In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie Sherman shares a powerful tool for improving therapy practices: Tar Heel Reader. Get ready to unlock a world of free, accessible books that will enhance literacy, comprehension, articulation, expressive language, and social skills. Learn how to make learning fun, increase vocabulary, and captivate your kids with custom stories. You won't want to miss this episode, which is jam-packed with new therapeutic advice and real-life examples! Here’s what we learned: How students can use Tar Heel Reader to become authors, empowering them to craft and publish ..read more

In the latest episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie Sherman serves up a steamy brew of fresh ideas to rejuvenate your speech-language therapy sessions.  Saying goodbye to the yawns and hello to sessions that are as enjoyable as they are educational. Hallie provides practical examples of how to adapt popular board games to meet various speech and language goals. From “Twisted Scrabble” to “Modified Monopoly,” and from “Guess Who?” with a twist to an adapted “Operation,” each game is a doorway to learning that feels less like therapy and more like play! Here’s what we learned: How to repur ..read more

Do you struggle sometimes talking to parents and navigating the whole IEP process with parents? If so, you are going to love today’s guest on SLP Coffee Talk! I sat down with Wendy Taylor to talk all about how you can better help parents when it comes to IEPs.  Wendy shares all of her best tips and tricks for communicating with parents, sharing your findings, handling disagreements, and helping parents advocate for their own kids in those tricky IEP meetings.  Wendy Taylor is a certified Educational Therapist, qualified Orton-Gillingham practitioner, trained Educational Diagnosticia ..read more

Are you familiar with trauma-informed care?  In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I sat down with Rachel Archambault, the PTSD SLP, to talk all about trauma-informed care for our speech students. You don’t have to be a trauma detective to support your students who have experienced trauma, you just have to offer them a safe space, and Rachel is telling us exactly how to do it.  ​​Rachel Archambault, MA CCC-SLP is an SLP Program Specialist for Broward County Public Schools. After experiencing a nationally publicized traumatic experience at her workplace, she looked for ways to help wor ..read more

Let’s talk about one of my favorite tools to use in my speech room- videos!  Videos are motivating, require zero prep, and can easily adapt to any goal. In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I’m sharing how you can use this versatile resource to target vocabulary goals.  We know that a skilled reader's vocabulary is a key component to their success. They can't comprehend what they read if they don't understand all the words in a text. So I’m sharing my favorite tools and activities that you can use in your speech therapy sessions with videos to help your students truly understand thei ..read more

Do your students love technology like mine do? If so, you’re going to love today’s guest on SLP Coffee Talk! I sat down with Gareth Walkom from withVR. He’s here to share what he does with VR and how it can benefit our speech therapy students! Gareth is from the UK and now lives in Belgium. He is a proud person who stutters beautifully and is the Founder of withVR – a customizable virtual reality tool for SLPs and researchers.  Since 2015, he has published, advised, and reviewed research on the topic. Gareth has spoken at 40+ conferences in the past three years, including being one of th ..read more

Looking for ways to get your students more involved, more engaged, and seeing more results?  You have to try interest-based therapy!  Many of us struggle with keeping our students engaged and motivated- especially our older ones. They are lifers. They've been coming to speech for years. They are bored of it. They are tired of it. They're embarrassed about it.  They are aware of their academic difficulties and they don't want to be doing it anymore.  So instead of fighting the fight and trying to get them to engage in the activities you choose,  how about we flip the s ..read more

  I can't believe it is already Valentine's Day week!  You're probably looking for some activities you can do to incorporate the Valentine's Day theme without acquiring a ton of prep, without being too cutesy and mushy, and that doesn't require any money. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!  I’m sharing 3 free and totally fun speech activities for Valentine’s Day!  I am all about finding simple activities that can be used to work on a variety of goals that don’t require a ton of prep because that’s how you avoid overwhelm and burnout.  These are ready-to-go games and ac ..read more

  As SLPs, the relationship between grad students and supervisors is so important for the success of the new SLP.  In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, I sat down with two SLPs, Kathleen and Shelby, to talk about their supervisor-grad student relationship. They share their best tips for new grad students and supervisors so that they can all build strong relationships that are beneficial to everyone involved. Shelby graduated with her Masters in Speech-Language Pathology from Monmouth University this past May. She is currently a clinical fellow in a specialized high school. I service s ..read more

  Have you ever thought about using music in speech therapy? You are going to love this episode! I sat down with Kevin Simmons, AKA The Singing SLP to talk all about how we can incorporate music and singing into our speech therapy sessions to help our students reach their goals in a fun and interactive way.  Kevin was one of my speakers at the Speech Retreat in November and if you’re not following him on Instagram, you’re missing out! He has tons of tips and activities that we can do using music with our students and he’s sharing them with us today.  Kevin is a pediatric speech ..read more