Peanuts Minisodes on YouTube

Cartoon Network has recently produced a series of Peanuts "minisodes" available on YouTube through this playlist. As a general strategy, locating playlists of videos on YouTube can help us find resources on a theme or potentially useful for similar clinical targets. Additionally, identifying YouTube channels we find useful, always represented by a circular icon and a red button to subscribe (the circle for Cosmic Kids, below, is a little hard to see with all the white) when you search, also helps us find a flow of resources:

Subscribing to a channel (red button) or saving a playlist (nearby orange circled item with lines and a check) will add resources to your menu (upper left circled item when signed in to YouTube with your credentials):

Regarding the Peanuts minisodes, these are short, engaging videos for kids and a great way to explore and identify the Zones of Regulation® and to map narratives. Peanuts interactions often also have a lot of figurative language and reference to seasons and holidays useful for these themes.

Tinycards, teched-up flashcards

I have previously written about our potential role in promoting study skills through a) targeting connections and categories b) promoting use of metalinguistic "tricks and b) motivating our students' participation as at some point, tests and grades matter to them. Duolingo's Tinycards- Fun Flashcards is another nice (100% Free) app for SLPs to look at because it provides access to appealing interactive flashcards. These let you move through a category by responding in different ways e.g. identifying via typing, describing, multiple choice to promote different connections within the category. For SLP students also, there are quite a number of anatomy categories available. Note: you can also make your own cards!

Lookup

Lookup: An elegant dictionary ($2.99) would be a useful app for MS and HS clinicians to have in their library. The app contains cool, attractively designed posters that illustrate the meaning (more precisely, often a semantic association) to a word. The array of posters is not yet of true dictionary breadth, but the ones contained within would provide a great inspiration for students to make their own posters. Consider doing so with construction paper, or with Pic Collage or Google Drawings. The Expanding Expression Tool and Beck/McKeown/Kucan's contextual vocabulary strategies would be good methodologies to employ alongside the use of this app.

Here's an image I whipped up in 5 minutes using Google Drawings, related to a vocabulary word I heard targeted in a HS classroom this week:

To create this I:

-started a new drawing, go to docs.google.com/drawings, Google "Google Drawings" or from your Drive click New, then More, then Google Drawing.

-used Tools>Explore and looked up an image of "dollar"- dragged it in, selected it and copied/pasted a number of times, rotating and resizing.

-Used the Line>Scribble tool to draw a stick figure, then changed the line weight

-Added and reformatted text.

Here's a complete tutorial on using Google Drawings, a tool with many uses, particularly in Chromebook environments.

Creating visuals with Google tools has the advantage of creating collaborative and sharing opportunities between students and possibly making collections for studying. 

You'll find that the above features (web search, doodle, backgrounds, text) are also available in Pic Collage EDU.

More on Breathing

Breathing is an important tool that SLPs can employ in a variety of client populations. For our students with self-regulation difficulties, having tools they can use anywhere without disruption of the current situation they are in can be very important (see Zones). For us, too-- our jobs can be stressful, whether it is a difficult treatment situation, a contentious IEP meeting, or just going back to work after the summer (I AM STILL NOT REALLY READY)...we need tools.

I've always found any kind of mindful breathing to be useful, but this summer I stumbled upon a link from VICE News that led to some interesting science. One study sited here documents the effects of "coherent breathing" at a rate that balances the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, leading to increased calm for people with varied conditions: "In subjects with MDD (major depressive disorder) treated with resonant breathing (coherent breathing with pursed lips resistive exhalation) at 4.5–6.5 breaths per minute (bpm), HRV (heart rate variability) increased and mood improved." Part of the technique is that one should avoid counting, say to 6, as that engages the sympathetic side too much.

I was easily able to find an app that therefore provided other cues so that breaths could be timed to correspond with the BPM guideline: The Breathing App (free for iOS). I have used this as a warm up for groups and also frequently for myself. The app provides different modes: in one, a ball enlarges as a visual for inhalation timing, and decreases in size for exhalation. I have found especially useful another mode which uses audio tones of different notes to time the same--great to use in the car when feeling just a tad anxious on the way to some work task. Check it out and try the technique!