Feeling overwhelmed with all of, the different options navigating the first few weeks of therapy. So, this is one of our meatier topics. We've got a lot to dive into here, and our plan is to kind of, talk through the four main things that we want to get done and this looks different in every district.

I know some SLPs start therapy on day one, and they just start their sessions, and they're doing all the things. Some districts have a little bit more lead time. The first week is, you have time to get things setup and then you start therapy.

So, this plan that we're talking through is just, kind of, once you start therapy what that would look like. So, in the first week or two of therapy we really want to focus on establishing rapport with our students, establishing routines and expectations, and then we also want to make sure that we have baseline data.

So, those are my top three priorities in the first week or two, and we'll talk about different strategies to make that happen. And then in week two or three is when I'll start actually with ... Starting with the actual therapy. And then we'll talk about what that looks like too.

So, the first thing that we want to do, is we want to establish rapport, and it might seem like, "Why would we take time to do that?" But we all know if we have a doctor who is not welcoming, and he's just, kind of, rough our interaction with him is much different than with a doctor who's friendly, and nice, and helpful. And we're probably going to get better results with this more friendly doctor.

And so, just taking some time, there's a lot of research behind it, there's some citations in the references at the end of these slides and so, it is worth taking some time to make that happen.

And some things that we might be able to do with our students are, just to check-in, talk abour our summers, what did we do? And it's also a great way to ... Because we're always looking at different components, this could be an opportunity to collect a language sample too, so we're collecting some data as we're establishing that rapport.

But let them tell us about their summers. I would model first and tell a story about my summer, and then everyone in the group could go around and tell a story about their summer. That could be an example, or we could just have a conversation about what we did over the summer and look at the interaction skills there.

So, we're always kind of, listening and taking in what the student is saying, but we also can use this as a way to start collecting that data and figure out where we're at.

Like, if we were working on K last year, and they're talking about how they went to camp with their beautiful K sound, then that's something that we'll note, and we always have our therapeutic brain on as we're doing these things.

Some other things that we might do if we're brand new to a school and getting to know these students for the first time, we might talk about what their interests are. What are their favorite things to do? And I often jot down notes so that I can be sure to incorporate some of their interests into therapy, because if they're engaged they'll also make that much more progress.

I also like talking about what their goals are. And we'll dive into this a lot more as we dive into the actual therapy components, but what do they want to be when they grow up? Do they have any goals for this year? Do they want to join the track team? Or do they want to accomplish ... Do they want to do some project or go on some vacation? What are their goals and how can we support them with that?

And then ... Yeah, just kind of, show your personality. Show your quirks and your interests. What are you interested in? Are you really funny? Do you like telling jokes? Are you a good storyteller? Are you a crafter? Do you make things? Bring in some of your interests into the therapy session too, because it helps the students get to know you and then it also helps make things a little bit more enjoyable for yourself as well as we're kind of, diving into all the things.

So, it works for our students, and it also works for us. And if we have a happy therapist, we have much more, awesome therapy sessions. So, that's important. Then we also want to take some time to establish routines. And we can do this in a number of ways.

And I'd like to talk about the why, behind routines as well, because it might make it feel like we're being robots, and it's super robotic, but there's actually a lot of research behind incorporating these routines into our therapy sessions, and it can be really helpful.

It makes it easy to incorporate evidence based practice into our sessions, because we can use these general principles that have been shown to improve student learning and outcomes, and we can use those to infuse our therapy sessions with those good practices.

And then it also makes it easier for our students. It gives them the cognitive resources to learn, because they're not struggling to figure out what's happening. They know what's happening, they know what to expect, and they can focus all of their resources on figuring out what to do, and how to make the most of the session, and how to really implement those new skills that we're teaching them, because that's what we want them to do. We don't want them to have to figure out what's happening in the session.

And then it also helps us. So, it frees up our own cognitive resources to be more flexible, and to do more problem solving, and to figure things out. And I think it's kind of, like a road trip map. If we know where we're going, if we are ... We're starting in Phoenix and we're going to New York. We're taking a road trip there, and we know that's where we're going. And if we know where we are, and where we're going, if there's a detour somewhere, if they're doing construction on one of the interstates or whatnot, it's easier to make that detour because we know where we are and where we're going. And we can more easily navigate that journey.

Whereas, if we're just like, "Where are we? What are we doing? Where are we?" And then it's just, much easier and just, less chaotic when we're trying to navigate the challenges that inevitably come up.

And it just helps increase student attention, engagement. Like I said, it gives them the resources that we need, and the research really does support taking precious minutes out of our sessions to do these different things. And we already talked about one of them, which involves the introduction, checking in with our students, kind of, establishing that rapport. And then we'll dive into the subsequent three steps as well.

So, with the introduction I like to take some time to check-in with the student. So, this goes along with establishing that rapport, and if I know that they love ... They do go-kart racing or something, and then I know that they had a race on Sunday and I'm picking them up on Monday for their session I can ask them how that go-kart race went.

And then in that conversation oftentimes other things come up. And I also like to do just, a general check-in with how they're feeling, and I'll give some different examples of visuals that we can use to do that check-in. And then I also review the goals, the students goals and I do that with the student, and that can be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons. And we'll dive into that in just a second too.

But first with that check-in. So, Nicole Allison has a free clip chart in her Teachers Pay Teachers store, and she uses it for behavior management, but I think it can also be helpful just to kind of, get it ... You can use it as an emotion check-in, if the student is ... If they're calm and ready to learn, they're green, or if they're kind of, sad or angry, maybe we can put them ... They can put themselves on yellow and red, and I would model this for the student first.

So, "My cat is sick, so I'm feeling a little bit worried and sad today, and I'm putting myself on yellow." But if they are like, "I won my go-kart race, I'm the champion," and they're super pumped up, they might put themselves on purple, because they're super pumped up and energetic.

And with either of those spans we could do some things to help them regulate and be in a place where they're ready to learn. Because, neither of those examples are going to be ready to learn. So, some examples that we could do are just doing a quick breathing exercise to ground ourselves.

We can dim the lights, we can have them sit in some kind of, alternative seating. Whatever will help kind of, bring them down or help them feel more comfortable. I've had ... I don't know, sometimes this is silly as a student, because I live in Arizona and it's hardly ever cold, but one of my students didn't have a coat, and he was freezing. And he wasn't going to pay attention to anything I was going to say, because he was just, so distracted by the fact that he was cold.

So, we, on the way from picking up, we just ran by the nurse and borrowed a coat and then he was ready to learn. So, sometimes it's just a quick little fix, or just a quick acknowledgement, a quick note, just something really simple and easy just to get them back on track.

And if they are very dysregulated we might have to take some other steps. Like, maybe they need to go back to class, and we need to see them another time, or maybe we need to change our plan for the session and do something that incorporates some more movement. We can be flexible and take that into consideration.

And you kind of, you learn this over time, and you learn to read the students, and you learn to know what is going to work and what won't work, but I think if you're still figuring that out this can be a good framework to start putting those puzzle pieces together, because sometimes it's just, not going to happen, and we need to find a way. And if it's a quick 30 second fix I will take that.

Another strategy that one of my special education teacher, friends uses is a temperature check. So, this is the visual that goes with it. And this matches up with what I was talking about with modifying Nicole's scale. But she has her students come in, and she sees larger groups, and so when they walk in they just put up fingers for how they're feeling.

So, if they are having the worst day ever they'll walk in with one finger up, or if it's the best day ever then they'll put a 10. And usually there's a verbal response that comes with their number. And then she uses those strategies too, and because she has larger groups she might get some students to start working while she checks in with the student who's having a one day, or the student who's having a 10 day and she just, kind of, triage's it as they come in that way. So, that's how that works.

And then for goal awareness, because I said I like to check-in with my students goals as one of the first things in the session. So, there's different ideas here. So, I've created some ... And you could actually get these for free, and I'll share it in the blog post too. I'll see if I can pull it up real quick for you in the chat too.

But I just have these little goal cards, and I have students write the goal in their own words, because I want to make sure that the student understands what their goal is. And sometimes we'll add ... It looks different for the different levels of students, but for some students we might add in a little bit about the why. Like, why that's important. I feel like all of, the middle school students that I've worked with want to become YouTubers, but that's convenient, because it works really well with a lot of our goals.

So, we'll just do a quick tie in, if they're working on story retell for example, that's important to be able to put together a good YouTube video. So, then we'll just make a quick tie in with that.

Another option ... So, I just print these out and just, cut little cards, and I store them in a pocket chart, and that's how I put that together. And I think this year I'll put them in the students actual folders, just in a little pocket. But both of those options could work.

And then they just grab that as they walk in the door, and then we review. And I usually just review one each time, like whichever one we're focusing on. And because they're paper clipped I can just shuffle them around. So, I can make sure that when we end the session the goal that we want to work on next is at the top.

But then we'll just check-in [inaudible 00:14:56] that goal and again, the student needs to know what they're working on for it to be effective, because otherwise they'll walk out of the speech room and say, like when someone asks them, "What do you do in speech?" Then they'll say, "Play games." But if we have this focus on the goals they'll know what they're working on. The research shows that it helps them make more progress and that awareness is so key, and so important.

So, here's the link to that. And so, there's just a quick, little, easy template that you can use to implement that. And then Nicole Allison also has some really cool common core posters. So, I did use this for a little while, I just made all of her posters and then I had the students grab the one that they were going to work on for the day.

