Great ideas for speech therapy materials abound, time to make them does not. That’s why The Speech Umbrella has a Free Resource Library for SLPs on the front lines. In the ever growing library you’ll find material for articulation, autism, clinic management, early listening and phonological awareness, fluency, and oral and written language.

 This episode takes you on a tour of some of my favorite resources in the library. Tune in and find the resource you’ve been looking for to make your clinical life easier!

— Useful Links —

Simple Tools for Optimal Outcomes 

Where Everybody Knows Your Name 

To Infinity and Beyond 

Essential Language for Autism 

Challenges in Early Intervention 

First Words Project 16 by 16 

Real Changes in Spoken Language with Sketch and Speak 

Simple Tools: Phonemic Awareness for Parents 

Youtube The Speech Umbrella

Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission

Transcript

Denise: Welcome to the Speech Umbrella, the show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I’m Denise Stratton, a pediatric speech language pathologist of 30 plus years. I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning, and along the way, I’ve worked long and hard to become a better therapist. Join me as we explore the many topics that fall under our umbrellas as SLPs. I want to make your journey smoother. I found the best therapy comes from employing simple techniques with a generous helping of mindfulness.

Hello. Welcome to episode 84 of the Speech Umbrella podcast. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you know I have a free resource library that I’m always talking about. It’s tailor made to help SLPs on the front lines. Everything in this library is a product I’ve made and loved. Last year I did an episode on my Simple Tools videos, which people seem to really like because it’s been one of my most listened to podcasts, and so I thought if something works, repeat the formula, right?

So for today’s episode, we’re going on a tour of the Free Resource Library. Who knows, maybe you’ll hear about the very thing that you need today. I hope so. This episode is called Free Tools From The Speech Umbrella. Have your thoughts ever traveled down this path? I know mine have. If I just had a checklist for this or a template for that, or a set of these pictures, it would make my life so much easier. And your next thought is, I could do that. I don’t think that would be hard to make. And that’s when you remember, I’ve been down this path before and it actually took me a lot longer, and it was actually kind of frustrating. Hmm, maybe I don’t wanna do that. And here’s where your good intentions died before they are even born, and that oh, so helpful product never gets made.

This is why I have a free resource library, because I can’t help myself. I can’t resist making these things. I just do. And because of all the practice, sometimes painful practice, I’ve had, now I can make them in a reasonable amount of time and I can put them in the free resource library for you.

Join me on this tour, and chances are you’ll hear about at least one product you can use in your practice. First, I’m going to talk about the six sections I have in the library, which I just reorganized to better reflect what they’re useful for. Now, some products obviously fit in more than one category, but I’ve done my best to make things easy to find, and then I will highlight some of my favorite products. I have 26 items, so I can’t talk about them all.

The new and improved categories in the library are: articulation, autism, clinic management, early listening, and phonological awareness, fluency, and oral and written language. So let’s start with some of my favorite resources for autism. Now, I used to have a separate category in the library that I called Essential Language for Autism or ELA, but that has now been moved under autism, and the former ELA products are really for Gestalt Language Processors. At the time I coined my own term ELA because I wasn’t familiar with the term Gestalt Language Processors. Speaking of Gestalt Language Processing, the stage one sentence types handout that I have in the library is fantastic to show to parents of our Gestalt Language Processing clients. Now, do you recall learning about stage one sentence types in grad school?

For me, it seemed like we covered it in a blink of an eye, and then we moved on. But many of us probably do remember the whole thing about mommy sock. Now, if you’re scratching your head trying to recall what’s this whole thing about mommy sock, here’s the gist of it. Language revolves around semantic relations. Every idea we express in a sentence is based on these foundational 13 types of word relationships. Thus, the early sentence mommy sock, is the basis for saying something like this is mommy’s sock. That’s if the child is communicating a possessor/possession relationship. Now, you can’t generate the longer sentence until you have internalized the stage one sentence types, these relationships among words.

And Gestalt Language Processors who fail to progress, they may repeat these longer sentences because they’ve memorized them, but the key point is they didn’t creatively generate them. And children without a firm grasp of stage one sentence types hit a ceiling in expressive language because they lacked generative language and they lacked generative language in part because they lack semantic relations. They do not understand how these words relate together. It’s actually really, really important to understand this. I use this handout to explain this concept to parents. I want them to understand why the one and two word stage of language is fantastic. It’s highly desirable. It’s a cause to celebrate, and I’ve also used it to take quick data In a session. I can make tally marks by the semantic relationships just to get an idea of where the child is at. That’s a brief explanation of the value of the Stage One Sentence Types form that you can find in the free resource library under autism.

Still under the autism category, let’s talk about gestures. Looking at gesture development is another great way to understand our young clients with autism, and that’s where my 16 gestures by 16 months tracking form comes in handy. Don’t try and say that five times fast. The First Words Project has a really great resource that describes gesture development from roughly nine months to 16 months. Gestures build on each other, so it’s super helpful to look at the developmental sequence. For example, we all want our kiddos to point, right? We know how important that is. But did you know the Index Finger Point follows a lot of other gestures that need to develop first?

Well, that’s kind of a no-brainer. I could have guessed that if someone asked me, you know, does the finger point gesture develop first? But I didn’t know what those earlier gestures were until I saw this resource. I wanted a way to track their development, so I made a tracking chart that allows SLPs to monitor every gesture, and you can mark it as not present, emerging, solid with assistance, or mastered. It’s great for progress monitoring and also to share with families. There’s a lot more in the autism category, so check it out.

