OTS 190: From Behavior to Regulation: How the Good Sense Rocketship Framework Transforms OT Practice
- Jayson Davies
- 2 days ago
- 42 min read
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 190 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
Get ready to blast off into a powerful new way of understanding sensory processing in schools. In this episode, Danielle Pluth and Ruth Isaac—Canadian occupational therapists and creators of the Good Sense OT Rocket Ship—share the innovative visual framework that’s transforming how OTs assess, communicate, and support student participation.
The Rocket Ship helps therapists differentiate sensory-based behaviors from other performance factors, guiding you from foundational sensory regulation all the way up through sensory-motor, reflexes, perceptual motor skills, interoception, and cognitive functions at the top of the “rocket.” This structure gives OTPs a clear map for identifying root causes of behavior and choosing targeted, meaningful school-based strategies that go far beyond “wiggle cushions and chewelry.”
Whether you’re brand-new to sensory integration or have years of experience, this conversation will deepen your clinical reasoning, strengthen your confidence, and help you clearly communicate sensory needs to teachers, parents, and IEP teams. If you’ve been searching for a practical, visually powerful way to explain sensory processing to your teams and build stronger intervention plans, the Good Sense Rocket Ship may be exactly what you’ve been missing.
Listen now to learn the following objectives:
Understand the Good Sense Rocketship Framework and its application in addressing sensory-related behaviors in school-based OT practice.
Learn strategies to identify and assess sensory processing challenges and their impact on students' functional performance.
Explore effective interventions to support regulation, sensory-motor development, and collaboration with educators and parents.
Guest(s) Bio
Danielle Pluth is an OT in Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 2002. She worked in various areas before starting her business Advance OT where her team provides OT services in local schools, community and their sensory clinic.
Danielle has done extensive post graduate education in the area of sensory and OT. In addition, she completed her SIPT certification in 2016. Danielle has created a universal sensory program for teachers and parents that has been used throughout schools in her division since 2008 called Good Sense for Teachers and Parents.
Ruth Isaac is an OT who has worked in pediatrics for 20 years. She studied at the University of Manitoba and has been working exclusively in pediatrics since 2005. She has worked with Danielle at Advance OT since 2008.
Ruth has also done extensive post graduate education in the area of sensory and OT. In addition she complete her SIPT training in 2012 and completed the University of Southern California's Sensory Integration Certification program (OT610)in 2017. Ruth has created a universal fine motor program for teachers and parents that has also been used throughout schools in her division since 2007 called Fine Fun for Teachers and Parents.
In 2021, Danielle and Ruth created Good Sense for OTs to fill the gap to help all OTs feel confident in using a sensory processing lens for OT services in the school and clinic setting. She is passionate about educating as many OTs as possible in this area to help change kid's lives.
Quotes
”The first layer was looking at regulation, being out of that just right state. Thinking about how sensory is coming out as an output in motor sort of a way. And it's a foundation as well. And it can also impact regulation.
-Ruth Isaac
“Often we see behavior being that tip of the iceberg. And we want to have a lens or a way to look at what's going on below the surface.”
-Ruth Isaac
"The semicircular canals are going to tell me is my head up, is it down, is it spinning around, and that information is going to feed the muscles around my eyes for eye coordination."
-Danielle Pluth
“Connect the dots and make it super easy for someone to understand, why I'm working on sensory regulation and how that is impacting daily living activities or academic learning and hitting all the other sections in between.”
-Jayson Davies
Resources
Episode Transcript
Expand to view episode transcript
Jayson Davies
Hey there school based ot practitioners. This is Jayson, and you're listening to Episode 190 of the OT school house podcast. Thanks so much for clicking play on this episode, and I hope it provides you with precisely the sensory information that you need in this moment today, I'm thrilled to welcome Danielle pluth And Ruth Isaac, the creators of the good sense ot framework, this pair of OT practitioners based in Canada have developed an incredible visual tool called the good sense rocket ship that will make it super easy for you to understand and address all the sensory processing concerns that you may see in your school practice. If you've ever struggled to explain the connection between sensory challenges and classroom behaviors, or if you found yourself handing out fidgets without a clear framework for why you're doing that, this is the episode for you. Danielle and Ruth will break down their comprehensive approach that goes far beyond wiggle cushions and jewelry without explanation to help you confidently assess and address your students sensory needs, you'll learn how to trace behaviors back to their sensory foundations and communicate effectively with teachers and parents using this powerful visual model. Whether you're new to sensory integration or an experienced practitioner, you'll gain practical strategies to elevate your practice immediately. Stay tuned as we blast off with the good sense rocket ship framework.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy, tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host, Jayson Davies, class is officially in session.
Jayson Davies
Danielle and Ruth, welcome to the OT school house podcast. There's two of you here today, so I'm going to do my best to prompt you. So Danielle, how are you doing this afternoon?
Danielle Pluth
Oh, I'm doing well. Thank you. Yeah, it's beautiful here.
Jayson Davies
So yeah. And Ruth, how about you? How are you doing?
Ruth Isaac
Doing good. I'm excited to be here and chat with you.
Jayson Davies
Yes, and this is a special occasion, because it's happened a few times, but this is one of the times that we are speaking to an occupational therapist combo here that are not in the United States. So why don't you go ahead one of you share a little bit about where you are and kind of the setting that you're in.
Danielle Pluth
Sure, we are in medicine, Hat, Alberta, Canada. We work within we have contracts with the school divisions here, and we also have a clinic, so we see children privately within the clinic and also in the community and in their homes. So our city is about 60,000 people or so, and we're in all the school divisions here.
Ruth Isaac
One of one of our school districts is a lot of driving. I drive two hours to get to one of my schools and two hours to get back. That's the farthest one.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah. So it's fairly large region of southeastern Alberta, wow.
