Group Therapy Observation

On February 10th 2017, I went to Hickory Grove Elementary School in the Brookville School District to observe in the speech therapy room. The speech room was a separate classroom that the kids would get pulled out of class to come to in order to receive therapy. During the hour that I observed the speech language pathologist, or SLP, saw a total of 5 kids; she had three kids in the first group and two kids in the second. It is a rather small school, so Mrs. Ferris, the SLP, is the only speech language pathologist working in that particular elementary school. In group therapy sessions, the SLP cannot have anymore than three students in a group so that all the students can get individualized attention. Before the students came into Mrs. Ferris’ classroom she warned me that one student likes to make up stories and pretend that they actually happened to him and that his buddy in the group tends to back him up. So as the students came into the classroom and made conversation with Mrs. Ferris I was able to observe this behavior right off the bat. Almost the first thing out of this student’s mouth was a lie, but Mrs. Ferris called him on it. She likes to tell him to write all his stories now and make a book instead of lying to people. During the therapy session Mrs. Ferris’ goal for
I did however notice that one student had a slight tick; every couple seconds he would scrunch up his nose and this behavior continued the entire length of the therapy session. The only other thing I observed is that one student would answer Mrs. Ferris’ questions before she was even done saying them. Mrs. Ferris seemed to be aware of the students behaviors in both groups and did her best to direct the behaviors into something more constructive. With persistent work the student’s behaviors will be able to be reshaped and changed into something more efficient and