July 25, 2014
Issue 30, Volume 7
It's All About the Choices!     
          
Greetings and Happy Friday!

We hope everyone is enjoying their summer.  We sure our.  Here is our weekly newseletter for your enjoyment and education.
 
News Items:
  • Feel Good Story of Week: 2-Year Year Old Takes First Steps with Prosthetic,  "I Got It:
  • Brain Waves Show Learning to Read Does Not End in 4th Grade
  • Blend Nature into School Playgrounds to Reduce Stress, Improve Attention
  • Code Switching in the News: Teaching Students How to Switch between Black English and Standard English
  • Therapy Clinicians Needed for Survey:  Your Use of Clinical Reasoning and Evidence Based Practice
  • Postural Stability and Cerebral Palsy
PediaStaff News
  • PediaStaff Therapy Placement of the Week: Oregon
  • PediaStaff Interview Tip of the Week: Phone Interviews 
  • Featured Job of the Week:  Special Education Teacher - San Jose, CA
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
  • CASANA's SLP Start Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech
  • App of the Week: ChatAble AAC App
  • "Would You Rather Cards" for Pragmatic Language
  • Book Review: There Was A Speech Teacher Who Swallowed Some Dice

Articles and Special Features 

  • Career Corner: Using a Career Journal to Further Your Professional Development
  • Pediatric Therapy Corner: Visible and Invisible Disabilities: On being a Reluctant Ambassador
  • SLP Corner: This is a Reminder that Speech Therapy is in Your DNA
  • OT/PT Corner: Effective Service Coordination for Students with Acquired Brain Injury or ABI in School
  • Worth Repeating: How Playing Music Changes the Learning Brain
  • Worth Repeating: Children's Speech Sound Disorders: Questions And Answers
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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Feel Good Story of the Week - "I Got It" 

Editor's Note:  I dare you not to grin from ear to ear!

 

[Source:  USA Today]

 

'I got it. I got it. I got it!

 

Kayden Kinckle conveys such determination in a viral video posted to YouTube on July 4 of himself learning how to walk with prosthetics.

 

He repeats the phrase over and over again, becoming more confident with each step. The video has 215,849 views so far and has been receiving positive responses from viewers.

 

Mother Nikki Sessoms of Englewood, N.J., writes on YouTube that her 2-year-old son was born with an Omphalocele. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines it as a birth defect of the abdominal wall, which can cause an infant's organs to stick outside of the belly.

 

 Watch this Delightful Video on our Blog

Brain Waves Show Learning to Read Does Not End in 4th Grade

[Source:  Science Daily]  

 

Teachers-in-training have long been taught that fourth grade is when students stop learning to read and start reading to learn. But a new Dartmouth study in the journal Developmental Science tested the theory by analyzing brain waves and found that fourth-graders do not experience a change in automatic word processing, a crucial component of the reading shift theory. Instead, some types of word processing become automatic before fourth grade, while others don't switch until after fifth.    

The findings mean that teachers at all levels of elementary school must think of themselves as reading instructors, said the study's author, Associate Professor of Education Donna Coch.

 

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

Add Nature into Playgrounds to Reduce Stress, Improve Attention

[Source: Psych Central]

 

School playgrounds that feature natural habitats and trees do more than just provide a unique outdoor adventure as researchers discover the environment can reduce children's stress and inattention.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers also found that working on class assignments or gardening in such settings also provide stress-reducing benefits for youth.

 

The study, as published in the journal Health & Place, is one of the first of its kind to focus on the relationship between student access to green settings and stress.

 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog

Teaching Students to Switch Between Black & Standard English 

Editor's Note:   Thank you to Heidi Southard of the SLPeeps Facebook Group for sharing this article

 

[Source:  Michigan Radio.org]

 

Last week we did a story about whether people judge others based on how they speak.  (Spoiler alert: Yep, they do.) One African-American high school student we spoke to said he hated how often teachers corrected him when he spoke. "Every time you try to say something they gotta correct every line you say. It's like ... I don't want to talk to you now."

 

University of Michigan education professor Holly Craig says that type of "correctional" teaching style is a sure-fire way to turn African American students off from education, and the results play out time and again in standardized test scores for African-American students.

 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog

Therapy Clinicians Needed for Survey - Please Read On! 

