This blog post written by Liz Watson, M.S., CCC-SLPTo be a truly successful preschool SLP, you often have to channel your inner behavior specialist (not to mention your inner child). Kids who are identified at this young age often have intense needs, making behavior management an integral part of our therapy. Dr. Anne van Kleeck sheds some light on why children with language delays often struggle with executive functioning. In the first of a five-part CEU series, Dr. van Kleeck gets into the nitty gritty of preschool language. The first, and most important distinction made in this Medbridge* course is between two different registers of oral language. These are referred to as casual talk and academic talk:  As you can see, casual talk refers to basic, everyday language, whereas academic talk refers more to the language of school. What does this have to do with behavior and executive functioning? Executive functions allow children to control their own goal directed behavior, facilitate planning, problem solving, and learn about the mind. These are often language-based skills. And academic language is the mechanism through which children learn to control their behavior. If a child struggles with understanding and using academic language, chances are they will also struggle with basic executive functioning skills as well. So what can we do as SLPs? How can we work on executive functioning and academic language skills with preschoolers? Check out Dr. van Kleeck’s Medbridge CEU series to find out! The first course introduces the concepts of executive function and academic talk and explains how these skills are the backbone of future academic success. Interested in other resources on academic talk in preschoolers? Read Dr. Van Kleeck’s award-winning article on the topic, here, or watch a video description of the article, here. The rest of the series teaches novel approaches to assessment and intervention that specifically target these critical skills with preschoolers. For example, the topic of Part 5 is “Fostering Academic Talk and Executive Functions”. Don't have a MedBridge membership? No problem: use code informedSLP at checkout for the best current discount!  *Disclosure: Any links with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links, meaning The Informed SLP, LLC (TISLP) will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Please note that TISLP has strict rules about what type of content we’re willing to share with you. We only share products or resources that meet our standard of being clinically applicable, clinically useful, and based on the strongest available research evidence. Additionally, which MedBridge courses we choose to review is a decision made independently by the TISLP team member(s) writing the post, and must be: 1) evidence-based, 2) clinically useful, and 3) enjoyable :)
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 This blog post written by Liz Watson, CCC-SLPMaking friends can be really freaking hard. Our children’s school-age years are supposed to be filled with the easy friendships that come with childhood. However, many of our high-functioning kids with ASD want friends, but have no idea where to start. In Medbridge’s* CEU course Focusing on Friendship: Building Social Groups for Autism, Dr. Laura DeThorne explains why so many of our social skills groups fail to actually help kids with ASD make real friends. SLPs tend to use skill-based interventions which focus on teaching social skills in isolation and normalizing deficits. Kids often don’t generalize the skills they learn outside of therapy, and we risk lowering their self-esteem when they’re unsuccessful. We may even inadvertently send the message that kids with autism aren’t “friend-able” just the way they are. In this course, DeThorne describes the Social Approach to Intervention. This approach involves:
One of the best ways to implement this type of intervention is to create affinity-based groups. Don’t tell me you don’t have multiple kids on your caseload who are obsessed with quoting movies. Or maybe you have a few who are **really** into Pokémon Go. I bet you even know some typical peers who are interested in these things as well. Try to build groups around these shared interests, where members are all equal. We’re not using the typical peers as teachers or “experts” on social skills. Instead, peers are equal members of the group. I found this course on Medbridge* to be extremely applicable to my work with young children. The instructor includes sections about goal-writing and techniques for scaffolding peer interactions. She gives great examples of visuals and how to respond to specific situations. At the end, she participates in a question and answer session that details how to implement this type of intervention in the constraints of a public school. Check it out, #SLPeeps! Not a MedBridge member? No worries! Use coupon code "informedSLP" at checkout* for a BIG discount! *Disclosure: Any links with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links, meaning The Informed SLP, LLC (TISLP) will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Please note that TISLP has strict rules about what type of content we’re willing to share with you. We only share products or resources that meet our standard of being clinically applicable, clinically useful, and based on the strongest available research evidence. Additionally, which MedBridge courses we choose to review is a decision made independently by the TISLP team member(s) writing the post, and must be: 1) evidence-based, 2) clinically useful, and 3) enjoyable :)
Time for *evidence-based* treatment of childhood apraxia of speech (learn it from the BEST!)3/1/2018  This blog post written by Liz Watson, CCC-SLPAs an SLP who lives with two other SLPs, talking about work is unavoidable in our household. I recently asked them “Hey have you ever used Medbridge to get CEUs?” One of them responded “OMG, I LIVE on Medbridge. That’s how I learned how to treat apraxia!” While ideally, we would all say, “I learned everything I need to know in grad school!” that’s unfortunately just not the case. If you’re feeling confused about the difference between apraxia and other speech sound disorders, or lost about the correct method for treating it, I highly recommend checking this out: Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Treatment of School-Age Children by Ruth Stoeckel, PhD, CCC-SLP. Dr. Stoeckel gives a great overview of Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), but she doesn’t dawdle on the theories and concepts. She gets right into evaluation and treatment methods with a strong evidence base. We know apraxia has to do with motor planning, but what does that actually look like? The main difficulty associated with apraxia is with the movement of the sequence of sounds, not just the sounds themselves. But listening to the sounds and syllable shapes are equally important. Target selection is critical to treatment of CAS. We need to look at what sounds and syllable shapes to add to the child’s repertoire. There are basically two ways to go about this:
Dr. Stoeckel emphasizes functional targets. No more lists of obscure words that happen to contain the target, but are minimally useful to the individual child (bye-bye “panda”). We need to choose targets that the child can use functionally in their everyday life. For young kids, this is pretty obvious. As children get older and gain more sounds, this becomes more challenging. I liked Dr. Stoeckel’s idea of using math homework. Children can restate an equation (e.g. eight and two equals ten) or paraphrase a word problem in their own words. A middle schooler might need to work on multisyllabics like geometry, hypotenuse, triangle, or algebra. Be creative, fellow SLPs! There are a few treatments with good evidence bases (read on more that, here). The therapy type with the strongest current evidence is Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing (DTTC), which is what Dr. Stoeckel is teaching in this course. It involves using imitation, tactile cues, and varied timing and prosody to target sounds and syllable shapes. If you are interested in implementing this therapy with your own students, I would recommend heading over to Medbridge to listen to Dr. Stoeckel explain it—I just can’t do it justice here. Happy learning, #EBPSLPs!  *Disclosure: Any links with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links, meaning The Informed SLP, LLC (TISLP) will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. Please note that TISLP has strict rules about what type of content we’re willing to share with you. We only share products or resources that meet our standard of being clinically applicable, clinically useful, and based on the strongest available research evidence. Additionally, which MedBridge courses we choose to review is a decision made independently by the TISLP team member(s) writing the post, and must be: 1) evidence-based, 2) clinically useful, and 3) enjoyable :)
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