I just thought ... Like, it just gets a little bit tricky, because then they ... I have to know what they're working on and then I have to help them find it, and it just took a little bit more time. And it wasn't personalized for their specific goal and their why. And so, I thought ... That's why I switched to more simple goal cards, but that's a really great resource too.

Okay. So, now we get to dive into teaching. So, we've done the beginning part of our session. We've checked in with students, we've helped them regulate, if need be, and then we help them ... We make sure that they know what their goals are.

The next component is to actually teach the skill. And this is one that I often skipped when I was first starting out, because I had ... It's not a focus in a lot of the things that you can purchase. If you purchase a workbook it's all practice, it's not teaching. And so, that's something that ... And if we're working on an articulation we obviously want to teach the placement before we have them practice it, because otherwise it's a disaster.

And so, that was one of my most common mistakes was that I would just skip that, and I didn't have the materials that I needed to really make sure that I could teach them well. Because a lot of these concepts, they're not super easy to explain. Like, we need visuals and things for students to look at.

Like, if I'm trying to explain past tense verbs just using my words the students get ... They get all the googly eyes, because it's not the most simple thing in the world, and I also don't want my students to depend on me and be ... Yeah, dependent on my verbal prompts and cues to be able to complete a skill. I want them to be more independent.

And that's where visuals come in. So, having a solid set of visuals for that teaching is key, because it helps break down the process for us, it helps us be more effective teachers of that skill, and then it also sets a student up for success and enables them to comprehend what we're talking about and make that happen.

So, we talked about this already, but I use the case load at a glance to break that down for myself, because it can be overwhelming to think about getting together visuals for 50 plus students who all have two, or three, or more goals, and navigating that process.

So, that's where the case load at a glance comes in. Just to find where the overlap is and to start building that library, and really getting the goals that we have ... The most common goals first, and then going from there.

So, that's a note on teaching. And then the next step is to dive into practice. And so, the research really focuses on using authentic context for therapy, and this is all ... it's all in our [inaudible 00:19:20] guidelines and there's a lot of research supporting the use of authentic context, and I think that it makes sense.

So, we want to make sure that we're supporting the student's ability to access the curriculum, like, to interact with peers, to participate in the classroom, because that's what our role is as school based SLPs, and the research shows that the best way to do that is to use context that naturally lend themselves to that.

So, if we want a student to participate in a social studies discussion we can bring some of that into the therapy room. And this is often referred to as curriculum based therapy, or literacy based therapy, because literacy is a huge component of the curriculum. And so, that's something that we want to think about as we're putting together that therapy.

And this could be a whole ... Like, I did a whole eight hour presentation just on this alone. So, we won't dive into all the nitty gritty behind that, but I just wanted to put that out there. And I'll share a quick example of just, how this ... Because I didn't always use this type of therapy, it was something that I learned to do over time.

But I was working with a student, he was in ... Yeah, he was in second grade, and he was making amazing progress towards his goals. I was so excited, and I went to tell the teacher like, "Look, Johnny is meeting all of these goals," and when I went to talk to her I showed her the goals and how he was meeting them, and she said, "Well, he doesn't do that in class, and he doesn't do that in class, and he doesn't do that in class."

And one of the examples was following directions. He could follow three step directions in my classroom, or in my speech room, but he wasn't following any directions in the speech room, or in the classroom.

And it was just, really ... And I observed him and I looked at some work samples, and there were some really, really simple examples of things that he totally should have been able to do based on what I was seeing in the speech room, but he just wasn't in the classroom.

And so, I was able to ... That was the big eye opener for me, and I was able to do some really little adjustments, like sharing some visuals with the teacher. One of his goals was working on WH questions, and they had ... So, this was in second grade, but they had simple questions with multiple choice visual answers, and it was just, a quick little quiz they did and he didn't answer any of them. And they were just simple WH questions. Something that we had been working on for a really long time.

And so, the teacher ... I just shared the WH questions visual that I was using in the speech room and then the teacher used that, and then we suddenly saw his performance increasing. Because I think they just, they don't always see how, what they do, especially for using drill cards and things like that, they don't see how that skill connects to what they're supposed to be doing in the classroom for some reason. I don't know, it's really interesting how that works.

But because I helped build that bridge he was suddenly starting to apply the concepts that he learned in speech to the classroom. And so, that was just, a really simple example, but it's just amazing the impact that I can have.

I could tell so many more stories of how just connecting what I was doing in the speech room to the classroom, how big of an impact that had for students. So, I know it's another thing to tackle, but if you're feeling good about this back to school stuff let me know and I'll share some resources there, because it's so huge.

Okay. And then another thing that we want to consider when we're providing practice is, that we want to facilitate success, we want to avoid that negative practice. If a student is constantly getting things wrong, then that motivation will start to tank, but then they're also not learning how to do it correctly.

So, it's kind of, a double edged sword there. And so, we get to use that prompting hierarchy that we're so incredibly good at, to provide students with the support that they need. And if we are pulling things from the classroom, if we are using text from the classroom those at a higher level than the worksheets that we might pull, or the decks of cards that we might be using.

So, we have to be especially mindful about the level of support that we're providing. So, we really have to step in and provide those different types of scaffolds and supports when we're using those more challenging materials in the therapy room, but we can do it. It works and it's totally doable.

So, one of the ways that we can do that, and just to make sure that we're being therapeutic when we're using these types of activity, is this framework by Ukrainetz, And it was in ... She describes it ... I'm sure there is other articles out there, but the best resource that I can share is her book Contextualized Language Intervention.

She does a really great job breaking down this framework and it's so helpful. And then it just ... I use it kind of, as a checklist to go through if I walk out of a session and I'm like, "Oh, that didn't go so well." I use this framework to figure out how I could improve, and to pinpoint what the issue was. And it works so well. It's amazing.

So, RISE, it stands for repeated opportunities. So, if we want to be therapeutic, we want to make sure that the student has repeated opportunities to practice the target skill.

So, if we are working on past tense verbs and we have them use one past tense verb one time, that's not enough repeated opportunities. They're not going to learn that one verb, and nonetheless all the other verbs that we need them to learn.

So, we want to have repeated opportunities. Then INTENSITY refers to what we decide when we set up their schedule or write their IEP in the first place. How often do we want to be seeing these students? And that's something that we, like I said, we decide as a team, usually on a yearly basis, but if they're really not making progress that's something we might want to revisit and look at.

And then the third section is systematic support. So, that's what we were just talking about. We want to make sure that we're providing those visuals, the verbal cues, those prompts and all of, the different scaffolds.

So, one example of a different type of scaffold could be reading something out loud for a student, or it could be working on a skill in a quiet room one on one, versus in the classroom.

And so, those are just, some different things that we can modify to set the student up for success and make the task more attainable. Then E stands for explicit skill focus, and that's what we ... We've got that covered with our goal cards.

So, when the student walks into a session they know which skill they're going to be targeting that session, and I typically focus on one skill and just focus on that. And maybe, if they're starting to master one we might incorporate more, or if we're doing an [inaudible 00:27:20] activity we'll do a little bit more.

But typically it's just, mainly focusing on one skill at a time, then we might jump between different skills or whatnot, but that's typically how that works. And the student just needs to know what they're working on at any given time to be able to check that box.

So, it's just, a really great framework. It's super helpful if you're diving into more of that contextualized practice, because it helps us ... It just makes sure that we're being stellar therapists. Rockstar therapists. And that's what we need to rock our school year, right?

So, then once we've gone through all of those different steps of the therapy process we want to recap the session. So, we can review performance, and we want to give them specific feedback. And it might be on actual task performance, or it might be on how hard they worked and giving that really specific feedback. Like, "I loved how you kept trying on the grammar game, even though it was really hard." And it's just, giving that specific feedback, instead of, "Good job," is really helpful.

And then for older students we can talk about how we might reflect on how the session went for us using our little framework, we can do that with older students too, and work on kind of, that self-awareness and that can be really key when it comes to generalization.

And then, we may do this on our own, or we may involve the students in the process, but the end of the session is a great time to make a plan for next time. Like, "Based on how things went what can we do next time, and what makes sense there?"

And we might also assign some homework and give them some extension activities to work on. And then just, any connections that we can make. If we worked on something that is related to what they're doing in the classroom we can have a mini ... We can just make a quick plug there. Like, "Hey, we worked on this vocabulary and this is what you're going to use later today in your reading class." Or, "Hey, we just worked on ..." For some of my students it was ... Like, my third grade teachers had a professional goal to ... I forget what the goal was called, but their group goal was to achieve a certain percent mastery on these really challenging word problems that they had to do, and that involved a lot of language.

And when they were talking about it, it was like, "Oh, that would make sense for all the students that I was working with in their classroom." Because it involved their different vocabulary, and syntax, and comprehension types of goals, because it involved understanding the math word problem and then explaining their reasoning, which is so good for language.

I never thought I would do math activities in speech, but I did. And so, we were able to ... Sometimes we worked on the actual word problem, and sometimes we worked on the component skills, but we always connected it back to, "Okay, so we did this type of thing, and this is going to help you in this way."

And so, we just, kind of, helped to bridge that gap. And maybe, even make a plan for how they could use their strategies. If I taught them a specific strategy, if I taught them a strategy for using context clues like, "Next time you see ... The next word that you see, that you don't know in your whatever textbook, then do this." And we would make a plan and sometimes they don't do it, but at least we're planting that seed.

And then I just mentioned this briefly, and we'll talk about homework more in the parent section, but additional practice can be really important for carry over and continued practice. And I will be the first to admit this is something that I struggled to put together, so I'm excited to share some different ideas and strategies in the parent communication section, but we have lots of different options.

