Pinterest project

Pinterest is full of wonderful ideas if you are someone who enjoys making therapy materials. I'm not the best at crafty creations, but I was inspired by a photo that one of my coworkers recently posted. It's a Guided reading beach ball by Carson-Dellosa. 

Now, I am NOT going to pay $7 plus shipping for two beach balls. I would rather put that money towards a Super Duper purchase. However, I loved the basic concept of using beach balls to make reading more fun in therapy. Dollar Tree to the rescue! 

Supplies:

1-2 Dollar Tree Beach Balls (you may also be able to find these at Target's Dollar Spot)

1 Fine Tip Sharpie Marker

1 Flat Surface

1 List of questions

I like the questions that are featured on the commercial beach balls. I typically ask my students what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. I also ask them about the setting, characters, and main problem. 

Write your questions on the beach balls using a permanent marker. I prefer Sharpies, but I'm sure there are other brands of markers out there that you could use. A flat surface as well as a ruler will help you write evenly.

I can see this eventually morphing into a project for articulation and social skills as it is one of the easier projects I've seen. For some other cute ideas on how to use a beach ball in therapy, check out this post on Speech Room News.

Of which she went learning

NC DPI's Summer Institute in brief review by a slightly worn-out, wishful thinking, and sleepy SLP.

See-the-Sound Visual Phonics- 2 days of awesomeness. I don't know ASL so my hand was very sore from all the repetitive practice of the phonics signs. However, I think this will be great to try with my students who struggle with reading, hearing impairments (only have 1 at the moment), and possibly nonverbal ones too. I love that the hand signs are designed to imitate the shape of your mouth when you utter a specific phoneme. It's something that can even be used in articulation therapy to help students think about the way they are shaping their mouth, which is a great addition to my fondness for sound  names/puppets. If you get the opportunity to take this course, I highly suggest taking one offered by their national trainer. She's an SLP and is really great at explaining all the different uses it has for therapy.

Letterland (Kindergarten)- 1 day of wondering what I signed up for....I guess the dreaded 2nd scenario (aka the vortex of confusion) had to hit sometime during the week. Letterland did not live up to my expectations. It felt like I was trapped in a giant infomercial where price tags and "non-essential purchases" kept hitting me over the head with a huge price wand. The characters and gestures are cute. I can see how it easily attracts attention and motivates the kids. However, I don't feel like it's very practical to me as an SLP unless it's used during a push-in session. The regular education teachers in my district don't use this program currently so my guess is that I won't be able to have that experience any time soon. Oh well....maybe I will go to love it, eventually?

Social Skills Across the Lifespans- 1 day of interesting. Social skills are probably one of my weakest areas as an SLP (after behavior) so this class was the one I really wanted to take this summer. It was a great decision. The SLPs leading the session gave great information about assessment and intervention. They even talked about relating it to Common Core! I am hoping that I can use some of their ideas in therapy this year with one of my students.
     One great resource that I learned about is Social Thinking! and Michelle Garcia Winner. There's something called a "double interview" that you can do as part of dynamic assessment in one of her books. I'm planning on putting some money aside to purchase this book in the near future. (This is not the wishful thinking aspect though---that would be attributed to my insane desire to go back to school for a PhD while having no idea about what I want to specialize in.)


In other news, I managed to score a Phineas and Ferb 104 Days of Summer game for $3 at Goodwill today.    I haven't looked too much at the cards. I know that it has following direction tasks and will be a way for me to help the kids learn their days of the week. You can read a review here.

The joys of Dollar Tree

I probably will be too tired to work on blogging much this week. I have 4 days of workshops to go to and a grandmother to visit.

This weekend I went to dollar tree to scout out their school supplies before tax-free weekend. (Check out this site for a list of states that hold tax-free weekends: http://singleparents.about.com/od/cuttingcosts/qt/TaxFreeHoliday.htm). I like to go scope out the stores a week or two in advanced to see if there is anything I don't want to miss out on. If there is something I feel really strongly about, I will usually go ahead and buy that item to avoid disappointment later.

Dollar Tree has several new items in their School Tree line-up. I bought three sets of classroom posters: "Monster Manners"-- plan on making a tissue box monster and letting the kids act out different social situations; Parts of Speech-- will just use these to decorate the room/discussion; and Punctuation-- room decoration/discussion.

I know that the boys will love the monsters. Hopefully, I can make a manners book to accompany the craft project. I have a set of 8 Disney Princess books that I can use with the girls. They will get to use paper dolls for their craft project (unless they request monsters too...).

I also picked up three sets of cards: antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms. I have older students who will use these rather than the picture set I bought last year for my younger ones. They also have sight word cards for each grade level.

Pre-workshop jitters and the joys of church yard sales

Next week, I will be going to several workshops. It will be my second experience going to a workshop (let alone 3 different ones) and the first time participating in my state's summer institute program. The courses I'm signed up for don't necessarily scream "SLP", but hopefully they will be useful with my younger ones.

Visual phonics- as I have a student who suffers from a hearing impairment
Letterland for Kindergarten- the EC teachers at my school use it
Social Skills Across the Lifespans- the one that best meets my needs as I'm still grappling with teaching students social skills. (I blame this on being an introvert and feeling socially awkward myself as a kid.)

