SLPs Hopping Back Into School Blog Hop

Hello, hello, hello!! Welcome to the "SLPs Hopping Back Into School" Blog Hop!! I'm happy to be a part of this!

There are tons of freebies that you can grab, as well as amazing prizes that you could snag!

My Back To School Freebie targets inferring skills and listening comprehension. It's called When Is Your Birthday? It's time to meet the 24 students that go to school in Room 365.  

I've included month labels and cards with descriptions, so your students need to decide which month each student has his/her birthday. There is one girl's and one boy's birthday in each month, for a total of 24 students. 

Time to pull out the calendar and use your listening and problem solving skills! There are 24 students in Room 365 and your job is to figure out when their birthdays are. There is one boy and one girl with a birthday in each month. Get your freebie HERE!

Here's my clue:

So what are the prizes?!?! They are AWESOME!!!

My Back To School Basket

I'm sure everyone heard about the MASSIVE TpT Back To School Sale that happened a few days ago! First, I'd like to say THANK YOU TIMES A MILLION to everyone who purchased activities from my store. I'm super grateful and humbled that people even want to buy my activities and use them in their therapy rooms. 

Want to know what I bought? 

I know it doesn't look like much, but I haven't seen my caseload yet so I'm not sure what I really needed. So I tried to get things that I would definitely use with the elementary aged population. 

1. Social Candy Monsters from Jenn at Crazy Speech World: What could be better than monsters and candy? Monsters and candy that teach social skills!

2. Articulation Menus from Shannon at Speechy Musings: This has been on my wishlist for awhile and I KNOW I'll have some articulation kiddos. Plus, it's just a really awesome idea.

3. License Plate Listening Comprehension from Maureen at The Speech Bubble: I love this product because I can target listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary, and life skills (like travel, etc). 

4. Common Core Standards IEP Goals from Nicole at Allison's Speech Peeps: Example IEP goals that are aligned to the Common Core. Enough said. 

I also bought some clip art for some activities I have in mind...so be on the lookout for those! Did you buy any of these products? What was your favorite purchase?

S...Peachy Feedback Linky Party August 2013

Nicole over at Allison's Speech Peeps started a Linky Party last month featuring one of my favorite things since I embarked on my blogging adventure: FEEDBACK! Her post for this month can be found by clicking the picture above. 

The concept is simple: I look at my feedback from TPT and pick one person who left descriptive feedback and that person wins a free product from my store (bundles excluded). My winner this month is:

If your username is "egspeech," please email me at teachspeech365@gmail.com with your choice of product. I hope everyone has been taking advantage of the sale! 

Back To School Sale!

It's here, it's here! The TpT Back To School Sale!!! My whole store will be 20% (this includes bundles) and don't forget to use code BTS13 to save a total of 28% off! Who's ready to fill up those carts?! 

First things first: here's the link for my store --> Teach Speech 365

I have uploaded several things in the last few months that you may not be aware of, so definitely check these out:

Language Sample Prompts (check out the freebie for a sample)

Daily Lang-Tic Tasks 

QR Stars Verbs

Articulation Phone Book

Candy Coated Expressive Language (part of a bundle - see below)

Prediction Presents (part of a bundle - see below)

Two Peas In A Pod Associations

Bundles (saves you 20% versus buying each activity separately)

Mirror Activities Bundle

Prediction Bundle

Homework SMILES Bundle

Expressive Language Bundle

What are you filling your cart with? I'd love to hear, because it might be something I'd like to purchase too!

Clinical Skills Confidence: Norm Referenced Assessments

Next up in the Clinical Skills Confidence lineup: Norm Referenced Assessments

We all use them! In general, they are our "go-to" methods in order to formally assess our clients. What are they? They are tests that compare your client's performance to that of a norming group. You generally are provided with a standard score that falls somewhere on the bell curve. From these scores, you are able to derive a descriptive rating such as "mild, average, severe, etc."

I'm sure we all have our preferred tests for language, fluency, articulation, social skills, etc. This post will focus on what I do when you're not as familiar with a specific test. There are always new editions of tests coming out with slightly different guidelines and/or stimuli, so it's important that we stay up-to-date on the differences!

1. Read the manual: Things to look for - basal/ceiling (if they are used), entry points for different ages, if and when you can repeat, where to look for percentile ratings and standard scores.

2. Grab a test form and write yourself notes/add post-its: I always use pencil when I'm testing. It makes me feel better to be able to erase if I need to. If necessary, I can go back over it with pen later. I highlight or add a post-it to the subtests I plan to give. This makes it easier for me during the actual testing process.