We can send home worksheets, we can send home folders, we can use communication apps, or we can send home monthly handouts. Whatever it may be. We can get creative, but as long as we have ... Or we can reach out to parents and have phone calls every so often, but I think that extension piece is really important, and if we can get parents on board then that is always a win.

So, that's the overview of what we want to do with our therapy routine, and hopefully that gives you some different ideas. Hopefully you're doing a lot of these already, and so it's a confidence boost of like, "Yep, check. I'm doing that. Check, check, check." And then maybe there's one or two things that you might want to implement in your own therapy routines. Some new ideas or some tweaks and adjustments that we can add to just, keep stepping things up.

And just one note here is that, this isn't always a parallel, or just a nice, little cycle. Some sessions, we might have to spend a lot more time in that check-in phase. And sometimes we'll spend almost a whole session teaching. Sometimes we'll just get to dive, quickly run through those in a matter of seconds, and spend our whole session with practice and just a quick wrap up.

And so, it just, really varies. And sometimes we might start with a check-in, we might start teaching and do practice, and then have to go back to check-in. And, so, we're constantly adjusting and it's not like, "Okay, first three minutes are check-in, then we do our teaching for three minutes, and then we practice, and then we wrap up." It's not always going to be the same, and that's okay.

And it shouldn't be exactly the same each time, because our work dynamic, our students are dynamic, our sessions are dynamic, and their brains are learning and adjusting. And so, it's not supposed to just be a perfect little cycle. And so, I think that's helpful to consider and know in case you think it is supposed to be that way.

And then it also might not apply perfectly to all types of students. So, some students might need a slightly different routine, and they might need different components in the session to help them be successful.

And so, we can use the data and use that RISE framework, and all of those different components, use our problem solving skills to figure out if something's not working, and if we need to make a change.

And that's why we're spatially rich pathologists, and not speech robots, because we get to make those decisions and really analyze what we're seeing in our sessions to make the best decisions, and adjustments for our students.

Okay. So, now we got through the routine and we're diving into some baseline data. So, this is something that ... So, I went into quite a bit of detail on the routine, and we just want to kind of ... We want to just, establish some of, the expectations around that. And our initial sessions might not include ... Well, our very first session with a student might include a check-in and it might include some of that.

Maybe it will include some teaching, and instead of teaching a specific skill we'll be teaching about the routine, and then we'll practice different components of the routine.

So, you could look at it that way, or you could just, like with older students you can explain, "Okay, so, when you come in you grab your goal cards and then we kind of, get ready for what we're going to practice today. And we just do some teaching, and then we actually practice it, and then we're going to wrap up."

And you can talk about it in student friendly terms, kind of, how I just went through it. Or you can just teach it in action and not have as many words around it. So, there's just, different ways to set that up at the beginning of the school year.

I saw one SLP who had ... She made four pieces of colored paper for the four steps of the routine. And she just ... I think she used a paper clip or something to move through the different sections for her students, so they knew what to expect. And then I imagine as they came in being like, "Okay, so, we're going to do our check-in and then we're going to ... We're doing some new things today, so we're going to spend more time teaching and we'll just do a little bit of practice." And maybe she used it that way.

So, there's just, some different ideas depending on what you're group need. But before we dive into all of, the therapy, we want to have an idea of where we're starting. And I think it's important to first build that ... Establish that rapport, build those routines, but then we also want to know where we're starting, like I just said.

And so, you can do this in a number of ways. It really depends on what your schedule is, and how quickly you're starting therapy. For some of my schools I would have to wait for all of, the other schedules to be put in place, and sometimes it took a really long time and I didn't have my official therapy schedule until a week or two into the school year. I think one time it even took longer than that. I'm not sure though.

But I didn't have my set group schedule, so I decided just to start pulling students individually and gathering their baseline data that way. So, I'd just run through my probes and just, update that, so then when they started coming together in groups it was just, really easy, I knew exactly where everyone was, and I didn't have to deal with trying to take data while managing other students.

And I think that's ... If you have the option to do that, that's really amazing and you could just have your probe week, and it's a good opportunity to check-in with students individually. If some of them are more shy, or just, maybe they're more likely to open up if they're not surrounded by their peers.

So, that's one option, if that works for you. I really liked using that in the past, but another option could be to ... Because if you're doing this in a group you might just have some different activities going on that are related to establishing that rapport or even diving into some skill practice right away.

So, you could set up stations, if you're going to do a book unit maybe you can have one station where the students are doing probes with you, and then another station has where they're doing ... They're listening to the book on audio and that can be a station where they're going through that.

And then another station can be where they're doing a pre-story knowledge activation and you can just have them move around, or you can have a back to school themed activity. So, there's different ways that you can set this up if you're not able to see students individually, but I think that's ... It's just, a really good use of time to get that figured out right from the start.

And then in terms of organizing this, on the goal cards that I showed you guys I just started writing the number ... A number that corresponds to that goal, and I just have a massive binder that has all of, the different assessments in it that I want to use.

So, then when I pull up a student's goal card I can see what number that is, and then I just flip to that tab, because they have super cool, mega number tabs and I just flip to the tab, give them the assessment that corresponds to their actual goal, and that measures it in the way that it needs to be measured. I just collect that data and enter it into my online system, and I don't keep all the paper sheets, I just have the template that I run through, and that's how I organize that.

But you can ... If you want to have data sheets, probe sheets for each student you can put that together too. There's all the options in the world to make this work. So, those are my tips for gathering baseline data, but I would strongly suggest that you revisit the students IEP goals and make sure that the probe matches up with how the goal is written, otherwise Parker's report time will not be very fun.

And I think it's a really good habit to make sure that you have probes or assessments for the goal when you put it into the IEP going forward, and that's just an action step that I add to my checklist to make sure that I'm getting that set up so that I am totally set up for success and ready to go.

And that prepares us for therapy. And we have got a really good start already. The students know their goals, we have a routine around our session, we have a way to collect data, we know where we're starting and hopefully, if we did like that case load at a glance, we have the visuals that we need to teach the skill and then we just need to find something ... Once we have those pieces together we just need glue for the session. We need something to piece it all together to work on all of those different skills.

And this is more of a logistics type of course. We won't be diving into too much detail on how to do all of, the contextualized intervention and all of that. Like I said, that would be a whole other day seminar, but hopefully we'll be able to walk away with some quick, actionable tips to make this happen in the meantime.

So, we talked about this quite a bit already in terms of the SLPs curriculum. We don't have a textbook or anything, but we have a built in set of strategies and you are your best therapy tool, or your best therapy resource. All of, the strategies and the knowledge that you have in your brain are what help your students make progress.

Sure, it's nice to have a great activity, but you have ... Your brain is what is driving that change with the students. So, that is incredibly important. How we structure our sessions, and what we're doing in the session really matters.

But it can be helpful to have some additional supports, and visual supports are huge and there's some really nice research behind that. We've talked about it a little bit, but some of, the ... It can help us structure our therapy, it increases student independence, because we don't have to talk as much. We can refer to the visual, instead of going into a whole spiel explaining how something is or how it works ... Sorry about that.

And then it's also easy to fade the use of the visuals. So, when we start introducing a skill we can hold it right in front of the student, we can point to it, we can talk through it, we can reference it all the time, and then as they start to understand the skill we can maybe, just point to it without using any words, or we can just put it on the student's desk and not point to it.

And so, it's really easy to gradually fade the use of that and just, kind of, as the student makes progress we can back off, and it's just, really easy to do that with a visual, because we have more [inaudible 00:44:30] there.

And then we can also ... Like I shared in the story, it's easy to share that with teachers to help with generalization, if we have a visual that's really working for a student we might print a mini version and put it on their desk, or we might put it in their binder, like, in their math binder and so, when they open up to do that crazy math word problem they'll have whatever strategy I taught them to make that ... To help them be more successful with that.

So, that can be a really great strategy. And then, it can be time consuming to create this, but that's why we have that case load at a glance, and we just tackle it one by one. We can conquer anything, just one little step at a time.

And so, just taking the time to build that up is a really, really great use of time. And we can find these materials in a number of places. So, sometimes the best visuals are a Crayola marker and a white piece of paper, and we just knock it out in the session.

And sometimes that's all we need, and sometimes those are the best visuals, because they're made specifically for the student. We can pull ... Sometimes teachers will have really great visuals, and it's nice to be able to pull from what they're using in the classroom to help bridge that gap.

Sometimes that doesn't do the trick though, and sometimes they need something a little bit more specific, or the teachers don't always have the best visuals to explain how certain skills work.

So, we can also go to Teachers Pay Teachers. There's lots of options on there. And then I have the SLP Now Membership, which includes lots of different visuals as well. So, that's another option to find some of those visuals.

And here are just a couple examples to give you some ideas. So, these are some of my favorites. The Expanding Expression Tool, which I'm sure most of you, if not all of you have heard of. It's a really great multi-sensory tool. I think students just connect with it right away, and it's a nice way to build on some describing skills, and that's a nice example of a different type of visual. It includes the sensory element as well.

Nicole Allison does a really great job with her intervention binders. She does a great job of breaking skills down for our students, and she has some really nice examples there. I have created a bunch of different sets of visuals as well. I have these, just, little strips that I used to hang on my therapy wall, and they just include super, super, super quick, simple explanations of different skills.

