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00:00:01
26: An Example AVT Session with Lynn Wood
668 Plays1 year ago
Lynn talks us through an examples auditory verbal therapy session for a school aged child. So many great ideas and resources in this episode!
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Transcript
Fall Auditory Skills and Listening Practice
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Transcript
Introduction to the Todd Pod and today's focus
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Todd Pod, a podcast to support itinerant teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, SLPs, and other deaf education professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fund, and today we're talking about auditory verbal therapy with school-aged kids with Lynn Wood of Listening with Lynn. Thanks so much for being here, Lynn. Yeah, thanks for having me, Deanna.
00:00:25
Speaker
I appreciate being able to talk to your audience and share a little bit. Yeah. Could you tell everyone a little bit about your background, who you are and what you do?
Lynn Wood's background and expertise
00:00:34
Speaker
Sure. Sure. So I am an audiologist by degree, but work as a listening and spoken language specialist. And I'm in private practice at the auditory verbal center, which is in the Chicago suburbs.
00:00:48
Speaker
And so one cool thing is my practice was one of the very first devoted to or exclusively working with auditory rehabilitation. So I've been doing this a long time. I scan auditory verbal training experience when I was a college student and I studied early on with some of the pioneers of auditory verbal practice and then later was certified in the group of
00:01:09
Speaker
professionals who sat for the very first auditory certification exam way back in 1994. Exactly. Exactly. But today in my practice, I specialize in pediatric auditory verbal therapy or listening and spoken language. I do post cochlear implant auditory rehab for teens and adults and also therapy for individuals with auditory processing needs. But my heart of my practice is really auditory verbal therapy.
Understanding auditory verbal therapy and its practical applications
00:01:37
Speaker
where I guide and coach and inspire hopefully parents or their caregivers so that their children who are deaf and hard of hearing can reach their full potential through listening and spoken language. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here to share all of that experience with us because I was telling Lynn a little bit before that I really think it's valuable for TODs to like hear more about auditory verbal therapy being actually applied, like not so much just about the strategies, which I think we've all read and thought about.
00:02:04
Speaker
but actually hearing how it's applied in practice. That's what I want to know. That's what I think is really helpful. Lynn, I'm really interested from hearing from you about what a typical therapy session with a school-age child, not a baby, looks like. Could you talk through a typical session? Right. Sure. I'd be happy to. I'd be happy to. While I love supporting anybody across the listening and spoken language journey, either if they're babies or
00:02:33
Speaker
kids that are school age and i said i was mentioned to you i see a lot of school age kids kids that still need services in that school age population is really diverse in fact i'm working with a college age student now i have in the past so.
00:02:49
Speaker
It's really your student across all those ages and things like that.
Therapy session structure and parental involvement
00:02:54
Speaker
So I would say my auditory verbal sessions are highly individualized. However, all the skills are taught with the emphasis on listening or maximizing audition. I do follow the 10 principles of auditory verbal practice. And as you probably know,
00:03:08
Speaker
Six of those principles are based on guiding and coaching parents. And yes, the college student that I'm seeing is now mom joins us in our teletherapy sessions every week. So I think that family and carryover, you know, is really, really important. In my practice, I was going to say also that there's so many different kinds of kids and kinds of needs and things like that. So when I look, think back on my school age population,
00:03:35
Speaker
I have kids with progressive hearing loss or kids that started LSL late, some kids that are transitioning or a couple of kids from hearing aids to cochlear implants. I have a big group of kids that were in private school for children who are deaf and hard of hearing but need more support in the mainstream setting. In fact, we mentioned it too, that kids with multiple needs.
00:03:58
Speaker
that regardless if they have other co-occurring, I guess you'd say special needs that sometimes we call deaf plus, but regardless, there's many ways that we can provide high quality listening and spoken language services across a big difference of population and things like that. But to go back to your question, if you were going to come into my office and you were here with a school age child, you would first learn that my sessions pretty much are very planned out and sort of follow the same kind of manner, which I find is
00:04:28
Speaker
really helpful for parents and things like that. But I'd say therapy begins the moment the child, their parent or whoever significant other, sometimes siblings come and in my office, they come into the waiting area, they might hang up their coat if it's that time of year. But kids learn really early on that that's our time to catch up, to share what's new. Lots of kids might bring something they want to show me or tell me about. We chat, I encourage small talk. But
00:04:56
Speaker
Beyond the greetings, my goal during that time is to glean information on how does the child seem to be hearing that day? Are they listening? Are they understanding? Even their mood for that day really keeps me in my toes because once I get into the therapy sessions, I really, therapy is always diagnostic in nature. Oh, the child's not having a good day or they're not listening as well.
00:05:21
Speaker
but I need to be always able to adapt to the child's needs that day and continuously. So that's the first thing I do is just, we just chitchat a little bit and you know, kids don't even, even when the adults walk in.
