At the beginning of each school year I do a short, 10-15 minute, powerpoint presentation about what speech services are and how they work in my building. This is a helpful refresher for those seasoned teachers and helps to open the doors of communication for the new professionals who have joined our staff. Now I could go on and on about speech and what we do but I try to contain myself to about 8 slides.
The Break Down
So here is how my presentation is laid out… Of course I have a cover slide then I breakdown the areas that we, as SLPs, treat in a school setting.
After I list the area, I have 2-3 quick bullet points with what that area is and examples, such as ” Articulation: – Difficulty producing speech sounds accurately, – ‘wat’ for ‘rat’, etc.
Now this is where I had some teachers come and approach me last year. They wanted more in depth examples than what I had in my presentation. They asked “What is an expressive language disorder?” “What do a receptive language issues look like?”. I gave some examples, but then the problem became that teachers clung to those and used only my examples as being criteria for fitting those deficits. So I had to figure out another way to provide my teachers with examples of these issues that would be used more as guidelines and not ‘the only option’.
So in my powerpoint this year I have hyperlinked several short you tube clips that should entertain and provide some good examples. I used the AT&T commercials to find examples for expressive and receptive language difficulties ( there are some pretty funny ones ). I used a clip of Froggy, from The Little Rascals, as an example for voice. I found a clip of Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, doing his classic 3-knock plus name on the door for social skills. I did put pictures of Looney Toons characters by my information about articulation and phonology. I know these can be a bit controversial for some people but they seem to get the point across in a gentle manner.
The breakdown of areas is about 3 slides. The rest of the presentation, about 3-4 slides, talks about my school’s protocol for bringing students up when concerns are observed and the procedure that follows. After my presentation I always email it out to the staff and make sure that everyone knows that they can stop by if they have questions.
Do you do any type of presentation in the beginning of the year?
6 Responses
Wow great ideas! I haven’t given a presentation on speech services before, but I’d like to. I think it might cut down on some of the referrals of kids who are within normal limits. 🙂
Lauren
Busy Bee Speech
Hi Lauren,
It did help with the amount of students being brought up for referrals. I think having something to reference is helpful for teachers.
Would you be willing to share your presentation with us, either on your blog or on tPt? I start my CF in a few weeks and would love to do something like this, but I’m already overwhelmed with preparing other materials, prepping my room, etc! This is such a great way to reach out to teachers and educate them about our role and how we can actually help their students!!
My presentation is currently on my thumb drive that is being held hostage in my office. I should be able to get back into my office in a week or two so once I can get access I will try and post either pictures or some of the slides.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I will be on the lookout!
Love your ideas of using different clips to show the different disorders. Makes the presentation fun and memorable! Love it!!