Jayson Davies
So that is a very large area to have to cover really quickly, because I think you are a little familiar with school based ot in the States, at least from you know, just, I know you haven't practiced here, but you've heard about it. If you kind of had to quickly explain to someone just the differences, like, how do you describe it as being similar or different to school based ot where we follow, or in the states where we follow, idea, we have a lot like, we have our own caseload and whatnot. Is it similar to that in Alberta, or is it a little different?
Danielle Pluth
I think so. I mean, we have, they're called ISPs, that we follow like so documents that the teachers will write that have the functional goals and whatnot in there. A lot of our recommendations are in there, along with speech and physio. We have kind of a set amount of time per school division, and then we have a lot of freedom to determine how we do our service delivery with regards to OT and OT assistant. What I've heard from the States, it sounds like you guys are a bit, maybe a bit more restricted with you have to really say how much time you're spending per child per week. Those kinds of things. We don't have those kinds of restrictions, so we can kind of flow a bit more within our service delivery, from Universal to groups to direct one to one. We probably can't do as much direct one to one as we sometimes hear that you can do down in the States. But even that, I don't know for sure, we tend to be more of a consultative model. Our ot assistance would do more of maybe, like direct like treatment groups and stuff like that that we've oversee. I think.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. I think that kind of is a good, good idea. It gives people a good sense of what's going on. So today we're here to talk about the good sense program that you two have developed and put together and are now even providing training for and I had the pleasure of sitting in on one of your webinars a few months ago, and just so excited to have you all here, because I was like, Oh, this is awesome. I want to bring it to everyone here on the OT school house podcast. Yeah. But before we dive into kind of the the nitty gritty of it and talk about. This really cool, good sense rocket ship you have here, I want to ask you, like, what inspired you to develop this program? What was the problem that you saw, and what was the problem that you aim to solve?
Ruth Isaac
Well, we've been working for a little while. It's probably over 20 years ago, and we never really okay, it's hard to admit, but we never really knew exactly like, the theory that we were using. We were just, like, eclectic. We're just doing a little bit of everything. And I think we've all been at that place at 1.0 yeah, where you're trying a little of this, and you're trying a little of that, and you're trying a little of this. And we just realized that we needed more of some structure to help guide and support us as we were doing our treatment and as we worked at mentoring more people in our community here, or our group of therapists.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, I think we've come a long ways. Like in the early 2000s sensory theory was pretty new in Canada, and it was pretty kind of ooga booga To be honest, like people didn't really so, yeah, it was kind of new, and initially, like, a lot of our referrals were for like, wiggle cushions and fidgets and like things that eventually you're like, wait a minute, I think I can do more as an OT and we really didn't get much training on sensory theory in school. So both Ruth and I went down to the states, and we did all of our SIP training, and Ruth did the OT 610 so all that extra stuff that we brought back here, we started developing universal programming for the schools, because we're like, you know what? You guys can trial legal cushions and fidgets. So we developed a good sense, actually, for teachers, program that is a step by step program to help them implement strategies in the classroom. And then what was happening is our education kind of just really took off, and as we would get new therapists in, they just wouldn't be at the same level that we needed them to be. And what the schools were now expecting us to know, because we are supposed to be the sensory experts, right? So I kind of progressed where, you know, we needed, like, an in between. We can't send everybody away all the time.
Ruth Isaac
To all the different therapy, like, yeah, like, trainings, right? Not everybody
Danielle Pluth
can do all, yeah, we've done so many. I mean, when, when you have like, 15 years, we're worth a post grad education, right? So just needing to pull that together, and we decided to come up with our own sort of training model. And then it just kind of grew and grew where we ended up developing a framework, and that framework now, you know, it's what we use every day when we're working, and it's what we train our staff in. And then we decided, you know, let's try to make an online course, because it looked like it'd be so easy, but, and we just, we're very passionate about sensory, so we wanted to bring that to everyone out there who's interested, right? To have a way to use leaders really feel sensory is really occupational, like, based in an occupational therapist invented it. So we want, we want to own sensory and we want to make sure OTs are trained to be able to run with it right out of university. Because a lot of schools don't teach, even teach the theory, let alone how to then functionally use it out when you're working.
Ruth Isaac
So yeah, and I think that our different areas where we work are looking to us to be the experts, and so we want to be at the table. We want to be having these conversations, and we want to be showing what we can do as occupational therapists. And we don't want to be this, that the other thing and just trying different things. We want to have a structure and a way of approaching how we're providing service.
Jayson Davies
Awesome and that kind of I have two follow ups here, but I'll start with this one. As you mentioned, you in the system that you're in, you work both in a clinic and also from a school perspective, as you were developing good sense, did you find that it catered more to one versus the other? Does it fit for both? Kind of how did that develop?
Danielle Pluth
It fits for both? Yeah, yeah. It's the foundation of how we do OT services here. So we developed the good sense rocket ship framework, and that's specifically looking at the child from a sensory theory, sensory lens. But we are also using it within like a PEO model, where we're still looking at the environment around the child and the tasks themselves. So we can use it in the school, and we can use it in the clinic, in the schools. The other thing about it is, as you use it for your clinical reasoning, for how you're assessing and then coming up with your intervention strategies, you can decide where on the rocket you kind of want to start, and are you going to take more of a bottom up approach or a top down depending on. Environment around the child. So if you're in a more consultative model, you might do more of a top down approach to help children in those areas to optimally function within their let's say, their classroom, whereas if I'm seeing them in the clinic, I might be able to do more of a bottom up approach, because I can go a bit more with actual treatment and intervention to make you know, impact some of their functioning within that that theory as well, if that makes sense. And we also look, even within the school, how much can we do some bottom up as well? I think what it helps the most is to help you to know where are my biggest priorities, and how am I going to intervene? So I know for sure. Am I doing a top down? Am I doing a bottom up? And who around the child is going to do what? So we might have an OT assistant or an educational assistant doing some of the bottom up stuff, and we might be doing more of the top down or vice versa, just depending on who's available. So it helps that whole thought process, no matter where you are, even if you're in the clinic, it might be, what can parents be doing to help support the child as well?
