consuming some of Angie's content, and it's been so incredibly helpful, and I can see how she shows her clients how to reclaim their energy, create more time, and generate resources. She's just on a mission to help whip-smart SLPs do less, be more, and thrive with joy in the one life they have. I cannot wait to dive into a discussion all about burnout today, with Angie.
So, without further ado, hello, Angie.

Angie: Hello! So excited, thank you for having me.

Marisha: Yeah. I cannot wait to dive into the questions that we have for today's podcast, because I feel like this is something that all of us struggle with, at least at some point in our career, if not frequently.

Angie: Yeah.

Marisha: ... throughout our career.

Angie: Yeah.

Marisha: I cannot wait. But, before we dive into the burnout discussion, I'm so incredibly curious to hear about, first, just your experience as an SLP? Then, also, about how you became a Life Coach, and that journey as well?

Angie: Yes! So, I graduated with my undergraduate degree, back in 2001. I started working with preschoolers, and right out the gate, I was pretty burned out, three or four months in. That was my first round of burnout that I had, and that place was coming from a severe anxiety, and lack of confidence, and that ... What do they call it? I'm trying to think. Impersonator syndrome? Imposter syndrome, that's what I'm thinking of. That was my first round of burnout.
Back then, I didn't have the life coaching tools that I have now, but I was able to use enough resources that I was able to come out of it. I worked for two years, that was back when you could work without undergraduate degree. In New York State, I don't think you can do that anymore. Then, I went back to graduate school, and graduated from graduate school in 2004. And I went back to working with preschoolers, which was fun because I had done that before, it was at a different agency.
After a couple years there, I started realizing I'm going to work, and I'm coming home, and I'm putting my pajamas on, and going to bed. That's all I had energy for. That was another round of burnout that I had. I was looking at my options, and I thought, well, maybe I need to change my setting, go into a different job. I did find a job in a school district, back in 2007. I thought it was great, because there was going to have a planning period, and I got some other perks of working in the school. But, there again, within that first year of that job, I found myself in burnout again.
I was learning all new processes, working with a different population. Again, that lack of confidence. For me, that lack of confidence was coming up. At that point ... Let's see, by about 2010, 2011, I said, well, I'm going to quit being an SLP, and I'm going to become a life coach. Ever since I was a teenager, probably, I've just been obsessed with reading self-help books, and watching Oprah, and things like that, I was just so interested in mental health, and becoming a life coach.
So, I decided that. I thought I'm going to quit my job, then I'm going to be come a life coach, and I did. The amazing miracle, awesome thing that happened was, in the process of becoming a life coach, I learned the skills of managing my mental and emotional world, and I learned how to ... I just learned the skill, the literal skill, of loving my job. Then, I found myself in a place where I didn't have to quit my job, I didn't have to escape my job anymore, which was fun. So, I stayed, and I'm still there, I'm still at the same district.

Marisha: Oh, wow. I'm glad that there's no video here, because I was like, nodding my head like a bobble head, because there's so much in your story that I can relate to. I just love that you were able to learn the skills that you needed to, to not need to escape. Then, you're also able to help other SLPs figure that out for themselves.

Angie: Yes! Yes.

Marisha: That is so cool.

Angie: I hear about ... We're struggling, they're struggling, and I just want to do everything I can to get people some tips, and just help people take some agency over their career, and over their life.

Marisha: Yeah, that is so amazing. I am even more excited to dive in, because I frequently talk with SLPs who are in my membership, or just in my community in general, like on Instagram, and one of the biggest things that comes up is, they don't feel confident, and they are just really struggling, and don't feel great about much of anything that they're doing. You're the expert here, but I think that definitely contributes to the burnout, and you just kept mentioning that confidence. That's something that I've heard from hundreds, and thousands of SLPs, even, that's a real struggle.

Angie: Yeah. I mean, it really is. It's not the case for everyone who's struggling, but yes, that is a huge piece of it.

Marisha: I think it's just the broad scope of practice, especially in the schools, we can ... There's so much paperwork on our plate, and the caseloads, and all of those things. I'm excited to hear your perspective, but I think that makes sense.
So, the first question is, can you tell us just a little bit about what you've seen with SLPs and burnout? Do you have any information about how many SLPs struggle with it, or what the patterns are?

Angie: Yes.

Marisha: Kind of, what you're seeing there?

Angie: We are givers, right? We're teachers, and we're guiders, and we're healers, and we serve, and we help, and that's what we do. A lot of us struggle from burnout. I've done a lot of searching for stats on what percentage, and there are some studies that are definitely relatable to our field.
About 20 to 30 percent of teachers in America have moderate to high levels of burnout, about 52% of medical professionals, so we're thinking doctors, nurses, have moderate to high levels of burnout. So, those fields are pretty relatable to our field. There's a study, out of Canada, that said that 76% of SLPs were experiencing mild to moderate signs of burnout. Now, when I read that study, a quarter of the SLPs that were given the questionnaire survey, didn't fill out the survey. My guess is that most of those that didn't fill out the survey were also burned out, because they couldn't be bothered with the survey.
Yeah, if I were to hypothesize how many SLPs struggle with burnout, at some point, I would say it's really because ... Although burnout is becoming more recognized, and more understood, it's highly under reported. I think that it would be closer to 80%, if I was going to hypothesize about how many SLPs suffer from burnout.

Marisha: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. If you're looking over the course of a career, I feel the estimate could be-

Angie: Yeah, like 99.

Marisha: ... even higher.

Angie: Right?

Marisha: Or, 100.2.
Yeah, that really makes a lot of sense to me, I think it's helpful just to get a little bit of the numbers behind it. I'm curious, what are the symptoms of burnout? I'll let you decide what makes the most sense, but I'm curious, how do we know if we're burned out? Then, what do you think about the causes of it? Like, it might make more sense to start there.

Angie: What's kind of cool is that it is being recognized more and more, it's actually ... Burnout is in the ICD 11. What it's defined as is "burnout is a syndrome, conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been managed." There's three components, they define three components of burnout.
Now, the first one is ... I always talk about, if you picture your spaghetti strainer, if you're a bowl, normally, when you're in burnout, you're a strainer. It goes along with that first component of burnout, which is energy depletion. You're physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. That's the first, and these do occur in progression, that's the first part.
The second part that I see is what I call brain fogs, so there's a mental distance. Your brain actually becomes pretty cynical, pretty critical, very negative. That's a tough place to be, because once you're there, it's really hard for your brain to see any kind of solution.
Then, the third component is reduced professional efficacy. So, you're just not as effective, which makes sense.
Some other things that I see, on top of this definition, is a lot of scatteredness, confusion, over analyzing, over questioning, lack of confidence. Something I call compare and despair, so you're comparing yourself to other people, and you're in a lot of despair about that. I see difficulty making decisions, and I see defensiveness.
Another thing that I want to say about burnout, and this is what happened to me, is what I call perfectly hidden burnout. Like, really, there probably was some reduced professional efficacy on my part, when I was in burnout, but really, no one would have ever known it. I was still going to work, I was still turning in my reports, and everything that I needed to do, it's just when I was getting home, I was overeating, watching Netflix, staying in my pajamas all weekend. Not because I wanted to, but because that was all the energy I had. I was just going through the motions of my life.
Then, the other thing I see is, I like to see your body's response to chronic stress. Your body gives you whispers, what I call whispers. So, you'll get a headache, you'll get a kink in your neck, you'll have some stomach issues, you might get a sore throat. For me, now that I've been doing this work for quite a while, my jaw is my stress management barometer. If my jaw and shoulders are tense, I know that I need to go back and manage my stress. So, your body gives you those little whispers, and most people, most of us don't really listen to those, we don't really connect that it has an underlying stress-based cause.
The thing is, when you start living from that place, you're very dependent on the world cooperating with you. It's like, you're constantly living from an anxious place of, I hope nothing happens, because I can't handle one more thing. But, we're humans, and we live in a world, and one more thing always happens. It's just a crappy place to be.

Marisha: That is definitely a crappy place to be, and I ... Oh, I just love your analogies. I take some notes during these, and my pages are already full, so much good stuff. I love the bowl versus the spaghetti strainer analogy, that makes so much sense. Yeah, I think I can definitely relate to what you call the perfectly hidden burnout, because I was just picturing myself with the overeating, Netflix, pajamas all weekend. That was definitely part of my life for a while, there, too.
I just love what you said about the whispers, because a lot of that stuff is happening for a reason. So, so incredibly helpful.

Angie: Yeah.

Marisha: I think that's a great breakdown, and a great way of checking for other SLPs to ... The first step is being able to recognize what's happening, because then we can take some next steps.

Angie: Yeah. That's the tough thing about burnout, when your brain is cynical and negative, it's actually hard to recognize it, it's hard to have some openness and curiosity about yourself.

Marisha: Yeah.

Angie: That's the inaudible part. That's why I think education is huge here.

Marisha: Yeah, I agree, and you are the profit person to break this down, so I am very excited. I think, based on what you were saying, burnout comes from chronic workplace stress that hasn't been managed. Was there anything else that you wanted to say about the cause, there?

Angie: Oh.

Marisha: Okay.

Angie: Yes, there is more I wanted to say. I've got a few things, here. Yes.
Nobody teaches us how to manage stress. Most people, we really don't know how to manage stress. We have these clues, like do yoga, and drink a green smoothie, and take a bath, but that doesn't really teach us how to manage stress. We don't learn it, we certainly don't learn it in our training, we don't learn it in grade school, most of our parents don't teach us that.
For me, it's something I learned in becoming a life coach. There're things that happen in our world, we do have stressors, and we do have triggers. I know that's a word nowadays, like trigger warning, but my thing is, let's not have a life where we have to avoid every single trigger, because triggers are going to happen in our world. That's just part of being a human. Things like, you get three new avails, or you have some new students, or you've got a student with some specific behaviors, or you're asked to, I don't know, write another report. Just all those things come up, and those definitely might be triggers. How do you manage those triggers? Not being able to manage them is one of the big causes.
The other thing that I like to think about is, we don't know how to say no. I feel like part of this comes from our grad school training, because you think about grad school, I know for me, it was pretty intense. It would be like, you have to push yourself through, and take this test. Push yourself through, and write that lesson plan, and do your practicum. Push yourself through, and jump through another hoop. We condition ourselves to live our lives that way, but it's not sustainable.
When I talk about people don't know how to ... Saying yes, and saying no, people have just said yes to too many things. They need to say no more, and create good boundaries. Good, healthy boundaries. Specifically like time boundaries, right? Making sure you have a time to work, and a time to rest, and a time to be with your family, and your loved ones, and making sure your time is organized in that way.
Now, something I continue to work on is when I have a coach ... I am a life coach, and I have a life coach. One of the things I continue to work on is a massive resistance to rest and relaxation. So, a lot of us, we're watching Netflix but the whole time, in the back of our mind, we're saying, I should do this, and I should do that, so we're not truly resting.

Marisha: Yeah, I totally can see that. I'm thinking back to the weekends when all I did was watch Netflix, and I definitely didn't feel rested after doing that. I think part of it is because, yeah I was just lounging in my pajamas watching Netflix, but I was also constantly scrolling through my phone, and thinking about Johnny, and Alice, and thinking about what I was going to do for my therapy plans, and all of that. I think there's really an art to true relaxation, I think.

Angie: Yes. I think part of is just, like I said, we have to undo that tendency that we have to push through, and just realize that it's not sustainable. Yeah, just getting into that wholehearted rest. Well, I'll get into my tips in a little bit, I'm going to get into that.
Putting those time boundaries for your rest, and putting your relaxation in your schedule first. If you're not rested, if you have no energy, you're not effective, right? We have to work at undoing those tendencies, though.

Marisha: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. It's like trying to pour from an empty cup. It might feel selfish, or, I don't have time to rest, what are you talking about? I have my job, and my three kids, and all of this stuff happening. If we don't take that time, then we're not able to show up, and be our best selves for our students, and our families, and just for ourself, too.

Angie: Yes, yes. I'm so glad you said that. The thing is, once you actually practice it, and learn how to wholeheartedly rest and relax, it doesn't actually take as much time as you think it would.
Like you said, a whole weekend of having that brain spin, of all the things you should be doing, but on the surface it looks like you're resting, but you're really not, in your mind. All that time isn't restful. Whereas if you actually just wholeheartedly rest, for an amount of time, it really is rejuvenating.

Marisha: So helpful. I am super excited to dive into some tips and tricks that you might have for us.
Let's say that an SLP is beginning to experience the signs of burnout, or they're deep in it, what would you tell us, if that's where we are?

Angie: Yes. I have so much for you.
Fundamentally, the first thing is giving yourself the gift of openness, and just giving yourself the gift of curiosity about what's going on, what do I need. There's a meme ... A meme. There's a graphic out there somewhere, that it says, "Our students must Maslow before we can Bloom." I love it, it's referring to Maslow's hierarchy of human needs versus Bloom's taxonomy of the educational objectives. Basically, we have to take care of our human needs before we can learn, and apply things, and self actualize.
Just on a very basic level, when you're in burnout, taking care of your physical needs actually starts to slip. Like, make sure you're getting at least ... What is it? Half your body weight, in ounces, of water a day. Make sure you're at least moving your body in some way, every day, make sure you're eating nourishing foods that physically feel good in your body. It doesn't have to be complicated, but just taking care of your physical needs, that's a place to start. Just being very gentle with yourself, and being curious.
I like to use powerful questions with myself and with my clients. One of the questions that I ask myself, and I have my clients ask themselves is, what's the matter, love? What's up? We ask our students, "What's going on, baby?" Just asking yourself, and opening yourself up to just being curious about what's going on with you. I think that helps to crack that cynical, defensive, critical mindset that happens when you're in burnout.
The other thing that I touched on before, is really creating clear time boundaries for yourself. Sometimes we get to a place and we realize that we've given too many yeses, and not quite enough nos. Making sure there's that time for you to rest, and time for you to connect with your loved ones, and definitely time to work.
I have a five-part series, on my website, Five Effective Ways to Get Your Time and Energy Back. I'll just go through the list, but then I'll go in depth in each one. Does that sound okay?

Marisha: That would be perfect.

Angie: Okay. Now, stay with me, here, because I'm going to explain everything. The first one is Front Loading, the second one is Zap the Time Suckers. Then, Reclaim In Between Time, Prioritize Work, and then the fifth one is Use Constraint.
Talking about Front Loading. I'll ask you a question. If I told you, okay Marisha, you give me $100 on Monday, and if you do that, on Friday, I'm going to give you $500, would you take that deal?

Marisha: Of course.

Angie: Right? You would take that deal. That's what front loading is, but most of us are really afraid to give that $100 up front. That's what front loading is, it's really just planning ahead. But, we have to really make the case for it, in our mind. When I work with my clients individually, we look at, what is going to give them the most bang for their buck?
One thing that I recommend ... There's a thing that's called decision fatigue. When you're going throughout your day, we make a lot of decisions throughout our day. The more decisions you make ... We make a lot of decisions as clinicians, right? That takes brain energy, that takes a lot of brain energy. I like to use the strategy of front loading to reduce the amount of decisions that you have to make throughout your day.
Some things that I've done ... I'm not saying these are the right things for everyone, but just idea-wise. I eat the same thing for lunch, ever day, and I pack my lunches on the weekend, I prepare my lunch on the weekend, and I eat the same thing, every day, five days a week. So, I don't have to think about what I'm doing for lunch. I recommend, also, eating the same thing for breakfast. I've been doing, for about a year now, intermittent fasting, so as far as that, I don't even have to make a decision about breakfast anymore. Now, I'm not saying everyone should do that, by any means, it's just an example of how you can reduce your decisions.
I plan my outfits ahead of time. This is your expertise, here, work in themes. I use a lot of literature, as well. Using materials that can be adapted for lots of different groups. One thing that I've decided, too, is when I take my daily notes, I write one to two sentences, no more than two sentences, with one piece of data, then period. I don't do anymore than that, that decision has already been made, I don't spend a lot of time deciding what I'm going to include in my daily note for my sessions.
Then, a new thing that I've started is I'm doing for dinners, I'm making a monthly meal plan for my family and I. I'm making a ... writing out all the dinners that I'm going to make. Not that I cook every night or anything like that, but what we're going to eat, every night. Then, I basically repeat it, every month. I already know what I need from the grocery store, there's not a lot of decisions that have to be made on a daily basis.
When I work one-on-one with people, we take an in depth look about what kind of front loading might work for them, so we can stop up those energy leaks.

Marisha: Oh, I love that, stopping the energy leaks. I really appreciate all the specific examples that you gave, and I definitely agree with what you said. Each person will need their ... everyone has their own energy leaks, and there's definitely different areas that we could work on reducing the decisions, but I really appreciate those examples, because I think that really helps.

Angie: Yeah, yeah.
The next one is, Zap the Time Suckers, which is kind of a funny name that I call it, but they really are time suckers. To give it a definition, it's those activities, little things that we do, that aren't quite aligned with our goals, and what we want for our future self, or even just our daily goals. Like, if your daily goal is to get your session notes in, but at the end of the day, you pick up your phone and you're scrolling on Facebook, or whatever it is that you do, that would be considered a time sucker.
Now, let me be clear, and give this a little caveat. There's nothing wrong with doing things to kick back, like we talked about before, like watching Netflix, there's nothing wrong with getting on social media, and relaxing, there's nothing wrong with having a beautiful meal and a glass of wine, or whatever it is that you do to relax. The caveat, here, is when we do it as an escape, or when we do it more to avoid the things that we really, actually want to get done. I also call it those numbing out behaviors that we do. Yes, we do need self soothing, and we do need relaxation, but I like it to be purposeful.
So, those times when you're engaging in those types of things as an escape, couple tips. The thing is when you have ... For me, when I have a report to write, especially getting started, I don't want to do it, I just don't want to do it. My tendency is, if I let myself just go, I'll go and scroll Facebook for 10 minutes, or I'll go and commiserate with my coworkers for half an hour about how much work I have to do, or ... This is kind of a joke with my coworkers, but Mrs. Merced will get into the prize box, and it just takes me away from my bigger intention, and what I want to create. I like to leave work at work, because I do have a husband and two little girls at home, and I want to spend that quality time with them when I get home.
We are doing those things to avoid a negative emotion. I want to get into, just a little bit, let's touch on emotion. In life, we experience positive emotion and negative emotion, right? That's just normal, that's a part of life. You're going to have positive things, and you're going to have negative things, that cause you to think negative thoughts, and feel negative emotion. But, I think there is useful negative emotion, versus useless negative emotion.
Some examples of negative emotion that's really not useful for us would be regret, feeling regret, feeling guilt, which I know a lot of us SLPs feel that way, especially Mama SLPs, too. We feel the guilt. Confusion, worry, compare and despair, those really aren't useful emotions, negative emotions.
Whereas, the feeling of discomfort could be useful. When I say that I mean, when I go to write that report, it's uncomfortable, I don't want to do it, it's uncomfortable. This is a really fun tip, wait for it. It's feel the discomfort, just let yourself be a little uncomfortable in the beginning. Now, you might not love that discomfort, but discomfort is better than what you might feel on the back end, if you don't start the project, and that's where the regret, and the confusion, and the guilt, and the overwhelmed, that's where all those emotions start to come in, that feel even worse than that initial discomfort. Does that make sense?

Marisha: Yeah, that does make sense. If we walk through an example, let's say, where we have this report to write, but we're avoiding the discomfort, so we scroll on Facebook, and talk to our coworkers, we don't get it done that day, and maybe we do the same thing a couple days in a row. Then, the report is due on Thursday, so on Wednesday night we're writing the report from home, and missing out on time with our kids, our families. We've got the discomfort still, of writing the report, but then there's also regret for doing the things that we did. And guilt, I'm supposed to be helping my daughter with her homework, or whatever it may be.

Angie: Yes.

Marisha: Is that right, is that how that would show up?

Angie: Yes. Then, I'm so glad you brought that up, because then our brain has a tendency to be mean to ourselves. Like, why didn't you do that? Why can you get this stuff done? Then, we get into that, it's really unuseful. Our brains do that, they beat up on us.
But, I have some more, I have some more tips for this, too, though.

Marisha: I love it.

Angie: To get you through that discomfort, though.
Yes, maybe be willing to be feel that initial discomfort. The next tip is, reclaim the in between times. I know a lot of us ... A lot of times, in my schedule, there'll be an assembly or something, or a student will get picked up, or something happens where 15 minutes opens up in my schedule, or I'll get a little extra time, that I didn't expect. Actually, let me back up a little bit.
When I work with my clients, I have them actually do, most of them actually do a time journal, so we see exactly where their time is going. I do it in 15-minute increments, so that's something you can do. You can really get real about where your time is going, throughout your day, your entire day. The reason I have them do that is because I like to have people get rid of their to-do lists, and put everything on their schedule instead. Endless to-do lists are overwhelming, and it doesn't really give you a good, clear picture of time boundaries, which we talked about before. That's part of reclaiming those in between times.
It's like, when everything is on a schedule, you can see when some time opens up for yourself, and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't have anything scheduled right now. Do I want to take this time for some purposeful rest and relaxation, do I want to start this report that I have, that I have scheduled later?
One of the other tips that I had, I highly recommend using a timer. Now, in college I always called it interval tasking, thinking I invented it. It turns out, it's called the Pondoro Technique. What I do is I use a timer, I try to chunk ... We do this for our students, right? We chunk things, into little mini steps. Use a timer, I work pedal to the metal for 20 minutes, and then I give myself 10 minutes to goof off. Then, I give myself another 20 minute interval, where it's pedal to the metal, and then 10 minutes to goof off.
Now, when I do that, it really, actually, energizes my brain, and gives me just some real focus. That's one of the things that really helps me get over that initial discomfort, that negative emotion that I was talking about. I've just found that to help, really help me be very productive throughout my day. I know it seems like a lot of time of goofing off, but when you have that uber, like I said, petal to the metal focus, you're really getting a lot done.
The other tip I have, this is a strategy for overcoming ... Raise your hand if you're a perfectionist, or a procrastinator, or you're anxious, which, isn't that most SLPs? I know, I raise my hand to all of those.

