It’s Week 5 of YouTube Treasures for speech therapy!
If you are just tuning in, this is an 8-week series so you have a fresh treasure trove of YouTube videos, with person-centered treatment ideas for speech therapy. If you’re new to YouTube or want some new ideas for how to use these videos in therapy, read on!
Have you ever used a YouTube video during your speech therapy session, or as a home program assignment? Here are a few reasons why I like using YouTube videos as a therapy tool:
*They are interesting and relevant, which promotes therapy engagement.
*They give information in real-life speed (they aren’t over-simplified). This means that skills or strategies practiced with a YouTube video could likely be used in real life as well.
*You can adjust the complexity by choosing different lengths of information.
* Best of all, there are a million (plus!) topic options, so it’s easy to use something personally-relevant for the unique communication needs of a patient.
YouTube Treasure: Connecting Flights
If you’ve ever wondered (or been asked!) what a certain therapy activity has to do with real life, maybe it’s time to try using a more life-like therapy tool! For example, working on random 3-step commands may improve someone’s ability to follow random 3-step commands, but it might not help them in the real world when they are following directions to catch a connecting flight! If you have patients who will travel, this might be a fun YouTube to use.
Patient Scenario: A 70-year-old woman post left brain CVA has moderate expressive aphasia and mild receptive aphasia. She was incredibly active before and plans to regularly travel out of state to visit family and friends.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fDouj8Eps4&w=560&h=315]
Video Length: 1:08
Therapy Option: For this unique situation, I would use the 1-minute clip above to challenge auditory comprehension with the following questions:
*How many terminals does O’Hare have?
*What terminal is the international terminal?
*What terminals can you walk to?
*What terminal do you have to take a train to?
*When you arrive at terminal 5, do you take the escalator up or down to the departure area?
Therapy Ideas: If you like these ideas, be sure to check out the Home Sweet Home Series and my Shop. Here are some ways you may be able to incorporate a personally-relevant YouTube Video into speech therapy:
| To Target Strategies or Skills in This Area: | The Patient Could Do This: |
| Verbal Expression | *Use word-finding strategies to explain 4-step directions around the airport
*Next steps: Use Script Training to practice asking for directions within the airport |
| Written Expression | *Write connecting flight information in clear, organized sentences, so that it could be followed by someone else. |
| Auditory Comprehension | *Demonstrate comprehension across 1-minute in-context listening tasks, with 90% acc for open-ended questions.
*Practice using strategies such as note-taking to enhance comprehension. |
| Reading Comprehension | (Nope). |
| Motor Speech | *Challenge ability to carry-over motor speech strategy or skill while giving directions to a known or unknown listener. |
| Attention | *Sustain attention for listening tasks of *** minutes.
*Alternate / divide attention for a motor task (such as sorting) while also listening to new information, with 90% acc on each task. |
| Memory | *Short-term recall for +5/5 direction steps after a 10-minute delay.
*Short-term recall: Explain airport directions after a 2-day delay. *Prospective memory: Look up upcoming airport terminal for trip and report back to SLP. |
| Thought Organization | *Organize information using bullet points and sentences |
| Problem-Solving / Reasoning | *List consequences of missing information
*List 2 action steps if you don’t know where to go in an airport |
| Executive Function | *Evaluate strategy success during task or plan how to adapt strategies for new situation. |
| Pragmatics | *Recognize facial/body cues if someone doesn’t understand the airport directions
*Use appropriate eye contact, facial expression, gestures for presentation. |
Check out YouTube Treasures (knitting, medication management, sports news, recipes) or other web-based resources for therapy here.
Be sure to sign up for Honeycomb Speech Therapy email updates, or follow us on Facebook or Pinterest!