Jayson Davies
Awesome, perfect. And then the other follow up that I had here was because it's really hard these days to talk about sensory without talking behavior, and so I wanted to get kind of your take on as you were developing this, like, how was that conversation in your own mind? Because I'm sure you anticipated people asking you about sensory and behavior. I'm sure you've been asked about sensory behavior and behavior plenty of times. So how did that kind of work its way into the good sense program? And how do you share that with people?
Ruth Isaac
I think that often we see behavior being that tip of the iceberg, right? And we want to have a lens or a way to look at what's going on below the surface. Sometimes, maybe we've seen where people will say, OTs behavior, and then we don't get involved. And when we're like, oh, somebody else has to deal with that. That's not something that we can deal with. And we feel pretty strongly that actually using a sensory frame of reference can be a great way to help navigate and support a child who's having difficulties and having different behaviors. And there might be different reasons as to why you might be seeing those behaviors. If we're thinking about the good sense rocket ship, those behaviors are things that are at the very top right and and we're looking at what else could be going on there that could be impacting.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, like, if they are over responsive to noise or touch or movement at the bottom of the rocket ship, that could be impacting their behavior, they're going into fight or flight, or they're going into shutdown. You can have kids who have poor postural control in the middle part of the rocket that can impact their breathing and their regulation that way they might have a startle reflex that's impacting like so they're, yeah, I think we, we really feel like it's our job as occupational therapists to own sensory and to use our lens to bring to the table what might be going on for the child as for that piece of the pie, right? There could be other reasons why they're having behaviors other pieces of the pie, but I think it's super important that we bring that full assessment piece there to show you know because, and if they are struggling with those areas, we definitely want to figure out how to help them with those areas. And maybe it's not going to solve everything, but it's going to solve or help that piece of the pie.
Ruth Isaac
Because there's no, there's so many, there's so many reasons that could be going on. That's why that tip of the iceberg.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, we are also really lucky with the division that we're working in that, you know, like 20 years ago, them seeing, wanting to have a more proactive approach, and being really supportive with us, getting sensory strategies universally in place. And we've seen a huge shift within our division with having universal strategies in the classroom for all kids, having hallway sensory stuff in place for some kids, and then we have sensory rooms for a few kids who need that even extra input. So we've been able to see over the years how much this approach can impact those behaviors overall. So to us, it's just, it's for sure, it's so obvious you absolutely have to Yeah, yeah, awesome. Take a look at that part for every child that we work with.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah. And I love, I mean, I remember sitting here and watching the presentation you all, you both gave. And I remember sitting here you talked about evaluation, Danielle, I believe. And I was sitting here like, just thinking about how this is so helpful. Like every ot can just print this out and kind of fill this out as part of their, you know, part of their evaluation, part of their occupational therapy profile, like this can really help you to better understand a student. We're going to dive into the rocket ship here in just a moment, but first we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back all right, and we are back here with Danielle and Ruth and. We're going to dive into the good sense ot rocket ship. But before we do, I want to let you all know that Danielle and Ruth have been very kind and are providing a way for you to get the good sense ot rocket ship PDF. So be sure to check out the show notes. You'll find a link there. You'll head over to their actual their website, where you'll be able to get that resource for yourself. So let's go ahead and dive in to the rocket ship here, and I'll let one of you take the lead here and share with us, kind of where we start.
Ruth Isaac
So if you imagine in your brain, because it's a podcast, if you imagine how a rocket ship looks, it's just a fun visual way to show how things build on top of each other, a little reminder that there are things around a rocket ship, if you imagine being in space, there's other things that could be impacting, like fuel or asteroids or things like that, and that might be like sleep or nutrition or home life and all of those pieces that, of course, are going to impact.
Jayson Davies
I just have to say, really quickly, I'm sorry to cut you off, Ruth, but I love that you just like, work the combo model in here, like that is awesome. I love it.
Ruth Isaac
There we go. But, but, like, the rocket ship itself is looking at the sensory but, of course, there's other things going on around there, right? And so when you're looking at that, Danielle kind of talked about starting at the top or starting at the bottom for the point of now we'll start at the bottom and we'll work our way up.
Danielle Pluth
Okay? And I think we mentioned earlier too. So the good sense rocket ship is a framework to look at the child that you're working at with within their environment, and then the tasks as well.
Ruth Isaac
So excellent. So at the bottom of the rocket ship, that's where we're thinking about sensory regulation. So this is where we're looking at visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, taste and smell, proprioception, overuse, and how that might impact your ability to be in a just right state.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, and when we're looking at this. We're looking at how, yeah, how does this area impact this child? And in our course, we go in a lot more detail with regards to looking at, like, what would a profile of this child be, what's the neurology, what's the assessments that you would do, and then what's the interventions and recommendations? But what we like about this is, as you're doing your assessment, you can start kind of plotting on there how this child is impacted from a sensory lens, and we have down the side of it, fight or flight, too fast, just right, calm, freeze, kind of all down there as well.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. Quick question on that actually, really, if I may, obviously, I have it right in front of me, and hopefully everyone's going to your website so they can get it too. You talked about how you have the visual, auditory, vestibular probe, tag, taste and smell here. Do you tend to get this data by talking to the student, talking to the parents, the teacher? Do you tend to use something like the SPM sensory profile? Obviously, you both have extensive experience, and I'm sure you can get a lot just from observation. But what are some of the different ways that you use to get this data?