I'm worried that the four days will be packed with so much information that I won't be able to retain it all. My brain needs to retrain itself from the joys of having a semester-long indulgence in knowledge.

Now on to the more happy topic.....

One of my favorite types of yard sales are ones that support religious organizations. (And, it has nothing to do with my religious beliefs.) Churches and youth groups put on some of the most well-organized yard sales in my community. The items are usually displayed clearly on tables rather than in piles or mysterious heaps in overflowing boxes. Perhaps, I am a yard sale snob? It's just so much nicer when you can clearly see everything.

This past weekend, I convinced my mother to go with me to a 10 family yard sale in support of a Church. It was a very pleasant experience because I got this little guy.....

for FREE. I plan on using him for an articulation game by replacing the hot potato cards with my Weber ones. The kids pass him around and when the music stops, they have to go through the articulation cards and lose the one that they produce (at whatever level) the best.

I also picked up some old conversation cards, Let's Talk!, that were originally intended for learning foreign languages. I plan on using them for social situations as the prompts ask the speaker to act out what he/she would do in real-life scenarios. It absolutely amazes me to find items intended for ESL or teaching foreign languages that can be modified for speech. My favorite find are the "Phonics Monsters" from laternfish. I used them for phonemic awareness as well as articulation last year.

Love Books in Therapy?

In my brief experience as an SLP, it has come to my attention that everyone does therapy differently. It's not all that shocking really since that's true of many professions. However, it can be frustrating as a graduate student (especially an out-of-fielder) when you are desperately trying to please intimidating supervisors.

My therapy style is rather laid-back as I'm a pretty easy going person. I also love to do creative projects/concepts. This equates to my therapy sessions consisting of more craft projects (paper plate owls, making cards, making posters about nouns/verbs, making ghosts out of milk jugs, etc...) than games.

 I also use a ton of books rather than the school computer. The English major deep within my heart believes that it's a great thing to expose children to text and to combine it with items that they can manipulate (ie...making a Rainbow fish by tearing up pieces of construction paper & gluing it into a collage). I also feel rather strongly about this because so many of my students just want to play games. (Don't get me wrong, I love how easy it is to incorporate games into therapy.)

So here is a helpful hint to those of you who love book-based therapy:

Library Book Sales

I love library book sales because the sales of these books go to something that I strongly believe every community needs...a public library. I feel very fortunate that my mother took me to our library as a child to listen to story time, check out wonderful books, and participate in many of their special programs. It's a small way that I can give back to the community without breaking the bank.

In my community, the FRIENDS of the Library have a bookstore that is open several days each week. It is a peaceful place with the reasonable price of $1 a book for paperback & children's books. Hardbacks vary depending on the popularity and condition, but most of them are only $2. These prices are pretty much the same as what I have to pay at Goodwill. I also shop the sales at the library in my grandmother's small community. They typically ask .10-.50 for their children's books. I managed to get The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly for .25 cents last week. Don't just take my word on it though, here is a link to another blogger who supports these sales too.



(And, yes, this is my way of procrastinating work on my Common Core Goal Bank. I've started 5th grade for Speaking & Listening, but the daunting task of Language is still ahead of me.)

Busy Bees

I went to the Dollar Tree this weekend to see if I could get a hold of a couple those echo microphones that I used to play with as a kid. They seem like a great idea to get reluctant kids to work on their articulation drills. While I didn't have any luck in my hunt, I did find something that I plan on using for articulation therapy.

It's actually made for classroom door decor as part of their "teaching tree" line. It's a bee hive with a bunch of little bees for student names. Well, I thought it would be perfect as a game for those pesky /z/ sounds. I plan on laminating all of the pieces and attaching velcro to the bee cards. This way I can use the cards for whatever position I happen to need. The kids get to put their picture on a bee once they correctly produce the sound (or say it 5 times, in a sentence, etc). Students who don't have /z/ as a goal can use it for language goals (use the picture to make a sentence, etc). The student who earns the most bees wins the game.

If you are lucky enough to land one of these little beauties, here are the clip art pictures I plan to use:

Initial from another blog I found (as I don't have Board-maker and clip art failed me)
Medial & Final

Common Core

I have been a very busy person lately. The Common Core is on my mind much as it is on many educators. Many people have enjoyed training sessions provided by their district or from workshops. I find that these sessions result in one of two scenarios: a) I actually get this! I am superwoman! (aka...Knowledge empowered) or b) I feel like I knew less when I started out. (aka...Completely clueless). My general state of being at the time of my district's training sessions was overwhelmed from all the other stuff I needed to learn as a CF. You can imagine the scenario I ended up in......

Therefore, I have devoted quite a bit of time to reviewing the Common Core standards on my own. I wish I could say that I understand everything, but it feels very far from it at times. My main goal is just to get a grasp at how it will affect IEP goals. The only way I know how to do this is create a goal bank. 

Here is a peek at what I've been up to.....................

Common Core Speaking & Listening Goal Bank
-Kindergarten 
-First Grade



BTW, if you want a PDF of the standards for each grade there is a nice website to visit.