Since then I've moved to bigger visuals that go into a little bit more detail, and that helps scaffold different parts of the skill. And I just store them in a file tote in this roller bag. I think it's meant for ... It's from Michaels and it's meant for sewing machines actually, but it fits my visuals perfectly. So, I just put this file tote inside and then I label all of, the different skills that we're working on, and then you can see that I also have my assessment binder in there.

But I like this system because I can just wheel it close to my therapy table, and then if I go into the classroom or if I go to a different school it's just easy to transport my most used therapy materials, and it just works really well.

If students get familiar with a system and they're able to just pull their visual for whichever skill we're working on, and that works really well. And I just print and store them in sheet protectors, because I feel like ... Well, that's the fastest way to get started, because we don't all have a ton of time on our side.

And it works well, because we can easily make copies and we can use dry erase markers to right on the sheet protectors, and it's just, really easy and simple. So, that's my motto, "If it can be easy and simple we can go with that." So, those are some examples.

Here are some more. So, this is how I used to organize my skill packs too. I would put the little manipulative cards in a little pencil pouch, and then I would put the visuals, and assessment, and practice pages in a plastic portfolio folder and that, I would just have a folder for each skill and then I would pull that. So, that's an option if you like focusing ... If you like everything for one skill to be in the same place.

And then the tote here, it's like a deconstructed version of that. And I thought that just worked a little bit better with my workflow, but I wanted to share the other example in case that's helpful.

And then this, I used to have this cart and I would store the different folders up top, and I just used a binder clip and just cut out a little piece of sticky labels to label the different skill packs. So, if you're looking for ideas to organize those, that's one idea.

And I kept this close to my therapy table, because it just had the stuff that I used most often. You can see it has some books in there, and some different worksheets and activities. I have my iPad right there, because I like to pull up some different activities on the tablet too. So, that's one option.

This is just showing on the left, we have an example of the different visuals hanging on the wall, and then another option could be to use one of these carts with all the drawers in it to organize the different visuals as well.

So, just throwing some ideas out there in case one of them gets you particularly excited. And so, we've got a really great system going. We've got our routine, our data, a plan for our visuals and now we just need something to piece it all together.

And so, I've just got a couple examples for you, and then we'll dive into the next module. So, the first thing is, this is an example of how I worked on narrative skills, or story retell using a book called The Gingerbread Man Lose in the School.

And I really like this one around the holidays. A lot of times they'll do some ... Usually in the younger grades they'll do some fairytales, but this book is appropriate too for the older students, like if they're doing anything related to gingerbread, stuff in the classroom I take any chance I get to pull this one, because it's like a cartoon.

So, the older students are receptive to it, and it's just, it's a nice ... It's an easier read, but it still has really great vocabulary and different targets. And great for compare and contrast, and comparing and contrasting to the original story and all of that good stuff.

So, that aside, when we were working on story retell, this is just a snippet of a small activity that I did. I typically have a month long unit where I dive into a book, into a lot of detail and we work on all of their different goals in the context of the book.

And the story retell activity is one of the things that we do later in the unit, because it's a great way to integrate a lot of different skills.

So, there's so much research on there. I did a presentation on vocabulary a couple months ago, and there was so much research on using story retell as meaningful opportunities to practice vocabulary targets.

We're creating sentences in our story retell, so it's a great opportunity for embedded grammar practice. It's a great opportunity for perspective taking. I just talked to a social language expert and she uses narratives and story retell in her social language group, specifically because it's such a great activity for that.

So, there's so many great activities that we can ... Or great skills that we can target in the context of a book like this, and story retell just incorporates so many of the goals in one, nice activity. So, this is an example of how I did that with The Gingerbread Man Lose in the School and I just used some of my different story cards to help scaffold their retell of the story.

I also have sets of visuals that students could use to match the appropriate story grammar element, but with this group of students they were a little bit more advanced and they didn't need the visual support, we could just fill in the graphic organizer.

And as you can see we did a very, very simple version, because the goal is for them to retell the narrative, and I just wrote down enough for them to be able to retell this story.

So, it's not like, writing out the whole sentences necessarily, unless that's a support that the student working on syntax for example, need it. It's just, a really great way to combine all of these different skills.

And then this is an example of what that looks like for Little Red Riding Hood. And this is just the example of the interactive activity. So, all of these are little, interactive pieces and I used sticky tack to attach them to the organizer, and then we can move them off, we can stick them to the board, we can stick them in pages of the book. Lots of different options there.

And then I also have the vocabulary cards and the WH question cards. I just store those, it's kind of, hard to see, but this is a little pocket from the Target dollar spot that I use to store those little cards.

So, that's just an example of how I put that together. And again, like I was talking about with The Gingerbread Man Lose in the School, we go through an entire five step unit where we start with pre-story knowledge activation, because a lot of our students are missing some of that background knowledge that they really need to comprehend the unit.

And of course, this is customized and adjusted for each student, in each group depending where they are. So, we know, as clinicians we can use that clinical decision making to figure out what makes the most sense for our students, but we start with some pre-story knowledge activation, then we read the story, we do comprehension activities.

Which a lot of times does include the story grammar activity sheet, because it includes a lot of comprehension. They have to know who is in this story? When did this story happen? Where did it happen? What was the problem?

And so, that involves a lot of initial comprehension and then once they're comprehending it, then we can move onto really specific skill practice and diving into all of those components. And then we work on integrating, practicing those skills, and then integrating them in the subsequent steps of the unit.

And so, that's a super, super quick overview, but if you're interested in learning more, like I said, happy to share different resources there.

And then this is an example of what we could do with a narrative organizer without printing it out, if you're just trying to do some digital therapy to get yourself started.

So, I pulled this into an app called Notability and I will share these names in just a second. But Notability is an app that you can use to ... You can take a picture and draw all over it, you can import a PDF and draw all over it, you can add pictures to PDFs, like I'm doing here.

So, with this one the students needed more support, and so we took a picture of the character in the book and used it to fill in the organizer. And then afterwards we can print it out or do whatever we need to do to support the students there. But it's just, a really great way to add additional visual supports, if they need those.

And then just a couple more ideas, and then we'll move onto the next sections. So, now just one other idea for following directions. If we're sticking with The Gingerbread Man unit and we're just needing some different extension activities to work on following directions, in general I would target directions in the context of therapy.

And so, if they have a goal to follow directions I would identify what's causing them to struggle with those directions. Like, if they're missing some of, the vocabulary that they need to understand the direction, I would target that, or if it's more of a attention or kind of, executive function strategies we can dive into those and target those in the context of the session.

So, I would give them additional directions and give them visuals to work on those strategies, but sometimes we just need a little to really hone in those specific strategies, we want to dive into some more of the specifics and give them lots of repetitions in one go, so they can really understand and use this strategy.

So, one example of doing that is, I have different visual instructions for different crafts, and I don't know if there's anything else quite like that, where they have the different pictures of the crafts, but you can find YouTube videos and take screenshots of different steps and any kind of procedure.

But then I just cut out the different steps of the cards and then I'll verbally give the directions as I show it and pair it with the following directions organizer. So, if one of the things we're working on is syntax, then I definitely want to use something like this, because I want to get them more meaningful exposures to the different directions.

So, the directions with, after in the middle, actually have a reversal and that's so confusing. So, if I say, "Dance after you laugh," the student has to laugh first and then dance, and it's just out of order and it's like [inaudible 01:00:19]. I am sure you guys know with out of order directions.

So, with this type of activity we can do something that's related to what we're working on, all the other students can still use the different vocabulary that we've been working on, but the student working on following directions has the opportunity to practice using this more complex syntax and we can manipulate the pictures and move them around. And I can give him directions as he makes his craft, or if there's another student working on it, maybe she can give the directions to the other students and then she has the opportunity to give the directions to multiple students in the group.

So, those are just a couple ways to work on that. I am trying to share as many ideas as possible, but then still staying on track with the time. So, let me know if you're wanting any other specific ideas, but I just thought I'd throw that out there.

And this works with older students too. So, I was reading an article about forensic science with a group of middle schoolers, and you might be thinking, "Oh, those are Fisher-Price animals. Why did you do that?" But that was all that I had in the therapy room at the time that would work to navigate this different vocabulary.

And it actually ended up being a really amazing lesson, but we used the same framework where we go through the five steps of doing pre-story knowledge, activation of reading, comprehension, specific skill practice and all of that.

But with these students when we're working on vocabulary there's some research to show that pre-teaching the vocabulary is very helpful, and I was just learning this when I was working with this group of students.

So, I didn't do that initially, and we just read the article and I did the comprehension activities, and they didn't comprehend any of the article. Like, the vocabulary. Detective, evidence, victim, suspect, criminal. That was really tricky for them.

And so, we were able to go back, and we changed the order a little bit. It was like, an example of what I was talking about with that graphic. We changed the order and we started working on the vocabulary first, I taught them those words, I gave them tons of exposure, tons of meaningful exposures to those vocabulary words, and then we read it again and did the comprehension and were able to dive into all of those activities and comprehension just, it went through the roof.

And they even retained the words when they went into the classroom. So, this works with older students. I know I gave some more examples with the younger ones, but we can use the same framework and maybe not use Fisher-Price animals, maybe we should have just printed out pictures of ... Like, it would have been so fun to have pictures of people in magazines or something. That might have been a little more appropriate, but it worked for this example and sometimes you just use what you have.

But some really helpful sites are Reading A to Z. That's where I got the forensic science article. And that was ... A teacher was using that and I decided to support what they were doing in the classroom. That was really great. News at ELA is great. They offer leveled articles. So, that's really nice if one of your teachers happens to be using Newsela, and your students are at a lower reading level you could pull the same article at a lower level and still use that in your instruction.

