Hide and Seek Blog Hop - Who's in the Art Room?

Thirteen bloggers are hiding--hiding on different blogs and hiding in the school. They're here to show you that you can (and probably do) do therapy everywhere and that each locale has it's own benefits. For all their tips, hop from blog to blog. While you're there, jot down the author's blog/school location listed at the bottom of each post to enter into Rafflecopter. 

Find each of us both working and posting somewhere new!  This post is from Tami: 

Many of us get too comfortable in our little closets, offices, portables, or corners because we get to do our own thing with our much loved tools of trade. However, opportunities to enhance and improve speech and language skills are not isolated to our room or with those materials.  Therapy can happen ANYWHERE!  A wonderful opportunity is missed when we do not embrace this fact.  Therefore, I want to thank Kim from Activity Tailor for creating and hosting this fun blog hop to get us to think outside of our comfort zone and our little cubicle we call "the Speech Room".

Skills that can be addressed within the art room include:  basic concepts, academic vocabulary, compare and contrast, following directions, sequence, semantic features, functional communication via use of AAC, and social language and peer interactions. Here are some ways that you can encourage and enhance speech and language skills in the art room!  

FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and SEQUENCING: Arts and crafts usually include steps to complete the creative task. While working with your students, break the art project up into smaller steps to address following directions.  Dependent upon the student’s needs, you can either keep them at one step simple directions (“Go get the white piece of paper”) to more complex multiple step directions (“Go get the large white piece of paper on the last table after you pick up your paints and brushes”).  After the completion of several steps, the student is able to tap into personal experience (from following your directions) to retell the multiple steps they took to complete the task. 

SEMANTIC FEATURES:  Breaking the item into its more basic components (parts, function, description, location, and category) can be completed for anything in your environment.  Students can practice this skill while holding onto the actual items such as art supplies or their art project (clay model, painting, drawing, etc...). This provides students with built in visual and tactile cues while giving meaning to the task.  This also provides the student with an opportunity to shine while they talk about the art project they created.

FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION and SOCIAL LANGUAGE: Arts and crafts require multiple supplies.  It provides for multiple opportunities to listen to and facilitate the use of functional communication and social language by having students work on complimenting each other, making requests for necessary materials to complete the task to their art teacher and peers, and asking each other questions related to the task.  All of this can be facilitated in this more natural setting and assists with long-term generalization and carryover.

Tami’s home base is TLC Talk Shop, but today she’s in the: ART ROOM! 

To enter the Hide and Seek Blog Hop raffle, collect the names of the participating blogs and where they are hiding and enter them here.

http://speechisbeautiful.com/2015/09/hide-and-seek-blog-hop

keep on talking!