{Review} iName It from Smarty Ears + Giveaway

Disclaimer: A copy of this app was provided to me; however, the opinions expressed are my own!

It's time for another app review! This time, I am reviewing iName it from Smarty Ears. This app is currently on sale in the app store for $14.99. Initially, I thought this app was geared more towards adults. After some exploring, I think it will definitely work with children as well. Specifically, it works well for anyone who has difficulty recalling functional words in the household. 

There is a choice of 5 rooms, including the bathroom, bedroom, garage, kitchen, and living room:

Once you choose a room, you will see a room with a variety of items. Along the bottom of the screen, you will see all the items that you can touch and see in a larger view. 

If the client isn't able to name it right away, there are a variety of cues that can help with word retrieval. You can hear a phonemic cue, complete a phrase, the whole word, or a semantic clue (a place to store dishes). This is great for learning what kinds of cues work best for each client. 

What I Liked:

-ability to target following directions along with vocabulary (touch the cupboard, then the cup)

-expansion of utterance (I see the ____, The ____ is in the kitchen)

-realistic pictures are awesome for a lot of my kids

-clean, uncluttered presentation of rooms 

What I Would Love To See:

-ability to touch the item and hear the word: I think this would work really well with some of my kids with autism, because I think they would be able to start connecting the verbal word with the item

-ability to only choose one type of cue at a time

Overall, I think this is a great app for vocabulary development, answering "where" and "what" questions, and learning functional life skills items.

Smarty Ears has provided me with a copy to give away, so please enter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Peek At My Week 3/28

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are included for your convenience.

We are charging towards April! The weather has finally started to warm up here, thank goodness. This week, there was an all day special event at my school, which shook things up a little. I learned awhile ago just go with it. I took the opportunity to push in and see how some of my students were doing during the activities. 

One of my groups is working on interpreting facial expressions. I picked up the book called The Way I Feel at a thrift store. It talks about feelings and what makes us feel different ways. We read this book together and talked about what makes us feel scared, frustrated, etc. I found these Highlights comic pages in the dollar section at Target awhile back and laminated them. They're great for interpreting different facial expressions. We took turns writing what we thought the characters were saying. These are similar to Conversation Comics in my TpT store. 

I use a modified cycles approach with some of my preschool friends. This week, I felt like letting them glue things, so I printed out worksheets (black and white) from Mommy Speech Therapy and cut them out. I cut out some squares of construction paper from other colors and let the kids glue them on while I did one on one practice with the others. They took it home for additional practice. 

Next week, I plan to use my brand new product called Design A Town!

Those were some highlights from my week! How was yours?

My Experience With PROMPT Training

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the PROMPT Institute!   

One of my 2014 resolutions was to take an Introduction to PROMPT course. I can check this one off my list! The course was 3 days long and it was INTENSE.

If you're not familiar with PROMPT, it stands for Physically Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. It is a multi-dimensional approach to motor speech skills that uses tactile and verbal cues. It is designed to help those with motor speech disorders, but can also be used for articulation or phonological disorders.  

The introduction course is 3 full days - that is about 6.5 hours each day of information coming at you.  As someone who gets overloaded with a lot of auditory information, this was a bit challenging sometimes. You're also learning a new motor skill yourself (i.e. learning all the different prompts - there is a different one for each phoneme) so it can be overwhelming at times.

There were 3 instructors who circulated the room and answered questions, corrected, your hand placement, gave tips, and did the PROMPTs on you so you could feel them. They go over the methodology behind the approach as well.

First, you delve into the theory behind PROMPT. Then you learn the PROMPTs and how to go about assessing and planning for treatment. There is another level of training that you can take once you've been using the method for awhile. 

You're taught some of the PROMPTs (there are different levels) and then you're given time to practice on each other. I definitely felt clumsy at first and it's somewhat awkward to be invading someone's personal space that much. Though after 3 days, you get used to it. I think everyone feels this way, so at least you're not alone!   

My Recommendations:
-bring hand sanitizer (they tell you this and our instructors had some, but I also brought my own)
-bring a highlighter
-bring pencils/pens (I like to write in pencil for these types of things)
-wear comfortable clothing
-cut your nails short on your dominant hand 
-don't feel bad if you don't feel at ease with it right away!