Marisha: I'm raising my hand, too.

Angie: The tip is, think of it this way. When you get the first 80% of a project done, as fast as possible ... So, those quick, massive bursts, it's going to help you with your focus, stamina, and the other thing it's going to help with, is help you hack your perfectionist fantasies.
Now, today, I was looking at my notes and what I was going to talk about today, and prepare, and I caught myself fantasizing about how I wanted to prepare, to talk with you. I pictured myself going downstairs in my office, and laying out all my articles, and reviewing them. I caught myself actually using a lot of time fantasizing about how I was going to prepare, rather than just preparing, and I think a lot of us do that. There's that over-researching. Do speech pathologists tend to over complicate things? Probably. So, I think just focusing on getting that 80% of the project done, as fast as you can, will really help you get through that initial discomfort of starting a project.
I mean, thinking about putting time boundaries on things, now, most reports I can write in an hour or less. That's my reports, I work with third through fifth graders, so the reports that I'm used to writing, I can write them in an hour or less. What I used to do is get super complicated, and take a report home, and literally, probably spend 12 plus hours writing the report, simply because I had no time boundaries for myself. I would say, well, I'm going to write this report on the weekend, so it would take all weekend.

Marisha: Yeah. I know that, especially for newer SLPs, it's like, I don't know how long it's going to take me. How do I put a time boundary, or whatever? I think we might not know, but we can just pick a time. I think this is jumping ahead to one of your future points, I think we just have to take a guess, and just go for it. It's surprising how that actually ends up working out.

Angie: Yes, yes. Yes, because at least you have that mental expectation for yourself, initially. Yes, I'll get to a little more on that later on.
The next one is just prioritizing. That's just thinking about your why's, thinking about your why's. My priority, in the past, I would say five years, I've realized how much my mental health is the most important thing for me, because that creates everything. That is my number one priority, but do I spend the majority of my time on that? No. Your priority doesn't necessarily have to be the thing you spend the most time on. I mean, the next priority is my family, but we spend a lot of time at work, we spend a lot of time sleeping, too. Those are priorities, too. Those priorities might not always align with time, so it's good to just know that.
The other little point I like to bring up is Stephen Covey has this concept of urgent versus important. Just thinking about the things that come up ... When I have my clients do their time journal, it's interesting, we go over what urgent things come up. The urgent things are like, the example I'm thinking of now, you go grocery shopping and a day later, you get home and you realize you forgot to buy milk. Then, you've got to go back to the grocery store, and spend all that time getting the milk, bringing it back home, doing what you were going to do with it. Or, ... I just had another idea, and I lost it. Basically, when you're having a lot of urgent, unexpected things coming up, that is a lack of front loading.
It's that, you've got to pay that $100 on Monday, so you can get that $500 back on Friday, so the urgent, versus the important things. So, thinking about spending your time on those important things, rather than the urgent things coming up. The other thing is, some of us overcheck our emails. I really try to only check my emails once or twice a day, because it's really just not that important. There's nothing that urgent that I need to be checking my email more than that. So, clarifying in your mind, what are the urgent things that are coming up, and what is truly important?
The other part is clarifying for yourself your have tos, versus your want tos. Now, most of my clients, including ... I've had this, too. They'll tell me, "I have to work, I have to pay my bills, that's obvious." But, something I tell them is, you actually don't have to work, and you don't have to pay your bills, it's just if you're honest, you don't want to experience the consequences of not paying your bills. Maybe you don't want to be homeless, right? Or, another example is paying your taxes, people will say, "Well, I have to pay my taxes. I don't want to, but I have to." You really don't have to pay your taxes, it's just that you choose you don't want to go to jail, or pay penalties, or whatever it is that you have to do.
I would clarify for yourself, and give yourself that subtle but important distinction of, you really want to work, because you do want to pay your bills, because you don't want to be a bag lady, or you don't want to be homeless. Just giving yourself, it is true, you do want to do these things. I think that part is important.
The last tip that I have, let me give this to you, I want to give you as many tips as possible, is to use constraint. That's like, minimalism for your life and your career. The problem with that is, most people when we hear, the definition of constraint is limiting, and constricting yourself. When we hear that, what happens? If you're going to limit yourself and restrict yourself, I know for me, the rebellious, inner emotional child comes out and says, "No, I'm not doing that." Or, we have that fear of missing out, we get the FOMO, or our perfectionist fantasies start coming out. Like, I have to get this right, we have to make it overcomplicated, we have to do more, and research more.
All of those things that our brain does, so that rebellion, and the FOMO, and the perfectionism, creates a lot of indecision, and non-committal, scattered energy in our life, that's that huge energy, and time drain that happens. I do recommend that you constrain your time. If you've ever heard of Parkinson's Law, it's "work expands to the time available." Who decides what time you have available? You are actually the one that gets to decide that. Going back to that, when I said the report would take me a whole weekend to write, versus one to two hours to write. So, constrain your time, give yourself time limits to work on things, and use that timer to help you. The other thing is just constrain your materials, and the things that you do. I like to work, do literacy based lessons, and that just constrains my materials, so that I can use them in so many different ways.
The last thing I want to leave people with, I know I've given you a lot, is just remembering that when you show up with your clients ... There's been lots of studies in education, with counselors, life coaching, although that's a newer field, so it's less studied ... there's been a lot of studies that say, your relationship with your client is the biggest predictor of your effectiveness. So, just show up as a loving human being, and just ask yourself, can I be a human being today, with my students, with my clients? I think we can all answer yes to that. Hopefully, that will just take a little bit of the pressure off.
Hopefully I've given you a lot of tips, and things you can try, like tomorrow. Don't get overwhelmed with it, just try one thing.

Marisha: Oh, I love that. I love when episodes are packed with practical tips, and this one is overflowing with them, so much good stuff. I definitely agree, we've got 100 things that we could do, based on what you shared, and that's definitely not the goal. This episode will be available for, at least for the foreseeable future, I don't think it's coming down any time, so just pick one of the things you want to try next, and see how that goes. Then, if that's going well, you can revisit it, and pick some more things, or you can connect with Angie.
Where would be a good place for people to read more, or connect with you and just learn more, if they're wanting to work on this?

Angie: Yeah, you can go to my website, SLPBurnoutCoach.com, or you can email at [email protected], or you can see my Facebook page, SLPBurnoutcoach.com.

Marisha: Got it.

Angie: Connect with me, ask me questions, I would be more than happy to answer questions. Email me, reach out, I love talking burnout, I love it.

Marisha: Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us. Yeah, I think this was a really helpful conversation, and you definitely gave lots and lots of tips for us to start implementing.

Marisha: Hi there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast. I am so excited to be introducing Caitlin Lopez today. We are going to be diving into all things mindfulness after a lot of you asked questions about it with Kristin Comella's interview. There was a huge interest in all things mindfulness, and I found the perfect person to help break this down for us. Just a little bit of background, Caitlin received her master's degree from Loma Linda University in communication sciences and disorders in 2012, and she has worked for the last eight years serving preschool and elementary students in the California school system.

Marisha: She also began practicing yoga in 2018, and it was love at first [inaudible 00:00:53]. She completed her 200 hour teaching training in 2013 and has completed 20 hours of trainings in yoga for autism, yoga for children, trauma-informed yoga, all the things, and she teaches adults and kids in studio classes, community centers and schools. She's passionate about helping others find their inner power through using their voices and living intentionally. So I cannot wait to dive into all of the tips and tricks that Caitlin has for us today. But before we get into all of that good stuff, Caitlin, I... Well, first of all, welcome to the podcast.

Caitlin Lopez: Thank you. I'm excited to be sharing.

Marisha: Like I said, before we dive into all the tips and tricks, I'm really curious... I got to hear a little bit of your story already, but I'd love if you could share a little bit more of your story, like how you got started on this journey and what that looks like for you.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. Back in 2008, I started practicing yoga just kind of as something fun to do while I was in school. I think I was doing my undergrad about that time. So I just hopped into classes as something new to do, like a new hobby or whatever and I absolutely fell in love with it. I noticed right away that it was something a little bit more than your average exercise class. So I have been practicing yoga for about four years or so.

Caitlin Lopez: My first year as a speech therapist in the school system, I remember this one day walking into grad students, and I had three kids and they were just like off the walls but on very different pages. One little girl was just like, word salad, telling me some story that made no sense, and another little boy was... he was like bouncing off the walls, just like high energy and then another kid was just like not engaging whatsoever. I was trying all the teacher tricks, like those things that they tell you to try for behavior management to get the two kids calm down and then maybe bring up that other kid, and nothing was working. I was just feeling my energy level kind of rise, my stress level rise, and I was like, "Oh, what am I going to do with these two kids that are bouncing off the walls and then this kid who's like, not interested in anything?"

Caitlin Lopez: I realized like, "Okay, well what works for me? Breath." So I thought, "Okay, I'm going to get them breathing." But in the past, I had tried breathing with kids before, and they just end up hyperventilating. You ask them to take a deep breath and to let it go and it's like... and it's like, wait, wait, that's counterproductive. So I got them grounded first. I have no idea where this idea came from, but I was like, "Okay, I need to get them grounded."

Caitlin Lopez: So I had them elephant walk around the table, because if I thought like, "Okay, if they can feel the ground beneath them, maybe that will give them a little bit of sensory input to bring themselves down." And then they did... they walked around the table a couple times, and I started to feel their energy level drop a little bit. And then I had them do a couple of deep breathing, breathing with their arms up and then exhaling with their arms down. And then once they were on the same page, the three of them, I had them do, like... I think I had them do chair pose or something and I was like, "Oh, we're going to do yoga." And they were like, "What's that?"

Caitlin Lopez: I had them do chair pose and then we did Bakasana or Crow pose, it's kind of like a fun balancing pose that kids are really good at; adults, maybe not so much. So we did that and then we sat down and we went through the rest of the speech session, and the kids were so engaged, I was like, "What is going on? Oh my goodness. I found the answer to all of my problems." So I thought, "Yeah, there must be something here." So as soon as I got home from my day, I Googled yoga for autism. One of the kids... Well, actually, two of the kids were on the spectrum, that were in the class or in the speech session. I found a training that was happening... I think this was about April, May and there was a training that was the weekend, right after school got out in June, and I signed up for it right then in there. The studio that I was attending at the time, they also were offering a 200 hour certification training that summer, that started weekend directly after that autism training.

Caitlin Lopez: So I signed up for that one about a week later after that one. So it was just kind of a summer of yoga training, and that's how I got into it. And then I did a couple of other courses, like the children's yoga, just to add to my tool belt, because children's yoga looks a lot different than adult yoga. Kids relax way different than adults relax. And then through some other experiences that I've had, I was asked to teach for women that were rehabbing out of human trafficking, and so I took a trauma-informed yoga course to give me some more tools to work with that population as well. So that's a little bit about my background.

Caitlin Lopez: Let's see, I started to... When I first started using yoga in my speech session, it was mainly for behavior management, so it didn't really become powerful, or I didn't really see how it could be powerful for kids to take on for themselves until a little bit more recently within the last few years. But yeah, that's my background in how I do what I do.

Marisha: I love that story. It's amazing how that one session catapulted and all of these amazing things that you did and you immediately took action, which is amazing. I love it. So, I'm curious. You shared a little bit of your first experience with this, but I'm curious how... Can you give us a couple more examples of how you incorporate mindfulness into your therapy sessions and what you use them for and what that ends up looking like?

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, at first, it was behavior management. So what it has evolved into... Like, I used to... I would feel like kids would act out or they would come in and they would be upset or whatever have you, so I would do a lot of breath practices with them. But what I've learned is that... and as I've kind of evolved into it, is that if we give kids the tools for self-regulation or helping put the responsibility on them and giving them the tools, they can be really powerful. So there's a couple of different things that I do now. I know Marisha, you talk about using a routine in... I learned that from you a little while back through your SLP Now stuff. I really find it powerful with incorporating mindfulness, because it can... I don't want to... It's a fine balance between doing these things that aren't necessarily goal related and then also making sure that you're targeting speech and language goals within your session. Because we do have limited time in the school system.

Caitlin Lopez: So a couple of things that I do is I like to keep to that routine. We usually start out with some sort of mindfulness activity. It can be very brief, it doesn't need to be super intense, and I kind of let the kids pick. Once I teach them the different types of that of activities that they can do, they can pick as a group what they want to do. So I walk to and from my speech sessions with my students. The older ones, I let them go back on their own, but I always walk and get my students. Not only does it kind of break up my day and get me out of the therapy room, but... The particular schools that I have been at, for whatever reason, they don't have an IEP schedule, and so then this way, I know that the kids aren't waiting outside of my room or lollygagging in the hallway on their way to speech.

Caitlin Lopez: So there's a couple of different things that I do on the walk back to the speech room. One of the things that I like to do is a noticing walk where sometimes we walk quietly and we notice all the different things that we can hear on the way to the speech session. And then they have to, if they can, remind... if they can remember, they have to tell me what it was that they heard, whether it was a bird or the crinkling of leaves or footsteps or a bell ringing or a helicopter. So we do noticing walks. We'll do like a gratitude list. Gratitude can be something that's a little hard for kids to wrap their heads around, like that concept, especially the little ones, and so we talk about things that make us happy and then like... They'll say, "I..."

Caitlin Lopez: Once they know that that's the routine of what gratitude is, noticing what makes you happy, then we'll add in the language of like, "I'm thankful for playing with my friends at recess or my mom's hugs." And we'll do like a gratitude list on the way to speech sometimes. Something else that I like to do is a personal weather report. I give them the language of like, am I sunny inside, am I my cloudy, am I thunder, am I... I'm trying to think of other. Like, is it a tornado inside, is it a hurricane, is it sprinkling inside, is it windy inside? So we talk about what those... how the different weather might relate to how their emotions are on the inside.

Caitlin Lopez: Sometimes we'll do the personal weather report and they'll say, "I am cloudy inside." I always just let it be. I don't necessarily try to explain it. A lot of times I don't even ask them why, I just let them like... If they're thunder, "Oh yeah." Like, "Oh, I know how that feels sometimes." Or I usually say something that validates that and then we move on. It's not something that I totally like engage them in, it's just something to help give them power to recognize it's okay to feel these things.

Caitlin Lopez: And then if we do the personal weather report on the check in... Once at the beginning of the session, I always like to do one at the end to show them too that things can change. Maybe we started out in a thunder mood and then after playing a couple rounds of like pop the pig or something, or after a success in speech, then they can maybe be windy or slightly cloudy instead of like a huge thunderstorm. Again, I don't draw a ton of attention to these things, just kind of allowing them to own how they feel and then own that it can change.

Caitlin Lopez: So some other things that I like to do is like rounds of breath. We'll do like only three to five rounds of breath. Sometimes I'll have them just sit like... We'll usually do the breath when they're sitting. So once we get into the speech room, if they decide that they also want to do breath, then they can sit in their chair, and I'll usually ask them to feel like the chair against the back of their legs or against their back, that way... so they're a little bit grounded. And then couple of different breathing practices that we can do is like, I'll just say, equal breath, and I usually have them breathe in for a count of three, hold for a count of three and then breathe out for a count of three. So we can do that one.

Caitlin Lopez: Something else that kids like to do, there's like that game, Johnny whoop, Johnny whoop, I don't know. It's something that I remember playing as a kid. But usually you take like the left hand and you place the palm, or you look at your palm and then you take your pointer finger of your opposite hand and you start at the base of the pinky, and then every time your finger goes up, you breathe in and then you breathe out. When your finger goes down the pinky and then up the ring finger, you breathe in and then exhale as the finger goes down, and you follow that motion. We'll do that usually once you get to the thumb, then we'll go back the other side. I call that one Johnny breath only because of that game, Johnny whoop. I don't know if my students know what I'm talking about, but they sometimes ask for that one. So we do that.

Caitlin Lopez: And then sometimes I'll use yoga as a reward at the end. The yoga for autism training that I did, it was really awesome. They gave us yoga pictures that were on... kind of like a picture exchange card. So I will let them choose one or two poses. I'll only have them choose out of five. It's not like they go through all three of the pictures, because that would take too much time. But if they want to do like yoga poses at the end, I'll let them choose some. Sometimes they take turns teaching each other, but that's like a reward at the end that some of the kids like to do.

Caitlin Lopez: Sometimes we'll do like a sound game where I'll play like a bell at the end of the session and they have to close their eyes and then just listen. They'll raise their hand as they're listening for the bell and then once they don't hear the bell anymore, they just bring their hand down to the table or to their lap and we wait till everybody has heard the bell or has done hearing the bell. So that's one thing that I'll do with them. So I keep it short and sweet. But usually, when I introduce all of the games or the different ideas behind things, it's kind of... I'll spend a little bit more time explaining, this is why we do what we do. The reason why we notice things is it keeps our brains sharp. Something I'll talk about with the inaudible is like we're using our spidey senses, we want to keep our brain sharp, we want to notice everything that happens around us.

Caitlin Lopez: And then with the gratitude list, when we talk about things that make us happy, I'll also have them notice like, "Oh, did you notice that you feel happy when you think about your mom's hugs or when you think about playing games with your friends?" And that I can all remind them too like, "Anytime you need to think about things to make you happy, feel free to do that again." So like I said, it'll be a brief thing. It's not something super intense that we'll do. The same with the personal weather report. Usually at the end, I'll draw a little bit more attention, especially if somebody's weather has changed, like, "Oh wow, how awesome. You felt this way, and now you feel this way. Whether it can change, and we know that. Sometimes it's sunny in the morning and then it rains in the afternoon."

Caitlin Lopez: That's about all I say. That's how I usually use these things within speech sessions. When I work with kids, like in a kid's yoga class, I'll usually be a little bit more intentional. Or maybe not intentional is the right word, a little bit more like spend a little bit more time on these things, because we also have to do speech and language goals too.

Marisha: Thank you so much for all of these ideas. I love a lot of... Well, I love all of the ones that you brought up. I've only used a couple personally, so lots of new things for me. I love what you said about... Because this is... You have separate classes where you dive into these things specifically with students, but I love just the little things that we can use to help set up our students for success in the session. I think these are skills that can be very helpful for them as they go about their day. So it does... I think this is the perfect thing to use as you're transitioning into the speech room and just...

Marisha: Because yeah, it might take one or two minutes out of our very few minutes, but if the student is having like a thundery weather day, if we can do just... if we can teach them some of these strategies, I think the student can get that much more out of this session and then they also have that skill to bring with them to the other parts of the day as well. Yeah, I love that. You gave us so many strategies that we could actually use, which is awesome. And then I'm curious too, what kinds of changes have you seen with your students, or do you have any... I don't know, what got you to be so consistent with using this in your sessions? What were the... Whether it's research or personal experience, I'm curious what you've seen.

Caitlin Lopez: A little bit of both. I think the research, I know like in Oakland they have started... Instead of doing detention, they have meditation for kids. There's a school district up there that does that, or at least a school within the district that has tried that and they've seen really positive results. And then I know for me personally, when I am consistent with things, it starts to take hold and you start to see things. A couple of years ago, there was a school that... Well, actually, it was a little bit more than a couple of years ago. I don't know if you guys remember it, was a inaudible San Bernardino.

Caitlin Lopez: But the December 2 shooting that happened, when it happened, we were actually a couple of miles away from where it happened, like six miles or something. But when the news broke, nobody knew what was going on or what was happening. I remember like... So anyway, we went on lockdown and we didn't... we knew that there was a shooting, we knew it was somewhere in San Bernardino, but we didn't know where it was happening or what was going on. I was out to get a group of students, and the principal walked out of the office and I was walking right by her and she said, "We're going on lockdown." And I said, "Okay, do you need help?" And she said, "Yeah, just help me sweep the campus."

Caitlin Lopez: So the fourth graders, or third and fourth graders were out at lunch and we were sweeping the campus, and one of the third grade teachers... This was not appropriate, but he was probably really scared. Our field was very far away from the classrooms and the bells, so kids could easily say that they didn't hear the bell, which happened regularly. So this teacher went out and was yelling at the students like, "Hey, you guys go in, go in." And the kids weren't listening to him, so he said, "There's an active shooter," which is probably not the right thing to say to children.

Caitlin Lopez: So kids were running into the classrooms, and as we were kind of sweeping the campus, there was a bunch of kids that were outside of the fourth grade classroom, and they had a substitute and it was lunchtime. So she had every right to not be on campus and getting herself lunch. So I ended up being in their classroom with them during lockdown. So the principal opened up the door and we went inside, and two kids were fighting. I just remember walking up and getting the kids into the class, and all of a sudden, one kid was in a headlock that another kid had him in, and it was just pure chaos. So I was like, "We're supposed to be quiet, it's lockdown."

Caitlin Lopez: So I just said, "Okay, who wants to play a game?" And the kids were like, "Uh." And they didn't really know who I was, because I was brand new to that school and it was December. So some of them hadn't really even seen me on campus yet. So they were like, "Uh." So anyway, I asked the kids, "Do you want to play a game?" And they all just looked at me. I said, "If you want to play the game, go ahead and sit at your desks. If you don't want to play the game, you guys can look at these books up here." They had some picture books or something in like a class library at the front of the class.

