Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify We’re back at it with another episode of the SLP Now podcast! This week, we’re taking the next step in our six-episode learning journey all about planning a month-long literacy based therapy unit — with comprehensive plans for your entire school-aged caseload. So far we’ve talked about planning for an early language unit using the book Lola Plants a Garden, and a picture book unit using Spring is Here! Today, we’re talking about therapy plans for a fiction article: Miss Johnson’s Plant Experiment. This unit is specifically designed for older student ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Welcome to another episode of the SLP Now podcast! We’re getting ready to dive into the second of a six-week series about literacy-based therapy plans that you can use across your entire school-aged caseload. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to explore various units that are designed to engage and support your students across multiple age groups and skill levels. Whether you’re an experienced speech-language pathologist or new to the field, we hope that these episodes will provide valuable insights and practical strategies that you can put t ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Welcome to another episode of the SLP Now podcast! This week, we’re kicking off a six-week series about literacy-based therapy plans that you can use across your entire school-aged caseload. Over the next several weeks, we’ll explore various units designed to engage and support students across multiple age groups and skill levels. Whether you’re an experienced speech-language pathologist or new to the field, we hope that these episodes will provide valuable insights and practical strategies for your caseload. Today, we’re going to start with an earl ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify After covering paperwork, data collection, and progress reports, it’s time to wrap up our March podcast series and dive into one of Marisha’s very favorite topics… How to Use Probe Data! Before getting into the nitty gritty of this topic, it’s important that we make sure we’re on the same page when we say “probe data”: A probe is a quick assessment that you administer in a session. You can do a probe at any point, but Marisha tends to collect probe data at the beginning of the session. She also does the probe without offering any support so that she ..read more

This blog post discusses how to write goals for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) for speech language pathologists. What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech? Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder that falls under the umbrella of speech sound disorders.  Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) occurs when motor movement and planning is impaired, which results in errored speech sound production. When a child has apraxia of speech, it impacts the precision and consistency in their speech, and is not due to muscles working incorrectly (ASHA, 2007b). What are the Characteristics of ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Welcome to the final installment of our Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp series. So far we’ve covered choosing a book, pre-story knowledge/reading, post-story comprehension, and targeted skill activities. Today we’re going to talk about parallel stories — which just might be Marisha’s favorite part of the whole literacy-based therapy framework. The sprinkles on this literacy-based cupcake is the fact that Marisha isn’t the only one who likes this step. Her students really enjoy parallel stories too! She has had multiple experiences of working with stu ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Now that we’ve covered choosing a book, pre-story knowledge, reading, and post-story comprehension, it’s time to get into focused skill activities! Before we dive into the practice, it’s really important to lay the groundwork for a successful session: Make sure the students are aware of their goals — and that we have their buy-in. We can have the most beautiful therapy materials, the most amazing visuals, and work with the latest and greatest in evidence-based strategies… and the session can still be a flop if we don’t have student buy-in and motivat ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Get ready for more Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp, SLP! Last week we discussed choosing a text (go back if you haven’t listened yet!) and in this episode, Marisha dives into steps one and two of Dr. Ukrainetz’ literacy-based therapy framework: pre-story knowledge activation and reading the text. Pre-Story Knowledge Activation and Reading the Text If you’re used to skill-based drill therapy, you might find yourself thinking that the steps Marisha discusses in this episode are more fluffy than effective — because that’s what she thought earlier in her ..read more

At the SLP Summit on January 30th, I presented 3 simple routines to streamline your therapy planning! Missed us live? The replay is available until February 19th! There were a lot of questions, so let’s take some time to answer them here! Literacy-Based Therapy Framework First, we reviewed Dr. Ukrainetz’s 5-step literacy-based therapy framework. Check out this Instagram post for a quick overview of literacy-based therapy. And now let’s dive into the questions… Do you write goals specific to this framework?  I don’t! I write goals based on the skills that my students need support with. An ..read more

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify What keeps an SLP from becoming a tutor? This framework. Okay, that’s not totally true — using a framework is not the only thing that distinguishes a tutor from an SLP! But it can definitely help, and that’s what we’re talking about in this week’s episode of the SLP Now Podcast: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: How to Choose a Book We want to be really clear that being a tutor is amazing, and being an SLP is amazing. This is not a conversation about one profession being better than another, it’s about understanding the role each person plays in help ..read more