And that is a really nice way to scaffold and support students, and then when they go participate in the discussion they still have an understanding of the basic concepts, which is really helpful. And then ReadWorks is one of my favorites too. And I actually started creating month long units around some of their articles. So, if you're looking at implementing this and want some materials I'd love to share some examples of that with you.

Marisha: Welcome to the SLP Now Podcast. We are in for a treat today. We have a bit of a unicorn for our guest speaker. Rose Griffin is an ASHA-Certified Speech-Language Pathologist and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. There are very few SLP, BCBAs out there in the world, so she's definitely unique, and she has a very amazing set of experiences and just a wealth of knowledge to share with us. She's the founder of ABA Speech. She creates therapy materials, and she has a tremendous amount of resources, everything that we would need to work with students with autism. She's super passionate about helping those students increase their language skills. She just does it in such a skillful and practical way. Without further ado, I'm excited to introduce Rose Griffin.

Rose Griffin: Hi, happy to be here.

Marisha: I'm so excited to hear from you about all things high school. You have a really amazing breadth of experience in that area. Can you start us off just telling us a little bit about your experience, and which population you work with now, and what it's looked like over time?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, definitely. I've been a speech-language pathologist for about 16 years now. I can't believe it. I feeling like I'm seasoned. I can use that word to describe myself. Also, it's been eight years since I've also been dually certified as a board certified behavior analyst. I really loved working with students with autism. I can remember my first student teaching experience. I had a mentor who had some very severe students, who had autism. I really just loved working with them. I thought it was very challenging, very rewarding, and so I've really focused on that population and trying to help them.

Rose Griffin: I love working with all students, but it seems that when you love working with students with problem behavior and students with autism, that you tend to just get a lot of clients like that, because it can be really hard to reach that population. Right now, I'm currently a school-based therapist, three days a week, and I work in a middle school high school. Then I work one day a week at an ABA type school for students with autism. I really love both those different settings, because both have their pros and their cons, and I like seeing the students thrive in both of those settings.

Marisha: That's so amazing. What does your caseload look like at both of the locations?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, so at the middle school/high school, I have... I'm three days a week there, so I have all different types of students. I have students with more severe autism up to students who have stuttering as a disability and up to students who just need somebody to check in on social skills or comprehension and all those higher level skills. I work a lot, collaboratively, with the intervention specialists, the teachers, and I really love that, and being able to push in, more so when the students get a little bit older, for students who are a little bit higher functioning, to see how they're applying the skills and things like that.

Rose Griffin: It can be anything from real intensive, more ABA type instruction to things where I might be checking on somebody quarterly for their fluency. I really like being able to serve each student really individually. I'm really able to do that in the district that I work in. Then, at the ABA-type center, that's a year-round program, and so my students there range from elementary through high school age. It's more intensive, and so I work real closely with... A lot of those students have somebody who's a one-on-one instructor, and so I work real closely with showing them modeling, how to work on communication, because the communication is worked on, really, in both places, but it's worked on when the student is not in speech therapy. I know that somebody is also working on those communication programs when I am not around, which is really exciting, because that's how we really make progress for students with more intense needs.

Marisha: Yeah, no, that's so important, and I love the... because there's a lot of research on that piece too, where we need that many more repetitions for them to be able to put all of those new concepts together. That's super smart.

Rose Griffin: Yes, thank you, yes. It's very collaborative, so that's really, I think, the longer that I've been in this field... If you're newer to the field, I would say that's my best piece of advice is to make sure that you know everybody on the team. Sometimes when you're working with students with more intense needs, the team can be 15 people, because it could be a school-based therapist, a private therapist, an outside consultant, a parent, parent advocate, it gets job coach.

Rose Griffin: It gets really complicated, and just trying to touch base with those people and know who they are and having an open dialog, even if we're not always agreeing on everything, I think is a real important piece into helping students, especially students who are older, who might be getting ready for competitive employment and vocational sampling, and then you're dealing with adult services, and people from outside agencies, and things like that as well.

Marisha: Yeah, wow. That's a lot, lots of people to keep track of.

Rose Griffin: Yes, it is.

Marisha: I'm really curious now, because we're focusing on more of the life skills students in our talk today. I want to start from the very beginning, what recommendations do you have when planning assessments for those students?

Rose Griffin: That's such a good question. I think what's so important is the ABA center that I work at sends out a questionnaire for parents. We in the public school also talk with their parents. We have really open communication. I love the questionnaire, because sometimes, even if you're communicating with parents, you may not understand exactly where they're coming from, or you may not understand what's really important to them.

Rose Griffin: I've had meetings before where maybe I'm working on a device with a student, and then you get to the IEP meeting, and the parents are happy, but then they ask you to put on a vocal goal, to work on a to work on a Coach training or verbal imitation, and then you are thinking, well where did that come from? I think having that, starting with that parental piece and seeing what's really important for the parents, it's obviously your clinical expertise, and we do assessments, and we collaborate with all the staff.

Rose Griffin: But I do think having an idea of really what's important for the parents is so very important because I just think now that I have three kids of my own, how much pressure it is to come into an IEP meeting, especially when there may be a lot of people around the table, and we're talking about potentially all the things that are really troubling and difficult for your child, that's going to be really daunting.

Rose Griffin: I realize that the more that I get into the field. Making sure that we listen to the parents, we hear them, we make sure that they get a draft early of the IEP so they can give us feedback, I think that's critical and working with these students. As far as assessment, I think that when we're working with students with more intense needs, I like the communication matrix, I like the functional communication profile. Those are things that we usually readily have available. But there are other things from the other world that I'm in the behavioral world, there's an assessment called the AFLS, A-F-L-S and it's a really cool assessment because it has a whole section on leisure.

Rose Griffin: It has a whole section on ideas related to activities of daily living. It would be something that you do collaboratively with a teacher and there are things on social skills, basic academics, communication, and I think it just is a little bit more specific and let's you tease out what would be important for your students to work on. I really like that assessment and so sometimes we will use that, and I really think it helps you get a really robust intervention plan for students.

Marisha: Can you tell us a little bit more about the communication matrix, and the functional communication profile?

Rose Griffin: Yeah. The communication matrix is a free online tool that inaudible

Marisha: That's so amazing.

Rose Griffin: I think I started using it maybe seven years ago just cause I had a student who I knew was not going to be able to perform on a standardized tests. We weren't going to be able to get much information. I like to use those types of tools. If I'm working with a student who is really about language level that's so impaired that you want to use something like that, I remember sitting and working with the teacher and also the pair of professionals that we're working with that student, because while I may be servicing the student and seeing the student maybe even twice a week, there are other people who are going to be working with the student and may be able to answer some of the guiding questions that they have on that measure. If you just Google that, it comes up, and it's a free online tool. It's a really cool tool when you need it.

Marisha: Yeah, and what do you do... Can you tell us a little bit more about what it actually looks like and how you use that tool?

Rose Griffin: Sure, yeah. I haven't used it in a couple of years, but there're guiding questions that help you set up a user profile and then it will ask you different questions and it's all dependent upon how you answered it and it will give you information on what level learner you have and then ideas for what would be potential intervention goals for that student. I think that's nice because sometimes when we have students who are not going to perform on a standardized test, it's just not going to give us a good snapshot. It's not going to be powerful information to plan intervention but that can be a really nice thing to set up.

Rose Griffin: The functional communication profile is more of a booklet and it goes through all the different types areas of language, and it looks at social skills and all the different parts of language and it can be nice because you can just go through with paraprofessionals and teachers if you're able to include them, and you can go through and say like, "Oh, this is something that's a strength. This is something that we could work on." Because a lot of the times if you're not going to get a standardized score for a student and if you're working in a place where you don't have to administer a standardized test, those other resources might be more powerful as far as planning your intervention for students.

Marisha: I love a lot of different things about that because it gives us an opportunity to open up that conversation and get feedback from the team and then if they were in on the evaluation and identifying the needs, then there'll be more likely to collaborate with us. Then it's also really nice from an IEP perspective because it's breaking things down where it's really easy to identify the needs, but also the strengths. Because if we give them a standardized test and they don't even get any items correct, then it's really nice to be able to bring up those strengths in the meeting too.

Rose Griffin: Yes, yes. I think that's really nice because we want to be able to say, this is what the student can do. This is where we want to get for the student to help them really be the most independent communicator that that can be. Especially as a student gets older, we know that we may not necessarily be able to close some gap for students, but as they get older, really think about how can I help this student be the most independent communicator? How can I help this student learn vocational skills, so they could potentially have competitive employment and how could we help the student have leisure skills? Because a lot of the times the students that we work with have very impaired leisure skills and that really isolates them even from their family. If there is not shared things that they can do together, it makes them feel very isolated in the community, should they have problem behavior that is a barrier to them accessing the community.

Rose Griffin: We try to do a lot of community based instruction that has... One year we took all the kids, it was amazing right to the library because it was right by our school and so we did a whole task analysis, which is just breaking up in a very baby steps, how to check out a book using a self scan with your library card. We took a video, so it was video modeling and then we had baseline all the kids being able to do it. Then before we would do the checkout, everybody would come and watch me, this video I had completed and then they would go and do the skill because there's so much research on video modeling and so we really want to just make sure that everything that we're working on for students that we can really explain why it's so functional for them, for their life.

Marisha: I love that. It's really looking at what do they need to have a good quality of life and have a good life, a happy life.

Rose Griffin: Exactly, happiness. That's important.

