Lighter Side

I was working with a first grade fluency little boy one day and we were using animal pictures to practice slow, easy speech. When he turned over the cow picture he proudly said,”I know lots of cows! There are whole cows, 2% cows, 1% cows , and skim cows!” It was such a cute moment.

I was asking a Kindergarten student to recall the various bugs that we read about in our book about spring and he was able to come up with one or two. Using a cloze procedure to help him recall the rest I said, “remember the red one with the black spots? It was a lady…” The student responded, “Gaga!” Now that he remembered!

During one of my small groups of two young boys with autism, I was using my “What’s Missing” puzzles to work on pronouns and correct sentence production. I gave each child one half of the puzzle and they had to tell me a sentence of what that person was missing while using the correct pronoun. Mind you…all of these puzzles are quite obvious in what they’re missing (i.e. a girl just holding onto a leash. She’s missing her dog.) Well, it was Jared’s turn and he received the puzzle piece of a man walking out of his house with a shirt, suit jacket, heart boxers, socks and shoes on. So I ask the question, “Jared, what is this man missing?” He states confidently…”His keys!” Apparently Jared doesn’t feel that pants are that important to wear when walking out of your house when going to work. Cracked me up!!

After 27 + years of being a Speech/Language Specialist in the Flemington – Raritan School District and teaching the correct placement and production of the /s/ sound and telling my students that this is the “Sammy the Snake” sound… I had a real live snake visit my therapy room one day.

One morning I opened my door to my classroom and a “milk snake” was coiled around the floor waiting his turn for Speech/Language Therapy.  I called the Main Office and they sent the custodian down to my room and had him take “Sammy the Snake” back out into the woods behind the school.  The snake was hisssssing and his production of /s/ was 100% accurate at Conversational Level.  Therefore, I dismisssssssed him from therapy the same day that he entered!

I was out at recess one day and one of my younger artic students, who was working on /l/, was running around with some classmates playing a game about aliens. As he came running by, he was shouting, “Run for your wife, run for your wife.”  His two classmates just stopped running and looked at him. I knew we needed to work harder on carry-over.

-Eleene Gallagher from Flemmington, NJ

I was working with a 5 year old boy, and after sneezing he looked at me and said in all seriousness: “I think I’m allergic to you.”

- Carrie Barnes Cary, NC

I was working with a 2nd grader on language. It was Halloween, so we had a picture of a haunted house, with people in the house having a Halloween party. The student noticed a pumpkin in the window that had a frown face carved into it, so I asked “Why do you think the pumpkin is frowning?”, to which he quickly and gravely replied, “Because tomorrow they’re turning him into pie!”

– Heather Montgomery, Culver, IN

Many years ago I was collaborating in a preschool disability class where vocabulary was continually taught. The teacher announced that she was getting married and wouldn’t be in class for a while because she was going on her honeymoon. A little one piped up, “You’re going to get sticky.” We asked him why, and he replied, “Because of all the honey!” Now there was a very literal thinker.

– Jacqueline Stempler, Maywood, NJ

I was working with a seventh grader on her /r/ sound. She is a beautiful girl, very popular. I asked her if kids ever said anything about her speech. She responded, “No, they tell me they like my accent.”

– Roberta Knox, Wheaton, IL