00:05:33
Speaker
with the cochlear implant rehab, I usually follow them in and ask them a couple questions. Are they hearing or not? Yeah. For like the itinerant version of that, I do that when I walk on the hallway with the kid, like I have to grab them from the classroom or whatever, and we're walking down the hallway. I treat that little like two minute walk as our little conversation, little catch up. But just like you're saying, like I am listening to how they're speaking and how they're listening to me just like, okay, like are we
00:06:03
Speaker
our listening hats are on today. We're all- Yeah, exactly. It is helpful to like, sometimes that waste, quote unquote, waste time, like trying to get to your room, but it can be valuable to do some diagnostic like listening of what's going on with them.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I find it really helped like get a lot of information even what they're talking about or sharing. Well, I think you might be surprised. I do not complete a like a hearing device check or like troubleshooting right away and you're like, Hey, how can you how can you not make sure
00:06:34
Speaker
the children have, you know, optimal access to sound. Can I guess? Can I guess why you don't have a desk? Have you trained the parents to do it ahead of time? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So all I mean, there's not anybody that's going to not maybe that's exaggerate, but people come here, I have a wide diverse population, but it's very different than in the schools or a center based service. The parents drive a huge distance lots of times to get here, deal with their insurance.
00:07:05
Speaker
type of thing. They'll do what it takes because they want their child to listen and talk. They're also families that they know their kids' objectives. They bring a wealth of knowledge to each session. And I know that what, and we'll hear a little bit about what I do in the sessions, but they've played with their kids. They've read to their kids.
00:07:24
Speaker
you know, they worked with them at home and things like that. So I know that's a little bit different. Of course, if there's a problem with their hearing aids, I have everything we, or their implants we check, but we don't waste time on that type of thing. Really kids come in and they know the drill. I have a place in my therapy room that they go right away and we do a listening check, so not hearing aids. So sometimes this may include L, M, H, 10 sounds or other speech perception measures.
00:07:51
Speaker
And depending on the child's level, sometimes we're presenting sounds up close or greater distances. Some kids, we are adding background noise, white noise, maybe a multi-touch of babble.
00:08:06
Speaker
just sort of to replicate what it's like in the real world.
Activities and engagement techniques in therapy
00:08:10
Speaker
But as soon as we do that, the quick speech perception, I tell the kids that we're going to do an auditory workout. They're going to build their, our exercise, our listening muscles. So they're sort of used to that. And it's really just a warm up exercise.
00:08:25
Speaker
And it's different every time. A lot of times it's related to a theme that we're working on or just something to sort of expand their brains and make them listen. So I thought I'd tell you what I did with some of the kids. A lot of things I do similar all week with a lot of my kids and then fine tune them according to their needs. I think that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's just you can't do individual for everything. So now it's fall. And like the first thing I did is auditory discrimination.
00:08:55
Speaker
And I might say hey listen are these the same or different and for initial sounds I might say squirrel squeal they repeat same different repeat the words or leaf versus leaves. Those kinds of things I get a lot of information too well they didn't hear that final sound or whatever.
00:09:13
Speaker
I'm huge on auditory memory for lots of different reasons, but I can tell you about that later. But one of the things that I did this week was, okay, I want you to listen to your piece, these words in the same order that I say them. Apple, apple seeds, apple cider, Johnny apple seed. What did you hear? So we want them to do that. And then I usually do auditory direction. A lot of times these are sort of
00:09:38
Speaker
little active things. So and it really varies on the complexity and, you know, child to child, these are a little bit trickier than I'm going to tell you. But these are ones that I can get a good information about the child. So one I use this week is it's Friday, so I can tell you what I did all week. Yeah, perfect. Exactly. If you like apple pie, say give me another slice. If not, name your favorite dessert. So you know that
00:10:06
Speaker
gives me, they're listening, they're answering, they're comprehending, and they're doing, if not, then what? Yeah, I like that idea of doing more of the if-then questions, because they feel a little more conversational. So they can answer, and then I can make a comment. It's a little more like, that's interesting. And also, I like using the fall topics. I do a lot of theme stuff too, just to keep it interesting for me too, because I'm doing this all day too.
00:10:36
Speaker
One of my coworkers always says, if you feel bored, the kid is probably bored, which I think is totally true. So sometimes I do things just because they're fun for me, but I think that does transfer over into being fun for them too.
00:10:49
Speaker
yeah parents a lot lots of siblings are here so yeah we have to have fun and i would say a lot of times i would get done saying i had a great day that was really fun yeah but yeah another example like i said sometimes are active one other ones i did this week is
00:11:04
Speaker
Pretend to catch a football, run down the field, and then fumble the ball. So I'm seeing, can they do that? How many critical elements? Can they do all those steps? So that's usually how I start. The kids always like coming in and building up their muscles, I think. They think that's pretty funny. I'm going to take notes. I'm going to do this later. I like those ideas. Yeah. I have a resource in my TPT store listed with Lynn.