Marisha: Yeah, that's amazing. You get to play a part in that every day, which is really awesome.

Rose Griffin: Yeah, for sure.

Marisha: I love it. We started touching on this a little bit, but so you've gathered all of this data, you know what the parents' priorities are, you've collaborated with the teachers and getting their feedback on how the student is performing, what the strengths and needs are, how do you put that all together? Do you have any favorite strategies in terms of generating goals for the IEP?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, I think that what's so important if you're able to do it, and I think everybody has different ways that they write goals. But what I try to really do with my teachers for even higher students, lower students who are struggling, is to have shared goals with the teachers. If we're working in a public school trying to discuss with the intervention specialist, or special education teacher whatever, you call them in your state, ways that you could have shared goals. If we have a student who has a vocational goal and maybe they're working on recycling or they're shredding papers, how can we come up with a step by step way to teach them those skills and how can we... Obviously communication is going to be embedded in there. I have a student who's working on shredding, so she orients to the teacher, she uses a device to say, do you have any shredding?

Rose Griffin: She makes that all on her own. I have another student who's working on recycling. So following the one step direction, it's time to do recycling, get the recycling box, can they do that independently? There's so much communication that's embedded that I try to make sure that the goals are shared when possible because I know that during my time with the student, I'm working on those. I also know that when I'm not present in the classroom that they're also being run either by the paraprofessional who I collaborate with to make sure they understand the vision for the goals and how we should be prompting and things of that nature, and also will be run by the teacher if possible.

Marisha: Yeah, that's so smart. Can you give us just a handful of different ideas? You talked about writing goals around shredding around recycling, what other types of areas might you focus on?

Rose Griffin: I think it's really important to have a vocational goal, especially as students get older, and I think what's so hard at the middle school high school level is you have to be a detective in your own building. You have to seek out these opportunities for work within your own building because as students go into high school, then they might have other opportunities based on your district to jobs sample outside of the school. Then in middle school you really need to set those up. We have students who work in our cafeteria, who are stocking snacks and stocking silverware. We have students who are making copies for teachers, and we have a student who... I loved this one goal, I had a student who is working in the library.

Rose Griffin: I was really almost like a job coach. I hung back and try to give the students space and they had to say I'm here for my job. Every week it was something different and we made a video model for that, how to sort the books by color and alphabetical order. Why I love working with older students, it's this culmination of all these things that we work on. We work on matching, we work on maybe ABC order, and then to really apply those skills into a more general setting, a more natural setting. It's really exciting because you're getting the student ready to potentially have competitive employment. I really love seeing that application.

Rose Griffin: I think vocational skills are super important because there's so much communication, or I have a student who's working on greetings, can definitely greet familiar people, but as soon as they are outside of the classroom, they're not generalizing that skill, and that's such an important, we call that a soft skill, something that you need to do. I'm sure that we've worked with adults who maybe don't have the best social skills either at work, but it's important because you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you don't have those types of pleasantries worked on. That's something that we're working on for that student.

Rose Griffin: I think if the student has language issues and they need more intense instruction and that's super important too that making sure that we have vocational programming, and then leisure skill building is really important because if you think about our lives as adults, and that's what I always try to do, it's like what is my life comprised of? My life is comprised of work and my life is comprised of obviously taking care of my kids, but it's comprised of leisure. I have a lot of different things I like to do. I like to work out, I like to spend time with my kids. I like to play music, things like that and trying to make sure that our students have those same opportunities and oftentimes may need direct instruction on how to engage in leisure skills, to make sure that's something that we look at.

Marisha: What are some examples of things that you do with leisure skills?

Rose Griffin: For leisure skills, I've had students who work on independent leisure skills. If students... Because you think of somebody having competitive employment, maybe they have a 15-minute break and what would they do during that break time? Now the iPad is amazing, I became a speech therapy before that even existed, I think as a tool but not every student likes to watch movies or do they like to listen to music? It can be really hard to be the detective to say these are things that are important for a student.

Rose Griffin: For people on the outside, they may think well, why would that even be important? But, well, I'll tell you what, it's important for that parent that the parents, let's say that that student has decreased leisure skills and doesn't enjoy the iPad and they have to go see family, and it's an hour car ride, can you think of how horrendous that would be for them? Can you think about maybe having to go on a family trip and staying in the airport? You know how hard these things are and if we have those leisure skills, those things that we can enjoy either independently or with others, there's really such a ripple effect.

Rose Griffin: I think that's the important thing to think about too. It's like we are the speech therapist. We were advocating for why these things are so important. It's not only important at school, but it's important in all these different environments, and it's really not only going to have an impact on your students, it's going to have an impact on their family life, their access to the community, all those different things.

Marisha: I also heard you talk a lot about modified leisure, and what does that look like?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, I think modified leisure is so important for students, especially students who are older because we can teach the student these skills maybe in a one-on-one session and then we can generalize it to a group and then we could also generalize it to the home environment, so they could have some more of those shared experiences with their family and friends. A couple of the things that I've done with students in the past, I had a student who we played Connect Four, but instead of strategically trying to get four in for this student that would have been too difficult, so what we did was he chose a color, either red or black, and he put it in a red one. I put in a black one, he put in a red one, I put in a black one.

Rose Griffin: It was cool because I was seeing this student, I've had him in a lot of different training videos that I do and for my course, Help Me Find My Voice, so you may be familiar with him and so we would do that. Then I was able to talk to the parent as well cause I saw him also for outpatient therapy and it was the coolest thing he told me, they celebrated Christmas and she said, "For Christmas, we bought so-and-so Connect Four so he could play with his younger sister" and I thought, "Oh, that's so cool." That is more important than how... It had such an impact on the family that they could actually purchase something for their son, that could be shared with them and as a family experience, so that really was exciting.

Rose Griffin: Then another game that I love to modify for my store students is UNO, which most of us have at UNO. What I do for students who are at the matching level is I take out all of those special cards, draw to and skip and reverse, and I put one color, one green one, one yellow, one blue, one red, and then we just make a main pile, and we pick and then we match by color. That's been really cool. I made a video model of that. I have a little YouTube channel called ABA Speech, and so I would show my students when we're learning how to play UNO that way, I would show them that video as a video model and then we would play that game together. Those are some really easy things that most of us have laying around, and sometimes things just have to be modified for students to be successful so that they enjoy those activities.

Marisha: I love that. It's amazing cause I think a lot of times they have a hard time connecting with peers and other family members and being able to bridge that gap through a game I think is really powerful. I'm also curious because the games obviously have different rules. Do you have any strategies, cause I imagined it would be really frustrating for a kiddo with autism who is used to playing it a certain way and then the peers and family don't know how that is, how do you communicate that and share that?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, in one of my blog post I wrote about leisure skills and I have a leisure guidebook that's for older students. I also have all these different videos that can be used as video models, meaning you can show the students before you engage in the activity. There's a lot of research that says that, that will help students learn skills. I have another video that's Hangman. For Hangman, which is a little bit higher, but I would write out the entire alphabet and then when a student guesses a letter or points to a letter, then I just cross it off.

Rose Griffin: Instead of having to have all the recall of thinking of a letter and putting it out, we're drawing it themselves, I'm just always trying to think of how can I insert prompts with that being a visual prompt to help this student be successful, because oftentimes when the students get to be in middle school and high school, we realize that they may never be able to play the UNO correct way. They may never be able to play Hangman the correct way, but that doesn't mean that they can't engage in those activities with other people in their environment and enjoy themselves and be happy.

Marisha: With the UNO game, you could just send home the instructions for how to play it and the Hangman thing, you could make a template and just print that out and send that home or put it in the classroom?

Rose Griffin: Uh-huh (affirmative). Long time ago, when I first was a speech therapist, there was a little notepad for Hangman. It was set up that way. Just the whole alphabet and had the little picture in the Melissa and Doug, they're hard to turn over, but there's some, listen Doug, Hangman activity. There's apps for that. It's something that you can really use easily when there's downtime as a parent with your students if it's something they enjoy.

Marisha: Even if you just had a laminated version, that'd be perfect to bring on the plane or in the car.

Rose Griffin: Right, can be easy.

Marisha: So cool, so fun. I love it. Then we're getting all that engagement and all that good stuff. Then I'm curious, what would a goal look like if you're working on those leisure skills? Do you pick something really specific or can you get some variations?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, I think a really good goal would be to, if you've done your assessment and you determined that leisure skills are something that are a deficit for a student, that you could set a goal for engaging in so many different activities. So maybe based on your learner's ability to learn, maybe three to six novel activities they will engage. Then I think what's so important for those types of things that are very specific, maybe we see how they're doing currently. So maybe we play UNO and we take data on an attendant session, how many prompts does that student need? If that student needs 10 prompts, maybe we say within one IEP cycle the student isn't getting engage in a leisure task for 10 minutes with peers, with no more than two prompts. We want to find out how are they doing currently and then with our specific intervention with video modeling, direct instruction, shared goal setting with the teacher, what can we expect them to be able to do after one, I think an IEP because I work in a school, but within one year.

Marisha: Yeah, that's super helpful. Because in the goal then if you just write, they'll participate in this number, I assume you have a menu of different go to options, how do you figure out which ones are the best choice for a particular student? Especially the more challenging ones?

Rose Griffin: That's a really good question. I have always loved group therapy, that's my jam. I have students now that we have just tried different activities together and this group of students that I'm currently working with really have enjoyed a lot of the different things that I'm telling you. We worked on UNO, we worked on hang man and things like that. We worked on weight lifting with water bottles. I was talking about that before. That was fun for me because in a former life I thought I was going to be an aerobics instructor at some point. But I don't see that in the cards now. No time. But yeah, I just try to see like is it something that the students enjoy?

