Today the Real Life Speech Therapy topic is Holiday Conversations: With the upcoming holidays, this is the perfect time of year to incorporate meaningful goals through scripts that your Person can use with holiday gatherings! The “Real Life Speech Therapy” series will focus on activity and participation of specific tasks, with tools for the everyday SLP to use across assessment, goal-setting, therapy, external language and cognitive supports, and home program.
If you’ve ever finished a worksheet, card game, or another task in therapy and wondered to yourself, “How did this task help my patient function better this week?”, this series is for you.
Real Life Speech Therapy series: Holiday Conversations!
Using a person-centered focus not only fulfills best practices across general healthcare trends, but it is also a best practice within our own speech pathology research. Best practices show therapy needs to be relevant, in-context, person-centered, and making improvements in everyday life. Did you know that for both language and cognition skills, practicing skills in context is recommended for carryover to everyday use? That means we need to move away from generic worksheets and card games, and instead focus on language and cognitive skills and strategies that will be used in someone’s everyday life.
Today’s conversation topic is inspired by the STUFF OF LIFE: Conversations with family and loved ones throughout the holiday season. Rather than using therapy to practice naming opposites or animals — and hoping that makes conversation easier — use evidence-based Script Training in speech therapy for a person-centered technique to improve the actual sentences your Person wants to be able to say!
See below for the Script Training Quick Reference Sheet, Holiday Script Ideas, and Key References. Everything else you need to start using Script Training in therapy can be found in the Script Training Packet.
*Please note the following are my personal notes from reading the research; key references below if you would like to review them yourself.
Who should I use Script Training with?
-Script Training has been successful with both fluent and nonfluent aphasia.
-Script Training has also been successful with acquired apraxia of speech.
What sort of goals would Script Training address?
-Improved accuracy and speed for a script that meets a specific functional need
-Improved confidence while communicating script information in a variety of situations
-Improved total word production
What does the evidence say I should expect?
-Improvement on topic content, grammatical productivity, and speaking rate for all scripts
-Increased communication across a variety of situations and listeners
-Improved patient rating of naturalness and confidence while speaking
How does Script Training relate to a person-centered approach?
-Script Training is completely personalized and dependent on the Person’s situation and goal! The content is highly meaningful and relevant to the Person (because it is chosen by them!).
-The Person’s word choices are used, so responses sound natural and access preserved wording.
How can I use Script Training TOMORROW in speech therapy?
Purchase the downloadable Script Training packet for $5 right here –you are set to go! From templates to documentation samples, you are ready to roll and can use again and again.
What are some Holiday Gathering Script Training Ideas?
This is a perfect time of year to talk to your Person and see what the upcoming holiday plans may be over the next month or so! Here are some functional ideas we could help our People prepare for in therapy–please feel free to personalize based on your Person’s exact situation: 