The ‘ Art ’ of Treating Communication Issues

A work of art is a form of language. Paint strokes, paper, shapes, colors and materials come together to form meaningful visual moments. Communication consists of the same basic principle. Sounds don’t have much power on their own, but when coherently strung together, they create meaningful human interaction. For this reason, I find using art in my speech-language sessions a natural fit for working with my students. I always loved how my college professors described the profession of speech-language pathology as “an art and a science.” As SLPs, we provide evidence-based interventions to motivate our clients, but also generate functional progress. One of the first things my clinical fellowship supervisor taught me was about the ease of doing in-class treatment during art class. You can work on following directions, prepositions, descriptive language, executive functioning skills and more—all within a single class period. I decided to go one step further, and bring the elements of my students’ art classroom into our speech room. Thus began my creation of a monthly “Art Gallery Day.” I found many resources online to help support my project. Let’s be honest, we don’t always have time to generate materials from scratch. Any resources to help lessen prep time means increased opportunities for carrying through with an idea. I like this free inferences and predictions lesson plan by Sublime Speech. It gave me a great starting point to develop my new art tradition. ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Language Disorders Schools Source Type: blogs