Caitlin Lopez: So the two boys who were fighting, they pulled their heads up over their heads and they kind of sat on opposite ends of that little library and they just started looking at books. But at least they were quiet, so I was like, "You know what, that's fine." So I did that check in. Instead of calling it a weather report, I just wanted them to say one word that they felt and... Or I should back up. I got them grounded, I got them sitting in their seats, kind of did like, notice if your feet are touching the ground, notice what that feels like. Can you feel the backs of your legs against your chair? Can you feel the chair against your back? And then I had them...

Caitlin Lopez: We went one by one through the class, and I just said, "How do you... One word to describe how you feel." And then some kids, I asked them where they felt it. I started off first. I said that I was hungry because I didn't have a chance to eat lunch yet. I felt that like... I was like, "And I feel that in my stomach. It's growing, and I feel it." So some kids, I asked them where they felt things, some kids, I didn't. So like one little girl, I remember she said she was angry, and I asked her where she was angry and she said her hands, which I thought was really interesting. You could see how kids like, they had never really been asked how do they feel, where do they feel it, and they... some of them I could tell they'd never really been validated in how they felt.

Caitlin Lopez: So I started to see the energy in the room just kind of equalize a little bit. Kids were starting to feel okay. Kids were scared, and they were scared in their heads, they were scared and their stomachs. So then after that, we did a couple of yoga poses by... I had them stand up and we did like one-legged chair and that kind of thing. There wasn't a ton of room in the classroom for them to move around a ton. And then I had them like... Then I think we did some more breath and then we transitioned... I think we started playing Heads Up 7 Up or something in the class that was quiet.

Caitlin Lopez: We were in the class for a couple of hours before they lifted the lockdown. So we also did like a... I did a checkout before it was time to go and kids had calmed down. It wasn't until a couple of days later when I saw one of the kids who was fighting... By the way, the kids who were fighting, they never once participated, but they sat there and they watched, and that was enough for me as long as they weren't putting each other in headlocks. A couple of days later, I was out grabbing students, and one of the kids who is fighting, he said, "Hey." Then they said, "Hi." At the time I wasn't married, so I said, "Hi, I'm Ms. Mack." Then he goes, "Oh, Ms. Mack." And I said, "Yes?" And he said, "Do you think you could come breathe with us more often?" And I said, "Oh. Well, will you breathe? Next time I come into the class, will you participate?" And he said, "Yeah, I think I will."

Caitlin Lopez: So I did it a couple more times with class, and the teacher said she noticed a huge difference just in the way the class interacted with each other, and that she noticed a huge difference. So she started doing it with the kids once she it modeled for her. So they would do it in the mornings, and she noticed a huge difference. So that, to me, is when it started to switch from this behavior management... because I had been using it for behavior management up until then, to this like, "Oh, kids enjoy this, they need a reprieve." The school districts that I have worked for in the past have been kids that have a lot going on at home. So I think for ways for them to have some control over their bodies, over their minds has been really powerful for some of them. So that's when I started to really use it just as part of the day, part of my speech sessions.

Caitlin Lopez: Of course, there are times where they might need a little bit more instruction or I might... If I noticed that a kid is having a thundery day, I spend a lot more and it drops down. I spend a lot more attention encouraging them to try this on their own or to try it when things are not going well for them or if they get stressed out with homework or mom and dad are fighting at home or something like that. Like, "Hey, you can always come back and do the breath yourself. You don't need me to do it for you." So I have noticed a change with some of my students, that they find like... especially the ones that grab ahold of it and they find reprieve or they find success with it and they see the need to do it.

Caitlin Lopez: So that has been... It's not all students. I have several students who... they don't really care about it, but we still do it, because you never know when it might click for them. It took me like... Let's see, I think I did... I did my teacher's training in 2013, and it like... I didn't start using it as like a... just part of my session until 2016, really 2017, because it was January, 2016. So you never know when something will actually click for somebody. I think we can say that too with our speech therapy. We work and work and work on goals and we're like, "Oh my gosh, is this kid ever going to get it? Are they ever going to see the need for why they should get it?" And then it's like, oh, all of a sudden they do it, or all of a sudden they see the importance of it. That's when I started to really use it more regularly.

Marisha: That is so helpful. I love your stories and everything. I can just like visualize it, and I think that's really powerful and helpful. I love what you said about it, taking time to place or to come... like, to really see a difference. For some, it'll be fairly quick and some it takes a little bit longer. For myself, I took a whole seminar, it was like a whole semester long seminar on mindfulness in college, and there was so much research around this approach. I know Caitlin, you have some articles, and then I'll pull together some of the articles that I've come across over the time too. You can find... If you're listening, you can find that in the show notes at SLPNow.com/39. But there's like...

Marisha: I took the seminar, I read like thousands and thousands of pages of research, I got to practice it in the seminar with this master. I don't know what he was actually called, but he was definitely very into mindfulness and meditation and all of that. I did it, but I didn't really feel it click. It took me... I think like 10 years later is when I started actually using it myself too. I love this metaphor. It was in a book that I read called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's such a good book. But he talks about an ice cube. I think this is... Like you were saying, it's true with what we can do with mindfulness or just speech therapy in general.

Marisha: But if an ice cube is at negative 100 degrees, if we... we can do a lot of work to increase that temperature, but we're not going to see a difference in the ice cube until it hits that melting point. So like we might have gone up by 60 degrees, but we're still not seeing that difference. So I think that's so powerful to keep in mind with ourselves because... I've talked to a lot of SLPs who said like, "I really want to try this, but it's challenging. I don't see it making a difference." So we can use that ice cube reminder for ourselves and also our students. So I love just the examples that you shared because I think it just helps emphasize that point as well.

Marisha: And then along that line too, I want to start with students. But what tips do you have? You shared lots of examples of things that we can do, but what tips do you have for SLPs who are interested-

Caitlin Lopez: Oh, great question.

Marisha: ... in using mindfulness with their students?

Caitlin Lopez: The thing that has been, for me, the most powerful is when... Like you were saying, you've been... it took 10 years for you to really dive into it, and I would say it's about the same for me too. Yeah, I was doing yoga, but did it ever leap off the mat? It took several years for that to happen. I think the biggest tip or the biggest piece of advice that I can give is that mindfulness really should be modeled. It's hard to teach something that you haven't necessarily bought into for yourself that you haven't necessarily practiced yourself. I think it can be done, but I think it is a lot more powerful when you are doing it yourself. It's really hard to teach somebody how to do something that you yourself are not using or that you haven't necessarily done yourself, which is why we go to... we get these master's degrees and continue with CEUs and reading all the research to make sure that we are teaching our students well when it comes to speech and language. But I think the same goes for mindfulness as well.

Caitlin Lopez: So I would really, really recommend developing your own mindfulness practice. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be sitting in a 60 minute meditation every single morning. But what can you do to live a little bit more intentionally? Maybe it's taking 12 breaths before you get out of bed in the morning, maybe it's breathing on your way to work in the morning, maybe it's something that's like taking your own noticing walk or your own mindful meditation walk. It doesn't have to be something super intense, but I think any little bit is helpful.

Caitlin Lopez: There was a podcast that I listened to recently, and I completely forget... I think it was Sally Kempton that was being interviewed, but I could be wrong. It was a live forum, and one of the attenders had asked the meditation expert, "What is the bare minimum that I can... What is the least amount of meditation that I can do and still receive the benefits? We talked about all this research about 20 minutes is... it drops your blood pressure and it reduces your stress levels. But what if somebody like me can't sit for 20 minutes and actually ends up like raising our blood pressure because we get so stressed out that we can't sit there for 20 minutes? What can I do?"

Caitlin Lopez: The meditation expert basically just said, "You're looking for the bare minimum that you can do, and really, the best thing you can do is is just a little bit every day. A little bit is better than nothing. A little bit of exercise is better than no exercise, a little bit of eating healthy is better than not eating healthy at all. And then from there you start to build." So that is kind of the best advice that I can give, is to start your own mindfulness practice and come up with a definition of mindfulness that makes sense for you because that's what you are going to be able to relate to your students. If mindfulness is like this really strict, rigid thing, then that's probably what you will do with your students.

Caitlin Lopez: And that's fine, there are people that have very strict, rigid practices. But evaluate your relationship with mindfulness and what is it that you're looking for? Are you just looking for a little bit of peace in your day or a little bit of intentional action in your day? And then that will be related to your students. So evaluate your relationship with it. Is it something that you feel like you should do, versus something that you want to do, or... And that can really change as well. When it's something that you look forward to doing versus something you have to do, it becomes a little bit easier to do, which I know we all knew that. So that's the first tip that I have, is to develop your own practice.

Caitlin Lopez: And then with that, once you kind of develop your own practice, or something that I think is really valuable and can show change in students is when it becomes consistent. It's really hard to get students to breathe when they are like a level 10 and they've never breathed before. But the more that they are able to do it when they're calm, then the more able they're able to help themselves when they are at that high energy level. That's something that I've had to learn the hard way in terms of trying to use it only for behavior management just kind of as that way of life. I think the same goes for all of us. When we're really stressed out and we're really in the heat of the moment, it's really hard to calm ourselves down. But if it's something that we've been practicing and we know how to drop down and take a couple of deep breaths and regroup, then that's something that is a lot easier to do.

Marisha: Thank you again, such helpful information. I'm also really curious like, how has your mindfulness practice changed over the years? Just-

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah, great question. [crosstalk 00:39:21]. A lot of people just kind of like... yoga as a way of like, I wanted that yoga body, to be completely honest. Like, "Oh yeah, hot yoga. Sure, let's do that. That'll get me fit, that'll get me feeling good." And then the more that... I think I had started a class at 24 Hour Fitness or something and I did that for a little while and then I decided to try out a studio. Just the way that the studio teachers taught was very different, and the things that they would mention in class about like intentionally putting your foot where you want it to go or whatever.

Caitlin Lopez: So it started very physical for me. That wanting to be healthy and then moving my body intentionally and being mindful about the... What's the word I'm looking for? Like, the anatomy, making sure that my body was in the right place and that hip goes there and lift your pelvis here, and that kind of thing. And then it didn't really become more... And with that, linking the breath, your spirits kind of starts to come online a little bit more, or maybe that idea of like... that Zen mindfulness starts to come on a little bit more.

Caitlin Lopez: But I had never really been introduced to meditation. I had heard about it and I knew it was good for me or whatever, but I had never really tried it until I did my teacher training actually. I used to journal a lot. The cool thing about my yoga teachers was they were like, "What do you do to process? And then how... Can you think of that as being mindful?" That it's all a part of it. It all works together. So learning a couple of different meditations through my teacher training was really powerful, and that's when I started to meditate.

Caitlin Lopez: But again, still at that point, because they wanted us to meditate... That teacher training was pretty intense. They wanted us to meditate every single day, do a breath practice, which in yoga we call pranayama. We were supposed to do that alongside the meditation and the [inaudible 00:41:51]. We were supposed to do that every single day. So it became something that I had to do, not necessarily something that I looked forward to doing. But it was still like that was... It's only been within the last few years, I would say, that I would... I look forward to my meditation practice. And then like, even the last year or so, and especially the last six months, I've really dived in deep to it.

Caitlin Lopez: What that looks like is... So I started doing this... During the teacher training, we had... our teacher would always say, RPM. "Did you guys RPM? Did you guys RPM?" RPM was rise, pee, meditate. They believed that the best time to meditate was in the morning because your mind is a little bit more... it's a little bit more empty, if you will. You haven't necessarily gone about your day and thought about all the problems, all the things that have happened, all of the interactions that you replay in your head that have happened throughout the day, whether good or bad. So that was something that I gravitated towards, was the RPM method during teacher training.

Caitlin Lopez: Now, I would say when I'm on routine in the school year, I still RPM- rise, pee, meditate. And then I journal after that. I'll do a little bit of reading. I take a couple hours before I go to work. I just like to... For me, that's what works best, to kind of be in that routine. Sometimes I meditate for... Oh, sorry, let me back up. I use Insight Timer, which is a meditation app. I think it's 10 bucks for the initial app, at least it used to be. I've had it for a couple of years now. So I like it because you can put different interval bells on it. They have guided meditations as well, but I usually just do my own thing and use the timer.

Caitlin Lopez: So I will breathe, I'll do a breath practice for the first 10 minutes and then the last 10 to 15 minutes I will just do like a mantra meditation, if you will. Like I'll focus on a thought or a phrase and I'll focus on that for the remaining 10 to 15 minutes. But I do a couple of different breath practices before I get going just because it not only helps wake me up, especially since I rise, pee, meditate, but it also helps center my brain a little bit, gets me focused on the breath, which kind of gets me in a good space. Whereas if I'm just supposed to sit and think about a word or a phrase, I usually think about a lot more other things. So that has been really helpful.

Caitlin Lopez: And then something else that I've really... I tend to be a little bit on the type A side of things, so in years past, and I would say especially this last year, I've been able to lean into this. So in years past, I used to like really beat myself up if my meditation wasn't like inaudible place. But I've been reading a lot of books recently. This last year, I was like, "You know what, I'm going to get into this even more." So yeah, it's a part of my daily routine, but I want two lean into the meditation side of things a little bit more heavily.

Caitlin Lopez: So I've really come to just accept my meditation practice for what it is. I was recently on vacation and I... Before the holidays I was like, "Okay, I want to do 30 days of meditation." So I have just committed to that, whether it's five minutes or 10 minute, and sometimes when you're on vacation and you're out of routine. It's been sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening before I go to bed. So I've just let things be, and I've just noticed like, "Oh wow, my brain was really busy today. Huh, I didn't really settle down, did I?" I've just let it be, versus like beat myself up of, "Oh, you're a terrible yoga teacher. You're a terrible meditation teacher. You can't do this."

Caitlin Lopez: I had a lot of grace for myself in that, and that has really helped kind of catapult me towards having a better... It's catapulted my thinking towards my meditation practice of, "I get to do this, and I look forward to doing this," versus like, "Ah, it's just a part of my day that I have to do." I know it's good for me. Like eating kale, I am somebody who doesn't like to eat kale, but I do because it's supposed to be good for us. So that is a little bit of how my meditation practice has evolved through the years.

Caitlin Lopez: Something else that I really enjoy doing that has become a mindful activity for me as well is cooking. I really, really, really love to play with flavors, and I think cooking and food is such a great mindfulness activity because you use all five senses. So whether... My husband knows. Like I'm in the kitchen, I'm doing my own thing, he'll sometimes come and play his guitar next to me or whatever. But I am like in the zone in the kitchen, whether it's chopping, and like it's just kind of... All I'm doing is focusing on that. My phone is nowhere near, the TV is not on, and I really enjoy just kind of diving in and watching how he changes the food or how chopping kind of releases the smells of the food and then also the eating aspect of the food and taking it all the flavors as far as that goes too.

Caitlin Lopez: So really, mindfulness can be any activity you want it to be. My definition of it is just kind of that one pointed focus. So if you're cooking, you're focused on just that one point of preparing the food. So that has been something that has been helpful for me. Walks can be really great. You're focused on your walk, you're focused on your surroundings. So those are the things that I dive into. My inaudible practice, it used to be really strong. So the yoga poses, it used to be really strong. And then over the last couple of years, I have definitely not had... Like, I would say my practice is stronger in terms of like, I'm doing what I need to do, not necessarily like all the hand stands, all the arm balances, all the strong...

Caitlin Lopez: So when I like... It used to be really strong in terms of like the poses, very intense poses, and now it's become just kind of this retreat for me where sometimes I will do a handstand or some arm balances if I have the energy. But a lot of times, I'm just kind of moving and breathing through my body and stretching what needs to be stretched and working what needs to be worked, but then also finding that rest in whatever it needs to be rested too. I don't think there's any right or wrong way to that. There are definitely days where you need to work hard and do that, and there's definitely days where you need to be in Shavasana or child's pose the whole time. So finding that balance, I think, is really powerful. So that's where I'm at with all of it. I'm definitely a lot... How do I say this? It's funny, I feel a lot stronger in my mindfulness practice, but I would say from the outside looking in, it probably looks a lot more type B, even though I feel like now it's all encompassing, if that makes sense.

Marisha: Okay. That does make sense. I so appreciate all of the examples. Like, we talked about before, a lot of SLPs are feeling like well... I don't know, they've probably tried like one of the meditation apps and they were like... I don't know, that can be hard to... For some people, that's easy to just jump in and they are able to get through that, but like for me, I tried starting with the meditation app and it was just like... it was just too much to start with. So I love that you shared different ideas, whether it's taking a walk before you go into work or going for a walk during your lunch time and just doing that. Because you called it the noticing walk, so just taking like a five minute walk as a way to start, or having a gratitude list or taking a couple of breaths before you walk into school. There's just a lot of little things that we can do to get started, it doesn't have to be, like you said, a 30 minute meditation or going to yoga every day.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely.

Marisha: Just kind of exploring and seeing what makes sense for you and something that is approachable.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:51:32].

Marisha: Because it's supposed to help you crosstalk and not make you feel more stressed up.

Caitlin Lopez: crosstalk teachers that I really, really love, Jackie crosstalk and Mary Beth LaRue. In their teaching, they talk about this concept of trying on. So they have a podcast called Rock Your Bliss, and it's more on this... Excuse me. It's more on this mindfulness journey. But I love the idea of trying on. There's something really valuable in finding community and talking about these things with your friends or... whether you join some sort of online community or something, because what might work for one person will not work for the other person. But then when we all share, it's like, "Oh yeah, I hate sitting quietly and meditating, but I can totally cook dinner and be focused on that."

Caitlin Lopez: So it's this idea of trying on different practices and seeing what works for us and what doesn't. There have been lots of things that I've tried that I've been like, "No." A guided meditation is not my jam at all. I am like, "Well, why are you talking so much? I just want to chill." But then there are times where a guided meditation is exactly what I need because my brain can't chill. So yeah, I like that idea of trying on different things and seeing what works for you and then being okay if something doesn't work for you and just letting that go.

Marisha: I love what you said about... because this has definitely been the case. When I first started exploring, meditation just felt like excruciating. Sometimes it works, sometimes it... Sometimes it feels great, sometimes it doesn't feel so great, and just meeting ourselves where we are and going from there, I think, is incredibly powerful. So yeah, I love this. And then you already mentioned the Insight Timer. I'll share links to these different resources in the show notes as well at SLPNow.com/39. So you mentioned Insight Timer, which is an-

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely.

Marisha: ... app.

Caitlin Lopez: So if you-

Marisha: Do you have other-

Caitlin Lopez: ... are a teacher-

Marisha: ... meditation apps crosstalk that you would recommend in case people are interested in that?

Caitlin Lopez: ... I would definitely check them out. They are a favorite. I have lots of friends that are not teachers that pay for it. They are guided meditations and they're relatively short. But if you're a teacher, you just use your school email to sign up. They even have some for kids, which is really awesome. I haven't used them in therapy simply because they are a little bit longer than... You try it on if you think that works for you. I haven't tried it on yet. So that's a really good one. And then if you are interested, miniyogis.com is the kid's website or the kid's yoga website. YouTube is also really great. There are meditations on YouTube, there are tons of great yoga classes on YouTube, and that's free and so I would recommend that.

Caitlin Lopez: Another really popular meditation timer or meditation app is Headspace. Andy Puddicombe, I think, is the one who does that one. He has a really great accent and so that can be fun to listen to if you haven't done that already. I think they have like a 10 day free trial, which is like an intro to meditation that is pretty decent. I've done that one before, but I hadn't paid for it. They have a bunch of like class packs that you can pay for and get if you're interested in that. That's something that you try on and you like. Another website that has online yoga... it's an online yoga studio, it's glow.com. I think it's only 18 bucks a month, and they have tons of different world-class teachers that I have really enjoyed studying with, whether in person or through the website, tons and tons.

Caitlin Lopez: The cool thing about glow.com is that they also have different class times. So I know a lot of us are busy and we can't commit to the commute time to a yoga studio and then taking the full hour and a half class or whatever your local studio offers and then the commute time home. What's great about Glow is they have like five minute classes, 15 minute classes, an hour and a half classes. They have a lot of different class times that I have found really fun to do, and they have a bunch of different programs. Like I said, some of the teachers on there are amazing, amazing teachers. Like, Annie Carpenter is probably my all time favorite teacher and she has classes on there. So I would definitely check that out.

Caitlin Lopez: Again, you can try on... They have teachers from all different lineages and so it's kind of fun to try on some of those things and see what... the style you resonate with, if that's something you're interested in. And then I also have a blog at radiatekind.com, where I talk about a lot of different mindfulness activities and journal prompts and I put up affirmations and things like that that you can check out, and again, just simply try on and see what works for you and what doesn't. I'm looking to start some kind of conversation there as far as others helping each other out. I find community to be really, really helpful in this mindfulness journey. I've learned some things through friends who do different practices, some of them I don't necessarily resonate with, but then others are kind of fun to try on and see like, "Oh, that did work, or maybe if I tweak it this way, it works for me." So going to your local yoga studio is a really great way to build that community and to make friends who are in that same journey.

Marisha: Awesome. Thank you for all of those amazing resources. And then you're also putting together-

Caitlin Lopez: Yes, yes.

Marisha: ... a little-

Caitlin Lopez: I will put together-

Marisha: ... like a sheet with some ideas-

Caitlin Lopez: ... a bunch of different-

Marisha: ... for activities that we can use with kids too.

