What's In My TpT Cart Linky!

It's that time again folks! The Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale is on 12/2 and 12/3. My whole TpT store is 20% off and don't forget to use the code CYBER to get a total of 28% off. Jenna is throwing this linky so that we can see what is in everyone else's carts and get some great ideas for things we may have missed.

I have some clip art items in there, but I want to focus on the materials. Here are my top contenders:

1. Flip Cards for Apraxia from Kathy Grover: I have some little preschoolers who need to work on CV words, so this will fit the bill.

2. Interactive Sentence Structure, Word Order & Sentence Lesson from Amy Minor: I have some upper elementary students who really need to work on producing more complex sentences. Plus, I can use this on my iPad. Score!

3. Following Complex Temporal Directions from Denise Polley: The CELF. Enough said.

4. Holiday Listening for Details from Miss Speechie: So many of my students need to work on this!

5. CVC Words Ice Cream Scoops from Expressly Speaking: Several of my preschoolers are working on final consonants. 

6. Receptive and Expressive Language Baselines from Miss Speechie: A great tool to have at your fingertips!

I guarantee I will end up buying more or changing my mind, but for right now this is what's in my cart! What's in yours?!?!

2013 Edublog Nominations

Edublog gives different blogs annually awards based on other bloggers' nominations and then voting. I can only hope to one day be among those nominated, but for now I'd love to celebrate some of my fellow bloggers.  Below are my nominations in some of the categories:

Best individual blog: Playing With Words 365

Best group blog: Speechie Freebies 

Best student blog: Speechy Musings

Best ed tech/resource sharing blog: PrAACtical AAC 

Most influential blog post of the year: Dear Your Honor (Again)

I wish I could just nominate all the wonderful SLP bloggers I've met through this endeavor! I am in love with blogging and sharing products with SLPs near and far. I can't wait to see who wins!

A-HA Moment: Invitation App

Haven't had one of my A-HA moments in awhile, so one was bound to happen soon. The other day, I was thinking about different ways to target WH questions. Sometimes I get bored (gasp) with my apps and other activities that target these types of questions. I was perusing the app store aimlessly, looking for something fun and interesting and stumbled upon this gem: Leo's Card & Invitation Maker. Best part? It's free. 

As you can see in the picture below, you have the choice to make a card or an invitation. For my purposes, I chose make an invitation.

You are taken to this page where you can add stickers and/or draw something. This would be a great way to work on requesting! When you're done, you ring the bell in the top right hand corner of the page.

You are taken to this page, where the WH magic can happen! The picture you created from the first page is now on the right side of the "invitation." You can now work on answering functional WH questions. Have your students pretend they are throwing the party by answering the following questions:

What is the name of your party?

Why are you having a party?

Who is hosting the party?

When will your party be?

When does the party start? 

When does the party end?

Where is the party taking place?

What message should you add to let people know more about the party?

The invitations are saved in the gallery. If you return to the home screen and choose "View Gallery," you can see past invitations. I like to make one to use as an example and we practice answering the WH questions from an already made invitation before making others.

Disclaimer: I was not asked by the developer to review this app. I found it useful and decided to post my own independent review!

Do you think you'll try out this app?

Love It and List It Linky

This month's Love It and List It from Speech Room News features articulation apps. Here are my picks:

1. Speech Therapy for Apraxia: I like to use this one for my young kids who are working at that CV level or who might have several errors. It's a simple app, but effective with these littler ones. I just recently saw they have a word level one as well, which I might end up purchasing!

Below you can see the different sounds you can focus on, plus there are multiple levels. 

2. Pocket SLP The R App: This is great for my older students who are working on /r/. It's simple and works well for drilling this sound!

3. Articulate It from Smarty Ears: I wrote a review about this one a little while ago. It's all inclusive and amazing. Read more about this one here.

4.  Pocket SLP Tell Me A Story: This app does double duty. After listening to a story, the student can retell it. Great for language building, but also for carryover practice.

5. Finally, this isn't an app. I frequently use the video function on my iPad and just record the student. We listen to it and rate how it sounded!

What do you use? Make sure to check out the recommendations of other SLP bloggers by checking out Jenna's post here!

Peek At My Week 11/22

We are quickly approaching Thanksgiving break! 

This week, the theme centered around turkeys! 

For my younger kiddos, I used the turkey from The Speech Bubble's cute turkey craft (found here). We read this cute book from Expressly Speaking called My Hungry Turkey (found here). I decided to use the turkey's stomach as sort of an Old Lady activity. As we read through the book, I had the kids draw in what the turkey ate. Then we retold the story - they especially loved the last part and yelled "Yuck!" quite loudly. Please excuse my very poor drawings, I never claimed to be someone who could draw! If the kids were working on articulation, we wrote words with their sound on the feathers. 

I also used Super Power Speech's Thanksgiving Mad Libs (found here) with my older kids. It was good to get their creative juices flowing with parts of speech. Before we even did the activity, we brainstormed lists of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. They got a kick out of the funny stories at the end of the session! 

My 2nd graders are working on non-fiction in their classrooms, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to read about the first Thanksgiving, so I used this article from ReadWorks. We worked on comprehension questions and summarizing. 

I had my first of two observations this week. It was a little nerve-wracking, but it went well! Have turkeys invaded your speech room yet?!

SLP's Holiday Wish List

Do you have an SLP in your life? Are you wondering what to get him/her for the holidays? Look no further. In my opinion, these are the most coveted items on an SLP's wish list:

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included for your convenience!

1. Laminating sheets: No, 50 is not enough. If you really want to get on the good side of your favorite SLP, you might want to add a minimum of 3 of these to your cart - yes, they are 200 count. Don't judge.

2. Assorted Stress Balls: You might be thinking, why would we need more than 1? Well, if you are kind enough to purchase the assortment below, your lovely SLP will be able to use them to teach categorization, object labels, verbs and much more. That same SLP can then "borrow" one to use when it's the end of the month and the paperwork mountains have gotten so high that your slightly frazzled SLP can't see his/her desk. Double duty, people. It's necessary for our profession.

3. Empty egg cartons, boxes, toilet paper rolls, and tissue boxes: Surprise, this one's free! You may think it's trash, but your SLP can work wonders with these things. Better yet, get an index card and a Sharpie and write the following: "Monthly Subscription Granted" and promise to deliver these items every month. Be prepared, he/she may jump up and down with joy.

4. A new tote: Check out Dean's etsy shop to purchase one of these amazing, personalized totes. I promise this will be a hit. Every SLP I know carries around a ton of stuff and this is a fun way to do so. And really...I mean, how cute are these?

5. Speech Pathologist Street Sign: This is purely for fun! Who wouldn't love one of these?

6. Coffee, tea, or other caffeinated beverage: Let's face it, an SLP's job involves lots of running around, late nights doing paperwork, and is generally a busy lifestyle. Caffeine is sometimes necessary to keep everything running smoothly.

7. Find a Cranium Cariboo game (seen below - sells for $160 on Amazon because it's discontinued). This is a gem of a game that all SLPs love to use. You will quickly become your SLP's favorite person in the world if you gift one of these. I'm only sort of kidding.

8. A TpT giftcard: Most SLPs I know frequent this website a lot. Why not make your SLP's day and give him/her the gift of well-priced, creative products?

9. Various colored permanent markers: These serve a multitude of uses. Ask any SLP! Most of us are all about the color coded, organized visuals. 

10. Die cut machine: There are several different types (see below for ideas). A lot of SLPs do crafts in therapy and this is the perfect way to help us out!

 

Not every SLP works in the elementary school setting, so let's not forget those in the hospital and middle/high school settings! These next few ideas would be perfect for them!

11. Anything from Michelle Garcia Winner's Social Thinking products: For the older crowd, I've used and really liked her Should I Or Shouldn't I? game. This is a great game to use in groups and has some topics that really apply to this age group.

 

12. News 2 You subscription: They have an app and in-app purchases that you can use right on your iPad. If you don't have an iPad, they have a regular subscription too!

13. Voice, swallowing, speech production clipboard inserts: These tablets have diagrams and information related to voice, swallowing, and speech production. Your SLP will love being able to rip it off and give to patients!

14. Speech Pathology Reference clipboard: Information at your SLP's fingertips is a great thing to have!! Plus it's a clipboard! We love our clipboards!

15. Prop It Speech Therapy Travel Kit: Mirror, magnetic, and dry erase. An SLP's 3 favorite things!

I hope this list has given you some fresh ideas for the SLP on your gift list. If you're an SLP, feel free to add anything YOU'D like for the holidays.

Gimme some apps!