3. Practice administering the test: Sometimes if it's a new test, I will practice saying the directions out loud, along with the first few stimuli.

4. Plan for the unexpected: That doesn't seem to make sense, right? Testing doesn't always go as planned. There can be a fire drill, your student may be inattentive, you run out of time, etc. It's ok. Usually, you are able to administer a test over several testing sessions. If attention is an issue, check out this post for tips related to how to improve a student's attention. 

What do I have for you? A FREE "quick look" sheet for tests. Print off several copies and make yourself a quick reference folder! You can then grab it for a "refresher" prior to giving the test if it's not one you use all the time. Click the picture below to get your copy!

Of course, these types of tests are not the only tests that we used to assess client performance, but we'll save those for another post!

Daily Lang-Tic Tasks: 180 Tasks to Enhance Language and Articulation

This year in my speech room, I want to have a quick language and/or articulation task that students complete at the beginning or end of the session. Why? This should allow me time to quickly check over homework, while simultaneously fostering independence in my students and giving them more practice with their speech/language skills. 

I realize this might need tweaking throughout the year and won't always happen, but that's ok.

Introducing Daily Lang-Tic Tasks:

(click the picture to be taken to the TPT link)

The concept is simple. There are 180 pages that look like the picture below:

Red pictures frames have a language task, while blue picture frames have an articulation task. 

Display these somewhere in your room. You can print all pages and display one each day OR download and pull one on up on your iPad each day.

Language tasks include: comparing/contrasting, describing, unscrambling sentences, grammar, WH and how questions, inferences, prediction, categories, social skills, multiple meaning words, problem solving, and object functions.  

Articulation tasks require access to articulation decks. There are repeats of these tasks, only because it's difficult to come up with 180 different articulation tasks. The goal of these cards was to get more trials! There is a blank page included for your to add your own. 

I realize that for some students the task of the day might not exactly hit one of their goals/objectives. I tried to make the language tasks broad in nature and tasks that would generate language. You can have your students do the tasks out loud so you can hear them, write them down (language task), or maybe have them record themselves so you can listen later. 

What do you think? Is this something you'd utilize and how?

Back To School Checklist [Freebie]

I promised some goodies and I want to abide by my promise! Today I have a simple SLP Back To School Checklist for you to grab to help you start the school year off on the right foot:

Click on the picture above to grab your copy!

The fun will continue tonight - I will do another flash freebie (10 minutes only) and I will do my best to announce it. Make sure you enter my giveaway for your choice of 5 products from my store (bundles excluded)!

1,000 Likes Party!

This morning, I awoke to find that Teach Speech 365's Facebook page had reached 1,000+ likes! 

I am beyond excited and grateful to each and every one of my followers! I started this blog in November 2012 and never dreamed that 9 months later anyone would actually read it! 

To thank you, I have some fantastic things planned. I know everyone is busy with back to school preparations, so I'm making it very simple. 

On 8/12/13, 8/13/13, and 8/14/13 I will do flash freebies. I will try to give everyone a heads up as to when it's happening. Each flash freebie will last only 10 minutes, so make sure you have fast fingers! I'm also hosting a big giveaway: one lucky winner will get to choose any 5 products from my TpT store (bundles excluded)!

Stay tuned for some other fun things throughout this week!

Enter here: 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Back To School FREE TpT Finds

Teachers Pay Teachers is all abuzz with back to school excitement! I recently decided to see what kind of free things I could find for the first week of school/therapy. 

Check out what I found:

1. Assorted Name Tags: 4 different themes included! This might be great to use with groups to have them introduce themselves to each other. All my kiddos will be new to me this year, so this would be great to help me learn all their names. You could have them draw/write things they like and then talk about them!

2. Frames: Enlarge and print one for each student. Have them draw a picture of themselves and describe things they like. A great icebreaker!!

3. "Be Kind or Be Quiet" sign: A simple reminder sign for all students!

4. Watermelon Craftivity: Write about why school is sweet! Another great way to generate language AND color! What could be better?!

5. Riding the bus social story and Back to school social story: Help kids get back in the routine of riding the bus and being back in school with social stories.

6. Fill A Backpack: Play this fun dice game and work on vocabulary and language skills. You could adapt this to work on following directions too!

7. Back to School Survey: Have your students interview each other! WH questions, grammar, and social skills all rolled into one!

8. Back To School Question Bingo: Pull out those bingo chips and work on answering questions and school related vocabulary!

