Day 11

Today we arrived at our classroom more prepared than we were on day one. Yesterday, we were able to write down our classrooms schedule so now we could create some activities that heavily involved language but still went along with our classes curriculum.  My partner and I made two sequencing activities that went with science.  One was the life cycle of a butterfly and the other was the life cycle of a seed to plant.  For our math activity I had made a build your own sundae.  Each part of the sundae was worth a certain amount. The idea was to have the students create a sundae worth so much.  Well as any speechie would know things don’t often go as planned… on our way to the school my supplies bag tipped over on the bus, which I didn’t think was any big deal.  However, when I bent down to pick up the materials I slowly saw my sundae math activity falling onto the road through a hold on the bus floor… This was almost comical to me.  I’ve learned on externship that a lot of times what you have planned will not work out.  So, when we got into our classroom our first lesson was supposed to be math.  Well this is where our quick thinking speechie skills come in.  I knew I had some popsicle sticks in my bag that were different colors.  My partner and I brainstormed and we came up with a pretty good addition activity that also targeted fine motor skills (writing) and language.  We assigned each color popsicle stick to a certain amount. We would then have the students choose a number of sticks and come to the math problems on the board.  We also made this activity target turn taking and managing group conversations.  To me this is one of the best skills a student, teacher, or SLP can have, because often you are going to be asked to think on your feet. 

My favorite part of today was being on the playground with the kids.  Its amazing to me how easily language can be incorporated into almost any activity with the right set of skills.  I was able to interact with a lot of the younger kids during this time.  I was also able to meet up with classmates and have them introduce me to kids in their classrooms.  One of the nonverbal boys on the playground today was playing a high-five game with me today.  During each clap I would count “one, two, three” during the end of our game he wasn’t able to actually say the numbers but he did catch on with producing the syllables. He really did enjoy the game too! He kept following me around the playground to do it over and over again.  It warms my heart to see how malleable these children are! Many of these are still like sponges and with a little (or a lot) of work they can make such significant progress in both academics and language.  I hope that by coming on this trip and spreading awareness it will increase the awareness of the country how much speech therapy could benefit this country.