Caitlin Lopez: ... I recommend... With the list, I know that we talk about this a lot whenever you take CEUs is like you can't implement everything all right away. Sorry, excuse me. But maybe you try one thing a week or you try one thing with one group and you know that that absolutely won't work with another group. It's something simply to try on. It's not like they have to or you get like you have to do them all or whatever. It's just simply ideas that you can try and see what works for you, or maybe you tweak them and you make them work for you.

Marisha: Awesome. I'll link to all of those resources, again, at SLPNow.com/39, in case you want to check them out. Definitely keep us posted on what you end up trying and how it goes. We'd love to hear from you. And then Caitlin, thank you so much for sharing your stories-

Caitlin Lopez: Thank you.

Marisha: ... and amazing knowledge with us. I so appreciate you and thank you for your time.

Here we go. Hello there and welcome to The SLP Now Podcast. I am so incredibly excited to have Allison Cloutier here with us today. We've been getting some questions about therapy ideas for the younger students on our caseload and she is an amazing resource and before we dive into all of her questions, I just wanted to share a little bit of her experience.

So she has worked in a pediatric private practice setting since 2011 and she graduated from the University of New Hampshire with her Masters Degree in Speech Language Pathology and she also concentrated in early childhood and augmentative and alternative communication and she has some amazing resources.

She does a lot of education for parents and for people growing their private practice and childcare centers, all of the good stuff and she'll be able to do that description much more justice, but I'm really excited to talk to her today just to hear a little bit more about her experience and she is going to be sharing so many practical therapy ideas that we can use with the younger students on our caseload. So without further ado, here is Allison.

Thank you for having me here today.

Yeah. I am really excited to dive into this topic, but before we go into all of the amazing therapy tips and ideas, I'm really curious just to hear a little bit more about your background and just how you decided to focus working up with the younger population and just where you're at now and what you're up to.

Yeah, I think really looking back at just kind of who I am as a person, I have always been really interested in working with kids. I know I've spent most of my teenage years either babysitting or working in afterschool programs.

It's just really a population that I love to work with. I love their energy and just having fun and they're just so involved in everything that you're doing. It's just really a place that I love to be and when I was doing my graduate clinical placements, I was in all the different settings they have as try and when I was in the pediatric private practice setting, I also had the opportunity in that clinic placement to co-treat with an OT and I just found that I just loved the environment of having some more of that flexibility and I really loved the connection I was able to make with the parents in addition to the children being in that setting.

And I'm always has been ... I've always been very drawn to that play-based family-centered format and that setting really allowed me to do that. So I also found that when you're in that private practice setting, it kind of caters logistically to that younger population.

You have your early intervention kiddos and then you have kiddos who get picked up from the school district and then there's somewhere that in between where they've aged out of early intervention, but they might still be in like a daycare setting or parents haven't pursued the school district for services and so we kind of have that age in between where sometimes they're looking for supports without those resources.

So just logistically, I found that that age has fallen onto my caseload a lot. So other than that, it's really just my comfort level and I love playing with them and figuring out a way to take their goals in their knees and integrate it into a format that is really meaningful for them.

Yeah. I can totally relate. I'm definitely a school-based SLP at heart, but I did get to work in some clinics and grad school and I love the ... Because it's like a different level of collaboration when ... Because in the schools, we can collaborate with other professionals, but I don't know about you, but when I was in the clinic, I shared an office with several other physical therapists and occupational therapists like we had lunch together all the time.

And we saw our clients together sometimes. So it was just really cool, just an awesome opportunity to really collaborate and then I definitely saw that too in the ... The transition between early intervention and the schools and getting to work with those kids and they are definitely so much fun and I'm especially excited to talk to you about it today because I feel like for a lot of us, it's not our natural area of strength.

We feel a little bit overwhelmed with what to do and especially if we are in the schools and we're ... We primarily work with older students. I'm really excited for you to share your tried and true tips and tricks to help us gain a little bit of confidence.

Yeah, and I think as I've done a lot more education with parents or early childhood providers or even other speech pathologists, it's ... I wasn't as aware of how easy that play-based and that connecting comes to me and it's something I've had to remind myself that this is easy for me and it's a comfort level, but it's not for everyone else.

So I really had to take another perspective on that and that's really what's led me down the path of doing more education for other professionals as well is being able to take my knowledge and share that information in a way that's helpful in the same way that when I was asked to consult with a high school student, I was like, "Okay I can do that, but let me tap into some of my resources first." Just being able to share that expertise is really helpful within our field.

Yeah, I love that and because I know you've had a lot of experience with like connecting to and creating relationships with local daycares and preschools and doing that education with those providers and parents and everything. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that looks like and what you're doing there? Because I think that's a huge component of it too.

Yeah. I think one of the places we would start with there is that the private practice I work for is actually in the same plaza as a daycare. So we first built a relationship just with them and a lot of that was mostly for ease of the parents.

So we do either bill insurance or have cash pay. So we have a little bit of flexibility with the location of where we provide those services and what we found was for the parents whose children are in those daycare settings, they're usually full-time working parents.

So it was very helpful for us to be either onsite or be able to take that child. We would just walk across the sidewalk into our office. So we did one or the other. It was really helpful for those families to have that as a resource and then what we also found was that those teachers were so ... What's the word I'm looking for?

They so were, had such a desire to help those children that it was ... It created some really great conversations between myself in those childcare providers of how they could support that child within that setting.

So I would also then start to do some of my sessions in their daycare classrooms. So similar to what a push-in session would be and I was able to then be in their environment, their teachers could see how I was working with the child and then their peers also started to understand a little bit more as well.

If it was a child who had more significant needs, we could do a little bit of educating with the peers and so overall, I just found it was ... Became a really valuable resource to everybody that was involved and then of course, the parents, we would keep them updated.

I would write a note every day and if it was a parent that I didn't get to see face to face very often, we would have regularly scheduled phone calls just to kind of give them an update and answer any questions they would have and then I also found that as I worked with this age population that the parents were looking for the same thing at their centers.

So when I first started creating relationships with other centers in our area, a lot of it came from my client connections. So their parents would ask for either giving their teachers some tips or being able to provide services on site wherever their child was attending.

So I started to build a relationship by seeing certain children on site. I then became a familiar face. The teachers were familiar with me and the work that I did and I slowly started getting referrals from them and thus far, I would say that most of the majority of my referrals either come from word of mouth from an existing client or they come from those daycare centers where I have built a relationship with them.

And then another part that I found was as those teachers were trying to learn a little bit more about that child's specific needs, that I was giving a lot of education to them and so then by necessity and some need, I actually started creating workshops for those teachers and that then allowed me to share more in depth information, allow for asking and answering questions.

And then I was able to take that information and outreach to other daycares and preschools and then from there, it just kind of snowballed into just creating more relationships which helps them, it helps me, it helps the client and it's actually been a really wonderful thing.

Yeah, and that's so cool and I love ... One of the things that I struggled with a little bit working in private practice was that it felt like it was disconnected from the child's context because I just saw them 30 minutes twice a week or whatever it was [crosstalk 00:10:29] and I would like try and ... I would teach the parents strategies and they'd sit on the sessions and we do all that, but I love that you are working in those childcare centers or preschools, whatever they, whatever contexts those are and like that's their environment for a huge component of their young lives. So that's amazing. I love that you were able to find a way to get that context.

Yeah, and I found that I ... As I went in and I was just doing I called it speech and language therapy basics and I would talk about what was typical for each age as far as speech and language development goes, when you should refer a child, talking to parents about it, collaborating with other professionals, how do you know who to refer to based on what you're seeing.

And I would get so many questions from the childcare providers that they really are looking for what's best for those children and then it gave them really a gateway to talk to the parents with confidence as well and then sends them to someone who could then really do the evaluation and take on that information. So it does, it's been a way that's really created a great collaboration between everyone.

Yeah, I love that. That makes a lot of sense and thanks for giving us a little bit of insight there and then I'd love to get into the therapy side of things. So in your Biodynamic, you mentioned play-based approached for therapy and I think that's what we hear a lot of when we're talking about intervention for those younger students and I'm curious if you could share a little bit of what that looks like for you and any tips that you'd be willing to share just to like help us kind of ... If we are feeling like we're struggling with that, what could we do to set us, set ourselves up for success?

Yeah, I have a few kind of different thoughts and tips here. So the first I tend to do is just really figure out what motivates that child and typically at the onset for me it's ... Well, I mean, I guess it would be for most therapies, but really for those younger ones is really building that rapport with them.

So I often ask parents or teachers if that child has a specific topic or interest or characters or things that they like and I will try to integrate that into our initial session.

Just really trying to create that positive environment for them and one thing too. It takes a lot of self-awareness which I think is a little bit tricky sometimes is really when you're building that rapport to get to that Playbase level is really gauging where the child's at in their energy levels.

So I always like to have some kind of movement with my younger kiddos, but some kids, if they're a little bit anxious, if I'm super excited, it might be a little intimidating to them or if they're a child who moves around a lot and needs a lot of input and I am really quiet, then sometimes, they don't connect to me as well.

So it's kind of having to morph a little bit more into their comfort zone just so you can get into a place that the work that you're doing will be really receptive from them. So one of the first suggestions to beyond that is definitely that movement piece I found for this age.

It's just so important for them to be learning through movement and I do some really simple things just like ... Even just crawling through a tunnel. In my office, I do a lot of hide and seek, so whether it be little figurines or puzzle pieces or pictures or cards and I'll place them around my room and of course when they're younger, I don't really hide them necessarily, but they're just placed in different areas and they get to go collect them and bring them back to me. I have a lot of things with sensory input. I don't know if you've ever ... Have you ever heard of a Yogibo before?

I haven't.

Okay. It's like a massive beanbag basically and they're a little pricey, but in my book, I use it almost every single day, so it's been well worth it. They're kind of like a massive beanbag, but they have little tiny beads inside and you can take that outside zipper off to wash it when you need to which is wonderful, but I use it for letting kids run and jump on top of it.

I might squish them up inside of it. I do a lot of singing songs where I like will rock the Yogibo back and forth. So they're getting some movement and some input, but they're in a safe space as well.

So I guess those would be my first points would be that find out what motivates them and really get on their level to build that rapport, gauge where your energy level is compared to the child and then adding in a lot of movement for them if that's what works well for them.

Yeah, that's perfect and I definitely want to check out a Yogibo now. That sounds amazing.

They're really comfortable to sit on yourself if you're writing reports too when children aren't in your office.

Oh, I love it. Yeah, I used to have a, just a cheap beanbag. I don't even remember. I might've gotten it from a teacher or something, but it was super fun to use in therapy, but the massive beanbag seems even more amazing and you can wash it.

Yes.

And I know that wasn't the highlight, but ...

It is [crosstalk 00:16:13] actually for most therapists and parents and we'll even do like I'll have them sit in a cube chair or on a circle square so they know their space and I'll even sometimes take like a Buffalo drum and as they run, I go like do, do, do, do, do, do boom and as they jump and they just think it's absolutely hilarious. So I do have some more tips there too, but I just didn't want to get too far ahead of myself in answering your question, so.

No, this is perfect. Keep on rolling.

Okay. So another thing I do a lot of is that imaginative play. So I will have a lot of materials and have them more like acting out and playing with figurines and moving the pieces around because of course, if you're looking at or like three and four year olds specifically, some kids will sit and do more drill work with you, but a lot of them, we'll do that just for a moment and then it's not meaningful to them.

So I'll find ways, I actually have little bags that I call sound bags and I'll have them labeled with ... I have all the vowels and I have like beginning constant sounds and just as I'm going to little thrift stores or things that my own daughter has, if I see like a little figurine that has that sound in it somewhere, I'll add it into my sound bag.

And then I'll use those either for the hide and seek or digging in a bean bucket or sticking them into Play-Doh and we pull them out and then I use that to address the sounds and it's great because then you don't have to be constantly brainstorming for a session.

Does this game, does this activity actually target what we need? But it is a way that you can easily integrate those into play-based therapy. So then you can use them in multiple context as well.

And then another thing I do a lot of is books of course. So I have an endless supply of books for kiddos and we do different sounds or whether it just be engagement or we talk about the pictures, having them do repetition and I think there's just so many different ways that I can use those books in therapy with those kiddos as well.

Yeah, that sounds great and I'm a huge fan of using books in therapy. We could go on and on about that. Awesome. So just a quick recap, finding out what motivates a student and you can, or the child and parents and daycare providers and all that are a great resource for that.

Gauging the child's energy and matching that, like getting on their level, incorporating movement, imaginative play, using books, is there anything else that you would add or like any favorite therapy materials along those lines?

Yeah, I would also say anything that adds that element of surprise is typically highly motivating at this age. So I do a lot of really simple like hiding something under a little blanket and we do either the peekaboo or we're trying to say like, "Oh, what is it? Oh, look what we found inside."

A lot of element of surprise. I do a lot too of having like a box or a bag where I put something inside and just try to get their engagement that way and then also really getting comfortable with being a little bit silly because that's how really to get some of these kiddos to be engaged especially if we're looking for already three or four or even five, but we're on a developmental delayed pattern of some sort.

We sometimes are needing to backtrack really that engagement piece so that element of surprise typically keeps them engaged much more. I also have this little pig puppet, but he eats different things.

So I'll do a lot of the pig puppet will hide and we have to ask for him and then when he eats something, he does a little bit of tickling. So using that same sensory piece to engage them as well and if you have a space that allows you to explore different sensory experiences without making too much of a mess, I would say that that's another way I often engage these younger kiddos as well.

I do also have access to a swing in my office, so that typically has been a really great resource for me as well adding in that movement, that engagement piece. It's really easy to do when you have access to something like a swing.

As far as some of my specific favorite like actual activities that you could or gains you could buy for this age, I really love, if you haven't heard of the company that they're called Fat Brain Toys.

They create a lot of really ... They're simple, well, the younger ones, they're very simple like cause and effect, but they're not all musical and lights and everything. So one I really love is called the SpinAgain and it's kind of like plastic gears that you put one on top of like a plastic pole and it just spins all the way down.

So it's a really quick cause and effect, but kids really seem to love watching the spinning. They also make one called Dimpl Duo and it's like silicone poppers so you'd have like a tray. It's kind of hard to explain without seeing it, but it has like a tray with six different colored like silicone ovals, but when you push it, it pops through and then you can just flip the board over and you can pop them back through the other way.

So my kids really enjoy that one. I love another company I really enjoy is they're called Blue Orange. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. They have like the Spot It Jr. and Telltale. Those are two of my favorite.

They're just a little round tin and they have picture cards inside of them and this would be for the older end of that young population or into early elementary. Spot It Jr. is where you have animals and there's a match.

So every card has one animal that matches on the other card. So you can flip them over and then they're scanning. They have to find the match and then they name it and then typically, I expand on that and we either talk about that and well, depending on what their goals are, we either describe the animal, we talk about what it does, or I'll be like, "Oh, that's a fish. It swims. What's another animal that swims?"

So we're able to expand on that language with those games. I wrote down some notes for myself and I had mentioned the Yogibo, but we already talked about that and then one that I have to mention I really love it is again for a little bit older because it has some small parts, but it's called Enchanted Cupcake Party and it's like little ... They're all princess themed, but they're little cupcakes and there's a cup, a cake, a frosting, and a topper.

And I've used it for working on lots of different sounds. I most often do it for sequencing for kids. So whether they are receptively listening to my directions as I'm describing or I have them expressively described to me when it is that I'm supposed to be making.

And then once we're done, we like go through the whole sequence again. Then we do a little bit of pretend play, putting it in an oven, taking it out. Sometimes we'll make like a little shock with it. So that's like one activity that you can do a lot of different levels of play with and then one thing, whenever I have a graduate student with me who's learning, I give them this very specific challenge.

So it's something I think that would be fun for your listeners to try as well. So I challenge them to take like one theme box. So I have a lot of plastic boxes that I put like a bunch of materials that are under one specific theme and I tell them that they have to use that box for all of the clients that we're seeing.

So it really makes you try to take like one group of materials and figure out how would this target receptive language, expressive language, speech sounds, engagement, social pragmatics and it's really getting ... You're used to looking at materials in a different way. So that's a fun way to kind of take what you have in thinking about how you could use it in different ways.

Ooh, I love that idea and we're going to ... We are going to get to do a little bit of that in just a moment ...

Yes.

Which is super exciting.

So I think, I'm sure once we're off, I will probably think about all kinds of other ones that are my favorite for this age, but I was really trying to think about ones that were a little different.

Of course, I always have like a baby doll and stuffed animals in the typical toys you would think for that age, but those are a few that are a little less common that I thought listeners would enjoy to have as resources.

Yeah, and I always use ... A lot of the ones you listed are new to me. I don't think I've used Fat Brain Toys. I have used the Blue Orange like Spot it Jr. and Telltale, the Enchanted Cupcake Party sounds amazing.

It is and it's hard because it does have ... The pieces are fairly small so it's not really for super young kiddos, but the kids, I can tell you, they just ... They love building them. They love talking about them, they love telling stories to pretend play.

It's definitely a very versatile toy at my office and that one actually stays. It doesn't leave because it can be used in so many different ways.

Yeah, I love that. And I definitely use lots of baby dolls, stuffed animals, the play house and the play farm are big ones, all the Fisher-Price stuff.

Yes.

And then I can't remember what it's called but I love the, I don't even know ... I know it's at Target but it's like a ... I don't know, it's kind of like a jail.

Oh, the one with the keys?

Yeah, it has all the different doors and then they have to match the keys with the shape and the color and you can put ... I think it probably ... Yeah.

I think it's like an animal hospital or like animal critter hospital.

Yeah. I think critter is the name.

Critter, yes because I use that one too.

I think it's amazing for ... To target so many of the goals that we talked about like describing, following directions. You can use it for articulation. If you have your little small figurines, you could put ... You could just pick whatever or categories and just grabbing whatever items we have, but that was one that was huge.

Yeah, I have that one too and what's great about it is that's one where like the product itself is just one thing, but you can always change what's inside to match the season or match a theme so kids continually enjoy.

One thing my kids, my younger ones that they really love in that one is putting a lot of windup toys so they get to open it and then we have a windup toy. I actually thought of two more too.

So another Fat Brain Toy is called Squigz. They are, picture like little builders that would have a suction cup on them. So my daughter right now, she's 20 months old and she'll take it and she'll like push it on the table and then when you pull it up, it makes like a pop sound.

And there's another one I'll put around the room, I'll go stick it on different surfaces and they'll get to go and kind of pull them off and pop them and then another great activity for this age and of course, I love like a lot of the themes are really great, but it's also fun to have those open-ended toys. So similar to the critter. There's one called Tot Tube. Have you ever heard of a Tot Tube before?

I haven't.

okay. So it's basically like a long plastic tube, but what's nice about it is it breaks into three separate parts. So you can put it in a box that comes in and store it away when you don't need it and so it's kind of ... It's like three plastic pieces and you put them together, but the middle is clear, you can see through it.

So I've used this for kids if we're just putting cars or balls that roll like down them and we do ready, set, go, car in, blue car, car go, all those simple combinations, but I've also found that since it's a really smooth plastic, if I have any kind of plastic figurines, recently, I was just doing an Arctic animal theme so I had little plastic Arctic animals and if you put that in the top, it slid right down.

So it went, it doesn't have to be something that rolls or has wheels. A lot of things would get sent down there. I've also used the Tot Tube with a little bit older kiddos where I have ping pong balls and I draw either letters or words on them so we get to send something down and then either name the letter, tell me what sound it makes, give me a rhyming word or reading like all of those things.

So it's a fun way just to add another element of movement and engagement with those different goals and then what I like about the middle part being clear plastic is when I've had really younger ones where we're really just working on initiating or basic signing or basic speech.

I will put something in there and then I'll hold it so they can like see it kind of floating in the middle and then I wait for whatever word it is that we're using, whether it just be vocalizing or out or please or ball or my turn or whatever it is that I'm using as a target. I'll wait for that and then I can dump it out and then they get to receive whatever it was that was inside.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I've never had the Tot Tube, but I used, I mean this sounds way better because you can manipulate it a little more to have more control over the ... Just set up opportunities, maybe manipulate a negative connotation, but we ... We're very strategic in how we set things up.

Some of our kids aren't super excited to communicate so we're setting up those opportunities, but I always use a ball track.

Yes.

And that was, I would use it for that purpose too and that was super fun, but the Tot Tube we can use all different figurines and have five bazillion more options which is ...

Yes, and that's what ... So as a product, but it does leave, it has a specified use, but it leaves a little bit more open-ended flexibility depending on what you want to use with it.

Yeah, and those like especially with limited budgets, we want those kinds of choice where we can get lots and lots of bang for our buck and use them over and over and still have it be like fun and engaging and all that.

I think the Tot Tube, I haven't listed on my website with a link to Amazon, but I'm trying to ... I think it's around $30 I think which ... I had someone that was like, "Oh, but you can buy a plastic tube for a lot cheaper."

I was like, "Yes, but this one has the clear middle and it packs in a box nice and neat." So those two to me are worth spending the money on.

I just looked at that, then it's like 19.95.

Okay. [crosstalk 00:32:40]

Right now, so it could definitely change, but yeah, it looks so fun.

It is.

I'll also link to it in the show notes, but yeah, I love it. I want to go work in with these kiddos again.

Yeah, I know [crosstalk 00:32:58]

This is so fun.

