General Use:"Off-the-Shelf" Materials

So I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again: in general, I dislike most "off-the-shelf" therapy materials. If it comes prepackaged with cards, a workbook, and an instructional manual, I probably have turned my nose up at it at some point in my career. Not to say the products are bad, but in my opinion, most "off-the-shelf" products simply aren't appropriate for teenagers or they just don't target their real needs.

Of course, there are always exceptions, especially when those products are modified heavily, such as the case with my use of Matt and Molly with my Mod/Severe teens. But sometimes, it's one of those days where I just haven't had enough time to plan my next session. A group is coming in 5 minutes and I need to just yank something off the shelf and survive the next 25 minutes. In occasions like these, I reach for a few special products that hold a dear place in my heart. I tend to use them as intended, but modifications are almost always at the forefront of my mind...

Language:

Jeepers Peepers or Headbanz (same game, I recommend whichever one you can secure funding for)
Hopefully you've all heard of this game before, or maybe you've heard of it but dismissed it as not appropriate for teenagers. Whatever the case, this is one of those games that should be in your arsenal. The premise is that each student has a card on their forehead that they can't see. The game can play out in a few ways:

1) The target student must ask yes/no questions about their card: e.g. "Am I an animal? Am I a tool?"
2) The target student must ask categorical questions about their card: e.g. "What category am I? What shape am I?"
3) The non-target students take turns providing individual descriptions of the target player's card: e.g. You are a silver tool with a handle used at home by mom and dad.

Depending on your students' goals, one method can be employed for the entire game or each student can use a different method. You can easily target goals like asking/answering questions, explaining, using complex grammar, etc.

The cards that come with the games are OK, but I have made a few specific cards with updated images (since, for example, some of the Jeepers Peepers technology images are very old).

Blurt!
Now I own a very, very old version of this game (as in I got this game when I was 9... so 16 years ago!), so perhaps the new game has a few differences I'm unaware of. But looking on Amazon, this latest version looks more or less the same.

Essentially, Blurt! is a combination vocabulary and memory game. The vocabulary that students will be asked to generate is not complex or difficult, but speed is the key to playing the game and if your caseload is anything like mine, you've got some students with dreadful word retrieval issues. Students take turns reading short descriptions (e.g. "A flat moving part that sticks out from the body of a fish,") and the first student to provide the correct answer wins a point.

You can play this game in several ways:
1) You read the descriptions and all students answer,
2) Students take turn reading one description at a time (use a die roll to select the number or just read the next in the line),
3) One student reads 2 - 6 descriptions in a row before moving to another student.

Lots of accommodations can be made for this game:
- A list of unfamiliar words is generated as a group
- After a pre-selected amount of words, students use and/or write a selected word/s in a sentence
- You provide the each student with a word and they generate their own description (after playing for awhile so they have some examples of what the descriptions are like) to test out on the group

Social Skills/Thinking:

Should I or Shouldn't I - Middle and High School Edition

Praise be to Michelle Garcia-Winner for the creation of this amazing game. I have used this game with my highest level Mod/Severe class and kids on the spectrum of all varieties - you will definitely get your money's worth if you work with any students with autism!

The game comes with a wide selection of scenarios, which I have since organized into categories like "conversations," "naivety," "manners," "college/job, 'etc. so that I can select specific cards for each group. The game starts as you read the selected card and students pick whether that scenario is:

1) Will give people good thoughts!
2) Is just fine, OK
3) Will give people weird thoughts...
4) Will annoy people...
5) Is against the rules!

Students are given a deck of cards from 1 - 5 so they can vote secretly and all reveal their choices together. After revealing, engage your students in discussion about why they selected their answer and what the consequences could be from engaging in that behavior. I have been very surprised by my students' answers; the game really highlights areas of weakness and strength for our students' social behaviors.

Bubble Talk
I picked this game up at a Goodwill for $2 this summer and BOY am I glad!! This game has been an absolute hit with my social thinking groups - so much so that we've struck up a deal to "work one week then play the next week" and alternate playing of this game every other week. Which is fine by me, because although they think they're playing, we're really targeting some great social thinking skills!