Okay, let’s move on to oral and written language. I could really call this oral, written, and receptive language, but that would be a mouthful. And I rarely have ever worked on receptive language without addressing expressive language and vice versa. And I never work on written language without also addressing oral language. These products have a lot of crossover, and that’s why this category is so comprehensive. These next two products I’m gonna talk about, I use all the time, several times a week in fact.

First up are the Tony stories, which is a collection of simple stories with the same character that I made up. Having a consistent character allows clients who struggle mightily with name recall to gain some traction. Without the cognitive load of trying to recall a new name every time they tell a story, they can focus on other parts of the story.

I love, love, love my simple stories. These have stood the test of time with many a beginning storyteller. If you’d like to learn more about how to use these stories, take a listen to Episode 58, called To Infinity and Beyond, and 59, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. By the way, I have several of these stories and I’m working on getting them professionally drawn.

My ultimate goal is to have 52 stories, a whole year’s worth, and then have a story of the week subscription club, but that’s still in the works. While that’s in the works, here are three stories that are accessible for those clients who are just beginning to dip their toes into narrative language, and you can download them from the library.

Second in oral language is the two column note form. This is so dead simple. I wondered if I should even highlight it, but the truth is I’m printing this off all the time, and that’s because I’m using Sketch and Speak all the time. I interviewed Dr. Ukrainetz in Episode 72 about this method she developed called Sketch and Speak, and it’s simply wonderful. I’ve seen huge changes in clients oral language when I use Sketch and Speak, it’s one of my primary interventions. So take a look at that and listen to the podcast so you know how to use it.

The next two products I’m gonna talk about fall under the category of early listening and phonological awareness. I’ve joined these two skills in one category because one leads so naturally into the other, it’s hard to separate them. Foundational to phonological awareness is the understanding that words are separate and that every word counts. And also critical to phonological awareness is being aware of the position of words within sentences.

Now we usually think of phonological awareness as being aware of sounds within words, but being aware of the position of words within sentences comes before awareness of position of sounds within words. So if you think of it as the bigger chunks, children become aware of the bigger chunks before they become aware of the smaller chunks.

And this is where I use my one two, buckle your shoe printable for helping them understand that every word counts. That every word is important and is its own separate word. I lay down carpet markers and I have these printable with a picture of a one and a two and a shoe, and we learn one twp, buckle my shoe.

That’s five words, so I demonstrate with a carpet markers stepping on one carpet marker for one word, one to buckle my shoe. It is really, really helpful for those kids who run their words together and parents are saying they mumble and maybe they don’t really have an articulation disorder when you dive down into it because they can say these sounds clearly, but they’re just not aware that they need to have distinctness between words.

Now, I also use this to help them become aware of the last word in a phrase or a line. So one, two, buckle my shoe. I ask them to remember what is the last word they heard. And lots of times they’ll say the first word, they’ll say one because they don’t really understand first and last word, but you teach them that it’s the last position, it’s the word shoe, and they start to remember that. And then you can pull in the rhyming piece, one two, buckle my shoe. Two sounds like shoe. And as you go on through the rest of the poem, you do the same thing, rinse and repeat. This must be helping a lot of SLPs because it has been downloaded more than 800 times on my TPT store.

Now let’s go further down the road in phonological awareness where we are manipulating syllables and sounds within words. I have seen again and again the benefit of using the Equipped For Reading Success approach with my clients. And here’s the kicker, I’m seeing improvement in their oral language and articulation followed later by improvement in reading. Equipped For Reading Success by Dr. Kilpatrick as copyrighted, so I can’t just give parents copies of the word analysis tasks that I have in the book if they want to help their children practice. But what I can do and what you can do is use the research that Equipped For Reading Success was based on, that research is now out of copyright and available for public use. It wasn’t in a user-friendly format, so I tidied it up. And I match the levels with what you see in Equipped For Reading Success. So it all looks really nice. And while there aren’t as many analysis tasks as in the actual Equipped For Reading Success book, it’s a great place to start. It’s a great way for clients to get additional practice at home. By the way, I have a Simple Tools video for parents so they can have a greater comfort level in trying this at home. And you can find that at thespeechumbrella.com/blog/pa-four-parents. That’s long, I’ll put that in the links. You can find this on YouTube too if you search for the Speech Umbrella, and then phonological awareness for parents. Now, I also know that this is helping a lot of SLPs out there because this particular video has been viewed over a thousand times on TPT.

Well, that’s just six outta 26 products in the free resource library, and I’m always adding to it. For just the price of your email, you can get access to materials for articulation, autism, clinic management, early listening, and phonological awareness, fluency, and oral and written language, and I promise to never share your email or inundate you with too many emails.

To subscribe to the free resource library, go to thespeechumbrella.com/free. What I do do with your email is let you know whenever a new podcast is coming out or a new product. You can find some of these products on my TPT store, but not all of them, because I save the best products for those who subscribe to my free resource library.

Also, I’m now on Instagram and on Facebook, but on Instagram you’ll find me at dstrattonslp, because unfortunately the Speech Umbrella was already taken. So that’s dstrattonslp. And on Facebook, I am the Speech Umbrella. If you like what you’re hearing, please like, subscribe, comment, give a thumbs up, or whatever it is you do when you’re on social media. I’d love to hear from you. Now I know my library is full of simple stuff. That’s true, but it’s also true that when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself.

Thanks for listening to the speech umbrella. We invite you to sign up for the free resource library at thespeechumbrella.com. You’ll get access to some of Denise’s best tracking tools, mindfulness activities, and other great resources to take your therapy to the next level. All this is for free at thespeechumbrella.com. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories.