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Home | School-Based | In the Spotlight

Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City Schools, Ohio

Short Bio

Gloria Roth earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Cleveland State University. After working for a short period of time in hospital and skilled nursing facility settings, she accepted a position in the school setting. Mrs. Roth has been with the Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City Schools for eleven years. During this time, she has been a member on the district’s literacy team and has served as a member of OSLHA’s Ethics Committee. Three years ago, Mrs. Roth was one of the first SLPs in their region to adopt the 3:1 model of service delivery. She has had the opportunity to present on this topic to other SLPs in her region at the Northern Ohio Special Education Resource Center, the Ohio School Speech Pathology Educational Audiology Coalition (OSSPEAC) 2005 Conference, and as a panel member at the OSLHA convention’s educational caucus meeting.

Personal Philosophy/Mission

Each day I have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of my students. As a child, I was enrolled in speech for many years for multiple articulation errors. I am grateful for my SLP, Mary Pizzuti, who made a difference in my life and consequently influenced my career choice. As a result, it is my goal to work collaboratively as part of the educational team to address the needs of each child so that every student will have the language ability and communicative competence necessary to reach their highest potential in school and beyond.

Setting/Caseload Description

Mrs. Roth works for the Sheffield-Sheffield Lake City Schools. It is a small district with about 2000 students located along Lake Erie approximately 30 miles west of Cleveland. The district currently employs one full time speech-language pathologist and three part time SLPs.

Mrs. Roth travels between three schools and provides services to students in preschool through fifth grade. However, the majority of her caseload is preschool, Kindergarten and First grade.

Areas of Interest

I have always had a very strong interest in the areas of early literacy development, phonemic awareness and learning disabilities. I see so many students who start Kindergarten without a good pre-reading foundation. They start to fall behind early on and it becomes difficult for them to catch up. Some of these youngsters need more intensive phonemic awareness intervention early on to help them.

Favorite Therapy/Technique/Materials

I find myself using techniques and materials from Project Read (Language Circle) and the Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS) for Reading, Spelling and Speech programs. These are programs which utilize multisensory techniques to teach skills in sequential and logical ways. The children also find educational games and activities on the internet very motivating. I have listed some fun websites below:

Building Language for Literacy
teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bll/index.htm

PBS characters
www.pbskids.org

Enchanted Learning
www.enchantedlearning.com

Starfall
www.starfall.com

Gooey games – Earobics
www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

Words and Pictures – fun activities with phonics
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/

Caseload Management Tip

With the increased workload demands placed on school SLPs, it has become imperative to find alternative service delivery models. Caseload sizes/workload continues to increase and the students with whom we are working are more involved and have complex issues. Extra consultation time is needed, especially for collaboration and writing goals that align with general education and academic content standards. In addition, paperwork requirements are overwhelming and take time away from intervention. For three years now, our district has been using the 3:1 model, where we provide three weeks of direct services and one week of indirect services. This service delivery model helps students, teachers and SLPs in many ways.

Provides more opportunities to observe within the classroom setting.
Helps promote carryover of speech goals into the classroom
Improves teacher consultations, both in quality and quantity
Changes staff mindset to a more collaborative sense of responsibility for the students
Helps SLPs have a better understanding of the curriculum and content standards being addressed at various grade levels.
Provides opportunities to model cueing and strategies for facilitating better speech-language skills within the classroom
Frees up time to schedule testing and meetings that otherwise would have resulted in changing your entire schedule or shortening sessions to cram everybody in.
Helps students by connecting their speech and language goals with what they are working on in their own classrooms.
Allows more time to provide materials and information to parents, staff or other therapists to educate and facilitate carryover into other settings.
Gives SLPs access to more students by increasing visibility in the classroom
SLPs are more accessible to the teacher to address their questions and concerns
Helps SLPs maintain some sense of sanity by making our caseloads, paperwork requirements and other responsibilities more manageable!!!

Using the 3:1 model has been extremely beneficial to the SLPs in our district. Student progress has not been compromised and the benefits are remarkable. I think that all districts should at least explore alternative service delivery models to help SLPs balance their ever increasing and dynamic workloads.

Recommended Readings

A Mind at a Time. Dr. Mel Levine

The Child with Special Needs: Encouraging Intellectual and Emotional Growth.
Stanley Greenspan, M.D.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Kate DiCamillo (great for you and the kids)