This game works a bit like Apples to Apples: a picture card is placed in the middle and each student selects a "bubble" card from their hand. This "bubble" card symbolizes something that a character in the picture card is saying... meaning that in order to play a successful, humorous card, your students will have to take the perspective of the characters in the picture!! After we all lay down our cards, I ask each student to explain who would say that in the picture and why their card is funny. It's great insight to watch them either give a great explanation or completely fail to understand what the character could be thinking or feeling.

In the end, we all end up laughing a lot. Sometimes we take extra time on specific cards where students are having difficulty and sometimes we spend extra time celebrating a student who plays a legitimately funny card. It's a good time all around - I highly recommend getting a copy!

Artic:
 

Artic Attack /r/ and /s/ and /z/
It seems to me that sooooo many articulation materials are made for the under 11 set! My teenagers are no longer amused by "Artic Flips" and coloring pages, and they have played more games of /r/ Go Fish than you can count. Don't even mention bingo or Chipper Chat. Don't even go there.

So what's a high school therapist to do? I ordered these great books with some Medi-Cal money last year and they're already proving to be invaluable. Artic is my LEAST favorite type of therapy and these books make it a little less painful when dealing with a group of 3 unruly 14-year-old boys who exhibit minor /r/ distortions (AKA boys who are leaving my caseload come their annual IEPs!).

These books are organized according to Pam Marshalla's hierarchies - you know, /or/, /ire/, /air, /er/, etc. - and different s-blends and word placements. For each context, there are 4 different games (tic-tac-toe, battle ship, etc.) that you can use to target specific /r/ and /s/ contexts that remain troublesome into adolescence! And chances are, these are games that have not yet been played-to-death in middle and elementary school! And you can print them out and send them home for homework! I haven't yet come up with modifications for these yet, let me know if you think of some new ways to use these games!

Fluency:
So I did my best to try and think of an "off-the-shelf" material I use with my students and... I don't think I do! I highlighted some therapy ideas in my previous blog post on fluency, but something that I might pull out of my tool bag at the last minute is watching and discussing videos by comedian Drew Lynch (who happens to be a young adult who stutters)!

My favorite stuttering-related videos are:
1) Why My Stutter is Getting Better
2) I Try to Cure My Stutter
3) How to Deal with Bullies

But really, there is something valuable in nearly all of his videos. Remember, the same rule applies as when showing students any media: watch each video ahead of time to verify that it's OK for your students (he does talk about dating and more mature subjects in some videos). I suggest introducing Drew by watching his America's Got Talent audition to highlight his great attitude of not letting his fluency disorder get in the way of his dreams.

I hope you've gotten a few new ideas of what to keep on your shelves to help out in those last-minute pinches! Comment below with your favorite quick fixes, I'm always looking for ways to keep things simple and effective! And as always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP

Social Thinking: Video Modeling With Adolescents

Ahh, don’t you just love working with our social thinking students? You know the ones...
- The student whose conversation topics consist of silverfish and skeletons,
- The constant “blurter” who insists he’s always right,
- The girl who constantly picks at her ear and then smells her ear wax for sensory feedback,
- The kid who will stare at you for five minutes before realizing you’ve been waiting for him to ask “How was your weekend?” back to you,
- The 14-year-old who crawls under his desk when he’s bored.

These students often provide us with the best stories to share after work because they’re just such unique individuals! But as therapists, we don't seek to remove or kill that individuality; rather we want give them some skills that they can use to navigate the real world and understand how they can be more successful when interacting with peers, teachers, and adults. But, that's easier said than done, of course! In this blog, I'm going to highlight one strategy I have used with social thinking groups, but please comment what strategies you have used that work for your students!

