Episode Transcript
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Denise (00:06):
Welcome to the Speech
Umbrella, the show that explores
simple but powerful therapytechniques for optimal outcomes.
I'm Denise Stratton, apediatric speech-language
pathologist of 30-plus years.
I'm closer to the end of mycareer than the beginning and
along the way, I've worked longand hard to become a better
therapist.
Join me as we explore the manytopics that fall under our
umbrellas as SLPs.
(00:27):
I want to make your journeysmoother.
I found the best therapy comesfrom employing simple techniques
with a generous helping ofmindfulness.
Hello, welcome to anotherepisode of the Speech Umbrella
Podcast.
If you hear a funny sound inthe background, it's because I'm
currently on a cruise ship inthe Greek Isles and I decided I
(00:47):
would record this podcast rightnow because it's already fall
and I want to get thisinformation out to you just as
soon as I can.
I don't know about you, butsummer just flew by for me and
here it is.
It's fall and if you're workingin a school setting, you're
probably taking a good look atyour caseload and your resources
and figuring out how to jugglethose things.
And even if you're not a schoolSLP, you still have to consider
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how best to spend yourhard-earned dollars.
Sometimes you can't even findthe materials you'd like to have
, regardless of how much is inyour budget.
I like to create products tofill those gaps, because therapy
time is just too precious touse materials that don't really
meet our clients needs.
That's really why the speechumbrella even exists to provide
SLPs with resources that areprecisely tuned to meet
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individual therapy needs.
One of the reasons my summerflew by so quickly is because
I've been busy getting a newproduct ready for you.
It's called Simple Tells and itfills a resource gap in our
field.
It's a series of stories we canuse for narrative intervention,
and I want to take you back tothe beginning and tell you how
it started.
One crisp fall afternoon, I waspreparing therapy for a
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preschool child.
We were working on stories, butI had no new story for her.
Having used up my meager storeof existing stories, time to
invent, as we SLPs so often doWith this particular child, we
acted out a story beforepracticing telling it.
So I inventoried my props andcame up with a witch's hat and a
cauldron.
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Because Halloween was coming, Itook a stab at drawing a witch
and she was at leastrecognizable as a witch, so we
could go with that.
Thus Wanda Witch was born, andshe was a great success with my
clients.
The Wanda stories were quicklyfollowed by the Tony character
stories who drives trucks tosatisfy the boy who only wanted
to drive trucks on my city rug.
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Then came Peter Pig, for thechild who loves the barn set,
followed at last by Tess andDanny Dinosaur and I bet every
single one of you has a childwho loves dinosaurs.
I already knew many of myclients struggled to recall
character names and thisstruggle seemed to get them off
to a rocky start when they did aretell.
I found using multiple storieswith the same character really
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helped with name recall and thatis why each character has ten
stories and some character namesalso use alliteration, like
Wanda Witch, to help with thatrecall.
The stories became such anintegral part of my therapy I
dreamed of having themillustrated by a real artist.
Sometimes dreams do come trueand thanks to the lovely and
talented Jocelyn my stories havecome to life in a way I never
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imagined.
Now I always have a story onhand and you can too.
So what is Simple Tells?
Simple Tells includes 50stories carefully designed for
early narrative learning.
Each story has the five basicelements we're familiar with
character, problem feeling,action and resolution, and each
story also comes with a basicwritten tell and a more
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expansive written tell forvaried levels of narrative
instruction.
The stories are available inprintable PDFs, which is perfect
for online or in-personinstruction.
Simple Tales features fiverepeating characters, with the
option to buy single characterpackets of 10 stories.
So if you don't want to investin all 50 tales, but you want a
sample of them, you can buy aset of 10 tales about Wanda
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Witch or 10 tales about DannyDinosaur and so forth.
So that's a little bit aboutSimple Tales, but now let's take
a deeper dive so I can tell youwhy Simple Tales is unique, why
it fills that gap that we havein our field of resources.
So here's what we're coveringtoday why Simple Tales is unique
, what features allow you toprecisely target intervention
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and what do you get when youpurchase it?