00:11:34
Speaker
that I think it's called listing practice activities. I have about 10 of those or whatever. But they're ones that I actually do all the time. Perfect. I have a bunch of your resources already. So I'll add one more. Same here. We're on the same kind of mind and things like that. So you can tell a lot of
00:11:55
Speaker
My session already occurs before we're even sitting down and I do usually sit at a table and things like that. And what happens is when the family before they're coming in, I usually place a toy or an item or something of interest related to what we're going to be talking about on the table.
00:12:13
Speaker
So this catches the child's attention while I check in with the parents. And that is really, really important. The beginning I have to check in with the parents. This week I have a little stuffed squirrel and a pile of acorns. All the kids went over that. But what happens is the parents share an update from their week.
00:12:31
Speaker
you know what I really like Deanna is when a child is at the table sort of looking at that squirrel and then they add oh but mom you didn't say this or you know whatever then I know that they I always want them to attend to the conversations around them pay attention and things like that so I know yeah you're doing really good when you're sort of adding into it type of thing yeah so yeah so up next
00:12:56
Speaker
And as long as I've been working with a family for a while, this is pretty quick, but I share the overall goals and objectives of that
Parental coaching and integration of therapy at home
00:13:03
Speaker
current session. What we're going to do, I usually share teaching and, um, like LSL teaching or parent coaching strategies that I plan to use. Like I said, if I said, Oh, we're going to use sabotage or we're going to do this, parents pretty much know, you know,
00:13:20
Speaker
if they've been there for a while type of thing. But then one other thing before I actually just start the activities, I briefly restate the objectives again, especially for school-aged kids. I want the kids to know and understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. So we're going to be working on your comprehension. We're going to be working on, you know, I really want your speech to try the best to use clear speech or whatever type of thing.
00:13:49
Speaker
I do that too. I think that's so helpful. I think especially for TODs who are working on self advocacy, like just allowing the trial to be like a more active participant in their own learning so that they know what they have to know what they're working on if they're going to advocate for learning. So like it all ties together, like nicely when even though I like I'm sure we're gonna talk about this too in a second, like I'm probably working on more than one thing at a time. But I want them to be focusing on something specific that they can improve on because
00:14:18
Speaker
that they're more actively engaged that way. So just like you said, not only the kids are actively engaged, and the smarty pants say, Oh, I know why we're doing this, you know, say you're right. But the parents, and by such are very active participants, they take turns, they get to one they're with me practice new skills, they ask questions,
00:14:40
Speaker
And then my goal for the parents is being able to take the lead during an activity. And some families are a lot more natural with that than other families. Some need practice to feel more comfortable or confident. So that really, that's my goal. There's honestly a couple
00:15:00
Speaker
parents that are, that's really hard for them. You know, I guess I would say sometimes it's males that's a little bit harder for, or families that English is the second language, but we work on that and that does, you know, get better. The one thing I remind parents is that there are 168 hours in a week and I'm only with them one hour a week. So during that time I can guide and coach them, but anything that happens important is during their time at home.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, things like that. So yeah, so I guess I'd also say during that time, I believe that children the best potential for listening in language goes when their parents have learned how to integrate the auditory verbal techniques into everyday activities experience. So I really encourage them to follow the child's interests and leads and, you know, teach that test. I think that's something that
00:15:55
Speaker
A lot of times happens, a lot of question asking, a lot of drilling. We don't want to do that. We want to have a conversation. We want to model. We want to, um, if, if you didn't know better, you think that, you know, we're just playing and having tons of fun, which we are, but, um, and that's something over the years, I've had lots of students and they are always surprised how conversational it is or how we could be doing activity and totally change it based on what the child says.
00:16:22
Speaker
And I think a lot of people are, oh, we're working on this, check done with that, move to the next.
00:16:27
Speaker
topic. And it's not like that at all type of thing. Yeah, I really I mean, I have a whole episode on like teaching, not testing. I feel like that was like the biggest truly like the biggest thing I learned from like my for auto verbal therapy was the teacher that was like the thing that made the biggest difference for me in therapy. Like I feel like like once I like once I clicked in my brain, I like everything else made more sense. And I could I feel like I could do it. Because really, just like it takes down so many barriers like
00:16:56
Speaker
A lot of kids don't like being tested. They don't like failing. You're not going to build a good rapport with them where they're going to engage with you for a long period of time if you're constantly testing them. And that's why I kind of like that little auditory workout idea at the beginning because it's framed as a fun little auditory workout, a little practice. And then the bulk of the session, it sounds like it's more teaching and modeling and playing.
00:17:21
Speaker
It's a lot more natural. And then since you're saying it is very diagnostic, you can adjust it very naturally without having to do a different activity. And I feel like I know a lot of your activities that you make are like this and a lot of the ones that I make are like this. They're kind of broad. I do write little directions sometimes because some people find them helpful, but I very rarely read from them. I'm almost always going off what's going on in the session and adjusting up or down a little bit.
