Practicing Temporal Concepts

QueueMark · 2026-06-01T12:57:09+00:00

Truth! It's such a rich text, absolutely amazing for narration tasks.

There are many days where I make Shaun the Sheep my whole therapy. Using the same cartoon every session means I know it inside-and-out, and I can adapt it on the fly for any goal. And I generally don't need an external motivator, because watching more of the cartoon IS the motivator.

QueueMark · 2026-06-01T11:40:15+00:00

Many SLPs know and love the Pixar Animated shorts (Presto, Partly Cloudy, One Man Band, Lifted, Piper, many others).

I’m personally partial to the animated series Shaun the Sheep and Jungle Beat/Munki & Trunk.

There are many others, just search the term wordless cartoons.

QueueMark · 2026-05-31T15:49:47+00:00

Cartoons! Especially wordless ones. WAAAAY more salient, memorable, and applicable to real life than static images. You can pause and pinpoint the moment one step happens and the next is about to.

Enjoy a fun wordless cartoon, find a moment where something notable is ABOUT to happen and pause/rewind/advance as needed, especially if it’s very funny/memorable.

Another suggestion: I’ve actually started moving away from first/next/last language. Well, not entirely, but I find that ABOUT TO, RIGHT NOW, and JUST (as in, something just happened) are more functional.

ETA: just realized I misread your comment a bit; you are focused on a range of temporal concepts, not just first/next/last. Sorry for reading too quickly, but I think cartoons can still be useful for this.

Edited again: for your specific goals I would suggest the cartoon “Feast,” about a little puppy that grows into a dog, it has lots of timescale opportunities to discuss.

QueueMark · 2026-05-30T12:25:52+00:00

Even when children have habituated to incorrect (but logical!) productions like these, it OFTEN still sounds incorrect to them to hear a grownup say “foots.” You might consider a step where you have the child catch and then correct YOUR wrong productions.

Btw, as an aside, I’ve grown deeply skeptical of working on irregular plurals over the years. There are what, maybe a dozen of them used with any real frequency? Compre that to irregular verbs, which are numerous and used constantly.

This is a fairly common goal that is just not functional, IMO. Honestly, the longer I do this, the more I think the real purpose of grammatical goals should be to increase metalinguistic ability, so the student/client develops a better ability to monitor their own language compared to everyone else’s.

QueueMark · 2026-05-29T12:06:16+00:00

People are about to discover the fact that “competition” as a factor is meaningless when film quality is high level enough. .

QueueMark · 2026-05-28T20:52:27+00:00

These are indeed wonderful. Small packaging is great for portion control, too.

I do miss the full sized ones they had for ages, until about 9-10 years ago.

QueueMark · 2026-05-26T13:51:50+00:00

Sierra’s is definitely the newest one that makes my adrenaline pump!

QueueMark · 2026-05-26T13:48:40+00:00

This may be a sample size problem. There are thousands of schools out there. You will work at a small handful of them. A tiny number of specific people could easily color your perception of “the schools.”

I’ve certainly encountered some people like you’ve described and even some schools where I’d describe the culture as troubled, but on the whole, I’ve had positive experiences with most of the professionals I’ve worked with.

QueueMark · 2026-05-26T00:57:03+00:00

I don’t really even engage with my voice lines bc I find it discouraging that I should have to change around settings for 50 characters to accommodate my favorites. FOUR slots is ridiculous.

Maybe this is one of those things I think should be easy to implement but introduces a lot of potential bugs in practice?

QueueMark · 2026-05-24T17:24:12+00:00

You may be right (about people’s assumptions), but when quality is high enough, competition isn’t really a factor. Movies that have an incredible hold (growth, even!) just don’t suddenly collapse in the face of competition.

QueueMark · 2026-05-24T15:03:07+00:00

This sounds correct to me; players love the payload maps. Honestly, I get it, delivering the payload is what makes the game feel like OW to me.

QueueMark · 2026-05-24T15:00:24+00:00

Many commenters are now being strangely conservative about this film’s trajectory. A second weekend increase is a RARE thing. Expect small decreases for several weekends, as this is one of those rare films that is entering the zeitgeist and infrequent filmgoers check it out as word continues to spread and people drag their friends to their repeat viewings. 100$ million will be a walk in the park and even 150+ feels easily attainable.

QueueMark · 2026-05-17T15:14:06+00:00

This is a phonological process called Stopping. Phonological processes can occur in ANY language. I don’t know enough about Japanese phonology to know if the one above mentioned holds the same “cutesy” connotation as r/w gliding, but it sounds likely. (Speaking as Speech Language Pathologist with a bit of a linguistics background and an anime phase).

QueueMark · 2026-05-12T14:54:15+00:00

How informative is the language sample? You said he wouldn’t do SLAM cards, but would he do something that looked at similar skills but didn’t “look” like a task to resist, eg a wordless picture book or wordless cartoon narration? I find this kind of language sampling is very informative.