Editor's Note:  A therapist applicant, of ours, Angela Benfield, has asked us for help to find SLP, OT, PTs who would be interested in participating in a survey being conducted for her dissertation.   The survey will ask you to answer questions about your thinking processes (e.g clinical reasoning) that you use when developing an intervention plan with a client.   It looks very interesting. The survey will take approximately 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete.  No compensation is offered but you will get a certificate that you participated in 2 hours of research for continuing education purposes.

I am completing my PhD in Health Sciences with an emphasis in EBP, measuring outcomes, and clinical reasoning.  My background is as a pediatric occupational therapist for 19 years. With my clinical experiences and in discussions with other allied health colleagues, I have come to the conclusion that we are faced with a difficult issue in balancing evidence, clinical experience, and patient values as much of our "evidence" is not like physician EBP- there is much more uncertainty and dependance on the clinician's thinking process due to the limited number of strong clinical guidelines (though the number has increased significantly in the past 10 years).

 

Read the Rest of this Call for Participants and Get the Link to the Survey on our Blog

Postural Stability and Cerebral Palsy  

[Source:  Pediatric Physical Therapy via Your Therapy Source]

 

Pediatric Physical Therapy published research comparing postural stability during static upright standing between 45 children with cerebral palsy (CP) and 45 age-matched peers with typical development (TD) ages 5-12 years old. A posturography device was used for assessment. Postural stability was evaluated under 4 sensory conditions: eyes open and eyes closed on a firm surface; eyes open and eyes closed on a foam surface.

 

The results indicated the following:
1. Statistically significant differences were obtained between children with spastic diplegic CP and children with TD under all conditions involving visual and somatosensory conflicts

 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog

PediaStaff Therapy Placement of the Week:  Oregon

Congratulations to Robin P., CCC-SLP on her rehire at one of PediaStaff's School Based clients in Oregon. Wow Robin, how many consecutive years have you been working for us now??   I think its six years with your fourth client??  Woo Hoo!

PediaStaff Interview Tip of the Week: Phone Interviews 

Many times a telephone interview is conducted for contract or temporary positions, in lieu of a face-to-face meeting.  Although a contract job is not a "commitment for life," the employer holding the phone will be looking for a strong indication that you are committed to the position you are being considered for and that you are truly interested in their district or company.

 

Interviewees often make the mistake of perceiving a phone interview as less important than one that takes place face-to-face.  In fact, the opposite is actually true. A telephone interview may be your only chance to make your best impression. It is much more difficult to get the "real you" across by phone, so

 

Read the Rest of this Post on Our Blog

Featured Job of the Week:  Special Ed Teacher - San Jose, CA  

PediaStaff is seeking TWO experienced Special Education teachers for full time contracts in School Year 2014/15.  Location is in the San Jose, California area. 

Job 1:  Middle, Special Day Mild/Moderate
Job 2:  Middle, Special Day Moderate/Severe

Excellent pay based on experience plus benefits. 

 

Learn More About / Apply for This Job on our Blog

Resource of the Week: CASANA's SLP Start Guide to CAS  

'CASANA (Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America) has written a fantastic "start guide" for Speech-Language Pathologists looking to learn more about Childhood Apraxia of Speech. We highly recommend it and their website to all SLP's looking to learn more about CAS.

 

Access This Terrific Resource Through a Link on our Blog

App of the Week:  ChatAble AAC App  

Review by Ryan Knoblauch, MA, CCC-SLP

The invention of the iPad has changed the way people access augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).  Prior to 2010, AAC devices were dedicated to speech only and were quite cumbersome to program. The iPad opened the door by creating a multidimensional tool for communication and many of these apps were developed for specific tasks: text-to-speech (TTS), voice dictation, and AAC among others.

 

When deciding on which AAC apps to use, I look at a few areas: creating and editing buttons/pages, vocabulary page sets available, symbol libraries and importing pictures, 

 

Read the Rest of this Review Through a Link on Our Blog

Freebie of the Week:  48 "Would You Rather Cards" 

'Thank You to Smart Apps for Special Needs for recommending these great, free "Would You Rather" conversation starter cards on the Measured Mom blog. These cards are perfect for carryover pragmatic language work , reasoning, and conversation practice and are ideal for long car rides and vacations!

