Speech Homework

I am fed up with sending home boring speech homework when our kiddos should be having a fun break. Plus, let's be honest here, they will be more likely to do some fun activities vs. some boring worksheets.
Here is my favorite idea!

Articulation fortune tellers
My kiddos loved loved loved these! This is a twist on the cool fortune tellers (or cootie catchers) you may recall folding up in grade school. This 21 page document has 20 target pictures for /k/,/g/,/s/,/l/,/r/, /th/ in all positions of words (60 target pictures per sound!) My kiddos loved loved loved these!
I have included a set of written intstructions on how to fold your fortune teller. If you have a hard time there are lots of great videos online that will help you to fold them appropriately...either that or channel your inner 5th grader and get folding! You can also do session it doesn't have to be just homework. You can find a copy of this activity here at my TPT store
Have fun!

1)Cut paper out in a square

2)Valley fold the paper across the perpendicular lines in the large square in the middle of the fortune teller

3)Open the paper up. You should have an X across your paper

4)Place the paper with the pictures face down

5)Fold the four corners of the paper in to make a smaller square

6)Flip your paper over

7)Fold the points of the smaller square into the middle  point

8)Fold the left side of the small square to meet the right side of the small square (taco fold)

9)Fold the top edge of the small square to meet the bottom edge of the small square

10)Push the corners of the square together

11)Open corner flaps form little pockets for your fingers

If all else fails there are lots of great videos on youtube.com. That show how to make these.

The most important thing is that the pictures end up on the outside.

I also like to copy a language activity for my students. We usually do a story and I send home a picture of the book coupled with a summary from the child and what the summary should be and encourage the students to share with their families!

Break is so close I can almost feel it! Hope you have a lovely holiday season!

Tech Tuesday: App review: Conversation Builder

I found this game to be a great starting place for my friends who have difficulty sustaining and thinking of things to say in conversation. It gives multiple choice answers to help students construct conversation by asking questions and making comments. You have your student think of something to initiate a conversation or if they aren't ready for that they can sustain a conversation with a simulated conversation partner.

Another interesting feature is the ability to play back the conversation. My students found it extremely rewarding to hear their conversation. You can also work on prosody and intonation in their sentences.

This app is 19.99 and definitely worth it for students with pragmatic language difficulties!
There is also a cheaper version for 7.99.
My students loved it!

Easy Monday Artic!

There are three ways to do this craft but this I chose the first way. The easiest way is probably way three!

Way 1: Plastic bag craft

 You'll need

•  plastic bags
•  ornament and sounds template (you can find that here at my TPT store)
• crayons
•  masking tape
•  scissors
• pom-poms, confetti (mine was from my hole punch :) or glitter)

Instructions

• Have students cut and color their ornaments. They will need help to know 1) not to cut through the ornament and to get to the middle (It helps if you outline the ornament in a different color and tell them to cut that first  and 2) cutting out the middle.
• Have students cut out their sound pictures
• tape plastic bags to the back. I had to cut down the top so it didn't stick out but I just taped it close so nothing fell out. I folded  up the bottom corners in order to tape them.
• Have students say their target sounds as they drop them in the bag.
• Cut out corresponding sound list and give to students

* Helpful hint: Tape pipe cleaners to the back of some of the pictures so the students can move them around and search for pictures on their sound list at home as extra practice
                                                             (Back of the ornament)

 

 

 

 

Way 2: Wax Paper and Crayons

 

A second way that this would be fun is to use wax paper and ground up crayons. Have the students sprinkle the bottom sheet of wax paper with ground crayons. Lay their pictures out on top and say their target sounds. Put a second layer of wax paper on top and iron it . Then let the students use the ornament as a frame. This required a little more planning and I didn't have all the materials available! But try it!

 

Way 3: Cut and Glue

The absolute easiest way to do this would be to have the students cut out their target sound words, cut out their ornaments and glue the target sound words in the middle of the ornament.Maybe with some glitter thrown in there for good measure...everyone loves glitter!

Good luck!

Let me know what works for you!

Language in The Classroom: Grandpa Green

I saw this adorable book sitting on the shelf of my school's library and thought...what can I do with this? Answer: verb tenses. Lots of students incorrectly conjugate verbs and it's part of the standards for the common core so it is a great thing to target for language in the classroom. This is what we did.

We reviewed all the words and talked about whether or not the way they were written (-ed, -s will+ verb ) meant the activity happened in the past present or future. Then the students filled out these worksheets and drew pictures to accompany them

 This one came out upside down...and I couldn't fix it but it was too cute not to include! This is how the students kept track of their favorite things that Grandpa Green did! 

 

Check out the whole packet at here at my Teacher Pay Teacher Store.

I Want Candy: Gingerbread

In the speech room this month we're going to do an overarching theme of candy and cookies. We have summarized and retold  The Gingerbread Man and made some fun activities here they are for your enjoyment.