9. Articulation story for /s/: Free story to work on articulation of /s/

10. Back to school spatial vocabulary: This can be played in multiple ways!

These are just 10 of the fantastic back to school themed freebies I've found while perusing TpT. Make sure you check these out and let me know of any other great ones you've found. Make sure you've "liked" my Facebook page because I often will post about great finds on there!

Bundle Fun(dle)!

I finally decided to join the bundling party! I have bundled several of my activities. Why? To save YOU money! Purchased as a bundle, you save 20%. Just make sure you have a program that will unzip the files, as all bundles are zipped. Also, if you have purchased any of them separately, I cannot refund your money (due to the nature of the product). 

Check them out:

Mirror Activities Bundle

Prediction Bundle

Homework SMILES Bundle

Expressive Language Bundle

Clinical Skills Confidence: Articulation Carryover

EEEKKK...carryover. I think it might be the most difficult aspect of articulation therapy. Why?! It requires students to take responsibility for their speech and self-monitor, which can be very difficult for some of our kids. I posted back in February about an idea for carryover that is loosely based on the game Red Rover, Red Rover. Check that out (and grab your freebie) HERE!

I've approached this skill in many a different way in the hopes of finding something that works more often than not. Alas, all kids are different; therefore, not all of them respond to the same things! Some ways that I have tried include:

1. When we first start this skill, I take a session to teach students to be aware of my speech and listening for errors. I purposely make errors to see if they can catch me. 

2. I give a number of coins (usually 10 to start with) and taking one if I hear a mistake. Usually, I start this by reaching slooooooowly towards the coin, giving the student ample time to correctly produce the word. After we've been doing it awhile, I'm less forgiving and also provide them with less coins to start with.

3. We record a narrative sample and then listen to it. I have the student count how many errors he/she made. This is more difficult to do in group sessions though.

4. The student and I agree on a nonverbal cue that I will use if I hear a mistake. Some have included tapping the table or touching my ear. I find this often works well at the beginning stages. I like that it is nonverbal, because a parent/teacher can incorporate this into daily interactions when they hear mistakes. Older children get tired of hearing someone verbally correct them all the time, so they like that this involves no talking! 

How do you work on carryover for articulation?

August SLP Link Up

All Y'all Need posts a monthly SLP link up which is oh-so-much fun! If you're a blogger and want to link up, check out her post here. If you're not a blogger, it's still fun to read about all the things your fellow SLPs are up to!   

August means back to school for a lot of states! What am I doing?

Buying: Organization items! Why?! I will be starting a new school based job! I'm not sure what my room will look like (or if I'll have one), so I have to wait for a bit to scope out the scene and then go out to buy some of the bigger things. For now, I'm organizing myself by sorting through my materials, books, etc. I also need to buy staples like pens, a planner, and other office type things.

Trying: to soak up as much summer as possible! This is a no brainer. Soon, my brain will be filled with IEP dates, goals, teachers' names, and other information. I love summer weather, so I am trying to be outside as much as possible.

Speeching: Super Duper Publications. Need I say more? They are trying out some new deals lately. Super Duper is always a go-to for materials! They usually change out the deals weekly too. 

What does August mean for you?

Twinkle, Twinkle Little QR

Who has heard of QR codes? I'm sure you have heard how teachers and SLPs (and lots of other things) use QR codes. If you haven't check out how Jenna from Speech Room News used it for a secret agent activity, how Maureen from The Speech Bubble used it in to teach social inferences, or how Kristine from Live Love Speech used it to teach vocabulary skills.

I recently came across QR audio codes, which provides audio clips when scanned!! So cool, right?! To see how some other SLP bloggers used these codes, check out how Kari from Rock Chalk Speech Talk used it to teach basic concepts or how Mia from Putting Words in Your Mouth used it to teach auditory memory skills.

A skill that I target a lot in therapy is verbs, specifically regular and irregular past tense verbs. I wanted to create an activity that would allow my students to hear the correct form multiple times if necessary (while also not being the one to say it over and over). I decided audio QR codes would be the way to go. Introducing QR Stars - Verbs (click the picture below to be taken to the product):

The colored stars have a sentence with the verb missed. When you scan the code, you will hear the correct verb form.

The black and white stars have a sentence. When you scan the code, students will hear a sentence and will then have to decide if it is correct or incorrect. 

Do you like this format? Would you like to see more of these? 

Enter the giveaway to win a copy of this activity! Happy August!

a Rafflecopter giveaway