Tech Tuesday: Google Voice

I was sitting with a friend the other day who was telling me about her students leaving Spanish monologues on her phone as home work. My first thought was that sounds dicey handing out your number to a bunch of high school freshman. (Insert your favorite prank phone call here (Is your fridge running?) She explained to me that she was using Google Voice which lets you get a number that allow a student/client to place a call and leave a message and the beautiful part is (drum roll please) it is not your cell number, home number, or work number. This sounded like a great idea for speech therapists!

I work with elementary students so this one might not work so well for therapist with younger kiddos, but I could see it working so well with a variety of students older than 12.

I was a little worried about the feasibility of me setting up something like this by myself. I am not extremely technologically savvy...(my main technological feat is creating Pintrest boards and witty Facebook statuses) but this was very easy to set up. It took all of 3 minutes to do and look at all the possibilities!

Here is how I am picturing it being used therapeutically:
1) Fluency: Have student read a passage and practice fluency strategies.
2) Traumatic Brain Injury: Give student/client a time and topic to call about at a certain time to practice long term memory strategies and organization strategies( encourage them to independently mange the information: put it in their phone calendar or reminders, write themselves a note, or set an alarm!)
3) Pragmatic skills: Practice how to appropriately leave a message with topic call back number and name.
4) Articulation: Have students practice their sound over the phone as homework.
5) Voice Clients: working on using breath support to leave a message of appropriate volume, using appropriate pitch etc.
6) Dialect Modification Therapy: Have your client read something you don't predetermine. Write down what you hear or understand. Have the student bring a transcript of what they said and review it in the next session.
That's just off the top of my head! Let me know if you come up with any other awesome ideas or how
to use Google Voice.
You can set up your own Google Voice account at https://www.google.com/voice

Leaving the Polar Vortex

I was on hiatus for Winter Break which was lengthened by this polar vortex (not to be confused with polar express). I have returned to the warm cubbiness of my speech room. I thought it would only be fitting to talk snow during speech!

The first game we played with my articulation kiddos was "Snowball Free For All"
                                              

You'll need:
Straws (I got these super cute ones at Target!)
pom-poms (snowballs)
and articualtion pictures (Mine are from Webber's Jumbo Articulation Drill Book)



To play:
1) Cut out target sound pictures and tape them to your work surface
2) Explain the rules:

• You get 10 seconds to blow your snowball toward a picture
• You can't use the same word 2 x's
• Use your best sounds to say your word or create a phrase or a sentece

3) Hand out straws and "snowballs"
4) Have Fun!
The kids really liked this game. I let take their straws and snowballs home along with 5 pictures of their choice so they could practice.

For my younger language kiddos we read "The Jacket I wear in the Snow" and made this spiffy girl.

You can download the girl from Making Learning Fun's website here
You can use the story to ask simple "Wh" questions and make simple inferences as well as make descriptions!
                                              

Another fun following directions activity is in the book "Snow Shapes" There are several fun winter themed crafts to make. My reading students tried it and loved making the snowflakes.
                                               

Additionally, we made snow dough! (cloud dough with sparkles). This let us practice sequencing and following directions! Beware of glitter eaters...it happened.

You can find this free snow dough picture recipe here at my TPT store.