The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming!

The Olympics are loved across ages and cultures: They are a great tool to be used in relevant, functional ways for speech therapy. Read on for some inspiration on how you could use Olympic material as a vehicle to target a variety of  goals in speech therapy.

The Olympics + Person-Centered Care:

In order to be sure your therapy activity is person-centered, here are some questions you could ask to decide how to tailor your activity to be person-centered:

• “What do you enjoy about the Olympics?”
• “Do you have a favorite event?”
• “Who might you talk to about the Olympics?”
• “What sort of information do you like to share about the Olympics?”

Key Olympic Websites to Use for Speech Therapy:

PyeongChange 2018 Schedule:  https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/schedule 

*This schedule is great for reading comprehension, problem-solving for reading a new type of schedule, short-term memory for information, etc.

Overview of Individual Sport Facts: Click on the blue icons across the top. For example, Curling:  https://www.pyeongchang2018.com/en/sports/curling 

*These are available for EVERY sport–personalize for each Person depending on their interest! Scroll down to see the “Overview” section for each sport. This information could be used for auditory comprehension, reading comprehension, verbal summarizing, short-term memory/new learning, problem-solving using a map, and MORE! Your Person could learn some fun facts to share in conversation with others!

Video Clips from Sochi 2014: https://www.olympic.org/videos/sochi-2014

*There are many 3-minute clips that could be used for comprehension, organizing info/verbal or written summary, short-term memory. They are mostly “summary” videos, so would be a more succinct way to get information than watching the current Olympics live in therapy.

Olympic News:  https://www.olympic.org/news/pyeongchang-2018 

*Interesting stories for reading comprehension, with most stories highlighting certain athletes or sports.

 

Sample Therapy Ideas:

I hope these ideas are useful or help you easily target a person-centered goal! If you would like other ideas like this, please check out the Home Sweet Home Series, Back To Work Series, and all the other items in my Shop!

To Target Strategies or Skills in This Area:	The Patient Could Do This:
Verbal Expression	*Use word-finding strategies to describe an event / performance / summary of competition *Participate in unscripted dialogue *Practice Script Training with new listeners (ex: asking what time a certain event starts, sharing what one likes about the Olympics, telling an interesting Olympic story) *Summarize new information from a news clips *Use Semantic Feature Analysis for different sports
Written Expression	*Write out/script phone conversation or questions to assist with organizing information *Sentences: Write a summary of new information learned from news clip or Olympic event *Word level: Write sports, athletes, medals, countries, etc. CART technique? *Critical writing: Written evaluation of performance and agree/disagree with judge’s ratings
Auditory Comprehension	*Comprehend new information from broadcaster during live event or news summary (1-5 minutes) *Use of breakdown/repair strategies *Use of writing notes to improve comprehension *Answer yes/no or open-ended questions about live event after watching for a few minutes
Reading Comprehension	*Navigation of a new website *Following a large schedule to determine dates/times *Read xx-page article and demonstrate comprehension by summarizing 5 points *Use key code to locate items on a map of a novel setting
Motor Speech	*Challenge ability to carry-over motor speech strategy or skill during word-level or discourse task
Attention	*Sustain attention: Watch or listen to 3-minute summary and express 3 facts *Alternate attention: Watch video or use schedule to prioritize what events you want to watch or schedule *Divide attention: Take notes about people / stats / facts while watching, reading, or listening
Memory	*Short-term recall for new information from article /video / map
Thought Organization	*Organize list of directions using map info *Summarize article / video info in cohesive paragraph *Prepare a 3-day schedule, prioritizing events
Problem-Solving / Reasoning	*Explain what is necessary for an athlete to better his/her performance based on certain situation *Navigation of new website and ability to find specific info *Using a map to determine directions *Using a schedule to pre-plan availability of watching events
Executive Function	*Evaluate strategy success during task, or plan how to adapt strategies for new situation. *Plan home program task that could be a similar challenge

 

The Olympics are scheduled February 9-25, 2018. And great news: The Paralympics follow in March, so we may have lots of opportunity to use this relevant topic over the next few months!

If you want more ideas of how to make your therapy functional and person-centered, check out my Shop and the freebie Nail Salon post from last week!

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