 

We used this felt gingerbread man to complete simple inferences by giving and getting clues about the parts of the gingerbread man.

Example: They are round, black and you can see with them

Answer: EYES!

The trickiest ones to figure out were buttons and icing.

 

We made these cute gingerbread people using "Zoo Pals" plates we turned them over and painted them with brown paint that had cinnamon in it which was awesome smelling! The whole hallway smells delicious!

 

We also made candy cane articulation ornaments with articulation pictures on them for articulation large group with my k, 1,2 students.

You can get a copy of the candy cane activity at here my TPT store . The kids all wanted me to laminate them so they could hang them on their trees!

 

This final activity I am using with my 5 minute kids. Every time they get a sound right they get to put a bead on their pipe cleaner!

 

 

 Enjoy!

Tech Tuesday

Here's something cool I stumbled on this week while looking for something to entertain and engage my older students. This is called the Story-Making Machine by Communication Connections. It lets you choose a target sound and a story that interests you. My older students loved it. Plus they got to be on laptops which is pretty sweet! It would also be a great idea for speech homework!

There are tons of stories and some of them are even leveled by grade. Here's the link
http://www.communicationconnects.com/stories.asp?write=no
Enjoy!

Functional Language for the Grocery

At my school there are two Multiple Handicap classrooms who do frequent fun outings into our community. Their most recent outing was to the grocery store. I though it would be a great time to target vocabulary based around the going grocery shopping. So here's the activity to target just that! Grocery Grab

This is in homage to one of my favorite childhood game shows "Supermarket Sweep"! The 5 fun activities included are a scaffold for practical and functional language use. This file  contains listening skills, spatial, sequential , quantitative, exclusion/inclusion, concepts, functional “wh “questions based in safety, sorting skills, picture to picture matching and reading of food words in a fun game format!

Activities include

Cart Concepts: Quantitative Concepts

Students identify the named cart (show me the cart with a few apples)

 

 

Supermarket Sort: Sorting items into appropriate departments (Milk to the dairy department!)

 

 

 

Shelf Concepts:
 Sequential, Spatial and Inclusion/Exclusion and Negative Concepts (Put the cereal on the middle shelf)

FOOD STORAGE FREE-FOR-ALL: Now that you have all this food what do you do with it?!?! Does it go in the fridge or in the cabinet? This is a great game to talk about food safety.

Brown Bag Races: An interactive listening/reading/matching game where you help "people" find their food by listening, reading or matching pictures

Have fun! See you on Tech Tuesday!

 

Language In the Classroom: 1st grade

As a part of intervention services I do language in the classroom. It not only gives me the ability to help teachers with students on the bubble, but I also get to help my identified students with generalization of their goals!

I try to pick a common core standard to work on so it benefits all the students. Then I tweak it a little so I can work with my IEP kids on their goals in the general education setting. This week we have been targeting homonyms.

Sounds the Same scramble

This game I made on the fly... and the kids really enjoyed it. You can find a copy of this activity here

To prepare:
Print cut and laminate pictures of homonyms
Print homonym work sheets.

To Play:
Pass out homonyms pairs randomly through out the classroom.
Explain to students that homonyms are two words that sound the same but have a different meaning.

 Have students find their "word" partner. Each student illustrates their word and writes a sentence using their word that illustrates the meaning of the word.

Articupalooza: November Style

I have a lot of students with articulation difficulties so sometimes it's hard to keep it fresh. I try each month  to do a craft as a reinforcer (I also usually double this one up for my Concepts and following directions/language memory kiddos),  games with articulation, drill with a traditional game, and a chance for students to practice their carry-over skills.

So here are my plans for November articulation skills:

Craft

Coffee Cozy Mayflower
This Coffee Cozy Mayflower was on Parenting.com's website. How cute is it! Answer: So cute.

Photo from parenting.com

For this project you will need:

• coffee cozies
• wooden stir sticks or Popsicle sticks
• white construction paper
• red construction paper
• Styrofoam cups
• glue
• scissors

Here is a video of the Mayflower Craft  showing all the steps and some additional Thanksgiving crafts you might want to make with your students
For generalization
Generally, I give the students 1 or 2 words to monitor during the activity sure they are correctly articulating during their requests or
For Drill
You can just given them a piece for each correctly articulated word
And                     are some picture supports for sequencing students


Pin your tail feather

Cornucopia Game

For this game you need

• pom-poms
• large brown construction paper
• tape

This was a huge hit with my students. To play you toss pom-poms "fruit" into a paper cone "cornucopia". To earn fruit, the student must say their target word/sound etc. 3-5 times or make a sentence. When they have achieved this they get to toss their "fruit" into the "cornucopia". As you can imagine this is a great way to get multiple repetitions and provide opportunities for practice for students.

