Author: sashabro89

Sasha Balofsky is a speech therapist living in Philly. Between work and Shabbat, she takes artistic solace in writing, playing Harry Potter songs on her flute, and attending her women’s chassidus groups. Her best friends encouraged her to write, including her husband.

Virtual Grammar and Sentence Combining Resource for Teens

Grammar and sentence structure goals are pretty common for our middle and high school speech and language students, yet it can be difficult to come up with ways to target them that keep our students engaged.  I find my students get sick of answering questions about pictures quickly and also find some of those grammar … Continue reading Virtual Grammar and Sentence Combining Resource for Teens →

Teaching Complex Sentences III: Comprehending in Paragraphs

If you've been following my posts Teaching Complex Sentences and Teaching Complex Sentences II: Lengthy Nouns, you may already know that many students with SLI struggle with comprehension at the sentence structure level and need explicit instruction.  We've previously discussed having students learn simple definitions for subordinate conjunctions and practice their uses in sentences as … Continue reading Teaching Complex Sentences III: Comprehending in Paragraphs →

Vocabulary Description Guide for Teens and Tweens

I don't know about you, but I have found those HedBanz questions pretty inadequate for teaching my students how to describe vocabulary.  Similarly, EET type guides or TPT visuals that focus on category, function, location, etc can be great for basic nouns but insufficient to teach students to describe the higher-level tier 2 vocabulary (including … Continue reading Vocabulary Description Guide for Teens and Tweens →

Teaching Students with SLI about Dialect and Code-Switching

Because I work at a fairly diverse district, I hear a lot of different dialects being spoken by my students.  I do not write goals around it because obviously students are entitled to their culture and speaking style; however, I do like to at least teach students that they speak a different dialect that may … Continue reading Teaching Students with SLI about Dialect and Code-Switching →

Sketch and Speak: Teaching Students to Take Pictograph Notes in Speech Therapy

One of the major issues I encounter with secondary school students is they both don’t know how to and are generally unwilling to take notes on what they read.  Recently, this got me thinking about a sketching/pictograph technique I used all the way in my student clinic days called Stickwriting wherein the student basically took … Continue reading Sketch and Speak: Teaching Students to Take Pictograph Notes in Speech Therapy →

Co-Articulation Tips for Teaching /R/

Oh, the dreaded /r/ sound.  When I first started as a speech therapist, I didn't know where to begin with this sound.  Now 4 years later, I have a lot more elicitation techniques within my arsenal: the KARLA method, the single-word /r/ screener, and of course many methods discussed in Pam Marshalla's Successful R Therapy … Continue reading Co-Articulation Tips for Teaching /R/ →

How to Target Writing in Speech

Boy, do my middle and high school students hate to write!  It's definitely a challenge to get them working on grammar and sentence structure during speech & language therapy sessions and especially so if I want them to target writing skills.  Yet, it's absolutely essential we work on writing, because it's such an important skill … Continue reading How to Target Writing in Speech →

How to Use Videos for Language Therapy

Often, getting our students to engage with reading-based therapy tasks can feel like pulling teeth- both for students and therapist! Our school clients often present with co-morbid reading and learning disabilities that make reading a daily struggle, and so it's no wonder they immediately deflate when we put an article in front of them.  My … Continue reading How to Use Videos for Language Therapy →