Peek At My Week 5/30

This is time of year that I find myself repeating "I think I can, I think I can." The summer light at the end of the tunnel is there, but it's justttttt out of reach. There is a mountain of paperwork to complete, last minute evaluations, IEP meetings, schedule changes, etc. to contend with, which means you just have to roll with it and fit kids in where and when you can.

So this week, I'm not sharing a therapy idea. I'm sharing an inspirational pep talk: 

Make it through another week,

To get to the vacation that you seek,

It will be here before you know it,

You'll be able to soak up the sun bit by bit! 

If you're still in search of summer ideas to send home with your kiddos, you might want to check out my Audio QR Summer Speech/Language Calendars. They consist of 10 weeks (undated) of articulation, language, and social skills tasks = 150 different tasks. You will need a QR scanning app in order to scan the codes. Download the preview for a free sample! It's currently 50% off until June 1st.

Happy (almost) June! 

Richard Simmons + Speech Therapy

What? Did you do a double-take? Yes, I said Richard Simmons + speech therapy. Let me explain. I often do therapy in the school setting in chairs at the table. Obviously. It's school. But I decided to try something a little different and you know what? It resulted in increased language usage, motivation, FUN...and just a little laughter.

*Disclaimer: While this may result in some laughter because these videos are clearly from the 90's, I could possibly be convinced to do this in the privacy of my own home (haha)* 

Step 1: Search "Richard Simmons" videos on YouTube. I think this one is good. It's long, but you can choose 1-2 minute increments to show. 

Step 2: Explain to your students that you will be doing speech therapy but a little differently today. They will be watching a video and then they'll be expected to retell what happened. These are some skills that you could easily target: sequencing, past tense verbs, and prepositions. 

Step 3: Watch the clips that you've selected. Fair warning: you may need to watch it twice, since I'm fairly certain the giggles will prevent them from paying attention the first time. 

Step 4: Retell what happened. Talk about what the people did, where they moved their arms and feet, what order they did things in. 

Clips To Try:
Minutes 2-3: moved arms to side, moved arms to the front, moved arms above head, looked to the side, lunged to the side

Minutes 12-13: moved arms above head, lifted both legs, walked to the front, moved hands up and to the front, lifted up knees, moved to the side, punched to the side, kicked to the side

The above are simply suggestions! It might be fun to hear how your students describe the very fabulous moves! Basically, this gets your kids up and moving (if they want to try the moves) and that's always a plus for me! 

What do you think? Will you try to use this in your therapy room?

Peek At My Week 5/23

This week, we talked a lot about Memorial Day. I found this cute free book on Education World, so I made copies for my K-3 crowd. We talked about the vocabulary in the book and had fun coloring it.

Older kids used another passage from Nicole Allison's Spring/Summer Nonfiction Texts packet. I think I'll be using this many times for the rest of the school year. I can tailor this to whichever goals that I need to target. Some of my 4th graders are working on conjunctions, so we wrote details that we learned from the passage and made sure to use conjunctions. 

The craft this week was simple flag printout that the students colored in between language tasks or while I was working with another student: 

Enjoy your long weekend!

Speachy Feedback May 2014

This month, I was overwhelmed with some great feedback! If you see your TpT username below, you just won a free product from my store (sorry, no bundles)! Email teachspeech365@gmail.com with your choice!

Jenna S. left some great feedback about Design A Town! 

Schoolhouse Talk left feedback about my free final /p/ interactive phonology book, which is a sample of a larger packet. 

Thanks Jenna and Schoolhouse Talk! Email me with your choice of free product! Don't forget to check Nicole's post this week to see if YOU won a product just for leaving feedback on a purchase!

Double Sided Flip Book

This week, I posted this picture on my Facebook page (follow me for giveaways, sales, news, and fun):

So I promised to do a blog post on this happy accident. This is how I made it. I took a sheet of construction paper (regular 9x11 or whatever, it doesn't matter) and cut it into 4 strips. You can do more if you want. 

Then I lined them up in a downward staggered pile, like this:

Then I cut the stack in half. You can see the staggered side on the right here. It's the same on the left, just turned over: 

I flipped one side so that you can see the staggered portions on both sides and stapled it twice at the top. You can use this for anything - I used it for categories this week. 

I love those happy accidents! 

Peek At My Week 5/16

We continue to barrel through May. Which means it's a straight shot to June, people. Sort of. Just wade through those last few weeks of IEPs, evaluations (see how I keep tabs on E.I.P.), progress reports, ESY paperwork, etc. etc. etc. I should stop listing things - just doing that is making my head hurt!

This week was all about flowers! Tulips, to be exact, because I used Nicole Allison's Nonfiction Texts for Spring/Summer. I bought this during last week's sale and it's been an absolute life-saver because I don't have to think so much about planning. I built activities around the passages and we did the above craft. Construction paper and glue is about all I can handle these days (and even that can get complicated). Artic words, multiple meaning words, or details from the tulip passage were written on the tulips and carried home (hopefully) for more practice. The tulip passage had great multiple meaning words that we circled, along with answering the questions that Nicole has on there already. 

I had an A-HA moment that featured the iPad camera, so if you missed that, check it out! I found this cute free caterpillar book called Caterpillar Colors from This Reading Mama which you can find here. It was a great way to work on retelling because it was a repetitive book. It was also easy to incorporate AAC use, colors, and spring! 

What did you do this week? 

A-HA Moment: iPad Camera

Graphic: www.graphicsfactory.com 

I use the camera/audio recording feature of my iPad at least a few times a week. Today, I decided to use it differently and it was a total A-HA moment. I was working with a couple 2nd graders and we were reading one of Nicole Allison's Nonfiction Texts for Spring/Summer (<---- these are amazing and made my life so much easier this week). I was having the students answer questions and then at the end of the session, I wanted them to create complete sentences to tell me what they learned about tulips. I wanted them to self-critique whether or not they actually produced a complete sentence. 

So I turned on the camera, aimed it at the student, and pushed record. Magic happened. After the initial giggles, they were totally motivated and wanted their turn. After their turn, we talked about if they said a complete sentence or not. I can see this working for tons of skills!

Dare I say I've found a way to get kids excited about talking? I hope so!! Do you use this feature for this purpose?