Therapy Resources

The No Prep Grammar Builder: Uncontractible Copulas (“Who’s happy?” “She is!”)

25 February 2017 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

“Who’s happy?” “She is!”

Typically-developing children acquire the so-called uncontractible copula “he is/she is/they are” at around 36-42 months. But many children with developmental language disorders and children learning English as a second language do not.

Instead, they make errors, e.g.:

Question: “Who’s smiling?”…
Answer: “She” or “Her”. (Incorrect.)

These errors make children sound less intelligent than they are and result in negative feedback from peers and others.

This No Prep therapy pack is designed to help children acquire this important grammatical target with a built-in reinforcing diamond hunting game. You can simply print and work through this resource as is. Or, for added fun, cut out the diamonds on the last page, and stick them in a bag. The client earns diamonds for achieving the target, which they can put on the game board (also included).

We use this resource in our clinic, particularly with young school-aged children. We hope you find it just as useful.

Uncontractible copulas resource

Lidcombe Program stuttering activities: Volume 2 printable activities for face-to-face and telehealth therapy now available

19 February 2017 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

When we published The Lidcombe Program for stuttering: my 10 favourite therapy activities back in 2014, we had no idea how popular it would be. Thousands of people from more than 20 countries have downloaded our free resource. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many parents and speech pathologists reaching out to thank us for sharing activity ideas.

More help needed

We’ve also had a lot of requests from time-poor parents and speech pathologists for specific materials/activities to help them do the treatment. Recently, we’ve had requests from speech pathologists and parents looking for materials to do the treatment by telehealth or webcam (e.g. by Zoom, Coviu or Skype).

We listened!

We’re now thrilled to announce the publication of Volume 2: Printable activities for face-to-face and Skype-based delivery of the Lidcombe Program

Why a pack of printable activities?

We wanted to publish this pack of printable activities for four reasons:

“Telehealth” (e.g. Zoom, Coviu or Skype) delivery of the Lidcombe Program has become more popular as the evidence base has grown (e.g. Bridgman et al., 2014). Although some face-to-face resources (like books) can be adapted easily for telehealth delivery, others can’t. With these activities, both the speech pathologist and the family can access exactly the same resources.
Some children (e.g. very talkative children and children with moderate or severe stuttering) may need more time in Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program to get and stay fluent. Table-top activities like the ones in this pack can help maintain a child’s “buy in”, attention and interest to enable families to focus most on what matters: their child’s fluency.
Some parents have told us that they have used up all the ideas in Volume 1 and want more activity ideas!
For economic and/or cultural reasons, some children do not have access to toys and other resources at home for use in therapy. We want to make the therapy accessible to everyone. (That’s why speech pathologists who purchase this pack for use in their clinic are licensed to share this resource with an unlimited number of their clients without additional cost per client.)

Activities

This guide includes 10 low-preparation, printable activities for children who are being treated with the Lidcombe Program for stuttering. These activities are for children in the highly structured and semi-structured (“practice”) phases of Stage 1 of the treatment and are designed to be used in consultation/with the guidance of the child’s speech pathologist.

What you get

10 “print and play” fun activities with easy-to-follow directions specifically designed to help you administer 10-15 minutes of therapy per day painlessly;
148 pages of printable materials suitable for both face-to-face therapy and telehealth (e.g. Zoom, Skype) – even over Zoom, the speech pathologist and client can use the same materials;
552 high quality photographs depicting common objects (nouns), places, action words (verbs), and people;
our 8 Speech Legends including Justice the Ninja, Viv the Pirate, Joss the Robot, and Arden the Warrior Princess;
6 attractive colour game boards, including our Smooth Stones Path, Pirate Hunt, Butterfly Chase, Keys to the Castle, Dinosaur Babies, and Freight Attack;
lists of carrier phrases, description attributes, and conversation starters to help deliver the therapy at the level set by the speech pathologist;
guidance on how to use and adapt the activities for different levels of fluency and language; and
additional reinforcement of the main therapy goal – stutter-free speech – with regular reminders from game characters in many activities to focus on smooth speech.

A companion volume

We designed the pack to include lots of cross-over between this pack and Volume 1. For example, we’ve deliberately used the popular grid-format used in Volume 1 to help parents and speech pathologists adapt the games to help administer the therapy. We also encourage parents and speech pathologists to “mix and match” activities and materials from Volume 1 and 2 to maintain interest.

We hope you find the activities as useful in delivering the Lidcombe Program therapy to children who stutter as we do. You can find our Lidcombe Program Stuttering Activities Volume 2 here:

Lidcombe Program Activities volume 2

If this isn’t for you now, no worries! Volume 1 remains free to download. You can also read a lot more about the Lidcombe Program and other evidence-based stuttering programs by checking out our free articles at our speech pathology clinic’s website: Banter Speech & Language.

The Pesky Lisp Fixer

25 October 2016 By David Kinnane Leave a Comment

Don’t you hate those pesky interdental lisps? You know, the ones that won’t stay fixed?

To fix an interdental lisp – those lisps where your tongue sticks out between your teeth when you try to say /s/ – we, as speech pathologists, used to start with simple tasks, like saying an /s/ on its own. Once the child had mastered their /s/, we progressed in tiny hops (like baby bunny kittens) to slightly harder tasks. This traditional approach works.

But it’s SO SLOW!

Many kids – particularly older and more mature kids – hate being treated like babies. And, even after finishing traditional treatment, many kids have difficulties using their “new /s/” on words they haven’t practised and in more natural tasks, like story-telling and conversation. Which is, of course, the main point of trying to fix a lisp!

A new approach

More recent research evidence supports a different route for better results. Once a child can say the sound on his or her own, randomly mixing up hard and easy tasks can have quicker results that transfer more efficiently to real-world, lisp-free speech (e.g. see Skelton, 2004).

(You can read more about why using randomised practice, non-word practice and other principles of motor learning and speech here).

Our Pesky Lisp Fixer program has three stages

Auditory Bombardment: 2 minutes per day – listening and tuning into the sound and practising it on its own. Audio file included!
Our /s/-Syllable Boot Camp: Based on principles of motor speech, the boot camp involves 10-15 minutes a day of high repetition practice of nonsense syllables designed to get the tongue, lips and teeth working together with different vowel and consonant sequences in random order.
Randomised Practice: Once the child has conquered the boot camp, this gives the child 20-30 minute sessions of imitating and naming words with /s/ in them, across all word positions. Again using a high repetition, randomised approach, we mix imitation, naming, and sentence generation tasks, with old-fashioned story telling, using over 200 high quality photographs – no cutesy vector clip art!

This program works best if an adult is around to give clear feedback every now and then – but no more than occasionally. Use it in your clinic or as a home program for your clients.

So download the Pesky Lisp Fixer today from our Teachers Pay Teachers store and get straight into getting rid of those pesky lisps!

download the pesky lisp fixer now!