I have found some new apps that I really enjoy using in therapy lately. With so many apps out there, I doubt you'll find two SLPs that have the same ones on their iPad! Some of my recent finds are:

• My Little Suitcase (free): This one is great for the preschool-kindergarten crowd. Choose different items based on where you're going. This would be great for vocabulary development, describing, answering WH questions, and expressive language.
• Snow Wonder (free): This one is great for the winter season. Build a snowman! Students can work on describing, requesting, and WH questions.
• Autism Emotion (free): Works on emotions using music and pictures!
• FindMe Autism (free): Find the person in the scene. You can also work on vocabulary and questions within this app.
• ABA What Doesn't Belong (free): Work on reasoning skills with this app, which can help with problem solving skills. It works on colors and expressive language skills if you have the student describe WHY something doesn't belong

These are just some of the free ones that I use fairly frequently! What apps do you find yourself using over and over again?

Teach Speech 365 is 1!!

Hooray, Teach Speech 365 has officially been around for 1 year! I'm continually amazed that people follow my blog and enjoy the materials/information I share. I'm also grateful for all the support from other SLP bloggers and the SLP community in general. I hope that you have found at least one thing that makes your life easier as an SLP (or teacher, parent, etc). I frequently use my own materials in my therapy, along with those of other fabulous SLP bloggers who have become "friends" over the past year.

In celebration of my blogiversary, I am and giving away some products/apps!

The first giveaway is for your choice of any 5 products from my store (bundles excluded) - enter that here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The second giveaway is for Articulate It from Smarty Ears - enter that here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

I will also be hosting some giveaways on my Facebook page, so make sure you check that throughout the week!

I am beyond grateful to all the support over the the past year. I have thoroughly enjoy diving into the blogging world. SLPs are a wonderful bunch of people! I look forward to what the next year brings!

Peek At My Week 11/15

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included for your convenience.

We did not have Veteran's Day off so I used the day as a loose theme for the week. For some of my language groups we read A Day For Veterans, which is a passage from ReadWorks. I have gotten so much use out of my free subscription to ReadWorks this year alone! We discussed vocabulary words in the passage and why we are thankful for the veterans who serve our country. I also found this cute freebie from Millers Flip Flops with various vocabulary words related to Veteran's Day. Suggestions were to sort the words into categories like people, places, or things or to write sentences with the words. I had some of my older students sort into "I know" and "I don't know" piles. I then provided a sentence using the word for the "I don't know" words to see if they could use context clues to figure out the words. 

I also broke out my Zulilly's purchase that came in the mail the other day: Hot Dots! If you're interested in trying out Zulilly, you can use this referral link if you want.
P.S. Once you sign up, YOU get your own referral link so you can get your friends to sign up! It's a website with daily deals for the whole family. They had a big Hot Dots event a few weeks back that I jumped on. This was new and exciting for a lot of my students. I tried the context clues box this week and it was a major hit!

Something that was not related to a holiday were these Melissa and Doug reusable sticker scenes that I picked up on sale at Target. These were great for a lot of my kids and goals! I highly recommend them and may take myself back to Target to pick up another one this weekend (like that would be a gigantic chore). I especially liked using these to have the kids give ME specific directions on where to place items. 

Did you have school/work on Veteran's Day?

Clinical Skills Confidence: 14 Early Developing Morphemes

Let's take a short trip back to graduate school and discuss Brown's Morphemes. These were identified by Roger Brown and detail morphological and syntactical elements of expressive language. Caroline Bowen has more details on her website, which can be found here.

There are 5 stages to Brown's Morphemes. Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) is expected to increase as a child's age increases. I frequently refer to these morphemes, especially with younger students. For whatever reason, I will always remember the difference between auxiliary and copula. Side note: you may receive puzzled looks if you throw these terms into everyday conversation! It's ok, fellow SLPs understand. Auxiliary means supplementary so there is always another verb, which means it's a copula if there is no other verb. Remember, these all refer to the "to be" verb. Contractible means it can be shortened (ex. he is swimming --> he's swimming), while uncontractible means it can't be shortened (ex. he was mad). 

I have created an informal screener for these 14 morphemes. It's been on my to-do list for awhile and I finally got around to it! Please note that this is not a standardized tool, it is simply meant to provide a baseline when looking at the expressive language of a child. Click the picture below to be taken to the link to download your screen (it's FREE):

A tracking form is included:

 An answer key for the screener is also included:

 Each page looks at one morpheme. The box on the left contains a target visual and verbal example to read to the child. The boxes on the right are for the child to respond to. There are different formats for this, depending on what the morpheme is. 