00:17:50
Speaker
like, as needed. And I think that that's something that one, I guess you just when you practice it, it gets better. But also, like, you have to have confidence in your ability to do it. You don't have to read the questions off of paper, you can, you can listen to the kid and adjust when you are thinking about what you're working on. Exactly. When you said that was a big thing that you learned, or you remember that, I hadn't really thought about this for years. But
00:18:14
Speaker
My real good friend, Warren Estabrooks, you probably read some of his things. But I remember, so he's a little bit older than me, but watching him do therapy. And that really, oh my gosh, they were whispering, they were joking, they were, you know, just his whole mannerisms working with kids. I think that that's that conversation. That's, oh, we're friends and we're working on this together. And I think that's what I really learned.
00:18:41
Speaker
I mean, I can go over definitely next, like skills that I address for school age children. So I don't want you to think that we're just sort of chit-chatting and that. I mean, I'm pretty specific at what I'm working on, but it's the way that it's done. I guess it's something that's more later preschool, some kindergarten, first grade, when kids find out that they come here and this is my job. That's really cool. It seems like when we've had
00:19:10
Speaker
But we talk about occupations or something, and I'll say, do you know what my job is? Do you know what I like? No, I don't know what you do. I'm like, this is it. And so that's always pretty fun and things like that. But it just shows.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, kids are cute all the way around. But yeah, the activities or goals vary from child to child, but I still target like the main domains of audition, speech, language, communication, cognition, and that's across auditory, verbal.
00:19:45
Speaker
you know, or listening in spoken language. So just I'll give you a real quick, what each of those look like that I can get into more detail. So audition, it might be for a child working through herbers, hierarchy of odd word skill development.
00:19:57
Speaker
might be auditory memory, auditory association, comprehension, and so on. I would say auditory memory, if a child does not have good auditory memory, they're going to get no place with comprehension or any of the other things. And I really work on where they're at moving on, increasing the complexity. So a lot of people add background noise. I do that sometimes, but I really like to use multitasking. So many times you're not, I'll tell,
00:20:25
Speaker
I had a little boy today that I started talking when he was still doing what the task he was doing. I saw for teletherapy and he was like, looked at me like, what are you doing? I'm not done. And I say, every, the teacher's not going to look at you and wait until you're done listening that, you know, they're going to keep going and things like that. So I do a lot of multitasking. A lot of that's, I guess, a little bit of sabotage, but, um, kids in my office, I might have a, a pretty complex puzzle.
00:20:55
Speaker
some of those brain buster puzzles or even a jigsaw puzzle, or I have some blockhead like a balancing game. So while I'm asking the questions or talking about whatever our topic is, they're having to build that at the same time. Yeah, so multi they're having to listen and do something else such as life. So that's really important skill for I also did that a lot. Yeah, I really like that.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I feel like that applies a lot better to life than background noise. I know background noise obviously exists a lot, but I feel like I harp on what the teacher is like, no background noise, reduced background noise. And a lot of times they do a good job reducing background noise a lot of the time, but the kids are still busy and they're still distracted. And I feel like it's much more real life when they're actually... Yeah.
00:21:44
Speaker
doing something while you're talking about whatever you're talking about. And also, that's another thing I thought has helped with behavior is like, they're not just sitting there, like talking to me like they don't want everyone wants to do that. But if we're playing a game, believe it or not, not everyone wants to talk to me. But I know it helps with engagement. And it's more challenging. So it's kind of like a win win for me. Yeah, yeah. I say for like note taking for older kids, they need to do that all the time. Yeah, games, we play games with almost everything. I'm a big
00:22:14
Speaker
personally in my personal life and therapy, you know, board games and things like that. So that's an audition speech. I'm not a speech pathologist, but I really work on kids, school age. I tell them we're working on your clear speech, you know, doing the best that they can that's using their auditory feedback loop. So they hear it, think it's sad. I use sort of an old strategy, I think, or old speech tracking. I don't know if that's a whole lot, but speech tracking is
00:22:43
Speaker
when a child repeats what you're saying word for word or verbatim, phrase by phrase, material that's read to them.
Speech and language development techniques
00:22:51
Speaker
So that really helps. That helps with their prosody and their memory and things like that. So that's something I work on a lot. And this is a newer resource in my TPT store. I do a lot of tongue twisters. Me too. I love tongue twisters. OK. OK. And I have a little game with that. But the tongue twisters really sharpens
00:23:12
Speaker
their speech. They love doing it. It's too hard, but it's giggles. It's fun. It's humor and things like that. So yeah, I like sabotaging them. I like sabotaging the tongue twisters where I say it wrong on purpose. And they love when I mess up a tongue twister because one, they like, you know, they think it's funny that I messed up. But also like if I substitute like an S for an F, but that's like a real good yes for me of if they're perceiving that on like a connected speech level.
00:23:42
Speaker
So it's really helpful information and it's fun. And usually I just Google them. So I'm glad you've collected some because I'll go down on that.
