Flip for Great Speech Skills!

Pre- and Post-test and progress monitoring: At the beginning of the school year the students' speech skills will be recorded with the cameras to have baseline performance to chart for tracking data. Also, this can be used for progress documentation to show parents as skills are attained. Speech students have a homework folder that is used to take practice sheets home and for teacher-parent communication. The students' individual goal and tracking information will be listed inside. Tracking on a bar or line graph will be used.

To educate parents as to how to encourage and follow through with practice at home on speech goals, each student can be videoed in speech class correctly utilizing speech skills-whether articulation drill, fluency strategies, language exercises and even voice and pragmatic types of skills. The cameras would be an invaluable way for parents to SEE what they should expect of their child. Speech therapist and/or child could demonstrate the desired skills. Then homework sheets sent home for practice could better be used for further remediation practice.

In speech class, centers can be utilized by the students to monitor/track themselves and their progress. They can write lists of words, sentences, poems, etc. to practice for articulation and language, etc. to practice on video to watch and track and document progress. They can choose from a variety of activities (from singing to reading a play aloud) to video themselves or others at school (supervised) such as teacher during approved activity (teacher doing lesson, student leading announcements, etc.) They can "win" a FREE day--they choose activity to do to video (within reason) to evaluate communication skills. It makes a big difference when they are able to SEE for themselves what their therapist is telling them about their speech/language skills. Even for students with autism, social stories can be videoed and used to show them how to deal with certain situations. Speech activities in speech classroom can be videoed and used at the end of the session to discuss progress and encourage/foster further needs for remediation.

And last, students completion and mastery of speech goals can become VISIBLY and enthusiastically noteworthy when videoed and compared to earlier steps in the therapeutic process. Videos of fluent speech, corrected articulation, more appropriate social skills, etc. become a documentation of a successful journey for each student and their parents.