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!

Fun with Mr. Potato Head

I posted a picture some time back on my facebook page about giving a new Mr. Potato Head a bath. I was asked to write a post about how I use Mr. Potato Head for therapy. Now that my husband is on the mend and the school year is winding down, I thought it was time to actually sit down and write out my thoughts. Mr. Potato Head goes to elementary school.....

The first thing I would like to say is that Mr. Potato Head is a pretty popular guy among my kindergarten to 2nd grade groups. He sometimes even pops up with my older groups although in a slightly less traditional manner.

1. Pronouns- This is one of his most obvious uses.

2. Attributes- You can talk about the size of the Potato Head, clothing options, hair options, etc.

3. Following Directions- This tags along with pronouns. I often ask my students to give the Potato Heads certain accessories or pair them up with some of my animal figurines. If you can find a doll house, why not turn it into Mr. Potato's house for spatial concepts?

4. Sensory bin- I use this to help students calm down when they are over stimulated. It's also a great way to teach about body parts and senses.

5. Requesting/turn taking- I have used Mr. Potato Head to get some of kindergarten students to request rather than to grab items that they want.

6. Articulation- As other bloggers have said in the past, you can use Mr. Potato head to practice at phrase/sentence level using target sound pictures. You can also use phonics figurines if you have the Lakeshore tubs (or can borrow from teachers) or your own set of gathered items.

7. Parts of Speech- As I said earlier, Mr. Potato Head sometimes visits my older groups. I often use pieces from my collection for Colourful Semantics lessons that involve sorting items into who, what, and where.

8.  Create your own Spud Story- I like to think that every variation of Potato Head has his/her own story. We can make up a story for our Potato Head and talk about his/her adventures. It could be Star Wars, a day on the farm, a day at the pet shop....you can't go wrong.


While I have seen some bloggers suggest to buy Mr. Potato Head on Amazon, I would suggest looking for him at thrift stores. I have found my entire collection by shopping at Goodwill, Salvation Army, and garage sales. The most expensive set I bought was the Star Wars set, which was $5. Just make sure you give them a good bath before bringing them to work.

Thankful for pronouns

November always seems to rush by in a blur of IEP meetings, regular staff meetings, special activities, and holiday gathering. It is no small wonder why I have been looking for a few quick activities to pair with fall themed books for my language groups. This activity was actually inspired my old pronoun book creation. I pulled it out a few weeks ago and decided that we still needed more structured practice. So here is a Thanksgiving creation from my speech room to yours....Hope you enjoy!

Included in this activity are four sheets for structured pronoun practice. Students have to label the person using either he or she and then decide which item that person might be thankful for during the fall. Most of the pictures are related to fall and can be used to target fall vocabulary. 

I have also included a page with a boy and girl pilgrim to be used as a magazine sorting activity. In similar fashion to the structured pages, students should tell you sentences as they make a thankful collage.

You can grab your copy of Giving our Thanks here.

The Hunt: Middle School Resources

I'm a little late to the game, but the hunt for quality middle school resources is on! I've had pretty good luck so far with google search and am hoping to continue to find new things to add to my middle school binder.

Reading Comprehension & Written Response

1. K12 Reader: Awesome worksheets that work for multiple goals. The best part is that they are all free!
2. ReadWorks: Another fabulous and free website that offers reading comprehension passages.
3. Student News Daily: News articles aimed at high school, but some of the shorter articles may interest middle school students too.
4. Smithsonian Tween Tribune: News articles aimed at various grade levels. I've written up questions to go along with the news articles I select.
5. Newsela: News articles aimed at various reading levels. I've written up questions to go along with the news articles I select.
6. Time for Kids: Another great site for news articles. This one doesn't include lexile levels.
7. Wordville: This has some interesting reading passages, but it is more difficult to save them.
8. Mr. Nussbaum: Great site for reading passages on levels from 2nd-5th grades.
9. TSL Books: Another website for free reading comprehension passages.
10. Super Teacher Worksheets: This site has some great reading comprehension resources at various grade levels. They are even nice enough to offer some of these for free as samples of their work. I love their freebie activities and only wish that they would offer more!

Go for the gold.

I know that it's a little early to be talking about March, but somehow I just couldn't wait any longer to share one of my favorite crafts for St. Patrick's Day. 

The top hat can be used for pretty much any goal that you need to work on with your students. I initially used this craft to focus on parts of speech. My example contains adjectives for MacKenzie O'Shamrock from The Luckiest Leprechaun story. If you notice, I left off his actual name so my paper so that my students would have to guess who my card was about. 

For my older students, I had them write their adjectives into sentences that described their object.

You could also adapt the craft into a mobile by hanging the gold pieces on pieces of thread rather than placing everything on a sheet of construction paper.

I also included a tiny bonus to this craft packet--- idiom cards and a short vocabulary game!

Grab your copy of the Irish Hat Craft here.

Pinterest game gold

Right before Thanksgiving break I stumbled across a little piece of pinterest gold that I have to share with all of you. It's called Ho, Ho, Ho or a Lump of Coal. (I just call it the Santa game.) The principle of it is very simple: if you get a Ho, Ho, Ho card and take an extra turn. Coal cards mean that you have to return all your cards back to the stack.

The teacher who came up with the idea used it for sight word practice. I, on the other hand, decided to write Christmas related words that my students either have to describe or use in a sentence. You can easily make articulation versions too (or just take the lazy way out like me and tape the special cards to several of your articulation cards).

It has been a huge hit in my room this week with all of my grade levels. I highly recommend making your own set before the holiday season is over. If you can't use the holiday version, I created a simple winter themed-version that you can grab here.

Who doesn't love monsters?

I know that monster stuff is generally more appropriate during Halloween, but I have a few students that want monsters all the time. I decided to give them an extra treat here at the end of the year by using a monster theme to review a few goals. There's nothing wrong with a little additional motivation after all.

The premise behind Monster Synonym and Antonym Review is simple. The student will pull a card out from the pile (I'm using my Pokemon card holders) and provide either a synonym or an antonym. My older students get to write the word on the card to add in some multi-sensory elements. They have to try to "collect" as many cards as they can. The cards can then be put inside a paper bag monster that they create using either the boy or girl monster at the end of the pack.

You could even use these for vocabulary. Grab your copy of the file here.

Vocabulary is going to the leaves.....

All the leaves are falling down

Falling down, falling down.

All the leaves are falling down,

It is fall time.

They are yellow, red and brown,

Red and brown, red and brown.

They are yellow, red and brown.

It is fall time.

Take the leaves and crunch them up,

Crunch them up, crunch them up.

Take the leaves and crunch them up.

It is fall time.

One bag of fabric leaves from the dollar store, one black sharpie, and Googling fall vocabulary words.

Deciding which words are Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III. 

Write on the leaves with paper underneath in case of ink bleeding through the thin fabric.

Wrap them up and pick some books.

Use them with the Expanding Expression Tool.

These are the ones I'm leaning towards this year:
Fall Book List
1. Mouse's First Fall (PreK-1st)
2. Let it Fall (PreK-1st)
3. It's Fall (PreK-1st)
4. Leaf Man (PreK-3rd)
5. Fall Mixed Up (PreK-?)

Thanksgiving
1. The Littlest Pilgrim (PreK-2nd)
2. Ten Fat Turkeys (PreK-1st)
3. I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (PreK-2nd)
4. Thanksgiving Is... (2nd-5th)
5. If You Were At the First Thanksgiving (2nd-5th)
6. If You Sailed on the Mayflower (2nd-5th)