00:23:51
Speaker
a little game that goes with it that makes sort of that not only they roll the dice and they have to maybe say it so many times and there's a, um, I'm trying to think of an activity that if they roll this one, then they have to twist like your tornado. There's activities that they do with that. And I forget what number six is, but yeah. So sort of work on that. Um, and I found it's more than anything making them accountable, making them, you know,
00:24:19
Speaker
you can slow down, you can make sure you put your ending sounds on things like that. Of course, if a child has a problem with articulation that I've referred out, we work together, but I found speech tracking, tongue twisters, clear speech I talk about really helps kind of thing. Yeah. So of course, the next thing we always work on language, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. So working on vocabulary as well as
00:24:47
Speaker
linguistic structures like syntax. We want the child to understand the receptive language and expressive language. Another domain, communication. So that's like pragmatics or social language. You know, are they good at asking questions? Do they understand slang or sarcasm? Self-advocacy comes underneath that. And then cognition, I always tell parents, we want them to think with the language they know. You know, think with language.
00:25:15
Speaker
And then my job there is to be really aware of the development of the whole child I'm working with and making sure that my expectations for their academics are cognitive based on who they are are developmentally appropriate. Yeah, that was something that I also found really helpful to think about is it's important for us to be aware of the child's cognitive level so that way we can shoot to get their language and their audition to match that.
00:25:44
Speaker
But we can't necessarily exceed that. So we can certainly work to push forward the child's global development. But you can't go past, like the cognition needs to be to be aware of what the cognition is. So you know what you're working towards. And I feel like if you're working with kids with multiple disabilities or
00:26:02
Speaker
kids who are older, it's really helpful to talk to the special ed teacher or talk to whoever is working on their cognition all day to get a sense of what they're doing. So that way you're picking materials that are appropriate and that you're picking goals that can actually work towards getting them to a more even development, right? Like everything more on the same page. A lot of people, some people don't realize how important it is to know about normal.
Setting appropriate therapy goals based on child development
00:26:31
Speaker
child development in all areas, but that's foundation for everything we do. Yeah. Yeah. In college, I was always a nanny, so I spent a lot of time around typically developing toddlers and little kids, and it was nice because I would hear the way they speak, and then I could use that as ideas for what I would like to target with my toddlers when I got a little
00:26:56
Speaker
when I started working because I knew like I went like they're combining two words like I know what words they tend to combine because I heard typical developing toddlers put together these funny little phrases and things so I think that's I mean a lot of TODs do push in for a certain amount of time into the classroom so I feel like we're lucky that we do have a good amount of exposure to like typically developing peers a lot of the times and
00:27:19
Speaker
even like you were going back to like slang and like just like being aware of like what type of language it's helpful for them to know, I think is important to keep in the back of your head that although I'll be honest, I'm getting to the point where I'm not even catching all the slang anymore. I tried my best, but like, I have a brother who's a lot younger than me. I asked him sometimes I'm like, what does this mean? Like, right? Exactly. But sarcasm is another huge thing though. I have found
00:27:49
Speaker
Because it's not just it's not the words, it's how it's said. Yeah. And so that really is something that lots of kids with hearing loss need work on or find difficult to listen to the intonation patterns or whatever like that. But when you're saying, you nanny, well, I'm a grandma now. So it's sort of reverse, you know, what my grandkids are saying and what they're doing and things like that. So which is sort of fun.
00:28:16
Speaker
which is fun. Yeah, I did hear you say about that use like thematic units for holiday things that I find school age kids that still need my service really struggle with vocabulary. Yeah. And I mentioned before the vocabulary is probably because of weak auditory memory.
00:28:37
Speaker
or they have difficult auditory comprehension because I'm not being able to remember what's happened or, or just lack of exposure. So I do use thematic units with my caseload while I'm targeting, you know, the auditory skills, memory association, sequencing, or whatever. But I really find in even a lot of my resources are seasonally based. So it could be seasonal. It could be a holiday. It could be just separate, um,
00:29:06
Speaker
sports, you know, whatever like that. But I really find the background knowledge of reoccurring, we'll say, seasons. It's fundamental for academic and language success. We know that the more the child hears and the more that's repeated about a topic, it's easier to comprehend and retain information, vocabulary grows. In my opinion, when maybe a therapist just introduces something different every time or not the repetition, I wouldn't find that
00:29:36
Speaker
it's helpful. And I find the repetition really encourages or, you know, like that it also is really engaging for families that
00:29:47
Speaker
parents can easily target and carry over themes that were, you know, I've introduced in therapy. So right now, autumn is such a fun time. Yeah, autumn is one of the best seasons for the years. Yep, exactly. Autumn and spring for me are the two good ones. Right. And who likes winter none of us, but raking leaves apple picking, you know, through, through stories and experience, they can carry over. But
00:30:12
Speaker
Another thing related to that, I don't know if you do this, it sounds like we do so many things together. I do you are not together. I mean, similar. I use a language processing hierarchy. And I don't know. Yeah, so that. Okay, okay. So and I do it almost like I work with the season. So in the summers, I do something different because of people taking off and
00:30:40
Speaker
different things. But each September, most of my kids, we work on categorization. It doesn't really matter what level they're at, but I target categories and families know that they're doing categories. When October rolls around, we target auditory associations, and then move on to comparisons. So, you know, how do things go together, comparison, same and different type of thing.