It is a lot of fun, but it sometimes, I work with middle schoolers right now, two days a week too and I'm like, "Oh my energy level is a lot different at the end of the day when I'm not trying to run around and play too."

Yeah, play is tiring sometimes.

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:33:17]

But it's a whole different challenge with the older [crosstalk 00:33:21].

Yes, it is, but I think it's more like because you're taking their, what their needs are and trying to integrate it, that's really how Playbase therapy becomes the most effective. So you have to be a little bit on top of your game while you're playing with them.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And you never know how a kid is going to show up.

Correct.

[crosstalk 00:33:43] activity and then they show up in a mood and then it's like, "Oh wait, nope, let's rethink this whole thing." So you're making teeny-tiny decisions like all day long every minute of your session."

Yeah, I have a ...

Which is [crosstalk 00:33:58]

I have a two year old right now who has very minimal words and I'm like, "Oh yes, he's going to love this." And then I show up and he's like, "No." And I'm like, "Oh man, I was, I thought for sure I had a home run."

So yeah, that would be another suggestion I get, I guess is really having some backups too and being flexible because like you said, they could show up in a mood or they might not be interested.

So really playing with that flexibility because if you're just trying to push the same thing like then you're just going to likely frustrate them and then that gets nobody anywhere, so.

Yeah, we don't want to end up in a battle with a three year old.

You do not because you will most likely lose it.

They are very determined. I love this. And then so our plan is to go through a specific theme and just talk about how we can use different materials, but I'm curious too, because I know when I was first starting out with this population, I was like, "I don't even know what's appropriate to target."

Could you throw out just a handful of goals that you find yourself ... Goals or areas that you find yourself targeting a lot? What are or maybe we can start with, well, articulation I think is pretty simple, right?

Straightforward.

We can easily determine that and not simple, straightforward is a better word. Thank you. But what types of like for receptive language skills are you often working on?

Yeah, as far as receptive language, it's a lot of I would say identifying vocabulary which is another reason why to have a lot of those figurines as you can, and I have a lot of them, but it's taken me time, overtime to kind of build up that.

I don't suggest necessarily going out and spending a ton of money because we have so many resources in our world of kiddos who no longer play with things and they get sold at yard sales and now I guess on online avenues fairly easily.

But yeah, I would say it's a lot of basic identifying, but I prefer to have that be for actual items versus necessarily like pictures and then a lot of really simple following directions and a lot of those will be for routines versus novel.

So I would say at this age, there's not a ton of novel directions. It's more basic routine-based directions. So like put on our shoes, where's your coat? Be kind to the doggy, working on all of those things within our session as far as receptively goes and then also a lot of responding to their name and joint attention.

So joint attention kind of crosses that receptive, expressive boundary, but usually at this age when I have kiddos coming to me with more receptive things, we really have to work on that joint attention and being engaged and a lot of imitation as well too.

So imitation really is our foundation for learning, right? If you're typically developing children or children who are in speech therapy, a lot of the ways they learn both speech and language is that I say or do something you say or do something.

So there's that imitation piece. I once had a little one, I think he came to me at 19 months old and he had no words and he actually even had very minimal babbling and as I evaluated him, what one of our goals ended up being was just play imitation because I said we have our gross motor and then our fine motor and speech is really ... It's a finally complex fine motor task, but he wasn't even imitating like gross motor play.

So we had to go backtrack a little bit and if I would build up some blocks and knock them down, he wouldn't try to not ... He wouldn't try to do the same. So we really had to integrate imitation in there.

So that's something I definitely look for and when I'm working with younger kiddos and that becomes almost like a precursor goal that I work on a lot before we're actually saying like, "Oh I say ball, I expect you to say ball." Does that answer most of your question there as far as some of that receptive piece?

Yeah, and that just sparked a memory that I have. I haven't looked into the research on this in a while so definitely check it first, but because I love how you mentioned that you're using like the play imitation gross motor actions to be able to roll that into the speech kind of sound imitation pieces.

There's actually like a manual that breaks that process down and I think it's based ... It comes from the ABA world, but it's rapid motor imitation antecedent training. I just dabbled using that with some of my ... I worked in a autism preschool for a couple of years and that was something that I started trying towards the end of my time and it was just really cool to see because the concept is like you kind of build that behavioral progression and do like a bunch of more gross motor kind of imitations and then it was amazing how it actually works. So you got them falling that pattern and then they ... It was easier for them to imitate some of the [crosstalk 00:39:53].

Yeah, and I see that too in my ... Yeah, I see too in my conversation with an occupational therapist that I often we refer clients back and forth is she'll do the same, but like from a motor planning perspective.

So for her, it's building like motor sequences in a way that kind of sets the stage for creating more motor sequences. So that starts getting out of my realm of expertise as far as where that ... Actually, the precursor and the foundations behind that where her and I kind of cross paths with a lot of those kiddos who aren't talking at all like for questioning some motor planning where she works on it from one perspective and I work on it from another perspective and it seems to help them.

Yeah, and I think it's just that momentum plays a role too. I even had that, I'm thinking back because I worked in a clinic, I don't even ... It wasn't that long ago. I am the worst historian though, but I ended up using that strategy with some of my students who were just, I guess maybe resistant.

I felt like they were just kind of shy and they were really ... They knew that communication was hard so I think they just tried to avoid it, but if I combine those motor actions with it, then they just ... If we make our arms super big or we jump and we do all these things, then they're like having fun and we're doing it and then if I do the movement and pair it with a sound, then they [crosstalk 00:41:38] beautifully, but if I just have them say like, even just like ooh, if I just say ooh, and then they say nothing, but if I move my arms and do it, then they do it. It's so funny.

[crosstalk 00:41:49] there's a lot of research about motor and speech together and we obviously, won't get into all of that now, but even for adults they talk about when you're learning, if you're doing some kind of movement like either walking on a treadmill or something that it actually stores the information further. So in a place where the younger kiddos do, but we would have to find the specific research and steps to do that effectively.

Brush that part of our brain.

Yeah, and then I think that expressively is pretty simple. A lot of my kiddos at that age, they have some kind of delayed language or delayed speech. So most common in that preschool age I get initiating and then if we're supposed to be doing two word utterances and we're only doing one, building the length of utterance or if we're at a two word stage and we're supposed to be talking in three to four.

So really building the utterance length. I do a lot of social stuff with kids this age from an expressive standpoint because like you said, if there's a barrier to language or speech, we see a lot of them kind of shut down a little bit.

So getting them to learn how to effectively communicate. I teach a lot of sign language at this age. We're kind of talking about the more involved kiddos. I do have some preschool kids where that stuff is fairly intact and we're working on a lot of sequencing, storytelling, seeing the beginning of some executive function stuff, but at an earlier level. I would say the majority of them though would cover those basis when I'm working with them.

Yeah, that's super helpful and it just kind of helps kind of frame our reference point as we start diving into the theme-based ideas. So do you think we're ready for that or is there something else? Okay.

So we talked about, we chatted a little before we went live, but we decided to go through a zoo theme. So I'm curious, let's say that you're planning to use the zoo theme next week, what would you do to set that up and kind of prepare?

Yes, so I have ... I found these plastic storage boxes that have handles on them and they are like the best thing ever. Maybe that's even a resource, I could send you that would be helpful to speech pathologist because then I can carry them around to different places, but what I do for my zoo theme, my zoo-like Safari theme, another actually great thing for this age are the poker dot books.

So again, that same physical, that pop, that cause and effect. So I grab, I have a polka dot Safari and then I grab some of my more classic books like Goodnight Gorilla, Dear Zoo, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, all of those and then I gather any of figurines I have.

So I have little people zoo animals. I have a couple of puppets, an old Beanie Babies stuffed animals and then any dress up that I have so right now in my Safari zoo box I have like a vest and binoculars.

Binoculars, they love to do the pretend play with binoculars and like a flashlight that they can shine on the animals and then I always have just some songs I tucked away that I enjoy. For this one, I specifically like ... There's a song, oh, I changed it to Down in the Jungle. I forget ... Actually, Down in the Jungle might be the original version.

I can't remember, but you can look up lots of songs, of course, but I like Down in the Jungle and then there is one that just talks about all different animals that are in the jungle and does some describing for them.

So I typically gather all those materials. Now, I've been working for so many years. I don't even really think about each child. I just bring the box with me and then I kind of ... When we start a session, I'm able to open it up and pull out the different things and use things like blankets or the hiding or the Tot Tube or surprise boxes that I just use those materials within those types of settings.

Yeah, I love that and then I think ... So we've got our materials organized and I love that you mentioned a specific storage box because that's definitely my thing. So we have this zoo like Safari theme box, we've got all of our materials.

Let's talk a little bit about maybe like some hypothetical therapy plans. So maybe we can pick like a couple of different types of students and how we could use the different materials. Do you have a student in mind that would be a good one to start with?

Let me think. Yes. Maybe if we had a child who was even ... Okay, so say we talk about some basic signing or one word utterances with our beginning sounds so more, please, all done, pop, boo, et cetera.

So these would be I would have singing songs with the puppets and then hiding them or doing the peekaboo with the different animals. Like I mentioned earlier, having the figurines and putting them in a bean bucket. So I sometimes will put like the cover on top of the bucket and wait for them to sign more or please or play and then we open it up and then when we find the animals, I do a lot of animal sounds so that like you've mentioned, that imitation and there's a lot of vowel sound, a lot of beginning sounds in there and I will simplify a lot of those too to just the vowel versus like the whole word if it's needed.

So basically, just using those themes more as like the motivators I guess for those simple structures for the kiddos we're working on really basic language and then I'm trying to think if we get to more preschool age.

I do a lot of taking turns, following directions like describing the animals, like what do they like to eat, what parts do they have? We go through a lot like that ... I forgot the name of it. There's like a visual checklist of like who, what, where parts name.

You go through all the different things like the different language to describe them and then that's another thing where the hide and seek comes into play because sometimes I actually will hide it and I'll say, "Oh, it's somewhere under a blue chair." And give them those prepositions, those items around the room for some following directions.

And then the opposite, I'll let them hide it and have to give me the direction of where to find it. Giving clues. If they have something hidden in a box or a bag, they can describe it to you.

If you have to guess it. I'm trying to think. I kind of jumped from your younger age to the preschool age there and then any of the stories. So you can always do a story retell. I do a lot of fill in the blank with stories so if it's repetitive, I will read the beginning of the phrase and leave off the end and have them do some of those closed phrases, those fill in the blanks.

And then a lot of those books like with the animals are so engaging so like Polar Bear, Polar Bear. I do a lot of like, "What does he hear?" And then we turn it and we say the animal and like it makes them all excited.

And then also for that preschool age, as I mentioned earlier, the flashlight or the binoculars, kids absolutely love to do this. So if you put the animals either around your room or like in a make a zoo, like a pretend zoo where they're in like their cages or whatever, having them either search through the binoculars to see what they can find or shining a flashlight on them before they tell you the animal's name and describe what it looks like to them. To cover it all, I [inaudible 00:49:56] get off on a little bit of a tangent there.

I love those ideas. No, that's perfect and I think it's ... I know it's so hard. I always travel with, because I love to give like concrete examples, but if ... It's so much easier to think of activities when you know like, "Okay, I'm seeing Johnny. This is what we did last time, this is what he's working on." You can really see that child and it's harder to come up with these [crosstalk 00:50:23]

... I do for this age like you mentioned earlier, a lot of naming, describing propositional phrases like following basic directions. So even though it's not really a here's the child, here's what we worked on. I feel like most of them would cover those bases somewhere. So hopefully, that would be some helpful information to just spark some ideas.

Yeah, and for the earlier communicators. There won't be as much of that, as much of the talking, but all if these things can be turned into a game and like play is that ... Those students or it is still for preschool too, but that's how they learn and so there's ... Yeah, we can totally set up the activity to elicit the signs or the one word phrases or whatever we're trying to target.

We can just be like you said, the bean bucket and the binoculars could be fun too or like even, I don't know if you ever do this, but when I was in the preschool, we had a lot of songs and the teacher just had the CD, but I found them on YouTube too.

So maybe it's not like perfect for like we want to limit screen time, but that can be like a fun occasional activity because they'll definitely request more and like [crosstalk 00:51:54]

Yeah, and music is so motivating for this [crosstalk 00:51:57] even more into the session is another way just to reinforce what you're working on.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And then so I think a huge component of like what we're doing with these ... Well, in any type of therapy is being able to have the students continue like practicing the skills when they get home.

So I'm curious if we're using the zoo theme example, what would you, and maybe we can focus on the early communicator and the preschooler and kind of brainstorm a couple of quick ideas on how we would communicate what we did to parents and how we might be able to encourage them to carry some of that into ...

Yeah. I do, of course in private practice, I have access to speak to those parents so a lot of them will sit in on my sessions or I'll give them a very specific task of like, "Oh, they really loved playing ... Putting the monkeys and elephants and snakes down a slide or something."

And encourage that they take the one piece that was really motivating. When it's at school, you don't have that direct access, but sometimes, I'll write notes home to the parents or send a quick email.

So one of the biggest things I would say too is just really to start with those books and it's easy to get books from the library if we don't own the one that we're using and really just pointing out to them that, "Oh, I use the ..." "Oh, oh, oh on every single page."

Or really, I was just looking for them to like I would hold it until they gave me eye contact and then I would turn it. So really just picking one piece that targets that goal, but that would be easy for parents to carry over.

I think when you give them too much information, it's a little overwhelming and also encouraging them to do that pretend play, but I found that a lot of parents have a ... Not a lot of them, but when they aren't being models what I'm doing, they have a harder time kind of conceptualizing that.

So just really being as detailed as you can for them to take what you're doing and really encouraging them that here's the simplified version. We're not going, "I'm a monkey." We're just saying, "Ooh, ooh."

Encouraging them the simplified version is a step in the direction that we want to go, but at that child's level and kind of giving them the confidence to just start with something small based on what you're doing.

Yeah. I love that and that's so much more feasible and like they're more likely to remember that. I sometimes go ... This is a little tangent, but sometimes I'll go to physical therapy and she'll give me like five exercises to do and it's like, "Oh." Especially as ... Yeah, if you're a parent and you have a kid with special needs, plus probably multiple kids and a job and all these things going on, I think like really small specific things are so incredibly helpful [crosstalk 00:55:13]

... And then more likely to carry over one small task than to disregard five of them so I would rather they have one tangible piece of information that's actually going to be implemented than being overwhelmed.

Yeah, I love that and the examples you gave were perfect. Yeah, I love that, like if the child is working on drawing attention, maybe we can work on making eye contact or a precursor skill. We'll work on eye contact [crosstalk 00:55:45]

... rather than doing the whole book and then be like, "So what is it about?" Breaking it down for them. Yeah.

yeah. It's so good. I love it and that's totally doable. It's easy for us to ... We can easily think of one activity, especially if it's something that the student was especially engaged in.

That easily stands out and it's easy for the parents to implement too. I love those tips. So helpful. Okay, so I feel like we've got some good ideas going on here. [crosstalk 00:56:25]

Yeah, I mean, I'm just really hoping that [crosstalk 00:56:23] information just to even inspire people to kind of think a little differently about the materials they have and as I mentioned before, I can send you over my website where I have actually some Amazon links to a lot of the games and activities I mentioned and then also, there's a whole bunch on there that I didn't necessarily mention specifically, but are definitely some of my favorite. So maybe I can send that over to you so your listeners can browse through if it's something that they're interested in looking at.

Yeah, I would love that. That is perfect. So I'll put that link in the show notes. So that will be at slpnow.com/38 and then Allison, what would be ... If SLPs are wanting to learn more about working with early childhood or just [crosstalk 00:57:22]

Yeah, I do have my website which is allisonpcloutier.com and actually, you can probably link that as well so I won't have to spell my whole name there and I do have some trainings for speech pathologists.

They're up on there and now, I'm working on creating a more streamlined process for those, but people could certainly reach out to me and we could talk about it and that actually is including a lot of the content from my presentations that I give and encouraging everyone how to build those relationships with daycares and preschools.

So there's information on running the therapy, but also how to do that if it's something you're interested in and I also have a little bit of one-on-one coaching too that if someone feels like they want some specific feedback and ideas, they could do that.

And then you and I together have been working on some of those themes, ideas where people would have access to using those themes and kind of have it all compiled for them together. So I'm happy to have people send me emails to ask questions, to check out those as resources or within your system to take kind of that knowledge of the thematic units and apply them as needed.

I love it and amazing resources, so excited that people will get to find out more about you and what you do and I so appreciate your time [crosstalk 00:58:58]

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for sharing all of these amazing tips and tricks. I'm definitely super grateful. So thank you.

Hi there, and welcome to the SLP now podcast. Today we are diving into all things literacy based therapy, with a focus on older students. So, in episode four, I talked about how to use books in therapy. I talked about the five step therapy framework that I use, and we did include some ideas for older students in that episode. But we've gotten several requests to really dive into how to use this with older students, so that's what we're doing. It's still the same model. I'll still be going over that, but I'll be focusing exclusively on ideas for older students. And when I think of older students, we move away from picture books, which was a large focus of the episode for presentation. But once students start to get a little bit older, we'll move to texts that are not picture books. They're typically articles.

ReadWorks is my favorite source for those articles. But we'll talk more about that in just a moment. But the literacy based therapy model works best with fiction texts, because then those are an actual story. So, I will use that until my students have a really strong grasp on story grammar. There are so many benefits. Check out my narrative presentation if you want to know more about that, I'll link that in the show notes. So, there are some amazing benefits to teaching story grammar, which is why I use the fiction articles as long as I do. We definitely want to target nonfiction, and I will make that clinical judgment in deciding what is most appropriate for my students, and you'll be able to do the same.

But I really like to use those fiction articles as long as students don't have a very strong grasp on their narrative skills, just because of the broad impact that that has. Once they're doing well with that, I do want to move on. I'm not just going to stick with story grammar, fiction texts, just because I like them. I feel like nonfiction texts are a step up. The syntax is more complex, and the students will really need to be able to read to learn, and a lot of the things that they're learning are nonfiction concepts in social studies and science and all those different subjects. So, that's what we want to jump to once they have the prerequisite skills. And this definitely is not set in stone. That's just what I've seen from my clinical experience. So, that's what we've got.

So, with older students, we're focusing on articles. I'll tell you how to select those articles in just a moment. And then I typically like to start with fiction articles and then move to nonfiction as they demonstrate those skills. So, that's what we've got. And then just taking a step back to, why even use literacy-based therapy. Studies document improved outcomes compared to other approaches. Though, there's receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, narratives, so many different benefits. I'll share some of the citations, and you can definitely email me if you'd like more. And then there was a really cool study by Gillam, Gillam, and Reece in 2012. They provided small group interventions three times a week over six weeks, which is probably a little bit more intensive than we typically do with our students, but it's not so far off. But the purpose of the study was to evaluate narrative intervention that's contextualized or literacy based, versus decontextualized, like using games, drill cards, those kinds of things. And they looked at vocabulary, sentence complexity, social language.

So, these are a lot of the goals that we're working on with our older students. So, they found that students' comprehension and story retell generation skills improve more with that contextualized intervention. And so, contextualized intervention is what this whole approach is about. The framework includes some decontextualized practice. There are some things that are a little more drill based, but they're still based overall on a more meaningful context than just rehearsing those past tense verbs. We are going to do some of that, but we're using targets that are relevant and applicable and that will be used in different steps. So, we'll dive into more of the nitty gritty behind that. But I just wanted to put this out there, because I know we are short on time;we are overwhelmed; there's a lot going on. Why would you invest in trying a new approach if what you're doing feels like it's working?

And so, I just wanted to share that study because it shows the potential benefits that we can see by implementing that kind of approach. So, it could benefit our students, and I'm willing to try anything that will benefit my students. And there's also some other benefits to this as well. Over the years I've built my framework, and I have some really simple materials that I have set up, and I'm able to tackle pretty much any text that comes my way. And I can make it work really well. Having that framework and just that structure to a unit makes it really easy to plan for therapy. It makes it predictable for our students. It gives our students enough exposure to a target in a variety of meaningful ways, whether we're looking at vocabulary, or grammar, or comprehension. It just is set up in a very strategic way that allows our students to make some really nice progress in a meaningful context, which can help with that generalization.

We could potentially make this work if we grab a deck of verbs to work on irregular past tense verbs, I guess we could shape that into the larger context by creating a story using those cards. But it's not as meaningful as pulling the verbs from a story and practicing those targets and then using those verbs to retell the story and then creating a parallel story. And we'll dive into all of the specifics of that in just a moment too. I'm alluding to a lot here. But we can work on past tense verbs and sentence construction and specific vocabulary words and all of that, and then we can shape that into retelling a story, and using those targets in a very meaningful way. And I don't know about you, but my ultimate goal is to be therapeutic in a functional context. I want to be able to teach students the language that they need to participate in the classroom and be successful. And yes, that's the ultimate goal. There's a quote by Gillam and Ukrainetz, 2006, that's a really helpful, and I'm just going to read this off for a second.

So our primary goal with literature based language intervention is not to teach students to read. So, we're not doing literacy, we're doing literature based language intervention. Sorry, that was unquoted there, but quote, “Our goal is to improve the many aspects of language, vocabulary, knowledge, grammatical acceptability, grammatical complexity, pragmatic awareness, phonological awareness, conversation, narration.” That's a lot of skills. That quote influenced the ability to participate in and profit from instruction in the general education classrooms. So, I know that was a lot, but we are giving this really meaningful context to target all of those different skills. I really feel, and I'm not the only one, but we can target pretty much any goal. And if you have any questions, if you're like, “I don't think I can target this goal using literacy based therapy unit,” send me a message, and definitely let me know. Because I'd love to brainstorm with you, because it's just such a meaningful context.

