I'm a materials geek!

This school has probably had the most unusual start of any that I've had so far in my career. We had a tremendous amount of problems scheduling as an Exceptional Children's team. It only took four weeks to figure out. (Yikes!) I am not sure what is so different about this year from the previous ones, but I hope this won't happen again for quite some time.

Through all of that excitement, I got to use several new materials that I want to share my thoughts on. I have posted about Teddy Talker many times. I always love to incorporate Teddy into my younger groups. Teddy Talker's Phoneme Friends is no exception. I have been using this great addition since the spring. I really like to use Teddy's newest edition with Mia McDaniel's wonderful Articulation Cans. This way my students have the Teddy visuals for shaping their mouths, the letter cues at the bottom for spelling, and the target picture. It's really helped get those final consonants!

I am also using Teddy with Speech Corner's Articulation Rolling Cubes. My school district recently purchased this set for me over the summer. It's quickly becoming a second favorite when I can't use my articulation cans. My students get to help Teddy sort out the cubes that have his sound and we talk about how to spell the word. I have pulled out my Teddy puppet to use with the action dice. My students like this because it's funny to make Teddy practice his sounds while clapping his paws or stomping our feet.

My older students have not been left out of the fun this year. My district also purchased two great educational games for context clues and inferencing.

The first one, Context Clues: Riddle of the Ruins, is from Lakeshore Learning. I really like this game because their are two levels of cards. The first one is a multiple choice for the word meaning. The second type are fill in the blanks with the best word. I used this with my middle school students and asked them for their thoughts on the game at the end of their sessions. They were all in agreement that it was a fun game even though a few of them got caught by the traps. They really liked the secret decoder. That was probably the highlight of this one. Sadly, Lakeshore has discontinued the game.

The second game, Treasure Trove, is from Speech Corner. It has an optional add-on set that my district also purchased that really makes this game a versatile tool. I can target synonyms, antonyms, homophones, inferencing, context clues, multiple meaning words. I decided to test this out with my middle school groups so I could get honest opinions. The level of difficulty is a bit harder than the previous game, but they never once complained about the cards being too hard. If anything, I think they enjoyed a good challenge. It is a great way to indirectly work on social skills too. I lost track of how many times they had to "steal" coins and gems from each other. It was pretty funny to watch their reactions. Some of them only wanted the coins or only wanted gems.  

Wishing all of you a happy October!

Teaching Together with Teddy Talker

As if I weren't all ready impressed with the amazing versatility of Teddy Talker, I wanted to tell you about how the new Teach Together Toolkit has really knocked my socks off. 

Why?

Well, for starters, the "Toolpages" for each of the 38 sounds bring to mind all the principles for literacy instruction that I learned about in Orton-Gillingham training. Lessons should be systematic, sequential, explicit, and multi-sensory. The Toolkit holds all of these tenants. Students are explicitly taught about the letter-sound correspondent using child (and parent)-friendly terminology. They learn to manipulate the cue pieces of their own copy of Teddy Talker right from the start with a lesson on basic oral anatomy. I store the mouth pieces and tongue puppet in a "Teddy Folder" for each of my students. Once they complete the introductory lesson, I take one of two paths: a) focus on the target articulation sound that the student needs or b) follow the sequence for teaching the sounds that I learned in my Orton-Gillingham training for my inclusion students. (You can use sequences from other reading programs too.)

Each lesson involves explicitly teaching the student how to prepare the oral structures for production with visuals and auditory cues. The student may be asked to trace the letters with his/her fingers while producing the sound (you could have them trace the letter on the page in crayon with plastic canvas underneath as a means of creating even more sensory input as they trace with their fingers) or joint read his rhyming story. They learn new vocabulary words and rhyming words with each of the 38 sounds. Students are even asked to do some inferencing to tell the adult "why" Teddy calls a sound by X name. In the lessons that I have done so far with my articulation groups, I've also added in the extra element of Visual Phonics as a sort of secret "Teddy Code." I start sending home the Teddy folders once I have gone through the lessons at school with my students. This way, they have already experienced success with the activities and are less likely to get frustrated at home.

The Toolkit also includes a sound assessment, listening games, lesson ideas, mini-Alphabet chart, and award pages. It's such a comprehensive tool whether you prefer the notebook (like me) or the PDF version.

Now, of course, that little Teddy face is not just sticking to our homework folders. I have come up with two ideas already to help manage some behavioral issues with my Teddy groups.

1) Role play hat. I haven't come across too many students that turn down the opportunity to play pretend, particularly when you tell them to act like an animal of any sort. My idea is to use the role play hat with groups of two or three students. Each student gets a chance to play "teacher" as well as "Teddy." The "teacher" has to teach "Teddy" how to say the sound.

The hat is really easy to make. I simply printed out an extra Teddy Face and colored him. I backed the face with some brown poster paper before taping to a sentence strip. You can probably skip the poster paper if you have card stock handy, but the sentence strips are a must. Once the Teddy's face was laminated, I added a little Velcro for the mouth pieces. (As a side note, I ran out of Velcro before I got to his bow for the voicing cues...)

2) Token box reinforcer. This project is very similar to the Old Lady tissue box craft that I made a while ago for sequencing. However, I use it to reward good target productions by feeding Teddy. It is a bit more complicated than the Teddy hat simply due to the mechanics of getting the mouth right. I ended up tracing Teddy's happy mouth as it was the best one for my tissue box. Again, I backed Teddy's face using brown construction paper to ensure a longer lifespan. (I didn't do that with my Old Lady and she did eventually rip.) I strongly suggest getting the face laminated before you attach him to the tissue box for extra stability. You can draw honey drops or use erasers for food. 

So there you have it! We just can't get enough of Teddy Talker.