Cornucopia mix

For this snack you need

• bugles
• runts
• Ziploc bags

I have the students talk about what a cornucopia is using the EET tool.

"Pin your tail feather"

This game targets articulation sounds for /k/ /s/ /l/ /r/ and /th/  Download it here at my TPT site.

Assembly

1)Print, cut and laminate turkeys and articulation sound pictures.

2)Hot glue articulation pictures to clothes pins (this is optional…I like it because lots of my

Kiddos also get Occupational Therapy)

3)     Hot glue turkeys to plain paper plates or use colored circles included as a base.

Games

There are multiple ways to use this game to work on articulation skills.

Game 1:

Have students draw sound feathers from  the and let them collect points  by clipping the feather to their turkey.

Game 2:

Use as a phonemic awareness as well as articulation game. Differentiate three turkeys  for beginning, middle and end sounds by printing and laminating  green, yellow and red circles and attaching them to paper plates. As students practice their sounds ask if the target sound is in the beginning, middle or end of the word and have them clip it to the corresponding green, yellow or red turkey.

Game 3:

Have students draw multiple feathers to make sentences or have them roll a die to see how many words to put into a sentence.

you can down load it here

Research Writing to Address Comprehension and Expression + a Rubric Freebie

Lately my second grade friends and I have been having tons of fun writing research papers based on monthly and classroom themes. It's been really nice because we are able to build upon skills they have used previously with the Expanding Expressions Tool Kit.

The challenge has been getting students to change from the lingo of the tool kit to a more cohesive style of writing. So to explain what I expect for my speech written expression students, I have made a great rubric based off the EET kit. This rubric is pretty generic. By changing levels of support  and content needed, you can make it more appropriate for students of different grades.  Look at common core standards to guide what your expectations as far as structure should be, they differ per grade level (upper grades expect definitions and heading etc.)
Based on Common Core State Standards, second graders should

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.5 With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.7 Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).

That being said, I give my kiddo's lots of support and expect mostly 3's and 4's on the rubric. You can set different goals for different students based on pre-writing and post writing scores if you wish to decrease support IE if they are at a 0 you can set a goal to get 2's on 6/7 etc.
You can find a free printable of my rubric here.

I find short reading for my kiddo's to combine with the knowledge they have sponged up from their science, social studies or reading classes. One website I really like for the short, grade level readings is readworks.org.  K12reader has a great First Thanksgiving reading comprehension passage  to supplement information reviewed in class that I am going to use with my second graders when they write a Thanksgiving themed piece.

Have a great week!

This is Halloween

As I have mentioned before it's pretty crazy around here during the month of October. I have some easy and fun Halloween ideas though. Since simplicity is key...they are really low on the preparation and expense scale so do with them what you will :)

Masking tape mummies for articulation

We used these to practice our artic words. They got an extra piece after they did repetitions or made a sentence.

Spiders and spider webs for following directions



Students had to follow oral directions to make hand print spiders and "webs" which are just wonkily drawn snowflakes that they got to cut out and pretend were web-esk :)

Room on the Broom listening activity that to work on active listening skills and comprehension which you can find here

Room on the Broom articulation activity

This activity was used to target /r/ and /w/ sound discrimination and identifying /r/ sounds for using a story. The students would raise their hand when they heard and /r/ word and sometimes I would give examples of two different words (ie wag and rag) from the story and they could identify the sounds that they heard.

And finally some cards for my nonverbal kiddos to exchange during Trick-Or-Treat. They really enjoyed practicing knocking, exchanging the card, getting some candy and saying thank you. You can find free copies of the cards  here .

Sorry this is a brief and disjointed post. Just wanted to get some activities out there for Halloween!
Have a spooky one!

 

Narratives and Retell's as a tool for the SLP

A couple Friday's ago, I was lucky enough to get to go to a professional development lecture by Sandra Gilliam of Utah State University. She has done tons of research about story retells and oral discourse and how it effects students learning and developed a great tool called SKILL (Supporting Knowledge In Language and Literacy). It was a great lecture and it gave some guidance about how the SLP can effectively improve student language skills and help them to achieve common core standards for their grade levels. I was amazed at the number of standards an SLP can effect by working on oral discourse and story retell per grade level!


This is just Kindergarten, but it gives you an idea. The common core standards build upon these skills as the student progresses through out their educational career. The following standards are from the website for common core state standards.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.2 With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.2 With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.K.3 With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.3 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.5 With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.K.6 Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1b Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1c Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1e Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1f Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

SS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.6 Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.
 Other reasons I particularly liked the SKILL approach is because it allows the SLP to work with the students language as a whole instead of just answering and asking questions, you can work on grammar and vocabulary. Since the SKILL approach also focuses on the character's emotional response to events and how those response lead to other events you can work on perspective taking. It's a very well thought out and interesting approach.  If you would like more information about SKILL (Supporting Knowledge In Language and Literacy) you can visit the Utah State University Works page.
As a school SLP, I think it is vital that we address educationally relevant modes of communication. For our kids this is taking the form of writing their own stories and retelling stories they have heard to show comprehension of topics outside of langauge arts.