00:31:04
Speaker
But each month, because I'm doing this hierarchy, builds on the previous month's learning or information and things like that. I go on to December, I guess it's antonym, synonyms, move on to multiple meetings. March is absurdities, right? And with a little leprechaun doing absurd things and moves on to like April Fool's Day. So I put all these.
00:31:27
Speaker
language and thematic units together or whatever type of thing. I love that idea. I don't actually do it so structured like that, but I think I will because that's such a good idea because like in your head then you know you're building.
00:31:43
Speaker
It's a lot clearer on your end to make sure that you're building every month you're hitting new stuff. But I have a lot of teachers ask about, what's a good vocabulary curriculum? Or how do I help kids with vocabulary? And it's like, this is actually how you help kids with vocabulary. Because it's not really about learning new words per se. It's about expanding on the word nuances that you already know. Exactly.
00:32:10
Speaker
So I don't need you to know more animals. I need you to know describing the animals and categorizing the animals and things associated with the animals. And that's how you'll get into the actual nitty gritty of vocabulary. And I really like the idea of building in that way. I'm going to start that. I'm going to do that.
00:32:30
Speaker
I feel like just for organizing it on yourself, it's even so applicable to a TOD because we work on language and vocabulary all the time with like every, not every kid, but a lot of them. Like that's a super common task for us to work on. And I feel like keeping that in the back of your head that like this month I'm mostly talking about categorizing and then this month I'm mostly talking about associations. I feel like you can really hit a breath of vocabulary that way. And for me, guiding and coaching families, that really makes it
00:32:59
Speaker
I think when the kids are younger, there's so much to work on. You're doing so many different things. Parents sometimes get lost, but I find this is really effective in working with parents. So in September, they know remote, you know, our big thing is categories.
00:33:14
Speaker
And we're doing fall and, you know, every week it's specific fall, but I do type of thing. But, um, so it's really effective like that. So we, and even like, so say, if I, if it's a kindergarten, we start this hierarchy next year, I repeat it, but then it's just more difficult, higher level and things like that.
00:33:35
Speaker
I don't know how I actually came up with this. I've been doing it for quite a few years and it seems, I don't see a whole lot of people doing that, but it's worked well with me. I remember when my son-in-law was in grad school to get into grad school, he had to, maybe you did, I don't know, take a test called the Miller analogy test.
00:33:55
Speaker
And the whole test was all analogies. And I didn't really think that much about analogies before that time.
Self-advocacy and real-world applications
00:34:02
Speaker
And then I realized, well, of course, analogies, the only way you're going to answer it is if you have a good vocabulary. Yeah. So, you know, you can't guess what it's going to be. But the other thing is, it's all about word relationships. So my last month in May, I use analogies. Well, analogies are usually
00:34:20
Speaker
Big is too huge as little is too blank. You know, they're either synonyms, they're opposite or antonyms, they're parts of holes. They're all the things we've worked on. Yeah, are at the last month, then you realize, oh my gosh, look how much they've learned how and parents are just like, wow, it, you know, everything that's come together, not everything, but
00:34:44
Speaker
It really works out great. So you have to try to let me know. Yeah, I do. I love working on analogies. That's feel like I feel like that's kind of my like go to for some of the kids that I work with that have like seemingly have a lot of vocabulary. And I'm trying to find the pockets of things that I can expand on. I feel like analogies are a great way to find those pockets because they might know a lot of words but not know 100% how they all connect to each other. So exactly. That is what
00:35:13
Speaker
for for those kids that it's not obvious what like and like I've talked about this before I don't like just like pulling out like a list of vocabulary words like I really want it to be like connected to something else like in context with something else and a lot of times I'll pull from the classroom but then from there it's nice to put those classroom things into analogies I just take it one step further and you I just make them up on the spot like I just I with a whiteboard and then once I can do it with the whiteboard then I just do it auditory only
00:35:39
Speaker
once they have like a strong enough auditory memory to handle all that. It's a really good auditory memory test too. So right. I really like analogies. Yeah, I love that too. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I guess the last thing of course is self advocacy and personal responsibility. And self advocacy and sort of all those related skills are built into every lesson. Every single thing I do, I
00:36:06
Speaker
have the kids be responsible. I have no ask questions. However we do, it's a huge topic and it starts off from very little kids, what they're doing to
00:36:18
Speaker
you know, even my college age student things that I'm working with her with that type of thing. I wasn't going to bring this up like with my preschoolers. One, I do a lot of experiential language activities. So things they get to do. One of the things that I do with them early on is making lemonade. And so you can talk about all what all involved in that, but sort of what I started introducing being the boss of your hearing loss. And when you make lemonade the lemon sour, but how you go and you take a bad situation,
00:36:48
Speaker
and turning lemons into lemonade. And I sort of started off with that kind of thing. And then I have lots and lots of resources that I do. Okay, this is a situation. Is it something to do with your hearing? Is it an environment? Is it, you know, all those different things. And then, you know, work on, on self advocacy or across the board with lots of different ways. And honestly, a lot of my resources that I make on self advocacy,
00:37:16
Speaker
are situations of real kids in my caseload. In fact, it's sort of funny, I just went a couple weeks ago to a boy that I saw for therapy, he's a high schooler now, but he just became an Eagle Scout. And I was invited to his Eagle Scout ceremony. And I told him
00:37:33
Speaker
that I just that week had done a whole scenario or some of the therapy that was based on something that she had done at the Dairy Queen back in the day. Oh my gosh. Wow, you remember because I remember that that happened. I won't get into that now.
