No Records Found
Sorry, no records were found. Please adjust your search criteria and try again.
Google Map Not Loaded
Sorry, unable to load Google Maps API.
- Erica
- Haseman
- No
- 1748 Topaz Drive
Loveland
Colorado
80537
United States - NoCo Speech & Diagnostics
Loveland
Colorado
80537
United States
When planning for therapy I use the information gathered during the dynamic assessment to identify the types of cues that were helpful and the vowels/consonants that were in error across syllable shapes to guide my choices on early stimulus sets. I like to start off each session by moving. This can be gross and fine motor movements, whole body or just the face depending on the kid, but the point is to get them to be aware of their body moving and get used to feeling movement in their bodies. I generally prefer to have multiple treatment sessions for shorter blocks than one or two longer sessions. I want the frequency of practice to be as often as possible. I stopped playing games with kids within the session a long time ago because I found that it was taking up to much of our time and we weren't practicing sounds as much. Now, instead, I will have kids earn point or tokens toward playing a game either with me or on the iPad during the last 5 minutes of the session to optimize practice time. I focus my treatment on the movement of the articulators and not on the phoneme themselves. Again, as mentioned above I want the child to begin to feel and be aware of the movements in their body. I don't have a specific treatment method or protocol that I used but a conglomeration of a bunch of different things that focus on syllable shape, co-articulation, production, prosody, and oral motor movements.
I believe that parents are the key to success. They are with their child far more than I am and it is my role not only to teach the child how to produce the sounds but also teach the parents the techniques I use so they can assist with carryover. Parents are an integral part of the therapy process. Most sessions I like to work with the child one-on-one because I've found they tend to work better without an audience, but I also invite parents back for the last 5 minutes to debrief and go over skills worked on in the session.
I generally use AAC as a means to mend communication breakdowns. Most of the children I've worked with view themselves as verbal communicators and it is my priority to get them the most functional oral communication I can. That said as we work toward that goal and after when there is a breakdown having a backup device (both low and high tech) is important to have and be mastered so that when the communication breakdown is happening they've already got a system to help and they're not having to learn how to use it in that moment. I like to use PECS primarily with the little ones and I will introduce high tech as soon as they have developed an awareness of the device and can take some ownership of it.