October 2, 2015
Issue 39, Volume 8
It's All About the Choices!     
          
Greetings and Happy Friday!

Please enjoy our weekly newsletter
 
News Items:
  • How Sign Language Users Learn Intonation
  • Blocking Light Improves Preemies' Survival Rates
  • Birth Weight Affects Social Trust, Danish Study Shows
  • Sleep and Children with Cerebral Palsy
  • Diagnostic Substitution' Drives Autism Spike
  • Dermal Monitoring Can Prevent Cerebral Palsy in Preterm Infants
  • Brain Activity Map Reveals How Infant Vision Develops
Hot Jobs 
  • PediaStaff Placement of the Week: School-Based CF-SLP in Ohio!
  • Hot Jobs! School Psychologists Needed In and Around Chicago! 
  • Hot Job: School Based Occupational Therapist - San Antonio, TX
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
  • App of the Week:  Dyslexia App by Plano Students Now Available
  • SLP Activity of the Week: Lego Gummies out of Jello and Therapy Ideas for Them!
  • Seasonal Activities of the Week: 35 Pumpkin Crafts
Articles and Special Features 
  • SLP Corner: Toca Life Apps and Contextual Therapy
  • OT Corner: Pushing the Birds out of the Nest
  • Pediatric Therapy Corner; For the Hesitant Teacher: Leveraging the Power of Minecraft
  • PT Corner: Teens and Concussion: More Than Meets the Eye
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





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Recent Occupational Therapist and COTA Jobs 

How Sign Language Users Learn Intonation
[Source:  Medical X-Press]

A spoken language is more than just words and sounds. Speakers use changes in pitch and rhythm, known as prosody, to provide emphasis, show emotion, and otherwise add meaning to what they say. But a language does not need to be spoken to have prosody: sign languages, such as American Sign Language (ASL), use movements, pauses and facial expressions to achieve the same goals. In a study appearing today in the September 2015 issue of Language, three linguists look at intonation (a key part of prosody) in ASL and find that native ASL signers learn intonation in much the same way that users of spoken languages do.

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Blocking Light Improves Preemies' Survival Ratesl
[Source:  Medical News Today]
 
The survival rate of preemies born between 26 to 31 weeks of gestation is improved by blocking light from reaching the intravenously-fed infused nutritious mixture they depend on for survival, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and the University of Montreal have revealed in a new study. Premature babies need to be fed intravenously due to the immaturity of their digestive system and their high nutritional requirements during their first days of life. This also prevents serious potential complications such as 

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Birth Weight Affects Social Trust, Danish Study Shows
[Source:  Medical News Today]
 
How much does your baby weigh? All new parents are familiar with that question. Perhaps their reply is more important than we realize. Birth weight affects how much trust an individual will have in other people in his adult life. Trust, in turn, is the glue that prevents society from falling apart. This phenomenon is at the center of new research from Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences (Aarhus BSS) at Aarhus University, Denmark.
 
Low birth weight is associated with low levels of social trust in adulthood, while high birth weight is associated with high levels of trust. In other words, the citizen of the future is formed in the mother's womb. Michael Bang Petersen and Lene Aarøe, both from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS, describe the correlation in a new article entitled "Birth Weight and Social Trust in Adulthood: Evidence for Early Calibration of Social Cognition." The article has just been published in the journal Psychological Science.
Sleep and Children with Cerebral Palsy
[Source:  CanChild via Your Therapy Source]

CanChild has published another excellent resource which is entitled Keeping Current In Sleep Issues Among Children with Cerebral Palsy.  Here are some highlights:
  1. Studies show that rates of sleep disturbances in children with cerebral palsy are actually quite similar to the general population and affect about one third of children.
  2. Certain aspects of CP are more frequently associated with sleep disorders, including active epilepsy, severe movement problems and level of spasticity, and intellectual disabilities.
 Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Diagnostic Substitution' Drives Autism Spike
[Source: Wall Street Journal]

The number of children diagnosed with autism has surged around the globe in the past two decades. But new research in Europe and the U.S. suggests much of the increase occurred on paper.

In 2000, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated 1 in 150 children in its surveillance areas had autism spectrum disorder. By 2012, the figure had grown to 1 in 88. Last year, the agency estimated 1 in 68 children suffered from the disorder.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Dermal Monitoring Can Prevent Cerebral Palsy in Preterm Infants
[Source:  Medical X-Press]
 
A research group led by Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine Project Professor MORIOKA Ichirou and Professor IIJIMA Kazumoto (Department of Pediatrics) has suggested a potential method of screening for jaundice (hyperbilirubinemia), a cause of cerebral palsy and loss of hearing in preterm infants with kyperbilirubinemia, using painless dermal monitoring. The group also determined the correct area of skin to monitor for accurate results. This study has expanded the possibilities for accurate methods of monitoring jaundice, and it is hoped that this will lead to a decrease in cerebral palsy and hearing loss in preterm infants due to kyperbilirubinemia. The results of this research were 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Brain Activity Map Reveals How Infant Vision Develops   
[Source EurekAlert]

Visual functions, such as the perception of motion direction, start to develop soon after birth and continue to mature over time as infants gain more experience with the world. However, direct evidence of how this maturation process unfolds in the brain has been lacking because there has been no functional imaging study testing very young infants while awake and visually engaged. A new study publishing in the Open Access journalPLOS Biology on September 29th provides for the first time a direct window into the maturation of vision-related areas of the cortex in the first weeks of life, showing that the visual brain of 7-week-old babies is surprisingly mature.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Therapy Placement of the Week:  School-Based CF-SLP in Ohio!
Congratulations to Esther S., on her new position as a School Based CF-SLP at PediaStaff's new client in Ohio.
 
This position is in the Warrensville Heights area, southeast of Cleveland. Esther will work with students grades K-3 at one school site.  This position is 5 days a week, 7.5 hours per day. The caseload is around 35-40 students.  She will be providing direct therapy, as well as keep up with IEPs, ETRs and progress reports.  The position runs through the end of March.

Congrats, Esther!
Are you looking for a full time School Psychologist position for the current school year?
 
We have several opportunities in and around Chicago in a variety of settings.   Positions are outlined below.
 
Carol Stream - Our client in the western suburbs of Chicago in Dupage County, is a school district in need of a full time school psychologist for the 2015-16 academic year.  The caseload is one elementary school with both a gifted learner programs and a special needs program.  School psychologist should have experience in the testing procedures as 

We are actively recruiting for our preferred client in the San Antonio, Texas area is looking to for an Occupational Therapist to join their team of 60+ working full-time in the local schools.  Pediatric experience (school experience preferred) is required for this position.  You would be performing evaluations an doing supervisory work...supervising COTAs.  Great place to really make a difference with youngsters who need the support and mentorship of a professional with compassion.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
[Source: Dallas News.com]
 
A mobile app designed by Plano middle schoolers to help dyslexic readers is now available for a free download.    The app - Mind Glass - grew from a science project to be a part of the Verizon Innovative App Challenge where a team from Rice Middle School was one of eight national winners.   They earned $20,000 for the school and were able to get guidance from experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as they developed the app.
 
When the students were still working on the app in February, they wanted to allow users to customize their text to fit their specific needs as dyslexia affects people in different ways.
 
"Dyslexia is a really big problem in the world," said David Yue, 13 one of the team members. "It doesn't mean that someone is not smart. They just have a disability or a neurological misfiring that doesn't

Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog
SLP Activity of the Week: Lego Gummies out of Jello and Tx Ideas
Oh my goodness I love this!   Thank You to Luke and Holly of Home-Speech Home for the great idea of making Lego Jello Gummies for yummy use in speech therapy!

Seasonal Activities of the Week: 35 Pumpkin Crafts 
[Source: Motherhood on a Dime via Hands On As We Grow]
Thank you to Hands On as We Grow for the link to this Jack O Lantern Water Bottle activity.   It is soooo simple but such great fine motor practice!!

Check out this Collection of Ideas Through a Link on our Blog
SLP Corner:  Toca Life Apps and Contextual Therapy
[Source:  Speech Techie]

Following up on my last post on the "Toca Life" open-ended sandbox-style apps, I recently read a "Clinical Focus" article in American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and thought it shed light on how these apps (and others) can be used in context in therapy. Fey, Long, & Feinstack (2003) sought to outline "Ten Principles of Grammar Facilitation for Children With Specific Language Impairments" with research tie-ins relevant to all ages, but particularly for ages 3-8. This is a great article for any SLP or language interventionist to read, but I wanted to present it with ideas related to the principles being used in context, in particular the features and content of the Toca Life Apps.

  Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog

OT Corner: Pushing the Birds out of the Nest
[Source:  The EleanorOT Blog]
 
By Eleanor Cawley M.S. OTR/L
 
When is it time to discharge?:  This is always one of the biggest questions when it comes down to CSE Meetings and whether or not to recommend services for students next year. Of course, in a school-based setting, the big 'money makers' are handwriting and now keyboarding. Before making that decision, I think that it is important to look at the student's level of function in a 
 

PTC: For the Hesitant Teacher: Leveraging the Power of Minecraft
Editor's Note: This article was written largely for general education teachers, but Therapy Clinicians can also make excellent use of the game as well.   Take a look at the other articles we have featured on our blog about Minecraft

[Source:  MindShift]

If there's any video game that has successfully made its way into the classroom, it's Minecraft. There's a small subset of teachers using all kinds of digital games in interesting ways, but the blockbuster hit Minecraft and its educational counterpart MinecraftEDU have reached much wider audiences. But getting started with MinecraftEDU can be intimidating for teachers who don't consider themselves "gamers" and aren't sure how to harness the engagement and excitement of Minecraft. Luckily, there's a robust and global Minecraft teacher community to supply tips, 


PT Corner:  Teens and Concussion: More Than Meets the Eye
[Source:  Lash & Associates Blog]
 
by Phil Hossler, ATC

In today's society, sports are more popular than probably ever imagined. Large numbers of athletes participate in a variety of youth, high school, collegiate, professional, and recreational sports. As sport becomes more of a fixture in the lives of Americans, the burden of responsibility falls on the shoulders of the various organizations, coaches, parents, clinicians, officials, and researchers to provide an environment that minimizes the risk of injury.(1) Kids can

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