Expertise exchange session with French students majoring in speech therapy at Clerment - Ferrand University
On June 10, 2023, there was an exciting and interesting expertise exchange session between a group of 8 French final-year students majoring in speech therapy at Clerment - Ferrand University and all teachers at Morning Star in the center's assembly hall. During the session, they brought to the Center's teachers a lot of new knowledge and new intervention methods in the process of speech therapy for children. Besides, they also provided many examples and lively practice activities to build children's foundational communication skills before moving on to learning spoken language, for example:
- Looking
- Intersubjectivity
- Paying attention
- Mimicking
- Gesturing
- Object permanence
- Icon model game
- Taking turns
In addition, the French students also shared more knowledge about sensory information processing and appropriate intervention for children with sensory problems. Some ways we can support children in handling sensory issues when they encounter difficulties:
Strategies can be given to help children with daily activities
- Adjust to the child's needs: for children who need more stimulation to concentrate, we can give them additional sensory stimulation.
- Self-regulation: the ability to maintain focus on a specific task or activity, often difficult for children with sensory issues.
- Help children adapt better to their environment.
In child support activities to help children handle sensory issues, we can build sensory rooms and create special designs with elements that stimulate the senses. It allows the user to interact freely with lights, sounds, scents and thus develop all his sensory systems. It is a pleasant space that promotes attention, exploration, joy and a sense of comfort.
This is a space that is beneficial for everyone, regardless of disability (autism, learning disability, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, intellectual disability).
At the end of the sharing activities about professional knowledge, there will also be sharing about support activities and how to use some support tools for massage and sensory stimulation of the lip, mouth, and hearing areas. sensory, facial muscle areas for children to help the intervention process go better and more effectively.
Some tools that can be used are:
- Rubber spike ball (to be applied outside the mouth only)
- Fingertip brush
- Vibrating mouth massager
- Solids or liquids of different textures or temperatures to stimulate sensations inside the mouth
After the sharing session, the teachers gained a lot of useful knowledge and many new ideas for their upcoming intervention activities for students to be more effective. We would like to thank the Association for Cooperation for Vietnamese Children (Enfance Partenariat Viet Nam, abbreviated as EPVN) for supporting and helping Morning Star gain the opportunity to learn and work with a group of foreign students to update ourselves on new useful knowledge.
