A bad case of the robot talk.....

Spring is my favorite season. The warmer weather (not too hot or too cold), the new flowers, and just the sense of energy coming back....It makes me very happy to think about those things. The thing that I am not so happy about is my 5th year college reunion and turning 27. It makes me feel so old! I wish there was a way to freeze time for just a little bit. 

My birthday present to myself.

I know that many bloggers go all out for their blog anniversaries and birthdays, but that's not really my style. I prefer to keep things low key. So I thought I would just share a song and tell you about my latest endeavor. 

I have a couple of older students who are struggling to talk with proper intonation, volume, and rate. It's been an issue that has gotten progressively worse over the course of the year. These concepts are SO hard to teach to students. They cannot hear themselves doing it and I don't always have access to a digital recorder. (Adding that to my therapy shopping list.) I decided to make a small little book to help them practice these skills. My method is to combine a page or two of the packet with reading from a book. I love using books because of the punctuation clues. It's also easier to use books for modeling and imitation as it forces them to use a slightly slower pace. I can usually figure out which word they intended to stress in a book instead of having to ask them. 

You can grab your copy of Robot Talk here.

She's back with another thrifty share inspired by pinterest

One challenge in therapy is motivating my students to work on goals that are less than thrilling for them. Auditory recall has been a big challenge this year. How can reciting information be exciting after the thrill of copying the "teacher" is done? Well, I found these voice sticks on pinterest a long time ago for articulation and thought it might be handy. I made them back in November and promptly forgot all about using them for those groups. The bag caught my eye a few weeks ago while my kids were complaining about the recall task. Robot voices make anything more fun..........

 I added a few action sticks to add even more entertainment after the first attempt with these went well. The kids pick up a stick before I give them the target sentence. They have to use the voice or perform the action as they repeat the sentence. We do a new stick for every task.

You really can't go wrong with craft sticks and a Sharpie.