Danielle Pluth
So yeah, we like to use the sensory processing measure. Sometimes we'll use the sensory profile, and so we'll get a background, basically sensory history from the parents and also the teacher. And what's kind of unique about our good sense rocket ship is we've put on there the areas that we feel can put you into fight or flight or so we have like, over responsive to touch. You can see on our rocket ship we have that higher up as a thing that could send a child into that fight or flight. We don't. What's different about our approach is we don't say you can be over responsive and under responsive to touch. So you're not going to see touch below the just right state on our rocket this might be confusing until people actually look at the rocket ship, but you'll see on there that we have under responsive to vestibular as something that can cause you to be under the just right state. So our approach is a little bit unique that way. And what it does is, when you're then mapping it out, it really helps clarify from a sensory lens what's actually impacting regulation. So you'll never hear us say they scored out, over and under in every single area, and it's all definite difference. We can't figure out how sensory is impacting them at all. You'll never hear us say that, because we can clearly map it out as to what's what they're actually over responsive to, versus under responsive. And we have it that if you're under responsive to touch, we have that higher up in the rocket ship into sensory motor.
Ruth Isaac
So we're jumping up, yeah.
Danielle Pluth
But I think it's a thing to really clarify, like that's something that a lot of OTs we see struggling with, and that our framework will help you to not struggle with, yeah.
Jayson Davies
And so as you move up into that next level, you do have sensory motor and under under sensory motor. You've got vestibular probe, tactile bilateral coordination, ocular motor and postural control listed. So I'll let you all share a little bit.
Ruth Isaac
So there, as you've moved up in the rocket ship that are the good sense rocket ship, excuse me, there is your sensory motor output. We're taking in that sensory information, we're processing it, and then that can impact our output. And there's a difference here, right the first layer was looking at regulation being out of that just right state. Now we're thinking about how sensory is coming out as an output in motor, sort of a way, and it's a foundation as well, and it can also impact regulation. And there's an example that we talked about earlier, is if you have poor postural control, that actually might be impacting your regulation overall. You might look super wiggly and having a hard time focusing, but it might actually be more related to the sensory motor versus the sensory regulation.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah. So helping you to come up with those kinds of hypothesis. And for a long time, I really, I mean, maybe it's obvious to everyone else, I really struggled with how sensory, sensory regulation, sensory motor were related. And now I feel like I've such a clear picture of how they fit.
Jayson Davies
Danielle, you are definitely not alone in that. Trust me, there are many OTs listening right now that totally feel what you just said right now. Like, that is hard. And then you start talking about praxis, and it's like, the same thing, right? Like, Praxis versus executive functioning and stuff like that. Like, yeah, the sensory world is confusing until you get the education.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, yeah. And I think, and then having that, that framework right to see that, you know, Praxis is higher, even higher up. And you know, and you need to have your intact proprioceptive and vestibular and tactile motor systems to then have good praxis, good motor planning. And so, you know, if you're jumping, you know, if you find out that your child struggling with motor planning, you have to look lower down to see what's going on in that framework before you can address it. Yeah, so then it just becomes way less overwhelming, because you can figure out where to start and what you're looking at.
Jayson Davies
All right, so I just got an idea, because so many people reach out to me and they're like, the teacher thinks they know everything about sensory. The ABA therapist thinks they know everything about sensory. The admin thinks they know everything about sensory. If that's the case, send them the last two minutes of this podcast and let them see if they still know everything about sensory. I'm just gonna
Danielle Pluth
say that right now. Oh yeah, very complex, but yeah, sorry, keep going.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. No, it is complex. You're right, and we're gonna start moving into what I think makes the good sense rocket ship very unique here, because in a lot of sensory courses that I've taken, they talk about regulation, they talk about sensory motor talk about modulation a little bit, but the next four phases of the good sense rocket ship are often not really addressed in sensory courses here. So the next level up on my screen, it's yellow. So if you have the color version, it's yellow. It's sensory reflexes. And I really like that you have built this in there. So I'll let you talk about that.
Ruth Isaac
Yeah. So on this level, now we are looking at the sensory reflexes, and we're looking at some of the commonly seen reflexes in the classroom, right? So the moral, the tonic lab, atnr, stnr, the spinal glont. There's more, but these are the main ones that we see functionally in the classroom. And we just see how there's an impact there on the higher levels of the rocket ship, and these are impacted by the lower parts of the rocket ship. So again, I know that with reflexes, we need to be careful, right? Because we don't want to just address reflexes. We need to have a functional output for it. But if we seeing a reflex, what else is going on below it that could be causing that? Right? All of those reflexes are based on some of the way that we process the sensory motor and potentially some of the sensory regulation as well. So it's building up as we go up the rocket ship.
Danielle Pluth
So yeah, when you're looking at reflexes, we want to make sure our staff are also looking at that underlying sensory motor systems that play into that. And reflexes is kind of one of those controversial areas in the OT world, but we've seen differences when we address them so clinically, we see that it helps children. So that's why we've added it into our into our rocket ship.
Jayson Davies
And I want to go back Ruth that you were talking about, why you put the sensory reflexes there, kind of in the middle of the rocket ship, because I have very little training in reflexes, and it was kind of my perception and the limited experiences that I have that it could potentially be at the bottom of the rocket ship. And I don't know if this is you kind of alluded to, and I would just want to let you kind of reiterate that a little bit, why it's kind of at the middle as opposed to somewhere else.
Danielle Pluth
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question, because I think, yeah, some people will think that's the first thing to get integrated. But as a baby, as you're developing the vestibular system and the proprioceptive and touch system that that sensory motor level, that's how you are then integrating those reflexes. So they're foundational to the integration of the reflexes, and that's why we have it higher up, because most often, if you do have a reflex that's not integrated, it's because you have a delay underneath in that sensory motor system, in the vestibular or the probe or the tactile. So we want to make sure therapists aren't just jumping right to that reflexes. We want to make sure they're digging deeper to see what's going on underlying.
