Adventures in Problem Solving

 Part of speech/language therapy can be working on problem solving skills.  When working in the area of intellectual disability, the students/clients often need real life examples to teach the skill instead of verbal/picture examples.  Here is one of my favorite therapy "mishaps."

The activity was making smoothies.  The student read the ingredient page (we are also working on reading comprehension) and then needed multiple prompts to go get the stuff off the table. Finally, we get all the ingredients in the hand blender container. We then get to the "blend the smoothie" direction. The student took the hand blender and plugged it in. She then tried to stretch the cord to reach the table. Doesn't work. She tried again. Doesn't work. I ask her if the lead/cord reaches. She says "yes." So I let her try again. Still doesn't reach.

Since she wasn't understanding that the lead couldn't be longer than it was, I said that I would bring the container with the ingedients over to her. However, she pulled on the plug. The plug didn't come out. She pulled more. And more. The plug came out. However, part of it stayed in the wall socket! Yep, the hand blender broke.

So, it took about 10 minutes to get her to understand that the blender was broken and we couldn't blend the smoothie. I ended up having her put it in the bin to help her understand because she kept trying to plug it in. Since we still wanted a smoothie, I got the idea that we could use the bottom part of the hand blender to mash the fruit (it had a blade). I showed my student how to do this. She asked for a turn. She lifted the part of the blender we were using and plunged it down into the container. Liquid splashed everyhwere! On the floor, on the counter, on my student, everywhere. After prompting, she cleaned up the floor. Then we tried to mix more.

About an hour after we started, we were drinking and cleaning up half mashed "smoothie." Yet, somehow, I stayed clean, which was good since I had an important meeting right after the session!