 

Download these from a Link on our Blog

Book! : There Was A Speech Teacher Who Swallowed Some Dice 

Book Review by Stepanie Long, MCD, CCC-SLP

Pat Mervine has written another great book for SLPs that can be used for therapy, loaned to parents as a fun resource for parents to read to their children, or as an icebreaker activity for an SLP to read with a new student starting speech therapy.  The book is a whimsical take on "There Was An Old Lady" series, and features an SLP  who first swallows dice, and then swallows various other materials commonly found in speech rooms such as sound card decks, tongue depressors, games, and more.  The colorful pictures help complement the fun, light tone of the book.  But, oh, there is so much more wonderful things in this book that should be mentioned!

 

Read the Rest of this Review on our Blog

Career Corner: Journal to Further Your Professional Development

[Source:  Quintessential Careers]

 

How much time do you commit each day - each week - to really thinking about your career? If you're like most of us, your answer is not much time at all. Sure, we would all love to have the luxury to daydream about our futures, but unfortunately, all too often the realities of the present keep us a bit too preoccupied.

 

Do you find yourself in any of these situations: Do you have a vision of your perfect job or career, but no pathway leading to it? Are you thinking of making a career change, but have no real clue about your next career? Are you stuck in a dead-end job - or worse - have you remained in your current position while others around you have been promoted? Are you a student who is trying to get a handle on both a major and a career path?


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


Pediatric Therapy Corner: Visible and Invisible Disabilities

by Lucas Steuber, MA-T, MS SLP/CF

I  have a disability. It's kind of a silly one. Are you ready?

I'm colorblind

Specifically, I have an M-Cone Reduction Deuteranomaly, which about 1.2 percent of men have and 0.02% of women. The gender difference is because the genetic disorder is on the X chromosome; women have two of them, which means it's likely that one of the chromosomes has the "correct" gene.

I said above that colorblindness is a "silly" disability - and relative to most, it really is. However it is a disability in that it prevents me from doing some things that people with normal color vision can do. It dashed my dreams of being a pilot after about ten hours of flight 

 

Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog


SLP Corner: Reminder that Speech Therapy is in Your DNA

by Erik X. Raj - MS, CCC-SLP

 

Some school-based speech-language pathologists work in school districts that have a large amount of money allocated to speech therapy materials. These are the districts that give each clinician a yearly spending budget in order to purchase new materials. I'd imagine that this budget, no matter how big or small, often invokes a feeling comparable to winning the lottery. "OMG, I just won $100 speech therapy dollars from this speech therapy slot machine! Sweet! I can't wait to buy some new materials that I know all my kiddos will adore!"

 

Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog

PT Corner: Effective Service Coordination for Students with TBI

Katherine A. Kimes, Ed.D., CBIS

 

Changes in a student's physical well-being, cognition, emotional and psychosocial behaviors after a traumatic (TBI) or acquired brain injury  (ABI) can stigmatize the child in school. Therefore, it is important to address all these areas within the education system through effective service coordination.  The key to successful in-school service coordination is to help provide an enriching learning environment.

 

The foundation that fosters effective service coordination  
Three essential factors need to be working in conjunction to establish the foundation for the successful coordination of in-school services and supports. It is important that these factors work together in order for service coordination to be effective and sustainable.  The building blocks of this foundation include:

 

Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog

Worth Repeating: How Playing Music Changes the Learning Brain

[Source:  Mind Shift]

by George Hicks, WBUR CommonHealth Blog

 

Remember "Mozart Makes You Smarter"?   A 1993 study of college students showed them performing better on spatial reasoning tests after listening to a Mozart sonata. That led to claims that listening to Mozart temporarily increases IQs - and to a raft of products purporting to provide all sorts of benefits to the brain.

 

In 1998, Zell Miller, then the governor of Georgia, even proposed providing every newborn in 

Also Worth Repeating: Children's Speech Sound Disorders: Q & A

We thank Dr. Bowen for explicitly allowing us to link to her articles.They are all found on her website.   Caroline Bowen PhD provides speech-language pathology information and resources for consumers, professionals and students.

 

Speech is the spoken medium of language. The other two "mediums" or "forms" of language are writing and gestures. Gestures range from simple iconic movements, like pretending to drink, through to complex finger-spelling and sign systems. 

 

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

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