You might be wondering okay,what makes Simple Tales unique?
Because there are some productswith basic stories, like Story
Champs.
While I love Story Champs and Iuse their method all the time,
the product doesn't have enoughstories for day-to-day therapy.
They have enough stories forprogress monitoring.
By the way, if you want tolearn more about the benefits of
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narrative language, check outmy two podcasts with Doug
Peterson, one of the creators ofStory Champs, and I'll link
those episodes in the show notes.
Simple Tales is unique numberone because there are 50 stories
.
That is a boatload of stories.
It's enough for an entire yearof weekly therapy.
Plus, I found you can do asecond year with more advanced
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retellings if your kiddo stillneeds to work on this kind of
storytelling.
Enough time is passed by by thetime you get through all 50
stories that you can circle backaround without your clients
getting bored, and there is notanother story product available
with this amount of stories thatI'm aware of.
But that's not all.
Another way Simple Tales is bothunique and perfect for
precision tailoring to eachclient is in the use of
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recurring characters, as Italked about earlier.
I noticed a lot of my clientsstruggling with name recall and
I reasoned that if they couldtell multiple stories with a
single main character, theywould be able to remember that
name and once they had that namefirmly in mind, we could switch
characters and they could learna new character name and
finally they could learn toswitch between character names.
And I tell you it absolutelyworks.
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It's very rewarding to see mykiddos gain confidence in
recalling names and that helpsthem with confidence just
through the whole story, becauseat the very beginning you need
to know who you're talking aboutand they're not fumbling over.
I don't know who that characteris and then they try and say he
, and they try and say she andthey're still maybe confused
about pronouns and then thething kind of falls apart at the
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beginning.
So this recurring charactermethod really works and it
spills over into other areas oftheir life.
So many of my clients havestruggled to tell me their
teacher's name or theirclassmates names and I feel this
has a real and detrimentaleffect on peer relationships,
because when you don't knowsomeone's name you have a
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certain fuzziness about them andperhaps a hesitation to engage
with them.
The five characters in SimpleTales seem to offer enough
practice in name call to reallyhelp in this area.
And, by the way, I foundpairing phonological awareness
and auditory memory tasks withnarrative therapy provides a
powerful tool when word recallis an issue.
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Another reason Simple Tales isunique is they have been
developed for the earlieststorytellers, the ones who have
just figured out how to sequencesteps and put basic sentences
together.
Check out my episode, followthe Narrative Road.
If you need help getting yourclients to this point, simple
Tales can take your clients fromthe beginning of storytelling
to the point where they areready to move to stories.
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With complications, elementsthat can confuse beginners, such
as dialogue, or problems thattake a lot of language to
describe, have been kept to aminimum.
You'll find some dialogue andsome variation in the amount of
language needed, and I did thatin order to have stories for a
variety of starting, but thebeauty of them is that the
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complexity can be ramped up asneeded with advanced retellings.
I really haven't found anotherproduct out there with stories
at this beginning level.
Another unique feature is theinclusion of stories that can be
used to teach infinitive to.
If you're not familiar withthis term, well, neither was I
until I looked it up, despitehaving been an SLP for many,
many years.
Despite having been an SLP formany, many years, infinitive to
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is the use of the word to,that's T-O combined with a verb
to express intent, as in to eat,to sleep, to teach, etc.
It is a very importantgrammatical function for
expressing intent, and so manylanguage-impaired children need
explicit instruction in order tolearn it.
Your clients may need to learnearly infinitives before
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including infinitive two instories.
So that's something to be awareof.
Early infinitives are thosewords like gonna, wanna, have to
, and they're a normaldevelopmental step as a child
develops language.
So they're probably not goingto be able to tell a story with
infinitive two until they havethat in their conversation.
That is one thing I work on andcheck to make sure they have
that before I introduce a storywith an infinitive two.
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But be prepared to be amazed atthe language leaps that happen
once a child learns infinitivetwo.
It's hard to understand why Ididn't learn about them in grad
school.
Check out my episode toinfinity and beyond for more on
Infinitive 2.
Now, moving on to what'sincluded with this product
Simple Tells.