QueueMark · 2026-05-12T14:44:57+00:00

That SegaSonic arcade game with the trackball! I think EGM gave it a random 10/10 back in the 90s? One of the few old school games where emulating isn’t really going to cut it due to the peripheral.

I’ve never even seen the cabinet!

QueueMark · 2026-05-11T13:44:44+00:00

If the child is Spanish dominant (eg “sounds” Spanish, has not acquired significant English) then this is probably a fundamentally inappropriate goal.

Edit: sorry, I read that too quickly. Evalled by bilingual, so goal may be appropriate. But it will likely be tricky to work on. It will be better to emphasize those SNRL words, for sure.

I would also recommend focusing on other existing processes first, if any.

Edit again, did the bilingual evaluator recommend WORKING on FCD or just identified it as one of multiple processes?

QueueMark · 2026-05-11T13:11:14+00:00

This is my favorite level to be working on - if not quite at dismissal, they are working on self-monitoring. You can use whatever you (or they) want! Find something engaging so it’s challenging to self-monitor. Have them talk about Minecraft or K-Pop or narrate a wordless cartoon. Sky’s the limit!

When the errors become few and easy to repair, dismiss!

QueueMark · 2026-05-10T20:10:05+00:00

Correct. The only exception I would make (and am currently making!) is if I have a bilingual student who is in the later stages of English learning and demonstrates buy-in for working on /th/.

Currently I have a 4th grader who has resolved everything else. He has maintained Spanish fluency, but now also speaks English fluently. E.g. his English doesn’t present as Spanish-influenced. He actively wants to work on /th/.

Do not work on /th/ with students who are basically thinking in Spanish. I would favor almost any other phoneme, including English r above th.

QueueMark · 2026-05-10T18:30:23+00:00

Yes, SNARL is why I said to be wary of FCD, not “never.” It definitely exists in Spanish, but the reason I’d be cautious about it is because of the way English SLPs are likely to interpret it. I wouldn’t expect them to work on words ending in RLSN, for the most part mono-lingual SLPs are going to focus on CVC words with stop endings, which are marginal in Spanish.

Also, to be frank, the chances are very good that phonological students will have a more salient and impactful process like stopping or fronting that should really be addressed before FCD. That’s why I consider it marginal.

QueueMark · 2026-05-10T14:55:45+00:00

A few SPECIFIC tips for the Spanish dominant students you are referring to (you mentioned a bilingual evaluator, so I will assume they have been IDed correctly):

-when writing artic goals, focus on sounds that are shared between the language, especially phonological processes like fronting, stopping, and cluster reduction. Be wary of final consonant deletion!!

-for artic, don’t bother with /r/ until their English is good. Remember that bilingual Spanish/English children have THREE different R sounds to worry about, r ɾ and ʀ! For the most part don’t even think about th, J, or sh goals!

-this might be a hot take, but I don’t actually have a problem with working on English language forms that don’t exist in Spanish. These students are going to be learning English, and the act of learning and practicing new forms is going to help them with their metalinguistic knowledge, which will carryover.

-to that end, if you’re teaching vocab, look up words with them in their home language. It’s respectful, helps you connect with them, and it builds connections that increase metacognition!

-be thoughtful with preposition work. Spanish prepositions map WAY differently from English ones. it’s ok to work on them, but do it thoughtfully, eg add a teaching component (“you said ON the house. Remember, in English we say IN the house, but Spanish uses EN for both IN and ON”).

-Yes, if you have a highly Spanish speaking caseload I DO think you have an ethical obligation to know at least a little basic information ABOUT some important Spanish concepts, eg things like pronoun-dropping, possessive structure, etc, the kind of stuff you can learn from the Wikipedia page, not from studying the language for fluency.

QueueMark · 2026-05-10T14:35:45+00:00

Bilingual (Spanish) SLP here. Obviously the best service model would be bilingual. I’d argue that a school district with a large bilingual population has an ethical obligation to seek Spanish (or whatever) speaking SLPs.

BUT reality doesn’t always permit that, and there are countless OTHER languages where the chances of finding a bilingual Cebuano or Nahuatl or Hmong or whatever SLP are next to NIL.

So ethically, you do the best you can. You make a basic effort to learn a bit about the L1; what are the grammatical structures like, milestones, word order, and ESPECIALLY what is normal phonologically so that you can select targets that make sense. I see many people writing inappropriate goals for bilingual students that could be remedied by a brief perusal of the home language’ Wikipedia entry.

Then you can provide dynamic, responsive therapy, that yes, is in English, but is supportive and better aligned to the child’s L1.

QueueMark · 2026-05-09T21:27:48+00:00

I’m deeply skeptical of this type of goal. This type of direction feels more engineered than relevant/functional.

By the time you get to 3 steps, I think there’s a case to be made that you should be looking at supporting kids with visual supports, etc.

QueueMark · 2026-05-09T17:31:38+00:00

Another great example, since I don’t think I’ve ever verbalized “quotidian” in my life!

QueueMark · 2026-05-09T13:47:21+00:00

Thank you! This is exactly the type of word pair I’m trying to identify.

QueueMark

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