Rose Griffin: Two years ago, we did have students who I was trying to teach yoga too, and they just really did not like it, they were enjoying it. I really do believe in following the student's motivation. What are their preferences? I don't want to teach them something that they're going to hate. I don't want them to have problem behavior and think they're going to get out of every task that maybe is unpreferred, but I really I'm going to analyze that and say this leisure activity, this is supposed to be something that's fun and if this group of students doesn't like this particular leisure activity, then we're going to work on something different.

Marisha: Do you have any favorite... Are there any assessments or tools that help you, especially for the students who... Sometimes I know I've come across students where it feels like they don't like anything, do you have any? Cause I feel like I've heard you talk about something.

Rose Griffin: I think that when we're working with students like that, we really need to look at a preference assessment. I've talked about a preference assessment, that's something else that I've put in my blog. But it's really like finding out what does your student love and enjoy and then trying to, which I love that about students who are hard to reach is analyzing, okay well, this kid really likes listening to music so how could I turn that into something that might be a leisure activity? One year with my students we learned how to operate Spotify and Pandora on the classroom iPads. I had the tech person make sure that was added to every single iPad in the particular classroom.

Rose Griffin: Then these students were a little bit higher so they could understand a little bit more. We talked about different genres of music. I made them listen to country music, probably the old-school music that I like. Then we practiced getting on Spotify, picking a song, we listened to it as a group. I like that ability to analyze. I had another student who was very difficult, had a lot of problem behavior and we did something like name that tune. I would have the YouTube and she could not see the iPad and I'll pick a song and she would have to guess what it is. I would pick something relevant that I knew she loved, like Justin Bieber, this was a couple of years ago then I would pick something that was old school that maybe I liked that I thought she would know.

Rose Griffin: I seriously drive around in my car sometimes and think about these students who are difficult to think about, what does the student love and enjoy. How could I make this into... Cause this particular student I'm talking about with that name, that tune really didn't even want to engage in me on a one on one setting. We really worked on that together and then we were able to generalize it to like a very preferred peer in the school. I love piecing those things together. It's like a puzzle. What does the student love now? How can we build that into a cooperative activity? That would be something they can do and engage with others and practice their communication skills embedded within that opportunity. It's really individualized for everybody but I love thinking of these things.

Marisha: Yeah, that's amazing, cause some of the students are more challenging and at first glance they're like, "Oh my goodness, there's nothing" but there always is something. Have you ever come up with a student where you couldn't think of anything?

Rose Griffin: Yes, I had a student, this is the same student.

Marisha: If you think it out.

Rose Griffin: inaudible my videos, it came to me and the ABA Center, it was eight years old, had no way to communicate, just engaged in problem behavior. That was the only way unfortunately he could communicate, didn't like watching YouTube or anything. Over time, we discovered that he really liked music, and so that really it changed his life. It changed his world and us to know what he's motivated by and being able to use that as a reinforcement to him to be able to work on requesting, that's the same student I was telling you that eventually we taught how to play Connect Four with his sister. But when I first met him, he just engaged in problem behavior, would not try to communicate, was very difficult. Now he is able to use this device to request and get some of his needs met and his family can took them to Disney world. It really over time, it didn't happen overnight. It's been like a 7-year process, but it's completely changed his life, being able to tap into what he loved and enjoyed and segue that into working on leisure skills.

Marisha: That's amazing. That's so exciting. Then I also wanted to circle back a minute to the vocational types of skills, cause I loved how you talked about the vocational skills, your goal might be to work on whatever set of leisure skills with this level of prompts, and then what would that look like with the vocational skills? I know it varies a lot depending on the level of the student, but how would you start to approach that?

Rose Griffin: Sure. We might say something like, the student will engage in three vocational jobs with a 100 percent accuracy or out of so many steps. If we're talking about maybe the shredding job, we might have a task analysis, which is just a way to break down that very large skill. So it may be putting on the student's device or having them ask, orient to the teacher, asking do you have any shredding? Getting the shredding, walking down to the office, counting out five, that's embedding all that one to work in correspondence, shredding the items, and then walking back to the classroom. There's so many different pieces and parts and we might say, well the student may need to complete that task analysis, all those steps with 80 to 90% accuracy for so many different consecutive sessions and then we'll move on to a new job. That's typically how we set them up in my work settings.

Marisha: Do you do the task analysis and everything before you write the goal?

Rose Griffin: Not before we write the goals. We may write the goal knowing that in competitive employment and vocational sampling is something that's important for the student. Then we will analyze the environment, what the student, at that point when the students younger middle school and you're doing everything in the school environment, you want to give them different opportunities. We have students who make copies, students who work in the cafeteria, students who do recycling. One year had students, we have police officers in our school, which a lot of schools have. They're so kind and we walk around the building and they do checks, of the different doors and different areas and we've had some students walk around with them. Oh my gosh, how Fun is that?

Rose Griffin: We just have all different types of things. We had a student once that would check the copy paper and the teacher's lounge and would note how many reams of paper we're left. We just try to make it really an enriched experience so kids can understand, this is something I like and this is something maybe I don't like.

Marisha: Yeah, that's amazing. I love that and I've also heard of... This a side note, but I've heard of some schools who do little snack carts for students and/or teachers and that involves a ton of different skills with the social interaction and money and inventory.

Rose Griffin: Yes, there is so much. Our school does not do that, but we did do something one year we paired with student council and there was a store and so our students and the student council students would work together and our students would work on... These were students who had some more academic skills, but they would do inventory, and they would get all the different items ready, set up. You just think about all the different people that you encounter in your job. I think about all the different communication encounters I have daily because I'm just a nerd like that and I analyze things, but I think about people who maybe don't work and then they don't have all those small talk experiences. I engage in small talk all day. That's why I feel like it's important for some of my students who are verbalizing and things like that and will have competitive employment.

Rose Griffin: We have done lessons on this is small talk, this is what it is. This is what you can talk about and it's important to do so when you're in a job setting because people that don't engage in those things, I know you know people like that. We all do. You think to yourself like, "That's interesting. Maybe they don't like me" Or maybe you know okay, maybe that's just not their thing. It's not their strengths, but we have so many embedded opportunities to work on communication that we just don't even think about it and we need to make sure that our students have those same opportunities.

Marisha: Do you do a lot of other community types of things? Maybe if they aren't going to, if the team decides they're not doing employment for some reason because you mentioned the library, do you do any other fast food or grocery store kinds of things?

Rose Griffin: Yes, we have in the past done things like that. But the district that I work in, everybody gets to have employment opportunities when they get to the [inaudible 00:35:59].

Marisha: Okay, that's amazing.

Rose Griffin: They work with the consortium, so it's like a general place that take students from all different neighboring districts. This particular place just works on vocation. So it's amazing. The kids will go half day to their high school and then will go half day to this particular place and they work on direct instruction on vocation and they just meet the kids where they're at. Every student is working on something different and it's at their particular skillsets. Some students with more severe impairments may be working on a task at the table with a paraprofessional with them, while other students may be working within the building with less adult supervision because they can and that's something that we want to get them ready for. That's something that is real important. I'm realizing that maybe not every district has that, but I think that's really dynamic for students to be able to engage in those types of experiences.

Marisha: That's amazing. Such a cool opportunity. Yeah, I love that. Such good stuff. So there's a lot of moving pieces here, you're working on a lot of different skills, keeping track of a lot of different pieces, are there any big goal types that you wanted? Any other big goal types that you wanted to talk about other than the leisure or vocational?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, I think another thing that's so important if you're working with students, choose to think about the vocabulary that students are working on. So just making sure that students can describe. So if they're working on labeling still at that level, that making sure that those words are all really functional and tied into what they're going to be working on or have to do with work or hygiene or things that are really important in their life, and then another thing that's super important for students is personal safety. I see that a lot on social media because I'm always online, I feel like the student cannot answer WH questions and that can be so hard for students. So I would urge you, if you have students who are working on WH questions to make sure that they really can answer those so important questions like, what is your name? What is your mom's name? What's your address? What's your phone number? All those different types of things. Thinking it's really important for personal safety.

Rose Griffin: I've worked on that with students who we knew were not going to be able to do that independently, but a lot of my students in the past have worn ID tags. Some of these students are verbal, and they verbalize, but they still are never going to really truly be able to remember that information on their own. But even being able to remember it from looking at that visual because that's so important or knowing to show that visual to somebody should they get lost as a student gets older, those things are just things that could happen. Making sure that we think about that as a team as well as really important.

Marisha: That's amazing and really thinking about the whole student and their whole life, that's so cool. Okay, cool. Then with all of these moving pieces, how do you organize your intervention? What does that look like on a day to day basis? Where are you providing the services? How do you navigate between all of us different things?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, that's a great question. It's super individualized for each student. Most students, just currently with my current schedule, I don't see anybody particularly in the speech room. I try to go into the classroom. The classrooms that I work in, every student has a work area that has their materials and has all of those things readily available. I love going into the classroom because even though I might just be working with one particular student, I had access to usually talking to that student's peer professional if they're around.

Rose Griffin: When I first meet somebody, if they're new to the team, I can model how to work on different communication based goals. Or I have a student right now that's working on verbal invitation with illiteracy activities. I changed the books every two weeks and we pick targets based on literacy, based on a coax that the student can do, they can verbalize. I'll talk to the paraprofessional and say, "Hey, this is our new book and this is how we're working on it." I really like being able to model that. Then a lot of my students have vocational goals. We might work in the classroom for a little bit and then we're out in the school environment. Then that's most of the session, you know what I mean? That's one of the sessions. That's how it looks.

