Let's be real- it is not easy teaching social-pragmatic skills to adolescents. Not only did most of us not have any courses on this area in graduate school but materials and assessments for social language are still quite scarce. What is out there is often for younger kids or too oversimplified to be of much … Continue reading Conversation Skills Lesson Ideas
Category: Problem-Solving
Break-out/Escape the Room Speech Therapy Activity!
With the school year wrapping up, I felt inspired to do an escape-the-room type activity with my speech & language middle school students. I'm still on a tight budget, so I kept things simple.
Functional Problem-Solving Resource!
Sick of playing board games or reading hypothetical scenarios for your speech/language therapy students to problem-solve? Tired of pulling out those dull picture cards? Well, I have finally found a problem-solving resource that is actually engaging and very practical: GCF Global. Under the Everyday Life section, there are activities about grocery shopping, making change, using … Continue reading Functional Problem-Solving Resource!
Social Skills in the Age of Peer Pressure
How do we teach social skills like blending with one's surrounding and following expected behaviors without it conflicting with our lessons on privacy, autonomy, and self-respect? The answer is to bring questions about values and safety to every discussion about social decision making. It is important for our students to not just see bodily autonomy, violence, or high-risk behaviors as "exceptions" to the rules of social interaction; instead, values are an intrinsic part of social problem-solving and hold the ultimate say in what we decide to do in any given situation. I've decided to create a framework that embeds questions about values and safety into the decision-mapping process.
