It’s Week 4 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: Giada’s Chicken Cacciatore
If I ever need speech therapy as an adult, I could only hope that my speech therapist will use recipe videos (or cookbooks!) with me. I love cooking, trying new recipes, or hearing about new ingredients–and I know that many of the clients I work with do as well. Worksheets don’t always fit the bill for targeting cognitive-communication skills for a person-centered goal–here’s where a YouTube Video of a recipe comes in!
Patient Scenario: A 45-year-old mom is s/p craniotomy for an aggressive brain tumor. She has moderate attention, memory, executive function challenges, in addition to a visual impairment that has made reading normal size text difficult. She expresses during the focused interview that she has not been able to return to meal planning or cooking and it’s “driving her crazy.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQISchHlo48&w=560&h=315]
Video Length: 4:54
Therapy Option: For this unique situation, I would use a 5-minute recipe clip like the one above to further look at where the breakdown is happening with meal planning. I would instruct the patient to write down the ingredient list and instructions, and be prepared to report back to me immediately after the video was complete. While the video plays, you will take notes as well and then compare performance together! Depending on the results, we would focus therapy on personalized strategies to improve her performance, directly translating to her performance with following recipes at home.
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 express 6+ steps of a newly learned recipe
*Next steps: Use Script Training to practice explaining patient’s favorite recipe *Name 6 ingredients required for the recipe |
| Written Expression | *Organize grocery list for this menu
*Write recipe in clear, organized sentences, so that it could be followed by someone else. |
| Auditory Comprehension | *Demonstrate comprehension across listening tasks for *** minutes, with 90% acc for open-ended questions.
*Practice using strategies such as note-taking to enhance comprehension. |
| Reading Comprehension | *Develop personalized strategies for the patient that assists in reading comprehension for recipes (size, simplified text, etc). |
| Motor Speech | *Challenge ability to carry-over motor speech strategy or skill while sharing a story 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 +10/10 ingredients after a 10-minute delay.
*Short-term recall: Explain steps for recipe after 24-hour delay *Prospective memory: Make recipe at home and report back to SLP how it went |
| Thought Organization | *Organize information using bullet points and sentences |
| Problem-Solving / Reasoning | *List possible ingredient substitutions
*List 2 positive outcomes from trying new recipe and potential 2 negative outcomes |
| 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 recipe directions
*Use appropriate eye contact, facial expression, gestures for presentation. |
Check out YouTube Treasures (knitting, medication management, sports news) or other web-based resources for therapy here.
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