by Anne Page | Sep 16, 2014 | Speech Room, Uncategorized
School has been back in session for six weeks now and things have been a little crazy. After my room flooded from heavy rains, I got back into my room after a few weeks of clean-up. The professional clean-up crew nicely packed all my games and materials into boxes, which I haven’t completely unpacked because the bookcases were trashed from the water damage. (The carpet was thrown away as well, thank goodness).
I am waiting to hear when the replacements will come, if it is too much longer, then I am off to Good Will or Treasure4Teachers. That might not be the worse thing, then I can paint the bookcases a fun color. I always get such great DIY ideas from A Beautiful Mess www.abeautifulmess.com (love their blog).
Last week, we had our first ever “Rain Day”, with school closures for our whole district. Thankfully, the janitor had placed sandbags in front of my door and no flooding for Room 4 this time. Meanwhile, therapy sessions are in full swing. The kids make me laugh every day and I love working with them!
Cute story: I was doing the vocabulary portion of a language evaluation. I asked 8-yr. old Xavier to tell as many meanings as he could think of for the word “sole”. He thought and thought. Then, I saw the light bulb come on. He rubs his chin like it’s a beard (Picture the Antonio Banderas version of Puss In Boots) “Sole, we meet again.” Bahaha.
by Anne Page | Sep 13, 2014 | Therapy Ideas
I don’t know about you but I am really excited about the release of the new Iphone 6. I am trying to decide if I want to order it, or wait to go buy it in the store. I love technology and the iPad is an incredible tool to use in speech and language therapy. I have been using the app called “Word SLaPps Vocabulary by Zorten Software, LLC” for a couple of years. It is amazing because you can customize it with your own photos and it has a voice recording feature. I have used it in a multitude of ways. Word SLaPps also comes with two preprogrammed categories, one for animals and one for colors. You have the option to choose the number of turns per game (5, 10 or 15). It is great for small group work.
Basically, it is great for teaching receptive vocabulary. We have a little farm at our school (I know, lucky us). Part of my caseload includes three classrooms of students with special needs such as autism, Down Syndrome and cognitive impairments. Learning vocabulary across a multitude of settings and exposures is so important. So, I took pictures of our farm animals and used them for Word Slapps. You choose if you want 1 to 6 pictures to show on the screen. In this example, I chose 3. The three pictures show up and your voice says an animal name. The child touches one of the pictures. If correct, the photo spins and makes a fun noise that the kids like. If they choose the wrong photo, a black X covers it. Once the amount of turns you chose is completed, some animated kids jump up and down and say yay! I have also used this to help the kids learn their classmate’s names.
I have also used it for older kids to help them learn difficult vocabulary. Once you input the words (Go to settings, Edit/Add Content, Your Folders, Add category, then type in your word). You can then search for an image online. I let the students help me choose the image that most reflects the word for them. Then you can add audio. Again, I let the students record their voice. This is so great because it uses multimodalities and the kids are in on the creation of the game.
For your convenience here is a link to more information https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-slapps-vocabulary/id413888079?mt=8 I have no affiliation to Word Slapps, I am just a fan.
The best part is the price, just $4.99. If you try it, let me know what you think!
by Anne Page | Sep 8, 2014 | Speech Room, Therapy Ideas
I found this cute bulletin board idea on Pinterest and used it for a great how-was-your-summer activity.
Materials:
- White paper (I just used photocopy paper)
- Pencils
- Colored markers
- Scissors
I traced most of the kids hands for them in pencil. Then, I told them to decorate their hand however they liked. I showed them the Pinterest picture that we were following.
During the activity, we just chatted. I was able to get an informal sample of how each student was doing with their goals in a casual conversational setting (usually this is very informative). We talked about their speech-language schedule for the year, reviewed goals, and reviewed the “rules of the classroom”. (I use the Whole Brain Teaching Rules. If you are not familiar with them here is a link http://www.wholebrainteaching.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=160:five-classroom-rules&Itemid=127And here is a link to the Free Download of the Posters I use from Mrs. Magee on Teachers Pay Teachers http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Whole-Brain-Teaching-Rules-Posters-FREE-292602
The older students cut out their finished hand, however, in the interest of time, I did it for the younger students. For my students with special needs, we used this as a following-directions and labeling colors activity. They loved it!
