Chimes School
Baltimore, Maryland
The Chimes School is a non-public special education facility
for students with autism, developmental delays, and other
cognitive disabilities. The school's speech-language
pathologists, Lynne A. Fadem, CCC-SLP, LaShonda Lucas, CF-SLP,
and graduate intern Misty Merkel hosted an afternoon including an
inservice on vocal hygiene, and then "fun and games"
with 50 teachers, administrators, and IEP aides to raise
awareness of how speech & language disorders affect the
students served here.
The SLP's helped facilitate versions of
4 board/party games involving the whole staff-"Mad Gab"
to demonstrate language processing, receptive difficulties and
central auditory processing disorders, "Pictionary" to
demonstrate strategies for expressive language disorders,
"Taboo" to demonstrate word finding difficulties, and
an improvisational game ala the TV show "Whose Line Is It
Anyway?" in which a speaker was suddenly diverted to a new
topic by pulling a scripted line out of his pocket on cue, to
demonstrate difficulties with pragmatics & topic maintenance.
Staff shared resounding feedback that not only was it fun, but
that they learned a lot about how our students understand and
communicate!
Submitted by:
Lynne A. Fadem, CCC-SLP