The Missing Link

It is so exciting when our students make progress during therapy! It gives us hope and helps remind us that we really are making a difference.  However, it can be so disappointing when I talk with classroom teachers and they say that the student isn't carrying their new skills over into the regular education setting. Carryover of skills across settings can be a difficult task, but here are a few tips to help your kids use their best speech and language skills once they walk out your door. 

1. Do you use visuals during therapy? Give them to your regular education counterparts! Even if they don't reference the materials as frequently as you do or use them in the exact same way, just seeing the visual aid your students use during speech can act as a reminder to use their best speech/strategies. 

2. Do your students have any built in "intervention" time? If they do, send materials for your students to work on during intervention time. Send things the students can do independently. I sent a "speech folder" and bingo dobber back to regular ed with one of my kinders and his teacher already asked me for more sheets to work on during "WIN" (what I need) time! Score! 

3. Send materials home. My younger students LOVE taking things home to share with their parents. My older students will actually ask if they can throw their "dot pages" into the garbage on the way out the door. Sometimes, I let them toss them in the garbage.  Other days (I try at least 1 time per month) I make them take their completed materials home so they have to show them to their parents. Fingers crossed those speech sheets make it out of the speech room, into the backpacks, and onto kitchen tables! If your kids and their parents are on board, send home speech homework. It doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking, but make 2 copies of that articulation dot page for your kids and have them do one with you and one at home. 

4. I saved the best, most obvious, but easy to forget tip for last. Keep open lines of communication with classroom teachers and parents! If your students have a great session, send a quick email to the regular education teacher and tell them how awesome little Bobby is doing on answering "where" questions today. ASK teachers how students are doing with their speech skills in regular education. I have found that when I do this, teachers ask me for tips on how to encourage students to use their skills in regular education.  My automatic response is to tell them to pull little Bobby aside and tell him one on one how they notice how great he is doing on his /r/ sound and that he must be working really hard in speech. My other classroom tips take a little more thought and are more child-specific. For students in self-contained classes, doing therapy in their classroom instead of the speech room is another great way to show teachers what your students are working on during speech. 

Hope you are having a great day and found some of these tips useful! What do you do to encourage carryover? I'd love to hear, so please comment below!