 I'm local. I hope that's a tasty song. Mr. Kusum, every time give me high five. I'm Maureen Del Blanc and I'm a speech language pathologist with Edwinston Catholic Schools. Have you seen this one before? No. It's pretty funny. The Broadway strategy I used at St. Charles was use books to pre-teach and highlight, which basically is really an easy one for most kindergarten teachers because obviously they're using books in their classroom already. It's actually not an octopus, it's called a giant squid. Can you say that? Giant squid. I knew that. What it is is basically using books in a more targeted way to work on speech or language skills. It's a strategy that can work in large groups, small groups or with individual children. Have you guys seen a real jellyfish before? Yeah. I read a book to the class. The book we read, I chose because it was related to a project going on in the classroom. You'll see me reading the book to the large group and holding the book back a little bit, asking the kids to make predictions about what they think is going to happen next. Having them repeat some of the vocabulary that might be new to them in the book, specific to ocean animals like puffer fish or barracuda, that kind of thing that they might not be familiar with. Miss Lisa is going to get you to move like a clam. As well, you'll see me working with the occupational therapist. So we took turns at reading the book, I would read a page, and then the kids would take a chance to act out some of the animals and work on some of their gross motor and fine motor skills as well. From our large group activity, the classroom moved into center time, which is always a great time to do small group activities. I just went and asked a few kids in the classroom if they would like to make a book with me. And basically, we made a book on my iPad that was similar in theme to the book that we had just read with the group as a whole. The kids got a chance to each take a turn choosing which animal they wanted to write about, deciding whether the animal was bigger or smaller than them, and then working on pre-literacy skills and phonological awareness, sounding out the words to actually type them into our story. Sound comes next. The value in small group activities is just huge. I think a lot of times for kids with speech and language delays, they might get a little bit lost in the large group. But when they're in the small group and they have the chance to interact with any adult, and even with smaller groups of their peers, they have more chances to talk, more chances to speak up if they don't understand what's happening, and more chances for the adult to help them out when we realize that they're struggling with something. I generally decide to go to individual work with children when they're working on something very specific. So a lot of times, if they're working on something like a specific speech sound, I'll move into individual work with them because most of the other children in that class can already make the sound. So we'll work together until they're stimulable, they can create the sound, it can imitate me doing it, and then once they're successful at that level, we'll move into a small group so that they can play again with their friends. Working in the classroom all the time, it's a really fabulous way of having kids motivated to come and work on their speech language skills because they don't see it as therapy, and it doesn't look like therapy in the classroom. I might be working with a whole group of kids, and there might be only one who has a specific speech and language goal that he's working on. But as far as he knows, he's just playing with his friends, and we're doing it in a fun way and they all think that it's just a great time.