Past projects 2
Teaching Play, Language, and Social Skills: Building Social Competence!
Funded Jan 10, 2018Thank you for supporting public education and providing me with the tools needed to successfully address my students' unique needs! These materials have been utilized to help students who struggle to maintain motivation, build social skills, and comply with teacher requests. Moreover, these therapy tools have been used for more effective intervention planning in an effort to help my students achieve academic success.
Additionally, integrating new materials and tools into therapy sessions helped to teach students how to engage in appropriate classroom behaviors. Problematic student behaviors have decreased. Students are becoming increasingly aware of their own behaviors and behavioral triggers and are learning how to avoid physical aggression and/or to manage anxiety. Improving student behavior and increasing motivation in turn results in more time available for academic instruction and research-based intervention.
Again, thank you for providing me with specific school resources to support positive behavior and help students succeed in school and beyond!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ashley McNabb, CCC-SLP
Help Revolutionize Speech-Language Therapy! Let's Talk Technology!
Funded Jan 19, 2017IPad Pro technology has proven to be a valuable tool for the identification, diagnosis, and treatment of speech and/or language disorders. I purchased several diagnostic applications to use during therapy, including the Basic Concepts Skills Screener (BCSS). The BCSS is an individually administered clinical tool used for the screening, identification, diagnosis, and follow-up screening of basic concepts in English speaking children. It is designed to determine if a child has knowledge of age-appropriate basic concepts (e.g., comparative, quantitative, spatial, temporal), needed for academic success. The comprehension of basic concepts is essential for following directions for hands-on activities, lessons, and other academic assignments.
The BCSS was used to analyze student responses and to describe whether or not students achieved various concepts over time. Using the BCSS, I was able to categorize errors according to the variables in the item analysis tables. This helped me to determine the categories that caused the greatest proportion of difficulty. I then selected targeted interventions that would improve basic concept knowledge, including the ability to follow more complex, multi-step verbal directives with embedded concepts. I also shared reports and therapy targets with classroom teachers to carryover what was learned into the academic setting. Total percent accuracy for students rescreened following targeted interventions was greater than 77%.
The IPad Pro technology was also used to help improve students' vocabulary, auditory comprehension, and inferential thought. Various IPAD applications were used to develop students' receptive vocabulary and awareness of the relationship between words and sentences. Most applications used spoken sentences and/or high-interest short stories paired with illustrations. These applications were used to teach students how to talk about and illustrate the function of specific words (e.g., word study), including rules to increase semantic and syntactic awareness (e.g., sentence structure). Sentence comprehension or the understanding of relationships among spoken information, real-life references, and situations were emphasized when students listened to high-interest stories or descriptions of events. Students learned how to answer questions about the content of the information provided, as well as how to use critical thinking skills to interpret beyond the provided information (e.g., making inferences and predictions).
Moreover, student attention and engagement increased significantly when the IPAD was used during therapy. Students continue to be fascinated by the size of the "large iphone". Again, thank you for helping me fund this project! I could not have done this without you! I am so pleased with this product. I will continue to use the Ipad Pro as a supplemental tool during speech and language therapy!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Ashley McNabb, CCC-SLP