Building Social and Language Skills One Block at a Time
Who doesn't like to play with Lego®s? Come play with us and learn a novel, interdisciplinary, organic, treatment idea using construction blocks to teach social skills, enrich language and build peer collaboration. This course will benefit therapists whose patient challenges include Autism, Pragmatic Language Impairment, Expressive Language Disorders, Receptive Language Disorders, AAC Users, Narrative Language Difficulty and more! Participants will gain hands-on experience by completing group construction challenges. Leave this course with fresh ideas to take back to the clinic, classroom or community for immediate implementation. With this treatment technique, kids can't wait to go to therapy!AOTA Classification Codes
OT Process: Evaluation, Intervention
Course Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Describe evidence supporting the use of construction tasks for social skills development
- Describe the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in social and language skill development
- Explain the impact of group-based naturalistic therapy on generalization of skills
- State 3 populations that may benefit from participation in construction-based intervention
- Implement a construction-based group therapy program in a school or clinic environment
- Modify construction-based group activities to suit a variety of age and skill levels
- List 5 goal areas that may be targeted using construction-based intervention
- Establish an effective social skills home education program
- Discuss documentation methods to support justification for funding and participation
Course Instructor(s)
Ellen Bustamante
M.A., CCC-SLP
Ellen Bustamante is a Speech-Language Pathologist currently working with the pediatric population. She specializes in Autism, pragmatic language disorders and utilizing augmentative and alternative communication. She has worked alongside occupational therapists in a traditional social skills group and has created a curriculum targeting pragmatic language that complements occupational therapy objectives and was the primary speech therapist in designing and running a new social skills group using construction blocks to improve social skills with pragmatic language disorders.
Sarah Yun
M.A., OTR/L
Sarah Yun is an Occupational Therapist currently working with the pediatric population. Sarah’s specializes in the areas of Autism and early development. She served as the primary occupational therapist in creating a new social skills class utilizing construction blocks. Sarah highly values a multidisciplinary approach when working with clients and their families. This includes working with speech therapists to create “out-of-the-box” treatment ideas for pediatric clients to help generalize their skills in their own community.
Course Agenda
Day 1
Contact hours pre-approved for:
- CIAO is an ASHA approved provider #AAWA (SLP/SLPA) Bubblesheet required
- This course is offered for 0.75 ASHA CEUs (Introductory level, Professional Area)
- 0.75 CEUs (7.5 Contact Hours)
- CIAO is an AOTA Approved Provider #4119 (OT/COTA)
- This course meets PDU requirements for NBCOT (9.375 PDUs)
- 0.7 CEUs MS Teachers (Approved by the MS College Office of Continuing Education) exp 05/06/17
This course is offered for 0.75 ASHA CEUs (Introductory level, Professional Area)
The assignment of AOTA CEUs does not imply endorsement of specific course content, products, or clinical procedures by AOTA.
CIAO is recognized on the NBCOT Provider Registry (meets PDU requirements for NBCOT)