Raking up some good times in the speech room!

October is quiet possibly the craziest month in special education in my district. We have all our IEP's this month!  So it was definitely a great time for an easy game that could apply to lots of students. I made a raking game using paint stir sticks. I know there has been a paint chip crafting craze on Pintrest lately, however the paint stir stick is a handy crafting object and they are free too! I did not use magnets but I think that putting a magnet on each leaf and rake to help the students get their leaves. It works pretty well with out it though.
Have students describe using as many attributes as possible! It is a great way to make sentences to work on grammar as well as vocabulary!

Anyway here is a free copy of Rake it up! fall vocabulary for you at my TPT store

Have a great week!

Are you ready for some football?!?!

To answer...no, I'm not. The only thing I understand about football is how to eat chicken wings and honestly I am a little to good at that . However, football  is a theme next week at school so I made some fun printables on Mayer-Johnson's Boardmaker program that target vocabulary skills.
The football feild game is to be used as an add on for the Expanding Expressions Tool (EET) Kit developed by Sarah Smith, MS CCC/SLP which you can find here. 

Touch Down EET Expansion

                                                      

To play the game, move from the ten yard line, have each student choose one picture .Use the dice in your tool kit to help the students describe pictures on the field. Step down includes having the student expressively identify the picture or receptively identify the picture. The students can roll one die or two dice to increase difficulty.
 After describing their picture they can spin to see how many yards they get to move their football up to their next picture.  First person to the touch down wins! (and then obviously does their touchdown dance...which is the best part :) )
 I used this with students for vocabulary, as well as grammar and articulation. My words were football themed to match the classroom theme, however, you can make your pictures match any theme you want. You can even print it out blank, laminate it and write your own words or tape different pictures on to change it up for each group. Make your football field template and spinner match the needs of your students!  

Have a great week!

A Concious Decision to be More Duck-like in the Speech Room

The decision "to be the duck" couldn't have come at a better time. The beginning of the school year is a crazy and hectic time for every SLP. If you are going to glide you might as well start from the beginning. I work with a wide variety of students from little ones in preschool to 6th grade. I serve a special population of students who have a wide very range of needs.  I need to come up with materials that are accessible for all of them. So this year, I am streamlining. I try to make one big project or material and retrofit it to fit as many students as possible. Here are a couple products a Pintrest project, and a simple, easy to make and fun game that have helped the year get off to a great start!

 The products that have changed my life (that's a little dramatic but I really love them)

1) dry erase contact paper

         I work in a finite amount of space and kids constantly shuffling in and out of the caddies behind their seats took a lot of time and was pretty disruptive so, per the recommendation of one of our lovely first grade teachers, I covered my table in dry erase contact paper and voila! something exciting for the kids to experience and a lot less time wasted in searching for dry erase boards. I was not able to find dry erase  in stores however, it is available online  and you can find it here.

2)  side opening storage containers
          This is where I keep the games the motivator of all motivators for elementary school kids. They are difficult for a child to open which makes them great for requesting, but easy for an adult to open which means it's easy to put away games at the end of the day, a win win situation.
 

3) A Pintrest project!
            Joy of joys a Pintrest project! This nifty idea has been posted and re-posted on the site! All you need is gallon sized bags and some duct tape. (The patterned stuff is really fun!)  For whatever reason, the texture of the walls or maybe the temperature, nothing I hung up ever stayed that way and I would come back to school and see a huge pile of my students awesome work on the floor...very depressing. Any how this "display quilt"  has solved all those problems. Classroom DIY has a great tutorial on how to make a display quilt and you can watch it here.
This was my finished quilt!


4) Feed the Teacher: A fast and easy game to make
            I originally invented this game for my artic kids in the k-2. I also used it with grades 4-5 and they loved it too!  I think the motor component of throwing the apples to the "teachers" was really rewarding to a wide range of students. I introduce the game by asking them what do teachers love to eat? Apples of course! The students objective is to earn apples by making good speech sounds. When all the apples have been earned by the students, I let them take turns throwing them in the cups.  A game like this is so simple. It  allows for multiple responses from students in a short amount of time (some of my kiddos got up to 50 chances to practice their tricky sounds!) Since all you need are some clear cups, a permanent marker and some wads of apple colored paper (or you could use pom-poms) it ends up being a stress free but stimulating game that fits into the back to school theme as well as being gentle on the wallet!

*Hint: a great way to draw the teachers is by looking for teacher coloring pages printing them out and tracing them through the clear plastic

Have a great week!