expanding expressions tool (eet) in speech therapy

My school district provides two days of teacher continuous improvement training for all teachers every year in February. All district employees can attend conferences about different teaching strategies or new technology to use in the classroom. There are motivational speakers and self-improvement talks. Some classroom teachers share with small groups about what is working well in their classrooms. It is such a great experience and I don't know of any other school districts that put this into practice!

This year, our wonderful team of SLPs provided CEU courses for the district speech paths. Our classes focused on implementing EET (expanding expressions toolkit), Story Grammar Markers, Visualizing & Verbalizing and PECS effectively into therapy. I loved it! Did your grad program teach you about these? Mine sure didn't. We learned about theories and how to figure out what to work on with kids.....but then there was somewhat of a hole on HOW to work on these skills. From talking with all my speechie friends, I feel like this is a common problem across grad programs. As a student, you are really fortunate if you get a good off-campus internship and learn the "how".

Anyways......

I love EET! I had been using it in therapy, but I don't have the big fancy kit. I didn't even have the string with the beads. I had a printed page of the different colored circles that I used with my kids. One of the big take aways from the EET talk for me was that using a TACTILE (sting with beads) reinforcer and MULTIPLE MODALITIES (playing a game, hopping on colored squares, coloring) increase the effectiveness of this tool and increase student gains.

In my head, "Duh! That makes so much sense!". But in reality, I wasn't using multiple modalities when teaching using my version of EET. No wonder my students weren't making any huge gains with the tool. So.....when I got back to my campus, I made a wonderful homemade version of the EET rope. I would love to have the whole professional kit, but sometimes you have to get creative.

I have also found that my students that have more severe language disorders and/or cognitive deficits had a hard time using this tool without additional visual supports. I made a book to pair with my handy EET rope that provides visual anchors to increase describing. I am hoping to eventually fade the use of the book, but I think that it is great for initial teaching of the new concepts and to build independence in using the tool.

You can find the adapted book in my TPT store here: Miss Ellen's Speech Corner TPT. Here is a little preview, if you are curious :)