I haven't come across a goal that I can't target in that way. And articulation, when we're at the beginning levels, I want to target that separately if at all possible. But we can still make it work if we need to. And there are different goal areas like that where we just want to get some really structured practice just based on the research. But for all the vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics, social language, phonological awareness, all of those different things, we can really target those very, very effectively using narratives. And this is totally possible. It doesn't have to be a huge headache. It doesn't have to be a huge overwhelm. We're going to break this down in a way that makes a lot of sense. And I've talked to so many SLPs who have started implementing this, and so I've gotten a lot of their questions and their feedback. And so, I've heard a lot, and hopefully I'll be able to share all the different tips and strategies that will help set you up for success.

And I talk about this all the time. So, if there are certain areas that you're not sure about, I'm sure I have blog posts and other podcasts episodes and additional courses that can help break this down even more. But my goal is for this to be a really good starting point. And then I know, if you're feeling like, “Okay, well I read the book, and I don't know what else there is to do,” or, “I spend one session on the unit, and we're good to go,” for me, and we'll talk more about timing as we go through, but these units can last a month. You can spend several therapy sessions really diving into all of these elements and still be fun, and engaging, and have your students experience success and progress and all of those great elements.

So, well we've got this. We can do this, and let's just dive on in. So, before we go into the specifics of the actual framework, I want to share one other framework. Because this is a question that comes up a lot in addition to the, “Okay, I read the book. Now what else do I do?” The other element is, “Okay, I feel like if I'm pulling a tax based on what they're doing in the classroom, or if I'm pulling an actual text from the classroom, I feel like a tutor. I feel like I'm not doing anything.” And that's a common comment or question that I get. And so, Dr. Ukrainetz, who also, if you're wanting to read more about this, her textbook called Contextualized Language Intervention is incredibly helpful. That's where this framework came from. I learned all of the things from her when I was struggling as a CF. So, that's definitely an amazing resource if you want to dive into any of these elements in more detail.

But she has this helpful framework called RISE. And so, they're the four elements that we want to include in our therapy to make sure that we're being therapeutic. And it's just when I'm feeling like a tutor in a session, I go through the RISE framework and I ask myself, am I doing R-I-S-E, and often times if I'm not feeling therapeutic, there's one of these elements that are missing. And it just breaks it down in a way where I can be like, “Oh, okay. So, I need to make sure that I'm doing this.” And then I implement that, and then I feel great. And sometimes it takes a little bit of troubleshooting, but then at least I know where to start. So, RISE stands for R, repeated opportunities; I, intensity; S, systematic support; and E, explicit skill focus.

So, R, repeated opportunities: if a student is going to master past tense verbs, or a vocabulary word, or whatever it may be, they need to have repeated opportunities. A tutor might just say something once or twice if they're going through a vocabulary activity, but as a speech language pathologist, we know that our students need a lot more exposure. That's why they're getting speech and language therapy and they're not seeing a tutor. Your tutor just gives a little bit extra support. We really break things down, and we're very strategic with the number of opportunities that we give.

We also look at I, which is intensity. So, this is typically what we think about when we're writing the student's IEP. We are strategic with how often we see a student and what that looks like. And so, if we have a student who isn't making progress, we might want to look at the intensity. Do they need to be seen more times a week for shorter sessions, or do they need a longer session, one time a week, or do we just need to increase the frequency of sessions overall while keeping the same duration? What will help the student be successful? And where we definitely are careful about, and we're conscious of this decision, we make our best guess when we're writing the IEP, but that's something that we can check in on and do a pulse check if we're not seeing the progress that we want.

Then S stands for systematic support, and this has something that we're really good at. We are always providing scaffolds and cues and all that good stuff. And then E stands for explicit skill target. So, with my older students, I definitely want them to know what we're working on. And Ukrainetz adds, she calls it RISE plus. So, the plus is a student factor. So, with older students this is incredibly important, we want them to be aware of their goals, and we want them to be able to reflect on their progress. So, when I'm setting up an activity, I make sure that I have that explicit skill focus. I show the student the visual; I tell them what we're working on, and they know that's what we're doing. If we're working on complex sentences, I say, “Okay, the goal is to make these complex sentences. That's what our focus is,” and that visual makes that super clear.

Then in addition to that, I want the students to know the why behind their goal. And the way that I do that is anytime I write new goals for an IEP, I have the students fill out goal cards, and then they write their goal in their own words. And then on the back I like to have them write why that goal matters, and why it's important to them. And it's incredibly helpful if it can relate to any of like their personal or career goals. If they want to be a professional football player, or if they want to be a YouTuber. One of my students, one of my third graders, really wanted to be an amazing Dad, which is so sweet. But we can really connect with the students and find out what motivates them, what their goals are, how we can connect with that. And we're working on communication, so it's not hard to make that connection. And that just helps so much with the buy-in, especially if we can involve them in the goal setting process, and think about that ahead of time. It's such a game changer.

But even if you're just trying to implement this now, we can always find a way to connect our goals to what they want to do in the longterm, and if not, we might want to check on our goals. And sometimes it can be super far out, like their career goals, what they want to be in 10 years from now. Or it can also relate to, “I want to be able to pass this class,” or just whatever is meaningful to them. Or I want to be able to talk to my friends and have them understand me. Or I want to be able to ask a girl to the prom and not the plum. Whatever their goal is, whatever their motivation is, we want to have that be at the forefront ideally every session, so we can just keep reminding of that.

So, off that soapbox and onto the steps of the framework. So, we have five steps here. We start with pre-story knowledge activation. Then step two is shared reading. Step three is post-story comprehension. Step four is focus scale activities, and five is a parallel story. And so, before we dive into the framework though, we need to pick the vehicle for this session. What are we going to be talking about? And with older students, this is typically an article. So, I really liked to use readworks.org. It's a free site. It has tons, and tons, and tons of articles. I can always find something that is relevant to what they're working on in the classroom, and a lot of times teachers are using these articles in the classroom as well. You can pull anything from the classroom. If you're working on fiction articles, you obviously want to pick something that's fiction or nonfiction; pick something from a social studies book, or a science book, or whatever it may be.

I personally haven't had as much success pulling from books, because I could spend a whole month on just one little tiny section of a chapter. And I think it's frustrating to the students if the class is going ahead on this whole text, and they're making a ton of progress, and we just keep revisiting this tiny little section. It doesn't feel as redundant and frustrating if it's an article, because we're doing so many things within the article. But I think just the reminder that we're working on that very specific section of the book, it's a little frustrating. If it's a really meaningful section of a chapter in their social studies book, if we want to focus on learning about a specific battle or, I don't know, whatever it may be, I've had a lot of success with that, or any types of articles that they're reading. And so, that's my personal preference. I like to pick something that I can read in 10 minutes or less. So, if I pick something from a book, I pick a small snippet, and I want to make sure that the text has multiple demonstrations of their targets.

And with older students, we're going to be looking at things like compound complex sentences, adverbial clauses, relative clauses, prefixes, suffixes, all of those components. So, I want to be able to see at a glance that the article has the targets that I want. If I really want to work on passive voice, I'm going to pick an article that has some passive voice in it so that it has some demonstrations there. And of course we can create our own targets by manipulating the text. But it's really nice if it is already there. It's just a little bit more authentic and relevant, I suppose.

And so, I personally make cheat sheets for the articles that I use in therapy. So, it just really helps me structure my sessions. I can at a glance see, “Okay. These are all the grammar targets. Here are all the vocabulary.” I can decide within seconds if that's an article that I want to use with that group. And I just end up keeping these cheat sheets and they're easy to access. And then it just makes it super simple when it comes to planning and putting all the elements together. You can totally make your own too, and that's how that works.

So, let's dive into the framework. So, the first step is pre-story knowledge activation. And I think just to illustrate this a little bit more clearly, I'm going to pick an article that I have used in my therapy sessions. So, this is from the March SLP Now bundle, and this is the hiking trip. You can access the article for free on readworks.org. And then I just create companion materials, but you can totally just access the article and use it based on what we talk about today.

So, for pre-story knowledge act fashion, just backing up a second, the hiking trip is an article about. So Devin, the main character, had been waiting all winter to be able to go hiking, because it was snowing and she wasn't able to go. It's finally spring, sorry, he, Devin he, he begged his dad to take him on a hike. And then his dad didn't want to go hiking, because he usually goes with his mom. And so, they encountered some interesting things along the way. So, it's just a story about that experience. So, with pre-story knowledge activation, the unit includes a sheet with some different discussion questions that we can dive into. So, we can talk about, if they've ever been hiking, have they ever gotten lost? Where do they go hiking; what happens in the winter and the spring; why couldn't they go in the winter; all these different types of questions. And I cater this, because I get to know my students, and so I have an idea of what their experiences are, and so I will cater the questions that way.

But it's always surprising what they do and don't know. So, it's a good experience. And I like diving into these types of questions. And this just helps set us up for success. It gives me an idea of what they know and don't know yet. It gives me a pulse on how much exposure they'll need to the vocabulary concepts, because if they don't understand, if they've never been in a forest, and they've never been lost, I don't know. There's just so many different elements that will come into really understanding the story, and building that vocabulary, and all of those different elements. So, that's what we've got there. Some other fun ideas are to watch a video, so about hiking in the forest, or whatever it may be. And I like to call it a virtual field trip, because then it just helps us imagine what that would actually look like. So, we could look at a snowy forest, and we could look out of forest in the spring, and just to build that background knowledge to help understand what happens in the story and why.

And then another thing that I like to do in this pre-story knowledge activation section is take an article tour. So, a lot of the ReadWorks articles have a photo; they have a nice big title. Some of them have a headings. And so, we'll just look at the overall structure of the article and take a guess what it'll be about. And this is a strategy that some of my teachers taught me in high school too. It's a great comprehension strategy to just scope out the article and see what we can find, and just teaching those strategies, to set them up for success when they're tackling different texts, and just helping them to be able to do that on their own.

So, that is step one, pre-story knowledge activation. With older students, I don't do this as much with younger students, but with an older student, it might make sense to pre-teach some of the vocabulary, because I've had a couple of just super salient examples of how important this is. I always tell the story of when I was working with sixth graders and we read a forensic science article. And the first time we read through it, I thought it was super interesting, and they were excited about the concept. But after we just did a rough read through, this was before I used literacy based therapy units and this framework; but I asked them comprehension questions and they had no clue. I just did a little bit of teaching of the vocabulary in the story, like victim, suspect, all of that, and just teaching them a handful of words, their comprehension just skyrocketed. It was amazing.

So, I think using that as a strategy is incredibly helpful, and pre-story knowledge activation, before we dive into the story, is a helpful time to look into those words. And when you're doing the article tour, you can even have the students, you can have them spot-check the article and see if they can identify words that they don't know. Or if we're working on prefixes and suffixes, the cheat sheet that I use has the list of the prefixes and suffixes in the article, so it can just help me, we can start to look at that and notice those as well. So, alluding to what we're going to be doing and step four of the framework. So, that is step one.

Then we have step two, which is shared reading. And with older students, I might have the students read it themselves, read it out loud. I might read it, and we might round-robin read, whatever makes sense. ReadWorks also has recordings for some of the articles. So, sometimes we play that. There's tons of options there. But it's pretty simple. We just read through it. I just make sure that the students are staying engaged. I'll pull out whatever tricks I can to keep them engaged, and it really depends on the group. So, that's why I mentioned maybe there'll be excited about listening to her recording, or maybe they need to round-robin to stay engaged, or maybe I need to read it and continue asking them questions. So, that really depends on the group and the factors there. But it's just a pretty quick read through, not a whole lot going on there.

And then I also want to say, throughout all of these steps, I planned this around my students' goals and I'm very strategic about how I show what I'm doing throughout the unit. I highly recommend checking out the vocabulary and the grammar podcast episodes, because those give a lot of specific strategies that we can use throughout the unit. But for example, just with grammar, I'm being really strategic. I'm recasting the structures that I want the students to use. So, if they give me a simple sentence and I want them to start using more compound sentences, I recast that into a complex sentence, or I'll throw in a relative class, or an embedded clause, or whatever we want to work on. I'll start making those things happen, so that when we get to step four where we're doing some super focused skill activities, then there'll be ready for that.

And, like I said, we might want to pre-teach the vocabulary in step one. We might want to teach just a grammar concept in step one before we dive in. It depends on the group and where the students are. It's not just a, do this then this, then this and this. This is a general framework, and then we get to apply it to our students. So, step one pre-story knowledge activation, potentially adding in a pre-teaching vocabulary, some grammar reviews, whatever it may be. Then two is shared reading.

Three is post-story comprehension discussions. So, with this, the cheat sheets include literal and inferential questions that we can ask. There's also different activity pages with more comprehension activities. And then again, I'm thinking about the student's goals, always recasting, always embedding that vocabulary, asking questions to try and elicit vocabulary, whatever it may be, or asking questions to elicit specific grammar structures. I'll do it all. I'm being very strategic throughout this whole thing. This isn't fluff. This is very intentional use of time, working through skills in a meaningful, embedded way.

So, that's what we do for post-story comprehension discussion. If we're reading a fiction text, I always make a little interactive, story-grammar activity. So, if we are working on a story retell, then I'll ask questions like who has a story about; where did this story happened; when did the story happen. And then, there's different levels of complexity across the story grammar framework. But that's a really great starting place to see how well the students understood the story, versus just asking questions about different details. You think it's a nice way, and then it sets us up for success for the subsequent steps of the framework, which is super helpful.

So, that's what we've got here. And I think having those visuals is incredibly helpful. I put my story-grammar organizers inside the SLP Now membership, but you can easily create your own, make a graphic organizer with the different story-grammar elements. There's tons of research studies that give you ideas for different icons to use. It's a really nice framework that has a lot of evidence behind it. I used to use sticky notes. I would just pull from Google images, all sorts of things, so many options there. And then I think incorporating technology too helps keep our students more engaged. So, that's always a fun thing.

Now the meat of the literacy based therapy unit is step four, which is the focus skill activities. And this is where we dive into all of the different skills. And we can spend quite a bit of time here. So, we work on comprehension in step three. We started working on vocabulary and grammar in step one. If you're looking for ideas for step four, definitely look back at the grammar and the vocabulary episodes. I'll link those in the show notes, which you can find at slpnow.com/37. But there are tons of different ideas and activities in there. So, we start with structure drill practice if that's needed, and then we'll work towards more embedded practice within the step four.

So, for example, if we are working on prefixes, we might do some activities first, and this might have started in step one, but I might have introduced the prefix a little bit. We might've worked looked at identifying the prefix in the text, because that's a really important strategy. If we want them to be able to use prefixes as a strategy to break down unknown vocabulary words, then we definitely want them to be able to identify. Because if we're working on the prefix re, like R-E, read starts with R-E, but d is not a word, or ad. So, we have to work on being able to identify that and actually identify the prefix.

So, we might go through and find some of the examples, then we might pull out some of the words and define them using the skill pack on prefixes and adding them to our vocabulary journal. And then we would start using them in sentences, and just embedding the words that we pulled in a number of different ways, using different activities. And then when we get to step five, then we would continue to use those words as well. Another exam.

Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about all things parallel stories. If you haven't heard of parallel stories before, this is always the last thing that I do in my literacy based therapy units for a number of reasons. It really allows students to integrate skills, and just really apply what we've learned throughout the entire unit.

If you're not familiar with literacy based therapy and how to make that work, all of that good stuff, I'd highly recommend going back to episode four which talks about the five step approach. It breaks it down and makes it super easy to approach. Just pause this and head back to episode four if you're not as familiar with the literacy based therapy framework.

But a lot of people who listened to that episode, or who are in the SLP Now membership, or who follow me on social media have asked for more information about those parallel stories, so that's what we're doing today. I'll just tell you a little bit more about what they are, and what the benefits are, and then we'll dive into some practical examples to implement this with your caseload.

I'm going to be sharing some different ideas on what we can do with a couple of different picture books, a couple of different fiction articles, and then I'll just give some different ideas for nonfiction articles as well. And then we'll see what else comes up, but that's the plan.

A parallel story, just backing up to step one, is when we read a story, for example, we read The Mitten, and we went through the whole literacy based therapy framework. We did our pre-story knowledge activation. We have a lot of great background knowledge. We read the story. We did comprehension activities. We worked on all of our vocabulary, and grammar, and just all the different goals that we have.

Then it's time to get some embedded practice and to really put those skills to the test. We always try to embed the skills throughout the skill practice and make it as relevant as possible, but the parallel story is the opportunity to take it to the next level.

So what we do is we take the storyline, and I typically do ... In step three or four of the literacy based therapy unit, I have students fill in either a story grammar organizer, if it is a picture book or a fiction text or a summarizing sheet. I just make these little interactive activities for my nonfiction articles. We do that if we are working on those narratives or ... We do that throughout the unit for the story that we read, and that really helps with comprehension. It's an opportunity to embed our language skills in the retell. But creating a parallel story is just another opportunity to practice these skills in an embedded way, in a very meaningful way because the story ends up being very meaningful to the student. They take ownership of it.

For example, if we read Snowman at Night, it's a story about what snowmen do at night, or it's what this boy imagines that snowmen do at night. And then we can ... One of my groups ended up making a story about what cacti do at night. And so that is a way to take the storyline ... We'll take that story grammar organizer, we'll look at how it worked for Snowman at Night, then we'll take another copy and we'll start filling it in. We will look at Snowmen at Night for inspiration, but we might change the characters, or we might change the problem, or whatever draws a student's attention, that's what we'll do. And they get to take creative license here, and work to create their own story.

There's a couple of different ways that I like to put these together. A lot of my students will ... I love a good, old-fashioned book. So they'll just take some printer paper and, depending on how big we have to write, I'll either just get a stack of paper and put two colored pieces of paper on the front and the back and staple those together, and then we have a book, or I'll fold the paper in half and then create just a smaller book. So that's what we do if we are hand writing and hand illustrating the story.

I worked in a clinic for a while, and I loved doing this in the clinic because those were one-on-one sessions and that worked really well. This can work if you have students who can write independently, or if your students don't mind sharing one book. But I find that it gets a little bit trickier when we have more students in a group. I've definitely been able to make it work, but if I have a mixed group or multiple students in a group, I really like to project what I'm working on, or at least use like a screen that we can all look at.

My favorite thing to use is my laptop when we're doing these, because then I do have the option to project or we can just look at the same screen and work on it together. I love using PowerPoint because I can type really fast, so the students can come up with ... We'll fill in the graphic organizer and then we'll start creating some sentences around what we put in the graphic organizer. So it's like an expanded version of the retell. Then I'll just type up whatever we come up with in the session.

We might pull in, depending on time, we might pull in some Google images, too, so the students don't have to illustrate. And then I just print off multiple copies, so each student has one. It just saves a little bit of time and get to focus on the actual therapeutic elements, and not as many of the elements that take a lot of time.

If it makes sense with the students' goals, I might have them spend some time illustrating the stories, and taking time in those steps. But if it doesn't make sense, then that's the route that I like to go because I like to be efficient and get things done. The students love seeing their finalized books, pulling them off. I usually just will print them and staple them, which I call binding, which is super easy binding, and then they just get to ... They are so excited to see the final product and the thing that we've worked on for so long.

Then all of the students get to practice telling their story or telling their retell. It's a great opportunity because each student gets to practice producing the parallel story, and use their different grammar and vocabulary targets and all of that, but then they get to hear other students tell the story, as well. And then they have this beautiful book that they get to take home and share with their parents, or share with their friends, or their classmates, or their siblings, and then we just get additional practice with all of those targets.

So it ends up being a really fun activity. Yeah. That's the traditional, my go to option. That's what I typically do, definitely if we're using a picture book or a fiction article, and especially for younger students, that's one of my favorite things to do. For older students, sometimes we have to up the ante a little bit and change things up. Then we'll talk about lots of different things when it comes to the nonfiction texts. But if we're looking at picture books and fiction articles, the PowerPoint option, printed off multiple copies for each student, that's my favorite.

Some other things that we can do instead of that printed book, or as an alternative, or as an additional opportunity to practice, I always mention this app, but I love ChatterPix. So if we were telling the story of Cacti at Night, we might take a picture of a cactus, draw a little mouth on the cactus using the ChatterPix app, and then record the retell of the parallel story. It's just a fun way the students get to practice producing their narrative, and they get to hear it back, and have it be told from the perspective of the cactus. You can even pick whatever character you want. So there's some good opportunities for perspective taking, and we can get so incredibly creative, so many opportunities. So, yeah, that's one thing that's very fun. Students love it.

There's also another app called Toontastic, which allows us to create animations. This doesn't always work when we're doing ... I will use ChatterPix if we're just retelling this story, too. We'll take a picture of a character in the story and tell the story that way. Toontastic is amazing, but it doesn't always work because the settings aren't always a match. But if we're telling a parallel story, we can choose whichever setting we want. So Toontastic is really great for that. These are both iPad apps. I'm not sure if they are available on other platforms, but that's one that is very fun.

And then, just the simple activity that students really enjoy ... I feel like all students, or so many of my students, say that they want to become YouTubers. I guess that's the thing these days. And so just being able to record videos of the students is really fun. They can practice retelling their story. It's probably a good idea to get parent permission, but we sometimes just record the video and then just delete it right as the students are leaving. I just want them to be able to see themselves producing their narrative, and get to hear it back. They're just really excited to be able to see that.

