March 24, 017
Issue 7, Volume 10
It's All About the Choices!     
          
Greetings and Happy Friday!

Please enjoy our weekly newsletter.
 
News Items:
  • Julia, A Muppet With Autism, Joins The Cast Of 'Sesame Street'
  • Which Kids Will Take Longer to Recover from Brain Injury
  • Sesame Street Plans Social-Emotional Learning Program for Refugee Children
  • Autism May Be Detectable In Blood
  • Sensory Profiles of Children in the General Population
  • Unanimous Supreme Court Expands Scope of Special Education Rights
PediaStaff News and Hot Jobs 
  • Hot Job: Pediatric Outpatient OK - Anchorage, AK
  • Hot Job: Early Intervention OT - Dover, DE
  • Hot Job:  Pediatric Outpatient PT - Ozark, AL
  • Hot Job: Pediatric Clinic-Based BCBA - Louisville, KY 
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
  • March 24th is Virtual Advocacy Day for ASHA!
  • Spring Themed Gross Motor Ideas
  • Using Google MyMaps for Targeting Spacial Concepts, Description and Narrative
  • Rhyming Flapjacks Game
Articles and Special Features 
  • School Psych Corner: Girls and Their Frenemies
  • Educator's Corner: Bringing a Healthy Brain to School
  • Parent's Corner: Speaking to Your Child's Classmates About Down Syndrome
  • SLP Corner: How to Teach Irregular Past Tense Verbs to Children
Feel free to contact us with any questions about our openings or items in these pages. Have you discovered our RSS feed? Click on the orange button below to subscribe to all our openings and have them delivered to your Feed Reader!  Don't have an RSS Feed Reader set up? Sign up at Blogtrottr and have our blog posts delivered right to your email.

Have a great weekend and Take Care!

Heidi Kay and the PediaStaff Team
8

The Career Center

The links to the right are "live" and reflect the most recent SLP, OT, PT and related assistant jobs, and ALL our Bilingual and School Psychology Jobs. 
Girl
To further narrow your search by state,
setting, bilingual, or term, use the
check boxes drop down menus.

If a particular search is returning
no hits it is possible that we do
not currently have new openings for
you with that selection criteria.

To see ALL our openings
click HERE and further narrow your search.
Recent Occupational Therapist and COTA Jobs 

Julia, A Muppet With Autism, Joins The Cast Of 'Sesame Street'
[Source:  NPR]

For the first time in a decade, the classic children's television show Sesame Street will introduce a new Muppet on the air.
 
Her name is Julia. She's a shy and winsome 4-year-old, with striking red hair and green eyes. Julia likes to paint and pick flowers. When Julia speaks, she often echoes what she's just heard her friends Abby and Elmo say. Julia has autism.

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Which Kids Will Take Longer to Recover from Brain Injury
[Source: Science Daily]

A new biomarker may help predict which children will take longer to recover from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to a preliminary study published in the March 15, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
 
"Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of disability in children, but it's very difficult to predict long-term outcome and which kids might need more aggressive treatment," said study author Emily L. Dennis, PhD, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "While the severity of the injury certainly plays a role in this, there's still a lot of uncertainty - you frequently have two patients with similar injuries who have different recoveries."

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Sesame Street Plans Social-Emotional Learning Program for Refugee Children
Editor's Note:  With news that PBS and Children's Television Workshop are in jeopardy in the new administration's budget, it's sadly ironic that there are TWO articles to share that involve Sesame Street this week.  
 
The Sesame Workshop hopes the friendly faces of Sesame Street characters will help refugee children navigate the complex social and emotional effects of trauma and displacement.
 
The organization is teaming with the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian organization, to "deliver transformative early learning and social-emotional support to millions of refugee children in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria," it said in a news release Thursday:

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Autism May Be Detectable In Blood
[Source:  Disability Scoop]
 
Scientists say they can predict with near perfect accuracy whether or not a child has autism from a blood sample.
 
Using an algorithm to assess metabolites in blood, researchers were able to identify samples that came from kids with autism in 97.6 percent of cases.
 
The findings published Thursday in the journal PLOS Computational Biology open the door to a possible biomarker for autism.

 Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Sensory Profiles of Children in the General Population
[Source:  Child: Care, Health and Development via Your Therapy Source]
 
Child: Care,Health and Development published research on sensory profiles of children in the general population.  The cross-sectional study used a large sample of 3-14 year old children gathered from a larger study of the reliability and validity of the Sensory Profile 2nd Edition.  The community 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Unanimous Supreme Court Expands Scope of Special Ed Rights
[Source: School Law Blog]
 
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a major decision expanding the scope of students' special education rights, ruling unanimously that schools must do more than provide a "merely more than de minimis" education program to a student with a disability.
 
In Endrew F. v Douglas County School District, the high court rejected the "merely more than de minimis" standard set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver. That language was also used in an opinion in another special education case by Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Adventure in the great outdoors awaits you in Anchorage, AK!  If you're an Occupational Therapist with tons of personality and a passion for pediatrics, we would love to meet you!
 
Our clinic is home to speech, physical and occupational therapy and prides itself on having a loving, family like environment where you can grow as a therapist, and patients flourish as a result of gentle, guided treatment.
 
*   This family-based, growing clinic sees a variety of patients aged 0-18 in a play-based environment.

