(Part 2) Best products from r/slp

Since you're not in a communication disorders program, it will be hard for you to find any opportunities to observe SLPs providing treatment - unless you know somebody who can help arrange it for you. Most people are in a similar situation as you when they begin their training and, based on the survey's we have, they complete their training and are satisfied with their job choice (even though while reading this subreddit you might think no one is happy being an SLP).

There are a number of different career paths you can take as an SLP but, overall, it is worth remembering that the disabilities we are in charge of diagnosing and treating are amongst the most complex human behaviors (much more so than what other rehab professionals are faced with). As a consequence, the job is intellectually demanding. If you are the type of person who wants to engage in a lifelong path of learning and enjoys such challenges then that's one indicator that you will like the job. The more you know in this profession the more interesting and satisfying it becomes but, realistically, it takes years to develop the kind of knowledge where the job becomes truly creative. Until then, we work to keep our head above water...

You might try purchasing a intro text to communication disorders. This will give you a broad overview of the types of work SLPs do. Here's one example of a text https://www.amazon.com/INTRO-Guide-Communication-Sciences-Disorders/dp/1597565423/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537463622&sr=8-1&keywords=robb+intro+to+communication+disorders

I know this isn't the core issue, but if you wanted to do more learning in the area, as it sounds like you do, there is a fabulous book called The Essentials of Diagnosing and Treating Dyslexia or something like that. Their book on reading is great too.

https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Dyslexia-Assessment-Intervention-Psychological-ebook/dp/B005OQFEJC/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?crid=SQHFFZC56BMO&keywords=dyslexia&qid=1555966929&s=gateway&sprefix=Dysl&sr=8-6

As for the "should we do therapy" bit, I do think that this is something we should work on. Teachers may teach vocabulary in class, but we also work with that goal, utilizing our specific training to help the student. I think of phonological awareness as being the same. You could teach this in large group. There's an awesome printable, evidence based, free curriculum and worksheets for phonological awareness (also phonetics and vocabulary) on the Florida Reading Research website, which can really be your guide as you learn more in the area.
http://fcrr.org/resources/resources_sca.html

That said - this is an edge case. And as someone who has had 100 person caseloads in areas where even when hiring contract and using bachelor level folks we were STILL short SLPs, meaning it was me and just me to cover those kids, I get it if you might be wanting to informally triage. It's the dirty little secret of the school system that no one wants to admit to, that there are more kids that need than we can supply SLPs in some areas (my area was rural and poor). So I'm gonna get hate for saying this, but if you find a way to help the teacher support the kids in this (maybe just giving them the website even), I personally would justify that as enough to move on.

I do an activity using the book It's Okay to be Different. First, we read the book, then the kids make a person out of contruction paper using a math glyph format by answering questions about themselves.

If you live with one parent, you get a square head; if you live with two parents, you get a triangular head; if you live with no parents, you get a round head.

If you have a pet, you get a red shirt; if you do not have a pet, you get a blue shirt.

If you like math best, you get green pants; if you like reading best you get yellow pants.

The number of eyes is the same as the number of children that live in your house.

The pictures turn out really cute, and all my kids from pre-k through 8th love it because it's funny.

If you're interested I can probably email you the pattern I use to make the people tomorrow night. PM me your email address if you'd like it.

Congratulations! I can only speak to my own experience, but I took a (non-required) introduction to communication sciences and disorders online class before really starting my postbacc year and we used this book. Having read most of this book for class has been SO helpful for me! I don't know how your program is structured, but I started my postbacc year with language development, anatomy and neuroanatomy so there was no real "introduction." This book/class gave me a framework to put everything I was learning into and made sure that it wasn't all brand new to me. Just a thought! And obviously, I've linked the 2nd edition because there's no need to spend $130 on the new shiny one when you're not using it for class or therapy! :) Best of luck.

do you know if she is interested more in working with adults/in medical settings or kids in educational/clinic settings? that may help narrow it down because they're very different fields. If you want to just get her some general interest stuff, a few good novels related to the field are The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, Where is the Mango Princess?, Schuyler's Monster...search this sub for other suggestions of books. There's also a bunch of cute gifty junk on amazon that is SLP related (not sure if you can get it in the UK though) If you find out what setting or population she's into we can probably think of some more useful/specific suggestions.

