I am in Tasmania this week to assess children's speech across the state as part of our research grant with Catholic Education Tasmania. It is wonderful to visit schools with Felicity Laurence and Lisa Johnson.
This is a really important study. One of the speech assistants aptly named this phase of the research the "CET speech census".
We currently have 785 consent forms and ICS data through Qualitrix.
Some of the unique experiences from this week:
- Monday and Tuesday - Assessing 53 children across 4 different schools using the International Speech Screen (and some with the DEAP Screener)
- A baby deer was shown to the children in the classroom we were visiting (very tiny and cute!)
- One child came three times to be assessed (he took his sticker off so we didn't remember he had been assessed before)
- Our treehouse speech sound poster (McLeod & Crowe, 2018) was on the speech room wall at one of the schools
- Tuesday - Negotiating the rain as we walked with children from their classrooms to the allocated research space
- Undertaking research in an art room
- Enthusiastic children wanting it to be their turn :)
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| Sharynne and Felicity ready for a day with Kinder children in Hobart |
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| Sharynne and Kate's treehouse poster was on the wall in the speech room at a school! |
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| Sharynne and Lisa in the rain |
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| Sharynne and Lisa about to meet the next group of 4-year-olds |
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| We also met with the private speech pathologists who assess CET children as part of the research on Wednesday morning |
