I have spent a fair amount of time here complaining about winter, so it's a good time to let you know that I LOVE St. Patrick's Day, mostly because to me it is the beginning of spring. Also, I am Darn Well Irish (the MacSweeneys, one of them being my grandfather, hail from County Cork, Ireland). This is sort of a weird holiday to target ...

Kids do! I was skimming the shelves at Barnes & Noble one day when I saw the cute little picture book ''When it Starts to Snow,'' by Phillis Gershator and Martin Matje. The title instantly made me think, ''temporal structure!'' Through adorable illustrations and rhyming text, the book describes what a variety of animals do when it starts ...

Dear Kathie: ''Do you always take a language sample as part of an assessment with a verbal child or adult with ASD? If so, what do you look for and how do you elicit the conversation?'' - Adrian, speech-language pathologist My Response: Thank you for asking about the assessment aspect for a child/adult with ASD. I feel there are three ...

Books continue to be my heroes in my school position, sometimes showing up to save me from ennui when I least expect it. I was recently doing a pull-over sort of session in the literacy center (the kindergarten class is nearby and my room is, well, not), and spied the colorful cover of Alphabet Rescue, by Audrey Wood and her son, Bruce. ...

This time of year, especially in the Northeast, it can seem like everyone is struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder, including our students. It's cold, it's dark, and the smallest thing can set us off! As SLPs, we can be good counselors to our students and encourage positive self-talk for all sorts of occasions.  Self-talk ...

Listening is such a key skill for SLPs in schools to address and foster for all students, whether they have auditory comprehension deficits, social communication problems or are just overly active in the classroom setting. Comprehension exercises are one way to do this, but it is helpful to be as strategic as possible and give ...

I am taking a brief departure from the soon-to-be-wrapped-up ''Book It'' series on using picture books in language interventions in order to report back from ASHA Convention in San Diego. I was super excited to attend this year's ''Divas + One Players'' Session: Language Intervention in Science and Social Studies: A Panel Discussion. ...

Autumn is the perfect time to use trees as a context for your speech and language therapy. The study of trees is often identified as a curriculum unit, at least here in the Northeast where they change significantly across the span of a year. Trees can be related to categories and subcategories, can be used to teach describing by parts ...

I am happy to share some good news for those of you who have been following the Speech in the Schools Blog over the past year. Last October in a blog post I recommended a book called ''The Spooky House of Horror'' by Charles Fuge, Ian Craig and Ron Van der Meer. I felt horrible to discover that it was a collectors' item and now costs a ...

A couple of blogs ago, I wrote about several new therapy techniques/strategies/programs that I was trying with my students this year. Now that it is nearly the end of the first marking period (Friday!), I think I've had enough time and experience trialing these programs to give you my opinion of each in this blog. One of the four new ...