This is a very big question and not one that can really be answered in a forum post.

Physical intervention is about managing the present moment - preventing (further) harm. It is upsetting and unless carefully planned by a behavior therapist, there's no reason to think that it will improve future behavior. In most cases, that's not its point.

There are definitely steps you can take to decrease the likelihood that there will be a physical conflict. It's important to realize that these steps aren't harmless, though. You have to look at the individual case to determine what's best for the kid. There's a tendency to assume that physical intervention is always the worst, most harmful thing and everything else is inherently better. For example, using extinction (planned ignoring) on head banging might allow the child to hit their head hundreds of times before the behavior remits. Anyway, here's some suggestions:

• Let the tantrum burn itself out, a technique called extinction. If the kid is hitting and kicking you, you walk away or leave the room until the child has calmed. This allows you to avoid doing restraint. It sacrifices much of your treatment time. There's a risk that the child will harm themselves and/or damage property during this procedure. Also, when it comes to the kid's suffering, extinction is generally a pretty unpleasant process. Whether it's worse or better than restraint is probably a matter of individual preference.
  
  
• Decrease task demands, which will decrease the efficacy of your treatment (e.g., child hits when you practice a difficult phoneme --> practice that phoneme less, less hitting). Here, you're keeping the kid happy by letting them do more of what they want.
  
  
• Modify aspects of the task or situation that don't reflect the demands. Use a visual timer, put the kid on a more intense reinforcement schedule, offer more comfortable chairs, etc.
  
  
• Creative or nontraditional applications of typical therapeutic tools (kid has to be guided to chair, do therapy on the floor instead). For some kids and some skills, this works just as well. For others your treatment is less helpful.
  
  
• The most effective ones use behavior modification / applied behavior analysis and take a long time. For example, if a child insists on chewing a plastic tube and screams and bites when it is taken away, the behavior therapist could determine the function of that behavior (perhaps it's seeking sensory stimulation) and create a long term plan to adjust the child's behavior (perhaps rewarding the child for spending longer and longer intervals with the tube out of their mouth). If you're interested in learning about this stuff, the book Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers (get an older edition - they haven't changed that much) is excellent. But know that these kinds of plans have to be implemented across the child's whole life to be effective. 30 minute bursts won't do much.

I bought this deck of social stories cards to work on pragmatic skills with my patients on the spectrum. They're kid-orientated (e.g. a lot of stuff about school routines) but I just remove those ones when I'm working with the adult part of my caseload. They're pretty large cards and the back has a ton of scripts, pretend scenarios to act out, and comprehension questions.

Other than that most of my patients are responsive to games with "fun aspects" (Photo Fish from Super Duper, and anything with magnetic chips that you use the wand to pick them up), sensory items (bean jar, pushing marbles into TheraPutty, shaving cream), and puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty.

Yeah, a lot of people use something like this one, since it's got a USB connector, decent battery life, and is in the $50-ish range.

Also, it's quite small, which is important. Because of confidentiality restrictions, you often need to be able to store a recorder at work, so it should be able to easily fit inside a folder in a filing cabinet. Of course, being able to upload the recordings to a computer via USB and delete them from the recorder itself is also a good solution.

This is a great book that has a number exercises and explanations of how to most effectively use and produce voice. It's written for actors, but the principles and exercises can benefit anyone who wants to improve their voice and speech.

This phonetics tool was very useful when I was in undergrad and graduate school. I've even returned to it a few times for things that I've started to forget.
Also, Pre-Feeding Skills is pretty much my bible right now. I spend a couple hours each week pouring through it and learning/re-learning. It has really great checklists I use for evaluation purposes also.
As far as therapy tools (for kids) that I absolutely cannot live without? Bubbles. I buy party favor packs of them so I can always have a small vial of bubbles in my pocket.

