About My Research (17)

Speech Pathology and the mass effects it has on a person’s life drives me to want to research the specific methods that work best for an individual that needs speech therapy. Every person is unique, and no one learns the same way, which makes it a challenge for speech teachers to bend the way they teach that will not only benefit the single student, but the class as a whole. My essential question for the research project is “How can I adapt different Speech Language Pathology methods to impact various degrees of autism”. My question has remained the same throughout the entire portion of the school year. The way autistic students interact with teachers and their peers has always fascinated me. They each have their own way of communicating through hand gestures, the tugging of the teacher’s shirt, or pushing a large red button that makes a sound. These students are smart enough to know that by doing a desired input, they receive the reward they wanted, but were not able to express this need through the simple task of speaking. Other than using my website I have put together throughout the entire year, I plan to make a PowerPoint to show specific statistics that correlate with my thesis as well as display pictures that relate to all my experiences throughout my time at Sharon Elementary. I also wanted to make a trifold poster board to display more research as well as the documents I found relating to my essential question. I have really gotten to know my mentor and her team of Speech Therapists. For my real inquiry I plan to conduct interviews with my mentor and her team as well as the autism teacher. Knowing how they react to different situations and the years of experience they have will help guide my research throughout my time in this program as well as my time in college.