Ruth Isaac
Exactly, digging deeper.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I think that's important. Because, like, you kind of said, I think a lot of the trainings, especially if it's not from an OT perspective, a lot of the popular professional development courses out there about reflexes, often call that the base level, and they don't necessarily look deeper.
Danielle Pluth
No, no, and they kind of, like, sell it as like, oh, you test the reflex this way, and then this is the exact exercise you do without you really clinically reasoning through why you're doing what you're doing. So I think it's important to understand that's how we've decided that it fits best, and, and that's Yeah, and we want to make sure that we're addressing those underlying things, yeah.
Ruth Isaac
Yeah. And I think that's then some of those reflexes also can go all the way down and impact regulation. That's where, like, the moral, that startle reflex, right? Like, oh, what was that? And then OT, we're out of that just right state, and we're into a different dysregulated place. So as we're working up the rocket ship, you can see how, as we're going up, things higher can impact all the way down to the bottom, as well as from the bottom, impacting things moving up.
Danielle Pluth
That's one thing we don't have on there. Is kind of arrows coming down. But that is what happens, like when we were talking about if postural control impacts your regulation, you need a little arrow OOP down to regulation, or if that startle reflex down to regulation. So, great point.
Jayson Davies
Great point. Because when we often think about a lot of the theories that we learn, you know, even in elementary school, a lot of things are used in a pyramid, type of MTSS, right? Is an example, level one, level two, level three. But oftentimes it's the top of the pyramid is impacted by the bottom, not vice versa. But the rocket ship goes both ways.
Danielle Pluth
Exactly, even the way we have the too fast, too slow, just right, shut down, you know, down the side of the rocket ship there. We know that that can be circular. It's just, how do you make a model that you can use? That's, you know, we it's, we couldn't make it in a circle, so we didn't know how.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, totally get it all right. So we covered sensory regulation at the base of the rocket, sensory motor at the next level, and then sensory reflexes. What's next?
Ruth Isaac
Now we're up to the perceptual motor, and this is the area that, like most occupational therapists are super familiar with. This is where fine motor fits in. This is where Praxis is in there. There's other pieces in there as well, but those are the pieces that often we know that really well. Again, what could be going on at that level that could be impacting all the way down to the bottom? So if we've got a kid who's really struggling with fine motor skills, for example, that might be causing all sorts of dysregulation, or the opposite way, it could be going all the way up to the way up to the top and impacting the behaviors, right? We're looking at how it's a moving framework, right, right?
Danielle Pluth
And it helps you to be an advocate for your child, to be able to say, like, yes, you're seeing these behaviors up at the top, because they actually, you know, I've had kids in grade seven and eight or whatever who are scoring first percentile on the berry VMI, and nobody realized they had these extreme fine motor delays that were then actually playing into the behaviors they were seeing in the classroom. So I think that's really important when we're able to show that.
Ruth Isaac
As they're moving up and then higher up, that's where we've thrown in, introception, right? The like being aware of hunger and thirst and pain, temperature, your bowel, your bladder and and a lot of our kids, they don't maybe are not as aware of these, like, not like ear quiet, but like quieter sensations within your body, right? And so because everything else below can be so overwhelming, from regulation, from motor reflexes, from perceptual motor, all of those things could be impacting so they're not really as aware of that interception piece. And then, and then you're up at the top, and there we are at the beginning again, with that cognition, right, academics, behaviors, activities of daily living. This is where our referrals come from, right teachers, parents, they're they see and they know that there's issues up there, and they're saying to us, hey, help what's what's going on, and we're able to look at what more could be going on underneath there.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I love how you frame that, like that's where the referrals are coming from, because that's truly as like, we get a referral for handwriting. We don't get a referral for proprioception and bilateral. Motor coordination. Like, yeah. All right. All right. So now that we have this rocket ship framework here, for the good sense rocket ship framework, I want to get a sense for how you actually use it during your evaluation, and maybe we'll go into intervention a little bit, but I'm like envisioning printing this out for every single student that I evaluate, and just marking the heck out of it. And I want to know if that's what you all do, or how do you kind of use it in the evaluation process?
Danielle Pluth
Yes, we have kind of an expanded we basically we have a background observation form that's color we really are into this color coding thing. Our background observation form is color coded to match the rocket, and that's where we put so when I go out to see a child, depending on how much time I have for the child, I mean, in an ideal world, I get a sensory processing measure history done on everybody. I then am going to do my clinical observations based on like earn a Blanchet kind of stuff to help look like the sensory motor pieces. I'm going to do some kind of fine motor screen or assessment. I'm going to talk to the teacher. I might do a classroom observation. And again, all of that is going to depend on the severity, the case load and whatnot, for how in depth I go at each level of the rocket. So basically we have, you know, different assessments that we would do, or different observations at each at each level, and then pulling that together, basically that is where you could mark up the rocket to start seeing, where are you seeing all of the different areas of concern that might be impacting the child's function. And then we do have a color coded initial visit summary to then relay that information to the teachers. And if I will pull out the actual rocket to explain my report to them and show them where my thinking is coming from, and my recommendations, then, as well, are also based on all the areas of the rocket. So whether I'm going to start at the top or the bottom, all of that I outline in my visit summary. So that's how I I use it every single day. So yeah, that's always in the back of the now it's pretty much in the back of my mind. I don't necessarily need the print ot right in front of me, but.