  If you're interested in taking a workshop, visit their website here.  
  I feel that it is another tool that I now have in my "speech toolkit." I have started using it with my preschoolers and have seen some results. It's great for the early developing sounds! I don't have too many kids with apraxia on my caseload, but I have used it with the ones that I do. I will say that some of my kids are highly resistant to me touching them, so that sometimes complicates things.  

Love It and List It Linky: Technology

This month, Jenna's Love It and List It Linky features technology! Who doesn't love technology?!

Here are my favs:

1. Ipad: Probably on everyone's list! With a vast array of articulation, language, AAC, and social skills apps (plus many more uses), it's a multipurpose tool that everyone loves!

2. Websites: Lately my favorites have been Watch Know Learn and ReadWorks. I like to find reading comprehension passages on ReadWorks and then try to find an educational video, because I find that method more engaging for my students.

3. Auditory Memory Stories CD from Super Duper Publications: I got these on sale awhile back. It's great to be able to have one student using this while I work with another student.

Those are currently three of my favorites! What are yours? Don't forget to check out Jenna's original post to get ideas from other SLP bloggers!

Peek At My Week 3/21

Disclaimer: Affiliate links are provided for your convenience!

Thoughts of spring were quickly derailed early this week with yet another snow day. Thankfully, the temperature has risen a bit and snow is far from everyone's mind (for now, at least). This week was a little of this and a little of that. Plus, the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! Which actually turned out to be a pretty nice day.

Highlights of the week:

My younger kids enjoyed Robert Munsch's book Andrew's Loose Tooth. I love his books! For homework, I pulled a tooth graphic from My Cute Graphics to make a quick homework sheet that I jotted down targets for home practice. This book was great for prediction, past tense verbs, and answering WH questions!

I pulled out a spring themed freebie from last year for synonyms - Bee-utiful Synonyms - to work on synonyms. I continue to use pages from S.L.A.M. too because it's quick and easy. At this time of year when I'm running myself ragged trying to assess, attend meetings, and do therapy, that's all I can ask for!

And now...drumroll please: I spent a whoppin' ONE DOLLAR on something this week that became a total hit with my kids. It is the magical giant fly swatter from Dollar Tree. You can tell that it's giant in the picture about, but I kid you not, it is giant. Like "I feel silly walking around with this thing" giant. But I added velcro to it and velcro to some laminated pictures and we had great fun slapping pictures and naming what we found. This would work quite well for lots of goals! Trust me and go get one!! 

Those were highlights from my week! What did you do to bring in spring?!

Speachy Feedback March 2014

It always amazes me when another month goes by! The good news is when the 3rd Monday hits, it's time for Speachy Feedback, where you could win a free product just for leaving constructive/detailed feedback on a TpT product. This is brain child of Nicole from Allison's Speech Peeps - so check her blog post to see if you won from other SLP bloggers!

This month, I selected two winners: one for a free product and one for a paid product.

For the free product: Marla S B left feedback on Association Poppers. 

For the paid product: Sara R. left feedback on Conversation Comics.

If you see your username, email me at teachspeech365@gmail.com with your choice of a free product from my store (bundles excluded). As always, thank you for leaving feedback!! 

Get More Trials!

Yesterday, I tried something a little different with a couple students that I don't normally see together. With March being a Code Red month, my "schedule" is all sorts of wonky (if you're not sure what I mean by Code Red, check out the link to get your own SLP Mood Decoder). Two students were working on completely different goals (one was the /r/). I was using Step Up To R from Linguisystems, which is a great step by step program for the /r/.

*I purchased this resource myself. Opinions expressed are mine from using it!*

I wanted to be able to drill the student with the /r/ and still work with the other student on what she needed. I flipped the book open to an initial /r/ page that had a grid with words. I told the student we were going to play a game and she was in a competition with herself. When I was working with her, I put a magnetic chip (from Chipper Chat) on each square when she said a word correctly. After we got through all the words, she counted up the chips and wrote down the number. Then she practiced by herself in front of the mirror while I worked with the other student. It was a good motivator and she really tried to get more chips the next time around - and I got a ton more productions that I think I normally would have!

I will definitely be using this method again! It can definitely be used with other skills - be on the lookout for a new activity that uses this idea!