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!