We can even create different animations. We can grab just some different props or even print out different pictures and create our own low key animation using printed pieces or whatever toys we have in the speech room to retell a story, just using whatever props we have. You don't need anything super fancy. If you've got a phone or anything that has the ability to record video, there are so many different options and it's super fun.

Hopefully that gives you a good overview, lots of different ideas on things that you can do for fiction texts. Before we dive into nonfiction, I wanted to ... With nonfiction, it's not technically a parallel story, but I find that the principle works really well even using that concept. We're just working on summarizing instead of retelling, but it's still a very relevant skill, and a lot of the same types of things work when we're working on summarizing versus retelling. We're still embedding the concepts. We're still being communicators, all of that good stuff.

But before we do that, I wanted to dive into a couple of different examples of what this looks like for a couple of different texts. We will start, because I just pulled out my cheat sheets for the different units. I create them for every month of the year. Every month has a book, a picture book, a fiction article, and a nonfiction text that we focus on. And so you're getting a sneak peek of the books and fiction articles that are going to be coming out for the next couple of months inside the SLP Now membership. You don't need the membership to make this happen. That's just where I'm getting the inspiration from, and just from what I've done with previous students as well.

The first book that we'll dive into is The Mitten. This is a story about a boy who asks for white mittens from his grandmother. She knits them. She's hesitant to make them, though, because they're white and they get lost in the snow. And then the boy ends up going out to play. He loses one of the mittens. A bunch of stuff happens to the mitten while it's out in the forest, and then you'll just have to read the story to see what happens to the boy at the end of the story. That's just a recap of that story.

There are unlimited options that we could ... Your students will surprise you. They'll have so many different ideas on parallel stories based on their experiences. You'll do the pre-story knowledge activation, you'll be able to ... Some of those experiences will start to come up, and you'll be able to pull from those as you're working on the parallel story. It's a nice way to wrap everything up, because you're pulling all of the elements from the entire unit, even the pre-story. It's beautiful. I love it. For The Mitten, the students could tell ... Everyone has lost something at some point, so they could tell a story about something they lost. They could tell a story about a gift that they got from their grandmother or from their grandfather, or just any gift that they got. They could tell a story about the last time they were in the snow, the last time they were in the forest. As long as it follows the storyline and it has those story grammar elements, anything is fair game.

And sometimes we might want to steer the direction. Like if we really want to have a repetitive element with animals, like The Mitten does, we might want to steer students in that direction. You can steer the ship in the way that you want to get whatever grammar targets are, not grammar necessarily, but whatever targets you want to elicit, you can steer it that way.

If we really want to focus on animal vocabulary, I'll encourage the students to come up with a story about animals. So we can tell a story about a boy who wants a sand colored hat, and he lives in the desert and he loses his hat, and all of the animals crawl into his hat. That's an example that really closely follows the storyline, but it's in a different setting.

Or if you want to work on seasons, this story happens in the winter. You can tell the story about the spring or the summer, and what that would look like in the forest, or what would the boy want in the summertime? What would he be wearing in the summertime? So there's lots and lots of options. They are absolutely endless.

If you use the story grammar organizer, I have one in the SLP Now membership, but there are ... I'll link to some, but there are hundreds of research articles that outline these different elements. They give you different ideas for icons to use. There are so many options. I just pulled together what made sense for me. If you have that, you can't go wrong. You just ask the students, who is the parallel story about? Where did the parallel story happen? What was the problem? And you just work through that.

If you have their original graphic organizer to reference, the students will use that for inspiration. It works out beautifully, and it's so incredibly interesting to see what the students come up with. So those are some ideas for The Mitten. That's what I have planned for January.

As for some ideas for February, The Day it Rained Hearts is the book that I have planned for the February unit. The Day it Rained Hearts is a story about a girl who catches hearts on a rainy day. It's close to Valentine's Day, and she needs to figure out what to get her friends, so she uses the hearts to create valentines for her friends.

Again, tons and tons of story options here. Maybe you can create a similar story, like it's Halloween and it's raining pumpkins, or leaves are falling, or it's raining ... I don't know what it can rain, all of this sorts of things. It's raining paper and it's Christmas time. What can she make out of paper for Christmas presents? You can follow that main storyline. You can tell a story about Valentine's Day, maybe what they're doing for their valentines, or they had to go to the store with their mom and they couldn't find valentines, because they waited too long, or they forgot their valentines or ... There's so many things that can come up.

Again, just really thinking back, what came up during the pre-story knowledge activation? What did the students share and how can we integrate that experience and put it together? Maybe all of the students love dinosaurs, or they love a certain TV show, or it's a group of girls and they're really interested in Zac Efron or ... You can make it fun and engaging. They can choose the character. They can pick whichever celebrities or movie characters or whatever they want. And the nice thing is if you use Google images, you can easily grab those, and create the most engaging parallel story in the world. So those are just some ideas for February.

And then March, we've got another story. My cards are out of order here. For March, we have Spring is Here. It's a bear and mole story. This is a story about a mole who wakes up and realizes that it's spring, because bears and moles hibernate. I don't know how this works out, but he lives with a bear, and bear is still sleeping, and the mole really wants to wake up the bear, but he won't wake up. So then he comes up with a creative way to wake up his sleepy friend.

So lots and lots of options here. Again, use the pre-story knowledge questions to guide the decision making. You can choose, and it really depends on what you want to focus on. Do you want to focus on different times of year? Do you want to talk about different seasons? Maybe it's about to be winter and they have to get ready to hibernate. What's happening then? Or did they ever have a hard time waking any one up? What did they do to wake up? Like, if they were going to be late for school and they had to wake up their brother or their mom couldn't wake them up.

Or maybe there's different animals. Maybe we talk about, I don't know, just different characters, different setting, different time of year, place, time of year. Maybe we reverse the roles. Maybe the mole won't wake up. What would the bear do to wake up the mole? Or what would happen if the bear didn't wake up? Just all sorts of different things, lots and lots of options.

Hopefully those types of questions and ideas help you because I know a lot of you were just looking for a little bit of inspiration on what could happen with the parallel stories. Hopefully those three give you some different ideas. I have all of this sheets through May, but I think you get the idea. I think you have some good ideas on how to put this together for a parallel story.

I want to give some examples for fiction articles, too. I love using picture books for my preschool, early elementary students. But as they get a little bit older, it's just not quite as age appropriate, and the teachers are switching to more text-based materials so it makes sense that we make that switch, too. A fifth grader won't appreciate a picture book quite as much, and we want to give materials that are age appropriate.

So as students get older, I like to move towards those fiction articles because they still have ... The syntax is usually pretty doable. They've got a nice variety of vocabulary. It's a little bit of a step up from several picture books, which is nice. It's a little bit more challenging in terms of reading level. You can find articles that are at the same reading level as the picture books, too, but we just have more options and it's easier to find things that are educationally relevant.

Like I said, I love using ReadWorks.org. I can just match up with what they're talking about in the classroom, and that makes it really easy to put together. So that's what I like to do. I use those fiction articles until the students have a firm grasp of story, grammar, and all of the things that that entails, because story grammar is important for them to be able to tell their own narratives and story retell, and just in the expression components.

But it's also incredibly powerful. We won't dive into all of it today, but there's some really cool research out there about how teaching story grammar elements helps improve comprehension. They did a study with older students, and it helped. I think it gives students a framework, and it even helped improve comprehension of a classroom lecture, which is so incredibly interesting to me.

If you're interested in that, definitely check out our other narrative presentations. I think there's so much utility in targeting narratives in therapy, and I want to stick with that as long as possible. It's not something that they're being introduced to in the classroom, at least not in the way that we're teaching it. So I think it's incredibly powerful to stick with it, even if the students are older.

Now, if they have a really firm grasp of story grammar, they can tell nice narratives and all of that, it makes sense to move to a nonfiction text, which we'll touch on towards the end of this presentation. I like nonfiction texts, because the syntax gets a little more challenging and so that's more in line with the rigor of what they'll be seeing in the classroom.

It also is helpful because they're reading to learn at this point, and they're having to extract a lot of information out of their textbooks and all of that. So by reading nonfiction texts and summarizing them, it's just a really helpful study tool. And if they've already got the narrative skills down, like they've got a solid foundation, then it makes a lot of sense to continue on that.

But I would not be opposed to using a fiction article with secondary students, even later secondary, if that's what they need. Fiction articles can work for a wide range of students, and it's just really based on their needs. There's not a specific grade assigned to that.

The first fiction text that I have planned for January is called Snow Day Fever. This is a fiction article about a boy who has a fever on a snow day. He really wants to play outside, and he tricks his mom so that she'll let him play in the snow.

Again, it follows the same kind of thing. I fill out that graphic organizer, or my students and I fill out that graphic organizer, to map out the story grammar elements in this particular story. Then, based on the pre-story knowledge activation discussion, based on their additional experiences, whatever came up during the story, the students can then create a story maybe about the last time they were sick, the last time they had a snow day, the last time they tried to trick their mom. There's lots of fun ones that can come out of that. There's tons and tons of options. Again, changing out any of the elements, change the character, or the setting, or the problem. Maybe there's a kid who's afraid of the snow and he really doesn't want to go out, but his brothers keep teasing him or whatnot. There's so many different options, and we just let the students guide that discussion and steer the ship and we just guide.

For February, the next thing is How to Say I [Ref 00:29:21] You. This is for February, so it's with the Valentine's theme. There's a boy who didn't get any valentines at school, but someone in his family is very sweet and ended up taking care of him. It's a really sweet story about Valentine's Day.

The students, especially the older students, they will have lots of stories and emotions around Valentine's Day. So we can talk about, like, maybe they didn't get any valentines. Or maybe sometimes they send out cards for different occasions at school, so maybe they had an experience like they didn't get something that everyone else did. Or maybe they can talk about like figuring out the perfect valentine for someone they like or for a special friend or whatever it may be. Again, lots of options for that as well. And then, just thinking again about how can we change the characters, the setting, same thing. So nothing super unique here.

And then, the third article that I have planned, this one is from March and it's called The Hiking Trip. This is a fiction article about a hiking trip that a boy goes on with his dad. This is the March one, so it's almost spring and they couldn't go all winter because it was snowing, and so now that spring had arrived, they were able to go on a hike. His dad was hesitant to go, and it was an experience. So this is a story that involves waiting for things.

So maybe they're waiting all fall, they're just waiting for the snow. They're waiting for winter so they could go snowboarding. Maybe they tell a story about that. Maybe they tell a story about a time that they got lost, which happens in this story. Or maybe they tell about a time that they really wanted to do something and their parents wouldn't let them, or they had to wait for something.

The students will bring so many experiences to the table. If anything, you'll have a hard time just picking something because they're all such fun, good, unique ideas and so it's just a matter of navigating that, because not everyone will get to have their topic every time. You can take turns in being the storyteller.

If you're using the PowerPoint example, you can create multiple parallel stories and just have additional opportunities to practice, and that will extend the unit out a little bit longer. It gives the students more opportunities to really implement those. They'll get exposure to different vocabulary because you'll be changing up things in the story, and then they'll get to use their vocabulary, their grammar, all of the different skills. They'll be able to embed that into their retell of the story in a really meaningful way. I love being able to put those together, and it just really helps solidify all of those different skills. And it is super fun.

Then for the nonfiction articles, we have a lot of different options here, as well. I love the new newscast format. Like I said, a lot of the students want to be YouTubers, so creating a video is really exciting to them. And then I'll still use ChatterPix for these kids, too.

One example that I always give, it's an article about a futurologist who talks about his opinions about what he thinks traffic will look like in the future. I love having students ... Like, will you take a picture of whatever we think the futurologist looks like, and then we have him share his opinion. Then we can take pictures of different characters. We can have a picture of a teenager, or a mom or whatever, and we can have them share their opinions, too. So there's some opportunities to get a little bit creative here and not just summarizing this story, but then sharing opinions, working on fact versus opinion. Because I remember even in my essays as a high school/college student, they would have me highlight ... It was an activity that came up multiple times where in class we were working on highlighting things that were facts and things that were opinions. That's something that a lot of our students struggle with, and they will really struggle with a persuasive essay if they struggle, too, with perspective taking, and identifying the facts, and identifying the opinions, and finding out how to weave them together.

So these types of activities are incredibly relevant, especially if we're selecting articles that relate to what they're discussing in the classroom. It can just really make that experience that much easier. So yeah, that's what we've got.

If you tune into the live course, I will walk through some examples of stories that we put together. I can share, and these are ... Because I wasn't able to share the student work, they're examples that I created. But I'll show you the different examples of the written book, the PowerPoint book, the ChatterPix story, and the Toontastic. I'll just put together a bunch of different finalized products.

If you're not joining the live course, hopefully you have enough to go off of and have some ideas and inspiration on how to put this together. But, yeah, I'm excited to share that little extra bonus if you are joining us for the live speech therapy PD course.

You can find all of the info for this episode, all the links and citations that I mentioned at SlpNow.com/36. And then if you're here live, stay tuned for those little videos as promised, and we will see you next time. Thank you!

Hey there, it's Marisha from SLP Now, and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. Today, we are continuing the discussion about literacy-based therapy. Today, we're focusing on grammar, which is a super exhilarating topic. We all love grammar. We're talking about grammar for older students, which is even more exhilarating, because we're moving beyond the typical pronouns, verbs, irregular pronouns, those kinds of things, and jumping into more complex syntax and all of the things related to that.

I cannot wait to dive in. What we're going to do today is, we'll talk about the different types of targets that we might look at, when we're working with older students. We'll map that onto the framework that I presented two episodes ago. We're going to move through things in the same way as we did in the last episode, 34, except last time was for earlier goals, like the things that I just mentioned, those plural nouns, past tense verbs, pronouns, all that good stuff, and we're diving into how to do these with older students.

If you want a refresher, definitely head to episode 33 for an overview of all things grammar. Head to episode 34 if you want the nitty-gritty specifics for those earlier goals, and stay tuned if you're feeling good about the basics of grammar intervention, and you just want to dive into all things grammar and syntax. Super fun.

Before we dive into all of the strategies, I just wanted to make sure that we're on the same page in terms of some of the things we could potentially target and what those things are. I enjoy grammar and learning about it. I had a English teacher in high school who had us diagram all the sentences. I got pretty good at it. I understand all of those different elements, but I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. I'll just share what we would need to know to be able to help our students. Then, you're aware of what types of targets make sense.

One that I think we're all pretty comfortable with is just compound and complex sentences. Just a quick recap of a compound sentence. A compound sentence just contains two sentences. We join them together with a coordinating conjunction. Then, there's a nice little acronym that we can use. It's FANBOYS, so F-A-N-B-O-Y-S. That helps us remember all the different coordinating conjunctions, so for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

That one's pretty simple. Compound sentence, check. We've got that down. Complex sentences are a little bit more complicated. We have an independent clause, which includes a subject and a verb, and then we also have a dependent clause, which includes a subordinating conjunction, the subject, and a verb. It's just a little bit more ... I mean, the sentence can be the same length, but it's just a little bit more complex in terms of understanding it. There we go.

We've got compound sentences, which just combine two sentence with a coordinating conjunction, and then complex sentences include an independent and a dependent clause that are put together. The dependent clause has a subordinating conjunction. There's a handful of subordinating conjunctions, but some examples are after, since, that, until, when, which, where, while, if, before, because, all of those good ones.

That's what we've got for our complex sentences. Those are pretty simple. When I'm introducing these to students, I always use a visual. My visuals are in the SLP Now membership, but you can find lots of ideas and inspiration online.

I like using paperclips to help students put together sentences. We might just rip up some pieces of papers, or use some note cards, or whatnot. Then, you can even get fancy, and color code them, and add different labels to the paperclips. I usually just have, if I have colored paperclips, or I'll just grab a regular one and draw on it with markers, so that it's "color-coded". Then, we'll use that to start putting those sentences together.

The visuals that I created make that really easy. That ends up working really well. Those are pretty simple to introduce to students and to start practicing. We'll talk about more of the nitty-gritty, in terms of all five steps of the framework and what we would do within each of the steps, but hopefully we're on the same page with compound and complex sentences.

The next thing that we might target is the passive voice. This is a little bit funky. I know that all of my teachers would say not to write in the passive voice, but a lot of texts use the passive voice. It can be tricky for our students to understand that, because it's just a little bit of a different sentence structure, and one that we don't always use in conversation. I think it's helpful to break that down and have that be a little bit clearer for our students.

What is the passive voice? It's when the object becomes the subject of the sentence. I could say, "Someone stole my laptop." That's how we would typically say it. That is the active voice. We don't know who that someone is, so we could flip it and make my laptop the subject of the sentence. We could say, "My laptop was stolen." The subject of the original sentence is just left off.

It makes sense that that can get a little confusing for our students, like I said, because it switches things up. We can use it to emphasize the action, or the verb, or if we don't know who or what the subject is, and it's in a lot of different texts. That's just something that we might want to break down for our students, because it shows up a lot, especially when it comes to textbooks and nonfiction texts. That can trip them up. That'll be something that we can address with our students.

The next thing that we're going to talk about, so, we've got compound, complex sentences, check. Passive voice, check. Next on the list is adverbial clauses. With adverbial clauses, it's, again, a clause is a group of words, and an adverbial clause, no surprise, it plays the role of an adverb.

Instead of, like, I go to the store daily, that daily is just a regular adverb. If we want to change daily into an adverbial clause, we can say, I go to the store when my mom tells me to. When my mom tells me to becomes that adverbial clause. That's something that we can help teach our students, because our students will tend to create simpler sentences. That can also, again, like we talked about before, that can also impact their comprehension.

By teaching them these structures, and modeling them to the students, having them create sentences, and experimenting with these different structures, and then, also, when we come across them in a text, breaking them down, and understanding them, those can help students. It'll enrich their writing, their ability to describe and explain, because if we have very limited syntax, and if we're only creating those very simple sentences, it definitely does impact our ability to explain things that are a little bit more complex, potentially.

That's why, because you might be thinking, why in the world? I don't even know what an adverbial clause is. Why in the world would I target that? That's why. You definitely do know what an adverbial clause is. You use that all the time. It's just something that we just can break down a little bit for our students.

We've got that one down. We are on the last one. We've got a relative clause. This is sometimes, this is called an adjective or adjectival, I think is how you say that, clause. That's in contrast to the adverbial clause. It makes sense that a relative or adjective clause functions as the adjective. An adverbial clause functions as the adverb. The relative/adjective clause functions as the adjective in a sentence.

Just backing up a second, too, with clauses, all clauses contain a subject and a verb. The relative clause begins with a relative pronoun, so who, whom, whose, that, which, or a relative adverb, when, where, why. While a relative clause typically starts with a relative pronoun or a relative adverb, an adverbial clause typically starts with a subordinating conjunction. There is some overlap here between the relative pronoun and relative adverb, as well as subordinating conjunctions. Some fit into both categories, there.

What we want to do is really look at the function of the clause. The relative clause functions as the adjective. The adverbial clause functions as the adverb. That is the main difference there, because they're both clauses. They both have subjects and verbs. There might be some overlap in the pronouns conjunctions that we see popping up there. That's really what we want to be looking at when we are distinguishing those different types of clauses.

Targeting either of them will help our students, again, like I said before, increase the complexity of their own language, but then, also being able to understand, because if there's ... There can be sentences with multiple clauses in them. This is often, we see this. We might have a sentence with passive voice and multiple clauses embedded. It can get really tricky to understand.

It'd be a shame if it's just syntax holding back our students. If they're building that vocabulary and getting all of those skills, we don't want syntax to be that barrier. It's something that we can do to support our students, and help improve their writing, and all of that good stuff.

That was our quick recap. That wasn't too painful. We got to go through all of this different structures. Compound, complex sentences, passive voice, adverbial clauses, and relative clauses. Those are the five things that I typically focus on when I'm working on more later grammar goals with older students or students ...

This can even start earlier in elementary school, depending on where the students are. If we're working on describing, it might make sense to work on some relative clauses, because then they'll be able to use their describing words and all of that. There are different examples on how to make that work. Also, compound, complex sentences, that's something that we can often work on.

That's what we've got. I want to jump back into the framework that we talked about in episode 35, or episode 33. Like I said before, definitely revisit that episode if you want a more thorough overview of why we even want to target grammar goals in context, and why even target these types of skills. We did touch on that a little bit, today. Then, if you want a more thorough overview of the framework and kind of stepping back into the research and theory behind it, definitely check out episode 33. Today, we'll do a quicker run-through of the different steps of the framework and just talk about how we can make that happen.

Just to recap those five steps, so you have an idea of what we're working through, the first step is assessment. Again, I would recommend going to episode 33 for a more thorough overview of that. A lot of the things that we talked about will apply, and you can use those. Just the quick recap, you'll want to use language samples, writing samples, whatever you can get from the classroom. You could potentially look at their comprehension, and seeing if the syntax helps with that, all that good stuff.

Then, step two is teaching. Step three is focused stimulation. Step four is structured practice. Step five is embedded practice. Since we did a lot on step one, assessment, in episode 33, we are going to jump into step two.

This will really depend on the skill that we're talking about. I always, especially when we're talking about grammar, it can get a little bit confusing if we're trying to describe all of these things to students. I think pairing this with visuals is incredibly helpful.

The example that I gave for compound and complex sentences, like using those different note cards, color coded paper clips, that kind of stuff, having that matchup with a visual is really helpful. For me, I make compound sentences green. Complex sentences are red. The conjunctions are those colors. Then, that just helps us make those sentences.