I truly hope this is something you can use! Feedback is always appreciated!! 

{Review} Virtual Speech Center: Verbal Reasoning

I recently got the opportunity to review another app from Virtual Speech Center called Verbal Reasoning! Stay tuned...you might be able to win a copy.

From the developer's website: This is an app for ages 12 and up to target reasoning and critical thinking skills, with over 1000 stimuli. Activities include the following: identifying problems/solutions, predicting what will happen next, what would you do type questions, pros/cons, similarities/differences, why questions and negative WH questions.

This is an example of the puzzle reward - this is not a typical "place the pieces" puzzle, rather it's one where you have to keep moving the pieces around until you get the correct picture.

This screen allows you to choose which activities you'd like to target:

This is an example of the "predicting what happens next" with no multiple choice. 

This is an example of the "pros and cons" activity. This was one activity that I felt was definitely meant for older students - middle school/high school.

This is an example of the "negative why questions" activity:

What I Liked:

• Although the app says it's meant for ages 12+, I was able to use this with some of my students who were as young as 1st grade (if I chose the right categories)
• I liked the ability to chose if choices were given vs. open-ended
• I really liked the problem solving pictures - this generally resulted in discussions that went beyond the actual question
• I love that this app targets some different concepts than in other apps I've seen, like pros/cons and negative WH questions
• You have the option to record the student's answer, which would be a great way to work on grammar 
• You can email reports to yourself

What I Would Change:

• The puzzle as a reinforcer was too hard for some of my kids and they quickly lost interest (it's a puzzle where you have to move the pieces around rather than simply placing the pieces)
• For the pros/cons activity, it would be nice to have some examples for students to "drag" into a pro or con section

Overall, I like how this app takes a different approach to language skills that I frequently target. While it does state that it's for ages 12+, I believe you could use it with younger students with some adaptations. It currently sells for $12.99 in the app store.

Virtual Speech Center has been kind enough to offer a code for me to giveaway, so please enter below: 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Peek At My Week 11/8

Affiliate links are included for your convenience!

This week wasn't a typical week. Monday and Tuesday were parent/teacher conference days, so I ran around to a bunch of different meetings. It was nice to meet the parents of my students and briefly discuss progress.

I like to have a loose theme for the week, but since it was a shorter week with students, I let that slide a little. I visited a local consignment store this week and picked up a few new games, so I broke those out for a nice change of pace. I picked up S'Match, Guess Who, and a few books that will make an appearance later in November.

As a simple craft, I cut some "N"s out of construction paper and we glued it on paper. We wrote out the month and then brainstormed some words that made us think of November. This worked well for my language groups! 

(I forgot to take a picture of this)

What did you do this week? Do you attend parent teacher conferences?

Carryover Linky

Jenn from Crazy Speech World started a linky party for carryover. This is an awesome idea because I think it's an area that our students can really struggle with. Similarly, I'm sure SLPs are banging their collective heads against the wall when we KNOW our kids can produce their sounds perfectly in our rooms and forget all speech-related things when they walk out the door.

Here's some of the things I do:

1. I did a Clinical Skills Confidence post back in August about this very subject [freebie alert]. This post gives some helpful tips about carryover, including nonverbal cues (which are my go-to method). 

2. Now that I'm back in the schools, I will sometimes "drop in" to classrooms to check up on students. It's funny when some of them will automatically start paying more attention to how they're saying words. I have also placed visuals on the students' desks to remind them of correct placement.

3. At my school, the kids broadcast the morning announcements onto TVs in all the classrooms. Getting your students to do this is a great way to take speech outside the therapy room!

4. Have your students find a peer "artic" buddy, who can help them monitor their speech in the classroom! Keeps them accountable when you're not around!

5. Tongue Twisters are a great way to start working on carryover - check out one of my first TpT products that works on these here!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else does! 

Peek At My Week 11/1

Halloween was the theme this week (obviously). I picked up these fun scratch pumpkins from Target, which made for an easy craft - that involved no prep on my part! 

I also picked up Halloween Bingo from the dollar section in Target:

I knew the kids would be out of their minds with excitement for Thursday, so I kept things simple on my end. I tailored activities around Halloween vocabulary and used my skeleton for following directions. Did you catch my TpT freebie that's simple to print and go? Obviously, Halloween is over for this year, but store it away for next year!

What was your week like?