Have students put their name on one of the fingers of their hand so it will be visible in the finished product.
I just used bulletin board paper for the background, the saying and the flower stem and leaves. I wrote the quote in freehand (sometimes my art background comes in handy). To create the flower, just start with the outer edges of it, I just visualized a big circle. You could do a light pencil outline if you need to. Then start stapling on the larger hands and spiral your way to the center. The kids love the finished product and are having fun finding their hands. Such a great message too!
by Anne Page | Sep 6, 2014 | Freebies, Therapy Ideas
Imagine that you are a parent. Your little cutie pie comes home after being at school (and away from you) for seven hours. You want to know all about their day!
“How was your day sweetie?”
“Good.”
“What did you do?”
“Play.”
“What else?”
“That’s all.”
This is a normal conversation even for a typically developing child. But with prompting, he should be able to tell you the basic events of his day. On the other hand, a child with an expressive language impairment may lack the organizational structure and vocabulary to be able to recall the events of their day. The ability to remember and tell about the people, places and things he encountered is a foundational skill for the next step of sequencing. Recognizing the order of events is a vital skill for organizing thoughts.
After having many conversations with parents at IEP meetings or in the clinic waiting room, I wanted to make something tangible to help bridge this communication gap. My little client Suzy (not her real name), is six years old and couldn’t really tell her mom much about her day. Or if she did, she would repeat the same events every day saying things like “I went for recess” or “I played with my friends”. I put a worksheet together for her, talked to Suzy about it, and gave Suzy’s mom some ideas on how to give her some choices and prompts when Suzy says “I don’t know”. This was her homework for the week until I would see her again. We are now on our fifth week of homework. Suzy’s mom says Suzy requests it every night. Yay! We keep changing the three things and Suzy is learning some organizational thought processes and giving more details. The other great thing is that it is a multi-sensory experience with the colorful visuals (Suzy loves the colors and the kid graphics), she is touching the paper, she is writing, she is talking to her mom about it and she is talking to me about it. And she is practicing the skill in multiple environments for much more effective carryover.
The “About My Day” worksheets are available as a FREE download from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. (Scroll down for the link or www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/About-My-Day-Take-home-sheets-for-expressive-language-1432730 ). With colorful fun visuals and the “3 things” structure these worksheets are linked to Common Core standards and can also serve as writing prompts.
If a student is in a special education classroom, it may be appropriate for an adult to fill it in or use pictures. I use a color sheet as the cover page and staple six b/w copies behind it. Included are two versions (girl graphic, boy grapic) and two blank sheets to use as masters. (Make sure you set your printer to landscape setting). Or if you want to use it with your iPad, open it in Ibooks or the PDF reader app, then make a screen shot and open it in Skitch. Use your finger or a stylus to write with.
I hope you enjoy these!
by Anne Page | Aug 28, 2014 | Evaluations, Freebies
What is the best way to explain the difference between speech and language to parents and to teachers? I know many times there are misconceptions that we SLPs only deal with articulation errors and stuttering. Accordingly, parents can wonder why their child is being referred to talk about the possibility of a language evaluation, when their child doesn’t mispronounce anything.
That is where our role as advocates and educators comes into play. A simple explanation to parents can be a good starting point. The American Speech Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) provides a clear explanation at http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/language_speech/. We can paraphrase this in our own words, using parent-friendly language. I always find visuals to be extremely helpful; so I created these posters that are available to download for FREE on TeachersPayTeachers. (Scroll down for the link).
At our school, we display them in the room where we have our IEP/MET meetings. They are a great tool to use when explaining evaluation results. For the teachers at our school, I do a brief inservice at the beginning of the school year, explaining speech and language and how all goals are linked to curriculum standards. I also make myself available for quick consultations for teachers when they have concerns about a student.
I hope you enjoy the download, keep making the world better one child, one word at a time!
Anne
Hey there I’m Anne Page. I help heart centered SLPs and educators put the fun in functional communication. 