Souderton Charter School Collaborative

Souderton, Pennsylvania

I work part-time in a K-8 charter school in Pennsylvania. This year I decided to make a big deal about Better Hearing and Speech Month. I started out the month by giving each of my speech students a BHSM pencil. Next I created a bulletin board display with a game for the entire school to participate in. I had taken individual pictures of my speech kids signing a predetermined sign language word. I placed them on the board creating 4 different sentences (each sentence contained 4 words). Across the top of the bulletin board I hung the written words for each sentence. I hung game sheets up for all of the students in the school to fill out and return to me. The object of the game was to match the correct group of written words to the correct series of pictures. The speech students said they felt special by having their pictures up and also because they knew the answers! At the end of the month, the speech students will randomly choose 5 winners from the contest and these winners will receive a small prize.

I also gave each of the speech students an extra assignment for the month. They were given a paper that listed one of their speech goals on it (for example, Sue's target speech sound is /s/. She must use these 5 words in a sentence and remember to keep her tongue behind her teeth for the /s/ sound). The object was for each student to find 5 different adults (teachers, parents, etc.), show them the goal sheet, practice the target goal, then the adult would sign the paper. When they received 5 different adult signatures, they would bring the paper back to me for a small prize. The goal was for them to practice the skills they have learned in speech class in many different settings.

Finally, the school newspaper interviewed me for May and wrote an article about why using good speech and language is important in our lives.

Submitted by:
Kristen Pawling, SLP