after school speech part 23

Even though we were on Spring Break, SJ still had his weekly after school speech session.  He was very resistant when it came time to go to therapy.  In his mind, we were off school.  No school.  No speech.  But I had other ideas, so we went to the after school speech anyway.

SJ's therapist had intended on working on Main Ideas and Inferences.  She didn't have time to begin the Inferences, but she did a lot of work on Main Ideas.  She began by doing oral exercises with him.  She read several sentences to him with details.  He had to tell her what the main idea was.

For example:  I take off my clothes.  I put on my pajamas.  I brush my teeth.  I say good night.  Then, SJ had to answer that he would be getting ready for bed.  SJ did pretty well with this activity.  There were a few that he didn't quite answer correctly, but his answer was fairly close. 

She did visual exercises too.  SJ had to come up with details as to why his dad is an excellent cook.  He drew pictures of places where he would have learned to cook or things that he cooks well.  He also did a visual graph where he had to draw details to accompany the main idea of "I have fun at the new skate park."  SJ drew a skateboard, a ramp and rails. 

Last, she read him a paragraph.  When she was done, she read two sentences to him.  He had to tell her which one expressed the main idea of the paragraph.

For example:  Our class field trip will be tomorrow.  The bus will leave at exactly 8:30.  You will need to bring a sack lunch.  We plan to get to the zoo by 10:00.  We will stay there until 2:00.  I hope you have a great time.  The two sentences were the following:
                 1.  The class is going on a field trip to the zoo tomorrow. 
                 2.   We will eat our sack lunch at the zoo tomorrow.

She had SJ write down what the details of the paragraph were in a visual format.  He wrote 8:30, drew a sack lunch, drew a zoo sign with 10:00 a.m. above it and then wrote stay 2:00 p.m.  SJ was then able to correctly choose sentence number 1.

He did very well with this activity and was assigned two paragraphs for homework.  SJ's therapist said he was very chatty with her.  He told her how we were off from school and how he got Dry Bones (a Mario plushy) in the mail that day.  Considering he was so difficult leaving the house, he worked very well for her today.