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First of all, as I said before,you can purchase all 50 stories
at once or you can buy a set of10 stories featuring one
character.
All purchases come with twoversions of each story, one
basic and one more advanced.
You also get a progressmonitoring form, a story tracker
, so you know what storiesyou've done with each client and
when.
And you get parent instructions.
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I should say you getinstructions for the parent.
I've written specifically forparents to be able to understand
how to tell stories with theirchildren.
Finally, each story isprintable in three formats.
One has a blank frame forwriting the story as the child
told it, so then you can send ithome and the parent knows how
the child retold the story.
One has the basic text writtenout, and one format is flashcard
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style so that you can do asequencing or a bookmaking
activity.
My clients absolutely love tomake little books by gluing one
illustration per page while Iwrite the words in as they tell
it, and they also like toillustrate the title page, and
they are pretty creative atcoming up with their own titles.
When I asked them what wouldyou call this story, I can see
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the wheels turning in theirheads and, based on their
answers, I know they have beensynthesizing or summarizing the
content of story in their mindsby the title they came up with.
So that is really great.
There you have it.
Admittedly, this entire podcastis an advertisement for Simple
Tells, but this is one purchaseyou won't regret.
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I use it constantly and while Ilove so many features, my
favorite one is I always have astory on hand for therapy.
Now just let me tell you whatmy starting price is.
My launch price for thesestories is $20 for a single set,
$20 for 10 stories, so $2 perstory, and then if you want to
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buy the whole package, it's $100for all five sets.
Now that may seem like a lot,but if you think about this,
this is a product you can usethe whole year, or maybe even
two years, depending on yourclients.
With multiple clients, I usethis constantly.
I'm always printing thesestories out and the parents tell
me that the kids love thesestories.
They take them home, they keepthem, they reread them with
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their parents, especially whenthey've made that little
storybook I told you my favoritepart of this product is I
always have a story on hand.
But also because I do a lot ofnarrative instruction, my prep
time is minimal, my results aremaximized and I have to say
that's another favorite featureof this product.
I mean, the stories are justthere.
You hit print, comes out theprinter, you've got your therapy
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session, or most of yourtherapy session, planned.
This product checks all theboxes.
For my motto in simple tools,we got simple tools, optimal
outcomes.
Here's a story about one of myclients who had been with me a
long time and we were doingstories.
He was actually working onarticulation along with the
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stories.
And what is so cool is he was aK and G S blend kiddo you guys
know how frequent that is, andthese stories really lend
themselves to working on K and Gand S blends in the
conversation setting, which astory is a conversation setting.
So it was perfect for him.
And he came bouncing in one dayand he said do you have another
story for me today?
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And, by the way, he said thatcrystal clear, which would not
have been possible a couplemonths ago.
So these stories just put thecherry on the top for him.
I did a lot of other techniques, articulation wise, to get him
to that point, but by usingthese stories he really, really
fine-tuned his language.
Where he was saying really,really complex things, he was
using relative clauses, forheaven's sakes, and his
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articulation just blossomed.
And that, to me, is awesome.
When he came bouncing in andjust asked me for another story
and that can happen to you toothis is a product that is
totally worth the price.
In fact, I think it's a stealat this price, honestly, but I
know what budgets are.
So here we are.
This is my launch price To getthis awesome product.
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Go to thespeechumbrellacomslash simple, tells and you'll
find them all.
You'll find them in the 50-packbundle and you'll find them in
their individual 10-pack sets.
You can also find them on TPTSearch for the Speech Umbrella
to find my store.
I love to hear stories abouttherapy progress, especially
your stories, so give mefeedback about how these stories
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work for you.
Email me at denise at thespeech umbrellacom, and let's
talk.
Thanks for listening and we'lltalk to you later.
Dan (13:34):
Thanks for listening to the
speech umbrella.
We invite you to sign up forthe free resource library at the
speech umbrellacom.
You'll get access to some ofDenise's best tracking tools,
mindfulness activities and othergreat resources to take your
therapy to the next level.
All this is for free atthespeechumbrellacom.
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(13:57):
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Thank you.