Learn More About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
We are searching for a dedicated pediatric occupational therapist for the Dover, DE area who enjoys working in a community based setting treating children ages birth to five with disabilities. New grads and experienced therapists are welcome to apply.  New grads will have access to highly experienced therapists for a wonderful mentoring relationship.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
Exciting full-time opportunity for a Pediatric Physical Therapist to work in an outpatient clinic providing a unique approach to pediatric care in the Ozark, AL area.

*  Offers hippotherapy and aquatic therapy on-site and on-the-job training to therapists new to these specialties.

*  4000 square foot facility with horse arena and swimming pool.
*  PT will provide treatment in both outpatient and school settings.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
We are searching for a Board Certified Behavior Analyst for a direct hire, pediatric position located about an hour north of Louisville, KY. The therapist will have the opportunity to work with children ages birth to 21 in home, daycare, preschool, and clinic settings. This is a growing area within the practice, and the goal is to add Behavioral Analysts to the team. The BCBA will contribute to and manage this growth.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
March 24th is Virtual Advocacy Day for ASHA!
[Source:  ASHA]

Time to advocate!
 
On March 24th, ASHA's Advisory Councils (Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology), Board of Directors, PAC Board of Directors, and NSSLHA's Executive Council will be traveling to Capitol Hill to advocate for your professions. ASHA will launch a virtual advocacy activity on the day of the visits, to send messages to Congress about the importance of audiology and SLP issues, and to support our colleagues advocating on Capitol Hill.
 
Take five minutes out of your day on March 24th to support the cause!

Learn More Through a Link our Blog
Spring Themed Gross Motor Ideas
[Source:  Pink Oatmeal]
 
Spring is officially here!  As a Minnesota resident I am much appreciative of this season as it means that the end of the bitter cold is upon us.  To celebrate this start of Spring I've put together a huge list of fun Spring themed gross motor ideas and games!

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link on our Blog
Using Google MyMaps for Targeting Spacial Concepts, Description and Narrative
[Source:  Speech Techie]
 
Google Earth has always been a great, though not exactly user-friendly, tool for making maps that can target language. Consider the way that certain novels your students have to tackle require an understanding of setting and shifts in setting. Or their 4th grade year and the focus on places they have never been, like 50 States and National Parks. A "virtual field trip" can be great for giving them some 
 
Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Rhyming Flapjacks Game
Rhyming is a very important skill for beginning readers to learn and practice. It's a phonemic awareness skill that helps kids hear and identify sounds within words. Children develop an understanding of rhyme through experience and exposure; they must practice hearing the sounds/rhymes. Today I'm sharing with you a game and a free printable so you can practice this skill 
School Psych Corner: Girls and Their Frenemies
Editor's Note:  Thanks to our friends at School Psyched of Facebook for featuring this article.
[Source SMC Education Blog]
 
In schools we talk constantly about protecting girls from harm. We teach them about paedophiles, on-line grooming, sexting, and the harm caused by drug and alcohol use. In reality, the more likely destructive influence on an adolescent girl's day to day life is the damage they do to one another in their friendship groups...Relational aggression.


Educator's Corner: Bringing a Healthy Brain to School
[Source:  Education Week]
 
Imagine you are a 3rd grade teacher in a well-respected school district; you have a modern classroom with all the bells and whistles, a rigorous curriculum, and the latest instructional materials and technology. The principal is a well-respected instructional leader, and the teachers and staff have formed a collaborative and supportive learning community. Your district's website trumpets a path to closing the achievement gap by raising standards, implementing a rigorous and challenging curriculum, and supporting highly qualified and competent teachers.


Parent's Corner: Speaking to Your Child's Classmates About Down Syndrome
Editor's Note:  Today is World Down Syndrome Day.   Here is a great article to help children understand Down Syndrome. 

[Source: Friendship Circle]
 
My daughter Sophie is almost fourteen. She has Down syndrome. She's in eighth grade and has been mainstreamed since her earliest preschool days.
 
A few weeks ago, she invited me to speak at Career Day at her middle school. She wanted me to talk about the book I wrote about her. Turns out, what Sophie really wanted was for me to explain Down syndrome to the other kids at her school.

I was floored. And I felt terrible.
'
Since Sophie was born, her father and I have been so focused on getting her what she needs - government services, therapies, heart surgery, more heart surgery, the right teachers, the right IEPs, spots on the cheerleading team and in drama class - that it had never occurred to me that her peers had needs, too.


SLP Corner: How to Teach Irregular Past Tense Verbs to Children
[Source:  Speech and Language Kids]
 
In this video, speech-language pathologist Carrie Clark shows you how to teach a child to use irregular past tense verbs.  Use Before and After pictures.   Show the before and then the after and ask "what happened?". The child must use the correct past tense to talk about what happened.

Did You Get This From a Friend?

 

Sign Up For Your Copy of This Newsletter!
Would you like pediatric and school-based therapy tips, resources, articles, and news delivered to your computer once a week? Sign up here for our newsletter!

Sign up HERE
Quick Links to PediaStaff
If you would like to opt out of receiving this newsletter, there is a link located in the footer below. However, please note that once you've opted out, we will be unable to send you any future correspondence via newsletter.
Please Note:  The views and advice expressed in articles, videos and other pieces published in this newsletter are not necessarily the views and advice of PediaStaff or its employees but rather that of the author.  PediaStaff is not endorsing or implying agreement with the views or advice contained therein, rather presenting them for the independent analysis and information of its readers.