Sally, Please Don’t Smell Your Ear Wax

Back during my internship in a middle school, I began working with the first 3 students I described above. Once a week, they’d come somewhat hesitantly: either they believed they had no problems and did not belong in my social thinking group or they were so acutely aware of their “weird” status that talking about it made them uncomfortable. A typical session consisted of the group (attempting) to discuss a social thinking worksheet while…

• The silverfish student insisted on discussing silverfish while he drew skeletons in the margins of the worksheet.
• The lone girl in the group quickly pointed out the others’ “weird behaviors” but failed to recognize that smelling her ear wax is a prime example of oddity and social faux pas.

• The “blurter” interrupted everyone, all the time, to make a “more intellectual” comment and remind the group of why he didn't need to be there.

I quickly realized that these students were PROS at picking out the “weird” behavior in others. Identifying strange behaviors in a Mr. Bean video? Nailed it. Recognizing that Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is being self-centered and not thinking of others? No problem! How could these students be so observant when watching other people but be totally incapable of identifying their own unexpected behaviors? I decided that the strategy of video modeling had to be attempted to incorporate real-life examples.

Ms. Hall, Are You Going to Put Us On YouTube?

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with premise of video modeling, I'm not going to go in-depth with the concept of video modeling here, because that could easily cover several posts! If the concept is new to you, I highly encourage you to make a free account with Autism Internet Modules and check out their module on video modeling (as well as all their other great modules!).

As an aside, you should double-check with your school about their policy on recording students before you engage in video modeling. At the 4 schools I've worked at in two different districts, all required parents to sign a release stating that they consent to photos and videos of their students being taken for "school purposes." I don't think you should have an issue with video modeling at most public schools, especially since you will be deleting the video after watching it with the students!

So, here’s what happened with my group when we tried video modeling...

I had only an iPad at my discretion to use as a recording device, so I set it up discreetly on a back table in a manner that would still record all three students. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. I called for my students to come from their classes and hit record. We carried out a typical session and, as usual, each of the students engaged in some pretty unexpected behaviors.

For the next session, we watched the video I had recorded in secret the week before. I knew ahead of time that watching and discussing the video alone would not be enough - inevitably we'd get off track and it would turn into a session of each student trying to label the others as "weirder." In order to create structure for the session and access information through multiple modalities, I decided that I needed to develop a worksheet that each student could complete as the group worked through watching the video. 

You can find that worksheet available for a free download here at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

 

 I found the session to be fairly impactful. Although the students were already aware that they engaged in unexpected behaviors once in awhile, watching how frequently they did something unexpected on the video seemed to really surprise them. For example, the female student who smelled her ear wax has no clue how frequently she engaged in the behavior. While completing her worksheet, she came to the conclusion on her own that she needed to rely more on her scented erasers to meet her sensory needs. She had been trying to phase out using her scented erasers because she was "too old for that now;" but upon realizing that her ear wax smelling habit was far more unexpected, she conceded that the scented erasers weren't actually so bad!

For the student who couldn't help but blurt, we kept a tally of every time he cut off another person from speaking and we analyzed the facial expressions and body language of those he had cut off. While not entirely convinced that his blurting had been unexpected, he did identify on his worksheet that it was clear that his blurting hurt others and made them feel unimportant. With some subtle suggestions, he decided that his replacement behavior would be to write down what he wanted to say on a piece of paper and at the end of the session he could state one thing that he had been unable to say during the session.

Overall, the students seemed to enjoy watching themselves and realizing just what they looked like when engaging in unexpected behaviors. I did have to very firmly steer the conversation away from comments like "But he's weirder," so be ready to jump in and have a firm hand to guide the conversation. We ideally want students to come up with their own solutions, but the amount of cueing and conversational steering needed will definitely vary from student to student.

Finally, don't forget to delete your video as soon as you watch it with the students! Discretion with recorded materials is always best - you don't want to accidentally upload your students onto a cloud service! 

I hope this explanation of how I have used video modeling has been helpful. There are lots of ways to incorporate video modeling into your sessions (e.g. with fluency students to demonstrate hard stuttering versus easy stuttering), so get creative and let me know how it goes in the comments!

As always, it doesn't have to be fancy, just keep it fun and functional!

• Jillian, the No-Frills SLP