Then, I do the same thing for just to introduce the relative, and adverbial clause, and the passive voice. I just have a visual that shows how the different pieces move and what they mean. That makes a world of a difference. I love using a visual because, one, it makes it less confusing. We're not doing quite as much talking around things, and just talking about grammar can be very confusing.

Then, having that visual, it allows us to do less talking. It makes it easier for the student to process. Then, it's also really easy to refer to when we're doing different activities. The cool thing is, too, a visual can go with a student. They can take it to class with them, like if they're going to resource room, as well, and they're writing a paper, they can use those visuals when they're writing their essays, or whatever it may be.

It just increases ... We can give the student independence a little bit more quickly by giving them those visuals. That's a huge component of my teaching. I keep it as simple as possible. I just work ... My strategy is to give a simple explanation, kind of like I did when I was recapping the different grammar structures with you. I just keep it as simple as that, and even simpler, if I can, and just give them the nitty-gritty of what they need to know. Then, I just make sure that they can see all the different examples of relative pronouns and adverbs.

I don't focus too, too much on the terminology around it. I just give them that recipe. They don't have to know that it's a relative pronoun, per se. I give them the recipe, so that, the visual recipe of what the different conjunctions are or whatnot. Then, we work to create those sentences.

Not a whole lot of terminology around that. It's just a lot of functional practice with it. We'll get the recipe, and then we'll start making sentences. We'll start with things that are really relevant to them, like talking about the cafeteria, or their classes, or whatever movie they're excited about, or TV show, or game, or just whatever will capture their interest, something that they really understand well, so that they can wrap their head around those structures.

Then, once we get some good introductions there, that's when we can dive into the next steps. I always take some time to just introduce that concept, give them just a little primer, and just highlight the grammatical forms that we're going to be working on. Yeah. That ends up just being 5 to 10 minutes before we dive into an activity. Then, just focusing on the, and I like to just focus on one form at a time. I think that's a little easier. Then, we just learn by doing, like I said, following that recipe and putting that together.

That is step two. Then, for step three, we'll do some focused stimulation. Then, one caveat here, too, you know your students best. Some students might benefit just from some focused stimulation before you even try to explain it. Some students, it makes sense to teach it before you do the focused stimulation. I feel like these two go hand-in-hand at some times. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a linear process. You can use your clinical judgment to see what makes sense.

Quick recap of what focused stimulation is. It's when we provide frequent models and recasts in a variety of activities. When we model something, we highlight the feature naturally in conversation, when we provide a recast, it's when we correct or modify what the child says. If the student produces just a simple sentence, or maybe two simple sentences, we can connect those with a subordinating conjunction. We can recast it, add a subordinating conjunction, and recast that into a complex sentence.

Then, just continuing to do that, giving them examples of what they're saying in conversation, as they're talking about the weekend, as they're talking about a class that they're frustrated with, whatever it may be. We can embed that in our conversation, or when we're talking about a text, or doing any other therapy activity.

If we're reading a fiction text, or a nonfiction article, I can dive into some of those examples. As they're answering comprehension questions, I'll model. When I'm talking about the text, I'll model those whatever target structures we're focusing on. Then, I can also recast their answers to whatever structure we're focusing on.

This sounds super similar to last week, because it's the exact same thing. That strategy can still be incredibly helpful. Then, we want to give students enough exposure to the targets before we start expecting them to produce those sentences on their own. It's really a matter of clinical judgment, in terms of how much time we spend on that teaching and the focused stimulation. Some students are going to need more of that structured practice than others. We want to always be thinking about moving on to step five. We're talking about some really specific, drill-based things that we can do, but we want to move into the embedded practice as quickly as possible.

Three things that we can do there are, one, modeling combined with production. Two is imitating contrasting sentences. Three is combining sentences. With the first step, modeling combined with production, this is when we ... It's just taking that focused stimulation to the next level. We model a structure and then prompt the student to produce, or repeat it after us, or imitate.

Then, this can be helpful, but there is limited evidence for generalization. It might be a good first step, just to move a little bit away from just the focused stimulation and get them to talk through it a little bit more. I find that a lot of my students end up automatically imitating my recasts and my models, because they know what we're doing. Sometimes, it even works with younger students. They just naturally recast my recast or recast my model. That is super interesting to see how that works.

Then, the next thing that we can do is imitate contrasting sentences. This can be interesting, because I most often use this for the simpler structures, but you can check out the Connell 1982 article that works through a step-by-step training procedure. You can also use this if you're working on, like, you could have ... I mean, there's unlimited options. You could have contrasting sentences with different conjunctions and changing the meaning of what the sentence means. Yeah, so many different ideas, there. I believe that Connell 1982 gives some different examples of the more complex things that we can do with that.

Yeah. That's a really fun strategy that we can use, there. Then, another thing that we can do is combining sentences, which is really helpful when we're talking about compound, complex sentences, relative clauses, and adverbial clauses, because by combining sentences, we are using clauses, which is what all of those things are. We can give students two or more sentences.

Sometimes, we can even cut up an article and have them combine the sentences in the article. Sometimes, we'll just copy and paste it into a Word document and find ways to put them together. That's a way to connect with what we're reading in the text, or we can take the student responses and go from there.

There's two types of combining. We can do cued combining, where we provide the ... We underline the components that the student needs to combine and give them whatever they need to combine that sentence, whether it's the conjunction, the relative pronoun, whatnot. That is a step, like a scaffolded step.

Then, we can also do open combining, where we don't give them specific instructions. We just give them two sentences and prompt the student to combine them. Those are some fun strategies that we can use to work on some of those different skills.

Another bonus activity that I think is really fun when we're working on these different types of clauses is sentence expansion. We can just prompt students, like, we can take a sentence out of a text and expand it. Students can have a lot of fun. Sometimes, they'll do challenges to see who can come up with the longest sentence that's still grammatically correct and makes sense. We can just do different games with that.

Yeah. We can just pull a simple sentence from the article. Then, you add whatever types of clauses that we're using to increase the complexity and the length of that sentence. If we're working on adverbial clauses, we can say, "I saw the dog run," and then we can add different adverbial clauses to help clarify that picture of what the dog looks like when he's running, or how the dog is running, rather.

Those are just some fun activities that we can do when it comes to the drill practice. You don't really need a ton of materials. Once you have those visuals, it's really easy for students to understand what they're supposed to be doing. We can make it fun by just grabbing a dry erase marker and writing the sentence on the table, or letting them draw on the white board, or letting them type on the tablet, or letting them write the sentence in smelly marker, or whatever it may be.

There's a lot of different ways that we can make this more fun and interesting. I also, like, I mentioned this a lot, but there is some iPad apps that I really enjoy, too. This even works with older students. We can take pictures, or we can grab pictures from Google of their favorite celebrities, or TV show characters, or whatever it may be. As a reward for writing their complex sentence, or whatever structure we're targeting, they get to read that sentence out loud.

With ChatterPix, when you record someone's voice, it plays it back to you, and it looks like, it moves the mouth of the image that you imported, so it looks like your favorite movie character is saying that sentence. They get a big kick out of that. It keeps them engaged. Then, they're getting more exposure to those structures. That's a really fun way to get in that practice in a fun and engaging way. Then, you could even switch between characters. There are so many options. It's so fun.

That's what we do for step four, when we're doing more of that structured practice. Like I said, it can make a lot of sense to just pull sentences from the article. If that's still too confusing, we can just create sentences based on what they know, what their responses to questions, whatever it may be.

Then, once we give them enough exposure, and the purpose of the drill-based practice is just to highlight and prime those linguistic features. Then, we want to immediately incorporate them into the embedded activities, which we will dive into now. By using sentences from a reading passage, we can still do drill-based practice, but we're moving towards more embedded, because once we do that, we can have students respond to questions using their clauses. We can have them retell the story or summarize the article using their target structures. That helps us get towards that more embedded practice.

Yeah. Comprehension activities are a huge one. The retell, and any discussion around the story, any communication that we're doing, we get to embed the skills that we've been targeting throughout the entire unit. Like I said, that retell, summarizing component is one of my favorites. I like to have, with older students, we don't do quite as many traditional parallel stories where we're creating a book. Some students are very interested with that.

With them, I like to do some things that involve more media, because that gets them very excited. We can write a newscast and record that. That's a very, like, they'll be giving presentations in their classes, so that's a worthwhile skill to practice. We can generate that summary and then deliver the summary pretending to be a newscaster.

A lot of them want to be YouTubers. We can look at their favorite styles and incorporate some of that while using their sentence structures related to what the text that we're talking about. We're probably not going to ... I want it to be educationally relevant, so we might not be talking about the coolest new clothes or whatever those YouTubers talk about, or whatever stunts they're playing, but if it's related to the article that we're discussing, and if it's related to what they're working on in the classroom, then we're golden, and we're good to go.

That's how we do that. Then, just a recap, these steps are not linear. We'll move back and forth between these steps. It's not always one, two, three, four, five. Sometimes it's like, one, two, four, three, five, six, or not six, because that's not a step.

You get the idea. You use your clinical judgment to get a feel for where the students are. Don't forget to teach, because otherwise, this will be incredibly frustrating. Visuals are huge and so incredibly helpful. Definitely check out the, I'll put the citations in the show notes at SLPNow.com/35. Do check out those articles, because they help map out these things in such a detailed way. It gives you a protocol on how to implement this.

I will work on putting together some more specific examples, but if you're wanting to apply this to your caseload, definitely check out those articles. Double-check me on the research, too. Maybe there's something different out there or just a different interpretation. I just think going to the source is incredibly helpful.

A quick recap of the steps that we talked about. We start with assessment, and again, head to episode 33 to see more of the specifics. Step two is teaching. Step three is focused stimulation. Step four is structured practice. Step five is embedded practice. That's what we've got going on. I'll just give some examples of how we can apply this to an example unit.

I make, because I don't always have time to dive into all of the articles that our students are using. We can pull from just about anything when we're looking for materials within these literacy-based therapy units. We can use a social studies textbook, a science textbook. We can use whatever. We can use excerpts from books they're reading in English, or yeah, any literature is fair game.

One of my favorite time-saving strategies, because it is challenging, especially in a secondary setting, to connect with all of the teachers, and to know what they're doing at all times, and to figure out where they are in a text, because if they're reading a book as a unit, it can be a little bit frustrating, because it takes us several sessions to work through even just a couple paragraphs in the book. The book is not to keep up with what the teachers are doing in the classroom. The goal is to go beyond that, because we are speech language pathologists, and not tutors. We're really diving into a text to help give a student more exposure.

Personally, I've found that to be a little tricky, because the students get frustrated, like, "Why are we working on this small part of chapter one? We're already on chapter five. Why are we going ..." It just gets a little bit frustrating.

I like to try, if I'm working with the English teacher, I might just find out what they're book they're reading and find articles related to that, to help build their background knowledge and schema around those things. If they're reading articles, I'll definitely use those, if I can grab them. I find that sometimes it makes it easier to implement if we can just ... The teacher can easily tell us, "We're learning about X, Y, and Z this semester," and we can just find things to support that. I mean, we can always use what they're using in the classroom, as well.

What I ended up doing, for my own sanity, was I grabbed a bunch of articles. I love using ReadWorks, personally, so I grabbed a bunch of articles from there. I tried to grab the articles that I knew included topics that a lot of my students would be covering in their classrooms. Then, I made cheat sheets and activities to go with those articles.

It's been absolutely amazing. I just have, like, I keep the unit in ... I mean, it's all on my digital therapy planner in SLP Now. I started just printing out some of the materials to prep for the week, and then I just ended up keeping the folders. It's amazing, because I have a little cheat sheet that I use. Then, I put some different activities in there. It's just in a poly folder. I use paperclips to organize the different sets of papers.

Then, a quick cheat, I always mention this. If you want to make sure you don't use up your original, you can mark a big X in yellow highlighter. Then, you'll know not to give that one away. If you run it to the copy machine, it won't pick up the yellow highlighter, which is super cool.

Yeah. I just keep that bundle. Then, I've found myself, like, "Man, I need a therapy activity." Then, I can just grab that. It gives me everything that I need for that unit, in addition to the grammar visuals that I have ready to go, as well as vocabulary and whatever else I might need to teach the concepts. I have everything that I need for the structured practice and the embedded practice within that little folder.

The cheat sheets really help, because I pull all of the different grammar structures out. It can be a little bit overwhelming to try and find all of the, like, is this a good ... Will this article give us enough examples of adverbial clauses that we can pull apart and start to understand? Whatever structure we're working on. This can help us. What coordinating conjunctions does this article have? Which subordinating conjunctions? It just gives me a quick memory jog, too, on what I might want to do.

That's what we do. Then, I just grab the cheat sheet. It helps me figure out which targets we want to focus on, based on the students' goals. Then, we follow that framework that we talked about, like the one, two, three, four, five for grammar and embed that into the whole unit.

One example, I just pulled up the cheat sheet for an article called Snow Day Fever. This is from ReadWorks, as well. It's a fiction article about a boy who has a fever on a snow day. He really wants to play outside, so he tricks his mom, so that, like, he puts the thermometer in a glass of ice to get his temperature to go down. Obviously, that didn't work out so well.

It's a really nice article. It's relevant if we're having lots of snow days, or the students are learning about weather, or whatever it may be. This is one that I typically use, like, I think it was written at a third grade reading level, so it can be used with later elementary, secondary students. It's a fiction article, so it's great for story grammar and all of those other types of things. Lots and lots of vocabulary.

Because we're focusing on grammar, when I look at the cheat sheet for Snow Day Fever, I can quickly see which pronouns we have. There's one example of an irregular plural noun, tons and tons of irregular past tense verbs. Then, we have a couple of conjunctions, a handful of subordinating conjunctions. We've got some adverbial clauses, relative clauses.

Having this at a glance, I can just quickly look at my students' goals and figure out which targets I want to focus on, given what's in the text. Then, we may target all of them, throughout the unit. It just helps me prioritize for that session.

Then, when we're in the ... It depends on which stage of the literacy-based therapy framework we're in. If we're doing the pre-story knowledge activation, that's step one, I'm primarily focusing on ... We'll be discussing, like, each article has a pre-story knowledge activation sheet, so we'll be discussing some of those questions, like, have you ever had a snow day? What do you do on a snow day? Do you think we should have snow days? All of those different things, we're discussing that.

Then, I'm being very strategic. I'm modeling the structures. I'm recasting. We're focusing on the grammar that way. That's that focused stimulation.

Then, teaching, we get to decide at what stage we do that. Then, step two of the literacy-based therapy framework is when we read the text. I might just emphasize some of the structures, like, "This is a adverbial clause. It tells me more about," blah, blah. I can embed some of that, if that makes sense.

Then, step three is comprehension activities. Again, I'm recasting. I could, depending on where the students are with this skill, I can listen for them to use those skills in their responses to the questions, and all of that good stuff. Then, yeah, if they're not quite there yet, then I will continue to provide focused stimulation, so that when we get to step four, which is that skill practice, then they'll be ready for my imitating contrastive sentences, creating their own sentences, whatever it may be.

The cool thing with these activities, if you have the visual, and you have the targets, all you really need is a blank piece of paper or a whiteboard. Just anything for the student to write on, or a recording device, if you wanted to have verbal sentences. One other really fun thing that students love is voice to text. They get to produce their sentence, and then they get to see it show up on the computer, or the tablet, or phone, whatever you're using. Then, that's a great way to get immediate feedback, and look at the sentence, and see if that makes sense, and if we can expand on it, or whatever that may be.

That's something that we can do if we're working on expanding their sentences, or I can just pull together some quick contrasting sentences for them to imitate, or whatever the exercise is. That's what we do in step four. We really dive into all of those specific structures and put all of that together. Then, we continue to do that with the embedded practice, where we're responding to questions and all of that.

Yeah. I've got all of my targets, here. I have my visuals ready to go. I'm ready go tackle the unit, because I've got my evidence-based strategies in my pocket, because you are your best therapy tool. Armed with these strategies and a couple simple materials and resources, you're ready to rock your grammar intervention.

Yeah, that's what we've got. Let me know if you have any questions. I will share some videos and just a example in the live course. Then, yeah, let me know if you're interested in checking that out. Yeah, we're good to go.

If you're here live, stay tuned for the video. If not, I will see you next week, and we'll continue talking about all things literacy-based therapy. Thank you.

Marisha: Welcome to episode 32 of the SLP Now podcast. This week is a little different than usual because we're doing our first ever SLP Now podcast end of the year round up. So we'll be looking back at the five most downloaded episodes of the year. Before we dive in, I just have to say it has been such an incredible experience diving into the world of podcasting. Thank goodness I was prepared for all of the learning because of grad school. But in all seriousness, I'm so grateful for all of the wonderful SLPs that have been along for the ride, the incredible guests I've had the opportunity to speak with, and just that the episodes are eligible for ASHA credits. So thank you very much SpeechTherapyPD, and although this episode won't count for ASHA credits, hopefully it'll give you some inspiration if you're trying to quickly pull in those ASHAs CEs before the end of the year. Hopefully this will give you some inspiration for some episodes to check out.

Marisha: So let's start with the fifth most downloaded episode of the year. It was episode 17, How to Tackle Oral Facial Exams with Amy Graham, and I absolutely love getting to chat with Amy Graham. She's so incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to speech sound disorders and just life in general. She's one smart lady, and she definitely did not disappoint with this episode. So here's a quick clip.

Amy: In order to choose an appropriate intervention, you have to understand the nature of the disorder to begin with, and I think part of doing that is either identifying or ruling out those structural and/or functional contributors.

Marisha: Right? Amazing. So she also deserves a special award because she's the first repeat guest on the podcast. Her episode on childhood apraxia of speech just went live last week, so check out episode 31 if you want to hear more from Amy.

Marisha: Now, for the fourth most downloaded episode of the year, episode 14, Where to Start With Fluency Therapy. So this interview was with Lauren from Busy Bee Speech and it was so incredibly helpful. I absolutely loved hearing a little bit of Lauren's story, which I'll drop a quick clip right now.

Lauren: You can't just do a one size fits all therapy approach with fluency. You just never know the reasons why they're stuttering, it's not going to always be the same for every kid.

Marisha: And her philosophy, which she just shared, makes so much sense and she backs that up with so many practical strategies and therapy ideas. So if you are looking for some inspiration, some support, and some amazing fun, easy to implement therapy ideas, head to episode 14.

Marisha: And now for the third most downloaded episode, this was a solo episode that I did all about getting organized, and I love that this episode made it to the top of the list, and organization is definitely my love language. It makes my heart so happy that y'all humor me when I talk about all things organization. So be sure to head to episode two if you want to hear all of the different tips that I shared or if you listen to it and you're hoping to start the new year with some new inspiration to get organized, this would be a great one for you.

Marisha: And now for the second most downloaded episode of the year. The last two have a little bit of a... They're related here so it's super interesting to me, but it was episode six with Jennifer Taps Richards from SLpath.com. This episode was jam-packed with information. I got a lot of messages from you, and maybe this is why, but a lot of you relistened to this episode because it just had so much information. The episode was titled A Crash Course on the Complexity Approach for Rapid Intelligibility Gains, and it was definitely a crash course. And here's a quick snippet of it.

Jennifer: Most SLPs are familiar with the normative approach, the idea that we teach sounds in developmental sequence. That's been a historical practice in our field since really the beginning. Complexity takes this idea and completely turns it on its head. Instead, it advocates teaching phonetically complex, non-stimulable, and later mastered sounds. So this is a very different way of approaching helping kids to learn more probably about the sound system as opposed to one sound at a time. And it's really based on about more than 30 years of research studies and it applies linguistic principles to help SLPs with target selection.

Marisha: So be sure to check out episode six if you want to learn more about what the complexity approach is and then also if you want to learn how to implement this approach with your caseload. It's pretty magical and Jennifer definitely did not disappoint.

Marisha: And now for the most popular episode of the year, we have episode five with Shannon Werbeckes from Speechy Musings and I absolutely love getting to collaborate with Shannon and she never disappoints. Her resources and just the knowledge that she shares is so incredibly practical and relatable and just really helpful. So in episode five Shannon broke down the cycles approach for us, and this is one that can get a little bit confusing because there's all sorts of things going on, but she made it so approachable, digestible, easy to understand. She shares so many practical tips and some really helpful analogies that help make this process make so much sense. So let's take a quick listen at one of the many analogies that Shannon shared.

Shannon: I have kind of an analogy that I give to parents, because sometimes I think the hard thing for me, and I think parents, when trying to understand the cycles was like when do I move on to a different sound? When do I switch processes? Am I cycling through sounds or am I cycling through processes? And it gets kind of confusing what you're actually cycling through. So I give the analogy of if you were doing a physical body workout cycles style, you would have your arms, your legs, your abs, those would be your processes.

Marisha: Pretty amazing, right? Oh, so good. I am definitely going to be revisiting some, if not all, of these episodes myself, and that's a wrap. So head to SLPnow.com/32 to view a quick recap of the episodes if you're trying to decide which ones you want to use or if you want a little bit of a checklist. I cannot wait to share even more amazing conversations next year.

Marisha: If you want to help us find even more amazing speakers like the ones I just listed, please consider leaving a five star rating for the podcast. It makes a huge difference when we're reaching out to potential speakers and interviewees, and it just means a lot. I so appreciate it and it really helps us make this podcast even better. I so appreciate you. I hope you have an amazing holiday season and I cannot wait to see you again in the new year, and we'll definitely be back with more episodes just like these. Yeah, thank you guys.