Rose Griffin: I have other students I've mentioned that and almost as like a job coaching model where it would be for a student who's a little bit higher level, but maybe they have a job within the building and I go in and I just see how things are going and I make sure that they're applying those skills that we've worked on interact therapy for so long. I really love that because it's cool for me to see the student in the natural environment and to make sure they're applying things. A lot of the times on those IPs I may say, is applying the skills into the natural environment and I will provide feedback and coaching as needed. If I see something that's a little wonky that the student needs some feedback on, well we all probably need feedback on something that I will provide it to the student and/or talk to their teacher about what I've been working on them with. That's really basically in a nutshell how my sessions look.

Marisha: Do you keep all the visuals for the skills? Because if they're shared goals, then the materials would be in their work area and you can just access those?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, so all the materials are typically in the classroom. Then for students who have more intense needs, who were using applied behavior analysis to really work on their language intervention, they have data binders where we really graph the data every single day, put a data point on a graph so that we can have a visual analysis of how this student is doing and all that information is kept in the classroom so everybody can take data on those same goals.

Marisha: You're like a data Ninja with your ABA background. Do you want to talk like through one example of what one page and the data binder might look like for an example student?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, we had one student this year who was working on labeling functional places. I talked with the parents about things that were really important for the students to be able to label. This particular student like to go to Costco and so we had pictures of Costco , which if you know any of my work, it's really important to show multiple examples. We printed off three different pictures from Google images of Costco because that really helps the student generalize that and so what's really nice about the graphs that were using, and people could always contact me through Abaspeech.org, my website if they would want access to this graph. I haven't like put it on the blog yet cause it's pretty specific, but we would work on labeling and so this particular graph, I could just circle it, would say Costco, and I could write the date, my initials, and then I could circle how the student did that day.

Rose Griffin: The student we baseline it the very first time and they got zero, I would mark that. Then subsequent sessions, let's say they get 60 percent, 60 percent, 80 percent, 100 percent, I can circle that. In essence, every single individual session looks like a circle, and you can see exactly how the student's doing. That's what's so important for students with more intense needs is that that graph piece, it gives us a real visual analysis of how is the student doing? Should we continue to work on this target? Do we need to troubleshoot this target or can we move on to something else?

Marisha: Is this particular student just working on labeling Costco or items in Costco?

Rose Griffin: Student is working on just labeling Costco because the student goes to Costco and so they were working on labeling functional places and so for them, because they go with their family each week, that was something happens to them.

Marisha: Do you build your own deck of images with all the places that they want to work on? Is that real?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly how we do it. Some of the stuff is so specific that we would use Google images for that because obviously that's how you would get pictures of Costco and then we would kind of in essence make our own flash cards. That's how a lot of places are run when the students, especially students with autism, maybe you have something that's really functional for just them or they have something that's really individualized to them, so we would just make those in the classroom.

Marisha: That's amazing, and do you end up spending a lot of time creating materials for your students then?

Rose Griffin: That's a really good question. That's why I got into this whole space of having a blog and a website and all these things I do now, because I created the action builder cards, which is a physical product that I sell because I was spending so much time on Google images creating pictures. If you're not familiar with those, there's a hundred cards and they have different examples of actions because a lot of the times maybe I would have a general speech therapy flashcards set and it may have a picture of eating but I was teaching my students to label eating and then they were labeling ice cream and I wanted to put that together, eating ice cream, eating French fries.

Rose Griffin: I'm thinking of all this bad food, but things that kids like eating chips. There was nothing out there. It was like one picture of a kitty and apple, but that wasn't doing it for my kids. I was spending so much time on Google images. That's why I created those action builder cards because there's lots of different examples. I love that and people seem to like that product because it saves you so much time because it can get really time intensive to make stuff. I've just tried to make products that will save people time and are functional.

Marisha: Yeah, cause you mentioned... Those are amazing by the way. That's one huge time saver. But you also mentioned you're creating the video models, you're doing the task analysis and in my head I pictured pictures of the different steps, I don't know if you do that.

Rose Griffin: No, you don't have to do that. It really depends on the student, but for the student I'm working with currently, that visual prompt hasn't been necessary. It's almost the repeated exposure to the task with prompting as needed and then fading back that prompt as the student is doing things more independently. That's why that task analysis is so important because we can see like, I have a student right now that's working on recycling and he's doing great and he's getting the box, walking down the hall, we're going outside, he gets to the recycling bin and it's hard for him to get, he's got to lift it up and pull, push it in but that goes back to collaboration because I work really closely with our occupational therapist.

Rose Griffin: I ask the teacher just yesterday, I was like, "Hey, have we talked to so and so about how we should be prompting for that because I don't know the best way to prompt that?" I'm going to talk with our occupational therapists and it's like that's the part that he's having trouble with. Once we get that master, then he's kind of got that vocational skill, we can move on to something else.

Marisha: Then for that example, just going back to the data, you had just be keeping track of the number of prompts that he needed to complete that activity?

Rose Griffin: Right. We have every single step listed out though on a task analysis on this data sheet, it would say, we'll get the recycling box, we'll walk down the hall, we'll go outside, we'll go to the recycling bin, we'll dump it, we'll walk back inside, we'll walk back to the classroom, put the box down instead of throwing it. That was something that we mastered this week and so once we write out the task analysis, the steps on the data sheet, then every subsequent time that we run that program, then we can just put a plus or minus on the steps. If we see that a particular step has a minus in the student's not able to get it, then we can really hone in on that step and say like, "Oh man, the kid needs more direct instruction right on this step" and then once they get that step, they've got it.

Marisha: You just put it back into the sequence.

Rose Griffin: Yeah, that's it.

Marisha: That is so cool. I want to go work in a high school right now. I'm so excited. I love this stuff. It's so amazing. It's so practical and functional and you really have a way of just breaking it down in a way that makes so much sense. I'm very excited.

Rose Griffin: I love it. I get jealous when I see other people putting sensory bins and all those fun things on Instagram, but it's not what I'm doing right now. I appreciate all those different materials that people make, but it's just so different from the world that I'm living in once the kids get older.

Marisha: Yeah, but it's so functional and it has such an important impact. I love the strategies that you're implementing and it's going to change their lives forever, that's so amazing, so powerful.

Rose Griffin: Thank you, I love that. I love it so much. It's great.

Marisha: We're getting close to wrapping up here, but I'm curious, you've shared a lot of intervention activities, but are there one or two favorite ones that you wanted to highlight?

Rose Griffin: Sure, yeah. The piece on being part of the vocational process for students and trying to be, I guess I call it being a detective, but being a detective in your own building as far as what are functional activities for your students that they could practice their communication and vocational skills in your building. Because if you don't have those relationships with your principal, with the teachers, maybe with the administrative assistance, you may not know that these certain jobs need to get to be done. So, building rapport with everybody in the building from the police officer or whatever, you have going on in your building is so important because everybody really wants to help students to do their best. I would say building those relationships, trying to be a detective in your buildings to see how the students could work within their own little building and then leisure.

Rose Griffin: Leisure is so important and it's something that we didn't talk about yet, but something else I created that was out of my own need was this game called Double Up. It's a vocabulary in leisure activity game because I was working continue to work with a lot of students who are never really going to get past matching picture to picture. I feel like when you're working with older learners, something that makes me feel really frustrated is that there isn't a lot of age respectful or age appropriate materials out there. A lot of the vocational materials are from 1985 and they're old or it's just stuff that, this may be on my students' level, but it's not age appropriate. The pictures are not real. It doesn't mean anything to the student. I created this game that my students really love and enjoy and so it's a four person player game and you can match picture to picture.

Rose Griffin: It has leisure items, there's hygiene items. If your students are more advanced, they can match picture to associate a picture. We have a picture of a basketball and on your game board would be the people playing basketball. It's really nice for mixed groups and things like that and now is another thing I created out of my own need and speech therapists seem to really like it in life skills teachers too because I feel like it's just really hard to find materials for students who may be at this level of matching and maybe they're not going to get higher than that level, which at middle school, high school, that's okay. We're just meeting the student where they are, but we want to make sure that the materials that we have are functional and meaningful for our students as well.

Marisha: Yeah, that's amazing and awesome that you get to create all of those things to save us all some time. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your time and wisdom. I know I'm walking away inspired and I seriously want to go apply for high school jobs now because I'm so excited, but any last takeaways or anything that you wanted to wrap up with?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, just if anybody wants to reach out and hear about any of those nerdy data sheets I was talking about or talk about anything related to vocation and leisure to make sure to visit me at www.abaspeech.org.

Marisha: Awesome. Then can they find you on any other social media platforms?

Rose Griffin: Yeah, Instagram on abaspeechbyrose and I definitely am on Instagram every day showing you what's going on in my therapy room and sharing my stories on Instagram stories. So make sure to come on over and like me.

Marisha: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time and we'll talk again soon.

Rose Griffin: Okay, sounds good. See you.

Marisha: Wow guys, so Rose definitely did not disappoint. What a wealth of knowledge I learned so much. I'm really looking forward to implementing some of these strategies with students in the very near future. If you want to find out more head to the show notes, slpnow.com/13 and that's where you can find all of the things that will mention as well as information on how to earn ASHA CEUs for listening to this POD course. We'll see you next time.