Encouraging Students to Explore and Develop Strengths and Interests

Interest-based learning not only improves attention and effort, but this article from the NIH also says that interest-based learning increases re-engagement over time. Student interest is essential to their academic success. Tying this information to the work of Simon Sinek and Daniel H. Pink and what they have taught us about motivation, it seems obviously that our classrooms should be pushing for working towards students strengths and interests versus attempting to use external motivation. So what can this look like in a speech therapy setting? 

Developing strengths and interests starts with formulating strengths based goals through the IEP process. If students are able to, they should be included in the goal setting process, with the question "What do you want to work on?" I have felt the most comfortable with this type of goal setting working with my students with fluency disorders. If they don't feel the need to address disfluencies, why would we set a goal to decrease disfluencies? Or maybe, we can work with the students to determine which strategies help them most, and play off of their strengths. 

This question also brings me back to my emphasis on play-based learning and a child-led approach. I have explained these approaches to my graduate level students, with an emphasis on the fact that compliance is not our goal. If I can allow the student to explore their interests and have fun in the therapy session while also targeting an increase in language I am getting the best of both worlds! The last example that came to mind for me was using functional word lists for my articulation students. Of course I can easily find a word list that has many words with /s/ in the initial position of words, but I can also find out that the student has a sister Sarah, they like to eat salami sandwiches, and they play soccer and softball on the weekends. I can target their interests in a functional way, while still working towards the specific goal they need to target! 

What ways have you found to develop strengths and interests in the classroom or the therapy room?