Teaching Older Students Pragmatic Skills for Social Media Use

When speech-language pathologists work with middle and high school students, we can focus our services more on real-life topics—both in addressing academic skills and social interactions. Students at this level also tend to take more ownership of their sessions by recognizing areas needing more attention, helping set goals, and identifying strategies that work best for them. IDK if U Can Read This: Handling ‘Textese’ in Treatment? Handling Trolls on Social Media: A How-To Guide When Viral Videos Fuel Parent Expectations Working with older students and young adults gives SLPs an opportunity to look at goals to enhance community involvement and employment skills. Students tend to be much more invested in these types of interventions. Even students who in previous years tended to check out during sessions get motivated by activities focused on skills they want to learn. Some of those more interesting life skills involve practicing communication through social media and texting. Social media and cell phone use make up a significant amount of how today’s interactions occur, and students have high interest in these modes of communication. Classroom teachers also use social media or messaging apps to post assignments, and encourage students to communicate and collaborate with each other, creating an academic relevance to using this type of communication in sessions. My approach when providing interventions for older students is to have fun. Here are some activities I use t...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Private Practice Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Autism Spectrum Disorder social skills Technology Source Type: blogs