Facebook Freenzy Link Up

If you liked my list of freebies from Teachers Pay Teachers, here is another way to grab some great materials by SLP bloggers for free. It will only last for the weekend so make sure you check them out while you can!

Preparing for thanksgiving

Considering November is a rather short month due to the holiday break, one day of professional development, and benchmark testing, I have decided to start researching for fun freebies early. The finds on Teachers Pay Teachers have not been disappointing. There are so many good products on there if you can avoid getting bogged down by the sheer mass of products available. I typically use search restrictions to assist in making the list much more manageable.

• Thanksgiving Specific
• Happy Harvest Feast (read along story)
• Mr. Turkey Pattern 
• Articulation
• Articulation Turkey
• Turkey Sound Discrimination (/sh, ch, s, z/)
• Turkey Sound Discrimination (/k, g/)
• Syntax
• Fall themed subject-verb agreement cards
• Thanksgiving Adjective Sentences
• Turkey Splat
• Be Mine Verbs
• Parts of Speech Cube
• Phonemic Awareness
• Mickey Mouse Long & Short Vowel Sort
• Wh- Questions
• Jungle Themed Retelling Sticks 
• Owl Themed Retelling Sticks
• Vocabulary
• Fall Vocabulary 
• Thanksgiving Opposites
• Thankful for Fall (headbanz activity)
• Let's Talk Turkey (compare & contrast)
• Social Skills
• Compliment Jar
• No Talking Cards (topic maintenance) 

My love of pinterest knows no bounds....

I'm a little bit off of my usual schedule this week. I blame a rushed weekend and the stress of being observed for the first time by a non-SLP. 

Observations by school administrators is another thing that they don't warn you about it graduate school. I think some districts handle it by sending out their lead SLP or EC director, but in my district I get observed by either the Principle or Vice Principle. I managed to be lucky enough to have one of my articulation groups during my observation time. Last week, I had to meet with the Vice Principle to explain what she would see and tell her about the three students that would be in my room. They definitely stayed true to their form. One stood up three times and the other kept trying to interrupt in the middle of drill. However, they were for the most part as good as gold. I was so proud of them for being well-behaved and producing awesome sounds. I like to give them a little something extra special when there are changes to our normal structure: applause! I found this big hand clapper in the workroom last year. I love the bright pink and how much this simple object means to my students.  

The second item of my post is proof that I can use Boardmaker. It just took me two years to figure out how to do it. I saw the idea for this bubble map at the Adventures of Room 83. I love this blog and highly recommend checking it out if you've never read it before.

I fell in love with the idea of an adjective bubble map as describing is an area where many of my students struggle. It doesn't matter if they are in kindergarten or 5th grade, I always end up talking about describing words at some point in the year. I can pair this visual with the Expanding Expression Tool or just use it on its own. The target item goes in the middle and then we'll write short phrases or words to go in each of the five surrounding circles.

Halloween creepiness part 2 with delightful "hands on" practice

It's been a "short" week of school. We had two days of professional development, which is both a blessing and a curse. I managed to do the following: get caught up on my Medicaid billing, made some more Super Duper product posters for my 3+ month of laminating fun, pulled out my Halloween books, attempted to draw pictures to use for sequencing with the Old Lady who Swallowed a Bat, and started up another pinterest inspired craft. This list may sound pretty funny to people who are just curious about the field or unfamiliar with the realm of school-based therapy but these things take more time than I care to think about. 

Luckily, most of my students came back with refreshed minds and happy hearts. It was good to be back in session with them. They helped me find a new Halloween favorite: The 13 Nights of Halloween. I picked this book up back in January of last year at Goodwill. The concept is very similar to the 12 Days of Christmas song. You have 13 nights of a tiny pink goblin gifting odd and creepy presents. We used the Expanding Expression Tool to talk about some of these gifts (ie. owls, vampires, witches) and then played an exciting round of cat-EAR-gories. 

I also introduced my syntax groups to my second Halloween DIY project: Gross Parts of Speech. I picked up the fingers from the Dollar Tree earlier this month. All it takes is a sharpie and 10 minutes of writing. Toss them into a mystery box and you are ready to go. 

I had a few students who were really grossed out at first, but they were begging for thumbs and pinkies by the end of the lesson.

My new favorite song of the moment......

Dollar Store Dash!