00:37:49
Speaker
But I'm sure that I really like alien though cuz it's like it's it's real it's real stuff that's actually happened I have that lemon to lemonade resource you're talking about use it all the time and because it's nice cuz like they're so like the situations are like specific
00:38:05
Speaker
So, and it's like, helpful for the kids to see that like other children have had these struggles before them. And it's their solutions out there that we can figure out together. I do think that's helpful. And obviously, I love working on self advocacy. I do it all the time. You too. One of my favorites of mine is never have I ever. And it's like it asks the kid, have you never have I ever done this?
00:38:30
Speaker
And they're like, it's all about bluffing. So you know, everything's they don't bluff, and they realize they spend their life bluffing and things like that. So yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, I can sort of tell you a little bit how my sessions end, which is a little bit different than Yeah, please do. Okay, so when it's sort of getting close to time to go, I rather than just sort of ending it, I asked the kids to tell me
00:38:55
Speaker
What was the most fun thing we did today? What did you like the most or what was really hard for you? But they're having to recall and share that information. And the reason I do that, yes, it's good for auditory memory and recall skills, but it also keeps them accountable that they have to know why we're doing what we're doing.
00:39:16
Speaker
and things like that. So I was I mentioned before auditory memory, I just think that is the most important aspect once you get kids listening and paying attention, that you're not going to get very far and syntactic complexity. If they don't have the memory, you're not going to
00:39:34
Speaker
you know, continue with the comprehension. But so anyhow, I just started the kids tell me what they like best. I said, Oh, maybe we'll do that next time or whatever. But then the parents are given time to reflect and ask questions and summarize, you know, what we did.
Reflecting on sessions and social interaction practice
00:39:50
Speaker
And then we spent a few minutes reviewing
00:39:54
Speaker
and then brainstorming ways to implement the goals at home for that week. And I usually, as long as the parents have been with me a long time, you know, I asked them, I said, what do you think you could do to carry that over? Or this was really easy, or this was difficult, you know, what do you think you could do? And parents are the best therapists, you know, like I said, once you, once they get it and interactive, man, I'll just, I have a really good video of a mom that pretty much took over the entire session.
00:40:23
Speaker
one time with a little boy, and I had a observer with me. It was really they were just like my goodness or whatever. But so that's sort of how I wind up the session. Well, almost is one more thing that I do. So my after school kids
00:40:40
Speaker
are pretty much back to back in the day, I have about 15 minutes in between. So they're back to back just because of there's so many hours in the after school for them to get here and get home and things like that. So my kids often meet each other as one is leaving and the next one arrives. So I intentionally walk out with them and never let them just walk past each other. I can't tell you in the past, I've even had parents
00:41:07
Speaker
just totally walk past each other. And I realized, no, no, no, this is not happening. So now I walk out with them. I usually, you know, get them going. The kids get to know each other, but I encourage, and it's a great time for me to model, you know, polite greetings or small talk, small talk between the kids and adults. That's something that's not a salient small talk, just the chitchat or whatever.
00:41:31
Speaker
But it allows me in real life to work on nonverbal and verbal pragmatic skills. And that's something that's often needed with this age type of thing. Not only do they sometimes feel a little awkward, they just don't know how to do that or whatever. So over time, you know, I want them to use appropriate greetings, maybe even face each other or smile as appropriate. Oh, you're in gymnastics. How did your meet go or, you know, initiate type of thing, but just those small, computational terms. It's also
00:42:01
Speaker
Um, a good time to work in clarification. Some kids sort of maybe are a little shy and looked out and another kid has to learn to ask, you know, can you tell me that again or whatever? And then I always want them to leave without see you next week or gotta go or whatever like that. And then I guess there's one more thing. It's sort of cool. A lot of my, um, kids may be the only child with hearing loss in their school or in their class, but they get to know another child, at least someone who is hearing aids or a Baja or whatever.