Ruth Isaac
The thing that I like about it as well is that you, once you've marked it up, then you can start to see like, Oh man, I'm doing a lot of circling around one specific area that is going to guide me in my report and in my interventions. And then, if you're at a meeting with a parent, you also have that visual right in front of you. You have a teacher, you have that visual right in front of you. I think we talk about having visuals for kids, but I think we as adults need visuals to help guide us as well, right? Yeah, and then that way it can help to focus you. Where am I going to start my intervention? Sometimes that rocket ship for a kid can be completely like circled every area, almost right. Some kids, you start to see a pattern where you're like, oh, okay, well, I'm just gonna really target a certain area. But yeah, I would use this, this handout a lot, obviously, a little shameless plug for our course, would be to come and learn more about all of those pieces.
Danielle Pluth
But yeah, it's definitely used for my assessment, my clinical reasoning, and for my intervention, the whole process, and then communicating it to everybody, yeah, and it helps us to just feel super confident in knowing why I'm recommending what I'm recommending. I can easily trace it all the way back and show you exactly why do I have that kid on a bungee? I can trace it right back to where I am on the rocket. What the neurology is, what assessments I used, and I can lay it all out for you, which is super helpful.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, that's perfect. I love the idea of visualization. I mean, I don't know, in our conference room at many of our schools, we always had the bell chart, like, just so we could kind of show a parent, like, this is the bell chart for the assessment, and where, where the student is on the assessment, mostly used by the psychologist. But, yeah. All right, well, we're going to take one final break, and when we come back, we'll dive into some intervention strategies with Danielle and Ruth. All right, we are back with Danielle and Ruth, and we're going to dive just a little bit into the idea of using the good sense framework and the rocket ship to help you collaborate and educate others when working with a student. And then we're going to talk about some intervention and advocacy pieces as we wrap up. So the question here is, how do you really use the good sense framework, and I can imagine the visuals being helpful to really help parents to understand or to help teachers understand maybe why behavior is impacting sensory or being impacted by sensory, or maybe even how sensory motor is being impacted by another area.
Danielle Pluth
We like to talk. Um, a lot about and train our staff a lot in we call them little elevator pitches. Basically is, how can you quickly summarize what's going on? So a very quick example might be the vestibular system. So being able to say in a meeting like, you know, little Johnny is over responsive to movement, so it's harder for his movement system to get the input that it needs. And the movement systems in our inner ear, and we have like the semicircular canals are going to tell me, is my head up? Is it down? Is it spinning around? And that information is going to feed the muscles around my eyes for eye coordination. It's going to feed my cerebellum for bilateral coordination, for using both my hands to cut and those kinds of things. And it's going to impact the extensor muscles of my neck for that postural control to keep me upright. And so we'll use little spiels like that to then link it to the top of the rocket ship to show functionally, what they're seeing. So just having little spiels for like, all parts of the rocket ship, and then being able to quickly link it so I feel like I can quickly explain, in a pretty succinct way, of how the different areas are impacting the child so.
Ruth Isaac
And it also helps us to think about, are we doing treatment, or are we doing an accommodation? Right? For example, like, if you've got poor postural control, right, first off, accommodation, make sure those feet are flat on the floor, right? Do they have foot support? Something as simple as that, some different seating options, right? All of these things that we know, but it just helps us to say, okay, that's what we're targeting. Is the postural control of the sensory motor, let's say, and we're doing an accommodation teacher. Here's a quick something I want you to use this. This is why, or maybe we are looking at more of an intervention strategy, right? Could we work at something like just keeping it really simple, getting on the floor, doing some tummy time, where that body is in an extended position? Can they hold that position for a little while.
Danielle Pluth
Or we might give specific exercises that will ask them, you know, for six weeks, can you do these once a day? Because we're targeting this area to help that posture control, so that they can now sit at circle time, you know. So just keep bringing it back to here's where we're targeting. Here's what we're using to target that area, and why the functional impact, and so you just get way more buy in then, because people really appreciate knowing the why and the background, and they're just way more willing and excited to do the recommendations, because it just makes more sense to them.
Jayson Davies
I could totally see myself like, I don't know, I don't know if you have this yet, but I would just like, somehow get this on a whiteboard and carry it around, like I'm a coach on a football team, and just like, Hi teacher, look at this. Is the line. This goes here, and then, just like, connect it for them, and connect the dots, and make it super easy for someone to understand. You know, why I'm working on sensory regulation and how that is impacting daily living activities or academic learning, and hitting all the other sections in between, and kind of showing exactly how it how it works. So question here you've talked a little bit about, and this is more from the theory perspective that we talked so far about how you can go up or down the rocket, vice versa, how one part impacts another part, whether it's top to bottom, bottom to top. When it comes to the intervention side, though, how do you start to decide where to start? Do you start down at the bottom with sensory regulation? Do you start with reflexes? Do you start with interoception? I mean, as I kind of just alluded to, you could draw a line all the way down right and hit each part. But then, how do you move from understanding the difficulties to actually deciding where to start?
Danielle Pluth
I think, like you'll notice on our rocket ship, that regulation piece is the biggest chunk, like even size wise, visually, and so typically, that's where we will usually start. Is that regulation piece, we need to make sure kids are regulated before you can even start accessing the higher level of the rocket. So whether you know and you can look at that different ways, you might be looking at that from a universal level, what needs to happen for that child universally? Are there things in the classroom that we can start implementing that can help them do we need to start implementing, you know, heavy work breaks or things like that, and then looking at, maybe for the child specifically, is there different exercises we need to start working on to help them with those overall systems, depending on, again, how much time you have to work with that child, like, if they are tactically defensive, is, do we have time to actually work on that system, or do we need to put accommodations and strategies in place to help them cope and manage with that system, and just knowing that and being able to communicate that to everyone else around them, like, you know, I'm not going to be able to maybe change this child's tactile system at this like the way that they're processing it. That's why we want to make sure we're accommodating. Working for it.