Today, I am linking up with Teach Speech 365's Dollar Store Dash linky. The concept is to spend $5 and come up with 3-5 activities for the items you purchased. I totally failed on the spending limit (grand total of $21 dollars); however, I am going to talk about the items that have the broadest range of activities.

Superhero figurines and animals

Teacher Tree sight word dice & card games 

So the 5 items that I purchased for the linky are Dollar Tree's safari/jungle animals. I picked up the rhinoceros, lion, antelope, elephant, and giraffe. They didn't have the tiger at my store.  

Activities:

1) Safari animal vocabulary. I have several students with very low vocabularies this year. I love using figurines so they can have a 3-D image in their mind of what a lion looks like along with pictures from the internet or in video clips from National Geographic Kids. My students get to learn the names of the animals as well as actions that they do, like roar for lion.  

2) Following directions/positional concepts. I use stuffed animals to teach positional concepts; however, figurines work well for this task too. You can model moving the figurines around an empty tissue box or your students. Once they have grasped those concepts, it's time to work on directions by letting them move the animals around. 

3) Eliciting utterances. You can use these animals in pretend play to elicit utterances. I have several students working on 2-7 word utterances who are more comfortable talking in play activities. It makes them feel more comfortable and they open up in a way that you don't see in the classroom.
4) Routines. I have a few students that have to be coerced into joining groups. If holding the lion during book time gets them to sit with the rest of the group, I am perfectly happy to let that child have a figurine. The same for eliciting language/articulation. As long as it can motivate the child without becoming a distraction, why not?

So those are my $5 items. 

In other news, I finally wrote a goal bank for my middle school (6-8th) friends. It is for the language portion of the CCSS and is currently available to fans of my facebook page. 

It's time for some cat-EAR-gories.

I promised that I had a few spooky ideas for Halloween this year. This is the first of two DIY projects that I came up with for this year. I found the ears at the Dollar Tree and knew that I had to do something with them. My caseload is full of students with categorization goals and the gross factor is a huge motivator for the boys. 

 All I needed was a Sharpie and several packs of ears. It took about an hour to come up with the Halloween-related categories. (I'm a stickler for wanting my seasonal stuff to stay true to the season.)

My students have to name 3-4 items in the category based off of the ear they pull out of the witch's cauldron. You can throw Ned's Head game pieces in the mix to add the opportunity to target other goals via bonus points (or just say that they get another turn/lose a turn). 

I scream for great ideas....

I had all good intentions of writing another Halloween related post tonight. However, that just wasn't meant to be after spending another day in the trenches of Chipper Chat doom. I've spent every afternoon for the past 5 days trying to glue papers to poster boards so I can have cards. My room was covered in a huge pile of them when I left work yesterday (I'm sure the janitor loved trying to avoid stepping on them). 

 I'm guessing that I have two months worth of lamination right here since I can only laminate one poster a day. It will be worth it once all is said and done.

So in the meantime, here are some more cool links that deserve to be shared.

1. Targeting Articulation:
1. Blank Popcorn Words (can be used to target any number of things)
2. Silly I-Pad Rules (made for several different sounds)
3. Royal Speech (open-ended)
4. Super Power (open-ended)
5. Fall Harvest Articulation
2. Targeting Grammar:
1. Spooky Silly Sentences Grammar Skills (K-3)
2. Spooky Sentence Building (K-1)
3. Fun Wednesday Camel Alphabet and Sight Word Cards (K-1) 
4. Spider Word Sort (Verbs and Adjectives)
5. Candy Corn Sentences for Word Work (3-5)
3. Targeting Vocabulary:
1. Defining and describing sticks (DIY)
4. Targeting Phonological Awareness:
1. Phonics segmenting flashcards (link takes you to short O, but there are others available)
5. Targeting Following Directions:
1. Halloween Following Temporal Directions
6. Targeting Sequencing:
1. Trick or Treat Sequencing
7. Targeting Social Skills: 
1. Pumpkin Emotions DIY
2. Don't Touch (social story)
8. Targeting Pediatric Dysphagia 
1. Hierarchy of Sensory Exposure for Feeding Therapy
9. Miscellaneous 
1. Why do kids come to Speech? (handouts)
2. Environmental Print Cards
3. Push-In Handout 
4. Sight Words in a Bottle
5. Speech Therapy Certificates
6. Coming to Speech Song