Saturday, August 31, 2013

Entering the Externing World

Hey everyone, 

I am the 3rd member of Speech on the Fly. I waited till this weekend to post because this has been my first week of my externship, but I am very excited to be joining the SLP-to be blogging community. I first started reading blogs during my student teaching placement in undergrad (Go Elmira!). My supervisor and I discovered many great resources online and implimented a lot of the materials during my semester in the elementary school. 

My placement this semester is with adults with developmental disabilities. The individuals live in assisted group homes and we travel to see them for speech and language sessions as well as feeding/swallowing. So far we have focused a great deal on feeding and general safety of the individuals. One important aspect of working with the individuals on my caseload is remembering the diet consistency the individual should be on. A large focus of this first week was training new staff members in various group homes on the individuals they will be working with with a large focus on how to prepare the meals for each person and provide them with the correct adaptive equipment. I have gotten to see mother care spoons, high sided plates, built up handles on silverware, various types of cups and so much more already. 

The resourse that I have added to our TpT store is a document with cards to fill out about each client. I have began making these as a "cheatsheet" to keep track of important information for each individual I see. There are many ways to do this and I have seen many great ideas online. My verison includes the individual's location since I am travelling to many group homes and it can get confusing for who lives where. Also, there is speech goals, diet consistency, adaptive equipment, and a comments section. I feel that this will help me use the correct terms and memorize this information quicker. Hopefully the cards will come in handy for others too!

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!

~Rachel

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