SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY IN PRACTICE Winter 2007 7

COVER STORY: HERE’S ONE I MADE EARLIER...

SLTP

There is a huge resource of free and high quality ‘leftover’ material lurking in the filing cabinets of Estate Agents. Yes, I did say Estate Agents! It occurred to me that house leaflets provide an ideal resource for working on inference and logical thinking, not to mention discussion and team building skills. We all love to look at details of other people’s houses and these leaflets give details of price, house type, size - all you have to do is write a selection of client details to match up with the houses you have details of. When I first went to an Estate Agent I was given a whole range of details on houses from £100,000 to £500,000. They were also happy to give me six or more copies of each leaflet so I didn’t have to copy them. I then wrote short ‘sketches’ of my clients, for example:Mr and Mrs Black have a budget of no more than £250,000. They have no children but 2 dogs. They love walking and would like to live in an older style property in the country but not too far from shops. The group then had to consider all the clients and decide which houses would be most suitable for them. This included lots of vocabulary work starting with “what is a semi-detached house?”, progressing to what is meant by “no more than” or “an older style property.” They also had to infer information from the client profile such as that they would need a garden if they had dogs.The young people aged 13 to 18 who have used this activity have really enjoyed it, and we have turned it around so that they can begin to write client profiles for another group to match with houses. It is an infinite resource, easily added to and great fun.Alison Roberts regularly contributes really practical and imaginative ideas to this page. She has used this idea and extended it to matching holiday wish lists to travel brochures, again a wonderful free resource. So even though Summer holidays are over we can still dream of that perfect getaway while we work!

Sheina Stockton is an independent speech and language therapist in Upton upon Severn.

Here’s one I made earlier…

Location, Location, Location

Sheina Stockton with a low-cost, flexible therapy suggestion suitable for a variety of client groups.

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