Ruth Isaac
So yeah, and I think it also depends on where you are working right, what your setting is, what you've got. I think having this background helps you to then be creative in where you're using it. And you know your own setting. You know who you have access to, who your extra tools are, if there are extra people, if there are extra resources, what you have available, but at least you have that structured approach, and you're not just grasping at things. It's taking away that guesswork of like, let's try this thing and let's try that thing, and let's try this thing. It's giving you that organization and confidence to then take it to wherever you are using it.
Danielle Pluth
I'm going to know why I want to try different sensory tools and and in saying that too, you know, we might also need to address the fuel to the rocket initially as well. Like, is this child getting any sleep? Are they getting enough nutrition? Some of those things that might be your biggest red flags at the moment that you've got to address first. So it gives you kind of that systematic you could even number on your rocket which ones are your top priorities that you want to intervene with? First, you know, what, what? And also, kind of looking for your biggest bang for your buck. You know, if I have a kid with a startle reflex and dysregulation and postural control issues, what exercises can I give that's going to target kind of more than one area. Is another thing that you can be looking at too.
Jayson Davies
I am totally looking forward to version two of the rocket ship that has like asteroids on the side of the paper. No, but real question though, there's a lot on the good sense rocket ship, right? There's a lot of different areas that we're going to look at. And I know the two of you at this point, you're no longer, I don't know, maybe you do sometimes, but you're not marking it up, like I've talked about, like we've talked about a little bit today, but in your experience with it, do you ever find that one section doesn't have any difficulty, or is it pretty regular that If you're finding some difficulty with cognitive you're also going to find some difficulty in the other aspects as well.
Danielle Pluth
I think, I think what's fun about it, what I enjoy the most is you're building a profile for each child, and so you might be doing a lot of repetitive assessment type work, but in the end, the mapping out looks different for every child. And I think that's what's kind of neat. It keeps you away from getting like I think in the past, I would just get stuck every kid looked the same, you know, you'd kind of just have whereas, I don't know, for this now, I feel like I'm building a profile that's different for every child. And so I would say I've probably hit every area in some kind of combination for kids that I have worked with.
Ruth Isaac
And it's not cookie cutter, and it's not boring. It's, it's, it's individual, and it's and what's, what's that child's needs, and where do they need support? And where is that just who they are, you know? And what are the things that we need to work on and support?
Danielle Pluth
Yeah, and I think too, like, yes, it, the foundation of it is all sensory. But as you get to the top, we have definitely incorporated other areas of OT and even though the like the self care kind of classroom participation area, we look a lot at like kids play skills and developmentally where they're at with their play skills. So using we bring into it different assessment tools that help us figure out those different areas. And so it just keeps it, yeah, very comprehensive and, like, thorough without it being cumbersome. It's not like we're always assessing every single area, but yeah.
Ruth Isaac
and definitely, today we are doing a very fast recap and stronger chip, we could dive in and spend a lot more time talking about each area.
Danielle Pluth
But I think it, yeah, it starts it gives us that framework, and we run with that, with the majority of our kids, and we talk about like we still, we want to get training from all the OT gurus out there, and that's where we end up adding on the asteroids and all that kind of stuff, right? Because there's other thoughts and stuff out there, and we're always bringing it back to see, how does it fit with our model?
Jayson Davies
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're down to the last two questions here, and I want to go back to, I can't remember. I think it was Danielle who mentioned earlier about, you know, initially having difficulty understanding sensory regulation, sensory motor and and I know you know, both are providing a lot of professional development, both online through this program, but also just, you know, mentorship within the therapist and OTs that you work with. And so I want to ask you, what are maybe one or two of the hang ups that you find that practitioners often get hung up on when it comes to sensory maybe those who haven't gone through the SIP training, maybe those who haven't attended some of the other, you know, big programs, the CLASI or whatnot. What are some of those, those hang ups that you often see?
Danielle Pluth
Well, okay, I have, I guess, two things when it comes to sensory, motor. What has happened is, I'll give exercise. And people think my exercises are to impact regulation, and they'll say, you know, there was no change in him afterwards. And I have to get them to understand that we're working on the underlying motor system, and it will take longer, maybe, to see changes. So helping them to see that my exercises aren't always just for regulation, that sometimes it's for other areas of the rocket. So that's one area, I think, for OTs, what happens is, if they haven't been trained yet in sensory, What scares me is that they then sometimes want to dismiss it as an area, they'll say, oh, you know, everyone thinks everything is sensory, and it's a super key area. And so I do, I don't want people to just dismiss that, because they can then struggle, like we had said earlier, with interpreting the sensory profile, thinking, Oh, it's all definite differences, and not being able to pull it apart and clinically reason it, and then also getting hung up on evidence. So saying, like, oh, you know, somebody wants me to trial a weighted vest or a neoprene vest, or we just don't get hung up. We feel like, yes, definitely we want more research articles for all the sensory tools and all the things that we do. But I don't think we should constantly just be throwing stuff out because we are not a profession that has a super well established research base yet, and so I worry that we, if we just start throwing that stuff out when it can be effective, that we're doing a disservice to the children that we work with. So we very much believe that through having our framework, it gives us a way to properly assess and come up with interventions and then to trial them. And so, you know, so we use weighted vests, we use neoprene vests, we use brushing, we use the astronaut training. We use therapeutic listening. We do all of those things in the schools in a systematic way that has proven to be extremely effective. And I think that it's sad to me when I hear OTs just say, Oh, I'm not using I'm not touching that because, and maybe it's different down in the States, maybe we have more leeway or whatnot, but we have we track it, we document it, and we see impressive outcomes. So.
Ruth Isaac
And we just don't we stop.
Danielle Pluth
Let me say, yeah. And we just really want OTs to experience, I guess what we're experiencing in the schools, we're having a lot of success with a sensory approach. It's, you know, yeah, so I think I might have just gone, I'm not sure if I went way off your question or.
Jayson Davies
No, that was spot on. You gave, you gave several great answers. I really appreciate that. Ruth, did you want to add anything?