Yeah we definitely read the literature, but there are a few books that have been really meaningful for me.

One is about bilingualism in general (not in disordered populations), which I actually found to be reallllllly important to help me conceptualize how bilingualism develops. It's called The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism.

Some that specifically cover language disorders are:

Bilingual Language Development and Disorders in Spanish-English Speakers.

Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults

Since you'll have a range it'll be easiest to have one activity that you can adapt to all of your groups throughout the day - especially since you won't have a room.

Books are perfect for this. Look for short books with a repetitive phrase.

http://consonantlyspeaking.com/posts/2012/07/abcs-4-slps-b-is-for-books-lists-of-books-to-use-in-speech-language-therapy

I find that reading a short book (and throwing in WH questions throughout) and doing a group activity takes about half an hour. You could do pretend baking (I just bring in kitchen supplies from home) to work on sequencing and vocabulary. Having a "guess bag" of items from the story (you describe what it is and they guess, and then switch the roles).

Animal puppets are great (IKEA has great ones) because you can incorporate them into a lot of activities. You can grab a chair and everyone can practice prepositions and verbs etc.

For centers I did a lot of categorizing and describing activities. I did it by theme (there are a lot of themed calendars of tpt). I used a lot of laminated and cut out things for that. I put them all into a zipped envelope that stayed together in a binder. I just grabbed the envelope and away I went!

I also love these action cards http://www.amazon.com/Smethport-976-Actions-Language-Cards/dp/B0019VJEHO?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

They were pretty cheap and I use them all the time.

I haven't used them - but you could look into story felt boards. They usually have them at the conventions. Could be portable and could work on a lot of activities and most of the time they go with a book.

You may want to check out Dr. John Pickering's work. He specializes in voice tx in the transgender population. It looks like he published a book on it https://www.amazon.com/Communication-Therapy-Transgender-Transsexual-Client/dp/1597564702

I've never worked with this population but have heard Dr. Pickering's name before when discussing this population with other SLPs. I don't know if that would be of any help, but hopefully it gets you going in the right direction to finding resources!

This is a wonderful book about a child who has difficulty using speech to communicate, written by her father. It made this SLP cry big baby tears. http://www.amazon.com/Schuylers-Monster-Fathers-Wordless-Daughter/dp/B003R4ZFYM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346983961&sr=8-1&keywords=schuyler%27s+monster

Another great one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Memoir/dp/0375701214/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Is she a member of national NSSLHA? It's a really good resource for people just starting out! Maybe you could gift her a 1 year subscription! It does benefit her to have a national membership, as it entitles her to discounts when she needs to join ASHA to become a certified SLP. http://www.nsslha.org/join/Newmember.htm

I use storage clipboards all the time when working with clients. Here is a NSSLHA one, but you can find one in the office supplies aisle of any store. http://asha.org/eweb/OLSDynamicPage.aspx?Webcode=olsdetails&title=NSSLHA+Storage+Clipboard

Engaging Autism is fantastic. Even if your school doesn't use a floortime approach, it's still extremely helpful in providing strategies. https://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Autism-Floortime-Approach-Communicate/dp/0738210943

For my dysphagia course, we used Murry & Carrau's Clinical Management of Swallowing Disorders. It was pretty cool. If you're interested, here is the amazon link.

I'm a pretty big fan of Cariboo Island. Kids get pretty into it. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0028Y4RAU?cache=db03fdc600c8a751a2ac82f4fddea834&pi=SX200_QL40&qid=1411397732&sr=8-1#ref=mp_s_a_1_1

I love my bubble bear! I got it for a gift though when I finished my practicum so I don't know where to buy it.


Edit: https://www.amazon.ca/Toysmith-Pustefix-Bubble-Blowing-Colors/dp/B0002HYBXS

Zebra 301A 0.7mm!

So crisp and good at filling out forms. I just added a box to my Christmas list, hahaha