00:42:30
Speaker
and see that child is listening and talking and thriving too. So that's sort of how I end the session. So they're always fun, usually always fun, but you know, it's sort of a whole routine that I go through. And like even that last thing, they know that someone's going to be on the other side of that door when they are ready to walk out. And it's something that we can practice together and things like that. So yeah, I don't know.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds great. I feel like the whole thing is like jam packed from start to finish. Like every activity has goals behind it and like a purpose, even things like at the beginning at the end that we can think about when we're doing our sessions in the schools, maybe it looks a little different. But keeping in mind that like, oh, I can use this time in the hallway or when I'm returning them, I can model some proper farewells or greetings or whatever.
00:43:20
Speaker
to the other teachers or the other kids when you're pushing in. I do that a lot too. And I feel like it's just been really helpful to hear in detail about an auto-verbal therapy fashion because being able to pick and choose some of these things to apply to teaching is really, really helpful.
Adapting therapy plans to individual and school needs
00:43:38
Speaker
So thank you so much for taking the time to share all of that with us. I was just going to say real quick, I have worked for myself for so many years. I was a clinical audiologist.
00:43:51
Speaker
as I've done this. So even though I'm in contact with a lot of people, some of the things I do have worked for me, doesn't mean that it's what most people do.
00:44:00
Speaker
or whatever like that, that just sort of, but I think I'm referring to you said about planning your sessions. So I might know that I'm working on this theme, but there's not a kid or adult that comes through. I've not planned their, their lesson. And I, I follow a lot of different from social media. And I just saw somebody, I don't know who was today put
00:44:23
Speaker
Oh, I don't usually plan my lessons because what I plan doesn't usually work out anyhow. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I completely, yes, you can be adaptable. But I also, I feel really accountable to these families. I mean, they're trusting us to work with their child and we need to get them to a certain point. So yes, I am organized. I do know what I want to do next, even if it doesn't come to fruition. But I think that's, that's what we're called to do if we're in this field.
00:44:52
Speaker
to do our best that we can for the kids and their families. Anyhow, get off my soap box. No problem. People don't plan. I just don't understand that. I do think in the school, sometimes there are things that throw you that the teacher will hand you a packet and be like, they have to finish this. And I'm like, they have to finish it right now in my session? That's what needs to happen. And sometimes that truly is what needs to happen. And that's when I put on my little
00:45:20
Speaker
hat of trying to figure out how can I take this passage and incorporate all of my listening goals and language goals and self-advocacy goals into this activity. And I can. We all can. We all do it. So I think sometimes you have to make it work, but that doesn't mean I didn't have a plan. It just means I can't always execute the plan.
00:45:41
Speaker
I do think having an idea though of what you're going to work on, even if it's mostly like objectives, it's easier to think on the fly and adapt when you already know what you're trying to work on. So like even if the actual toys or games are not what you planned, I at least know
00:45:58
Speaker
what i was going to work on sure it's about how i plan for itinerant because i do think it's like a different piece then could i also go into early intervention and even that planning is different because i believe it or not i think i have more control over that because there's not so many other adults and like so many other
00:46:16
Speaker
things that can go on in the school. I don't even get a room. So I'm like, okay, I got to figure out where I'm going to sit with this child first. So that's like a whole other thing. But that's what I mean, though. It's like, I love hearing how other people do things. Like, I love to hear from someone who plans meticulously because I can take bits and pieces of how you plan and then apply it to how I plan. And I just think I love hearing people talk about how they do things. Yeah. Yeah. That's what your podcast, why people get more and more popular because
00:46:45
Speaker
you're talking about having people share their expertise. And we're in a small field, you know, that I guess also with all our, most of our conference run remotely. I mean, it used to be, we'd go to conferences and we'd stay up all night chit chatting about what you're doing in therapy or what's your best toy or what happened here with this, you know, that's how we learned back in the day. And now podcasts are great for that type of thing.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah.
Resources and closing remarks
00:47:15
Speaker
If people have more questions or if they want to see some of your resources, could you share where everyone can find you online? Sure. My website is hearsay, so hearsay, and then L-W, my initials, L-W.com. I guess it's hearsay, L-W.com. And like Deanna, I do create resources. There are a couple of different platforms, but my main platform is Teachers Pay Teachers, and it's Listen with Lynn.
00:47:43
Speaker
So thank you for listening to me today and inviting me Deanna to share with you.
00:47:49
Speaker
all the people that follow you on your platform was great. Of course. I'm a good talker. I like to talk. I also like to talk. But I'll link all of Lynn's things in the show notes so that you can find them. Everything we mentioned today I'll go through and link in the show notes along with the transcript down below and listen to Toddpod.com.
00:48:14
Speaker
If you'd like to be a guest on the podcast in the future to share about your area of expertise or interest, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at listeningfun. And I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time. Bye.