Ruth Isaac
Yeah, I think when you were asking about, like, when the confusion, I remember when I first started, there's there's so much terminology in our profession, and there's so many acronyms, and it can be really complex. And I remember something just as simple as somatosensory and thinking that was a whole nother thing, that's just tactile probe, that's all that is, and sometimes just sharing that basic information with people so that they understand, Oh, we're talking about proprioception. We're talking about tactile that's what that is. And then how does that functionally impact? That's the piece that I feel like was just really eye opening, especially when I'm working with new therapists. And I remember myself wondering, what is going on here, how, what is the difference between these things, and how does that impact? And having a bit of that neurology in the background is also super important, so that you understand what's working there and how it's not ooga booga.
Danielle Pluth
It's actually grounded in science Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I was gonna add one more thing on to what you were saying there. Go ahead. I was also just gonna add in there that we've spent a lot of time going through that vocabulary. So anytime we go to a new course, or we hear new terminology, we're constantly trying to figure out, okay, what do you exactly mean by sensory seeking, for example, or sensory craving, or, you know, and distilling that down to what it is, and then figuring out how it fits in with what we're already thinking. Do we need to change what we're thinking? Or is that different than what we're thinking? Or does it already fit into what we are thinking? It's just semantics, right? So we've have spent a lot of time figuring those kinds of things out.
Ruth Isaac
And still working on it. Like, I feel like it's a never ending thing, right? He is, yeah, like, and thank goodness, because otherwise I think we would be bored. Yes, I don't want to be bored with what I do. I want to keep pushing myself. I want to keep thinking about how this impacts a child's function overall. And I want to share that passion which we have with other people, so that they can see that as well.
Danielle Pluth
And that's the thing. Like within our community, we have built a whole program around OTs using sex. Sensory intervention, like with regards to our universal strategies, our direct one to one, our sensory rooms in the schools. And it's been a lot of fun to see impact across our whole division of, you know, 15 schools or whatnot. And so it's, it's neat, and it's nice to have something that you keep coming back to, that you keep, you know, we can keep training our teachers and parents and whatnot in it, and we're continuing to have success.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, perfect. Yeah, no, I think that's another five minute segment that people can send to their admin teachers and people who think that they're sensory experts or even another therapist, like, there's a lot to do with sensory and it requires training. And, yeah, it requires training.
Ruth Isaac
Ongoing, right? You never, I don't think you're ever done, like we're still learning as we continue on.
Danielle Pluth
And I think that that's the thing. Like, if we can have the OTs well trained in sensory, then you can really see that sensory is not just wiggle cushions and jewelry. That kind of brings us full circle, back to the beginning, right? So some people can think, Oh, if I give you a box of sand, I'm doing sensory intervention. Well, that's a sensory strategy, but that's not the basis of sensory theory, right? So, yeah, I think there. There's so much more to it and that that I know psychology has really gone into sensory but we've like, it's that vestibular probe piece too, that we really bring, as occupational therapists to that whole lens as well, that we can really understand.
Jayson Davies
So, yeah, absolutely. Well. Danielle Ruth, thank you so much for being here and sharing your good sense ot rocket ship and all the theory behind it and how you use it in application that's really amazing. Before you leave, I want to give you both the opportunity to kind of share where people can go to learn more about the good sense rocket ship, the theory that you're putting out there, and learn more about you all.
Danielle Pluth
So if they want to go and get a download of our good sense rocket ship, they can go to advance. Ot.ca, back, slash, sensory. Hyphen. Approach.
Ruth Isaac
And we're also on Instagram.
Danielle Pluth
Yes, you can follow us on Instagram at good, underscore sense, underscore OTs as well for our little video educational clips and bloopers.
Jayson Davies
Bloopers are always fun, awesome. We will be sure to link to both of those resources and all the other resources that we mentioned today. I don't think there are too many, but we'll have those two for sure, and any others that that we, you know, can find to send your way, and we'll put those in the show notes, so it makes it super easy for you to find everybody. I have the rocket ship up right in front of me. I am not lying when I say like I would mark the heck up of out of this thing during all my evaluations. And I think that you will find it very helpful too. So be sure to go get it, and you're going to learn a lot from Danielle and Ruth over however long you follow them on Instagram and are part of their atmosphere. So Danielle Ruth, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate having you, and can't wait to see asteroids on the rocket ship.
Danielle Pluth
And thank you so much.
Ruth Isaac
Thanks, Jayson.
Jayson Davies
Of course, I want to give Danielle and Ruth A big thank you for joining me today to share the good sense rocket ship framework with you. And of course, I also want to say thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you found value in understanding how this framework can help identify, assess and address sensory challenges that you come across with your students. Be sure to find the good sense rocket ship PDF in our show notes, and be sure to follow Danielle and Ruth on Instagram at good sense OTs to continue learning from their expertise. And as always, if today's episode left you wanting more practical strategies and support for your school based ot practice. I would love to invite you to join us inside the OT school OTs collaborative. It's where hundreds of school based ot practitioners come together for resources, professional development and direct mentorship from me. Within a group setting, you'll find frameworks like the one that we discussed today, plus tools to help you advocate for sensory, informed practices within your schools, head to OTSchoolHouse.com slash collab to learn more and join our community. Also, as a bonus, as a member of the OT schoolhouse collaborative, you can even earn a CU certificate for listening to this episode and many others within the OT school house Podcast Network until next time. Keep making a difference in your students lives through the power of occupational therapy and just have a good time. Don't forget to play. Don't forget to kind of sit down and just be in the moment with your students. Sometimes the best sensory interventions just come out of being present with the students. Take care and we'll see you next time bye, bye.
Amazing Narrator
Thank you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to OTSchoolHouse.com Until next time class is dismissed.
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