SpeechTea Blog

  • Celebrating Birthdays in Speech

    by Erin Larsen
    Hi SLP friends! Let’s talk about celebrating birthdays in speech. I LOVE celebrating birthdays in speech. I always know when their birthdays are an...
    Posted in crafts, speech room

  • Why You Can’t Stop Evaluating your Speech Therapy Clients

    by Erin Larsen
    Hi SLP friends! I want to chat about why you need to continuously evaluate your clients. And no, I’m not talking about standardized tests. But befo...
    Posted in assessment

  • Hey SLP, Get Outside and PLAY!

    by Erin Larsen
    Let's talk about how you can move therapy outside and play to increase speech and language. Read my top tips and favorite activities to engage and grow!
    Posted in therapy tips

  • How To Carryover Early Intervention Strategies In The Home

    by Erin Larsen
    In Early Intervention, we often have the benefit of seeing the child in their own, natural environment. We can assess the hurdles they may have to overcome in their homes and we see the areas where we can educate the parent or caregiver. But how can we make sure the therapy techniques we model and educate on are being transferred over on a daily basis?
    Posted in early intervention

  • How To Get Carryover of Social Language Skills In The Home

    by Erin Larsen
    We’re talking all about generalization and carryover of our client’s goals into their home for the next few weeks, so I KNEW we had to discuss this...
    Posted in homework, pragmatic language

  • Building Verbal Imitation Skills

    by Erin Larsen

    Now that you’ve educated the parents, coached them through strategies, and their child is demonstrating the Pre-Linguistic Skills we addressed in our first two blogs, we can start building on those skills! But where to begin? Think back on how you observe children acquiring language. Does a 1 year old spontaneously go from never making any verbalizations to suddenly responding to verbal routines or saying “hello” and “mama”? Not typically. All of those small little coos and giggles eventually manifest as whole, recognizable words over time and with the right encouragement.

    Posted in early intervention, parents, therapy tips

  • Pre-Linguistic Skills: The Foundation of Language

    by Erin Larsen
    Pre-linguistic skills are the underrated (and often forgotten!) foundation that allows children to build language, and they must be thoroughly developed. In my last post, I listed them out for you, but let’s look at them further!
    Posted in early intervention, parents, therapy tips, toys

  • What To Do When Parents Ask, 'When Will My Child Talk?'

    by Erin Larsen

    Now that you have a fresh caseload with eager parents and children waiting for your expertise, the only thing that could bring you down is a parent coming into a session after a few weeks of therapy and asking, “So when exactly will my child begin to actually talk?”. While disappointing to hear, often we forget to educate parents on a crucial part of early intervention therapy: pre-linguistic skills!

    Posted in early intervention, parents, therapy tips

  • 3 Ways An SLP Can Support Students Struggling With Sight Words

    by Erin Larsen
    SLPs are often asked to support students struggling with sight words. Read my three tips in this blog post.
    Posted in homework, literacy, parents, therapy tips

  • 5 Tips to Increase Sustained Attention

    by Erin Larsen
    Read my 5 top tips on increasing sustained attention in your speech therapy sessions.
    Posted in behavior management, early intervention, therapy tips

  • Three Activities to Target Flexible Thinking

    by Erin Larsen
    Flexible thinking is a pertinent skill to social language development. Read three activities to try in your speech room that are fun and engaging.
    Posted in pragmatic language, therapy tips

  • Teaching Perspective Taking Skills

    by Erin Larsen
    Teaching perspective taking can be tricky. Read how I tackle it in my systematic approach.
    Posted in pragmatic language, therapy tips