Uncategorized – Page 11 – In Spontaneous Speech

Most Useful Apps

28 May

May 28, 2013 Cindy 0

The school year is coming to a close and it will be time to return the iPads to the technology department. We don’t always get the same iPad back in the Fall. If the technology department has completed updates it is possible they come back wiped clean. I didn’t keep a list of apps last year and I regretted that. I decided to post my most used apps on the page now called Videos and Apps. Maybe you will find one you haven’t discovered yet. They were all free when I originally downloaded them.

I thought I would also write a bit about how I use what I call my Pretend Play apps. Three of my favorites are Toca Hair Salon, Toca Monsters, and PlayHome Lite. I use these boards frequently with my students in the Life-skills programs. I have found I need to create a lot of structure and routine or it becomes the student making a lot of random hits on the screen and basically zoning me out. If there are two students, it is often difficult to get one student to give up their turn to the other student. I don’t find a session very fruitful under these conditions. Maybe you have had that experience too. I have found that adding activity based communication boards to go along with the apps adds the structure and the control I need.

I use Boardmaker to make the communication boards and usually start with a pretty basic framework. My pronouns and nouns are on the left side of the board. The next section contains the verbs needed, then prepositions and adjectives. I leave the right side for my My Turn, Your Turn, Finished, exclamations like Oh-no, and Do it again. By keeping the basic framework the same, the student becomes familiar with the icons and knows where to look for them. You do too which makes it easier to model the sentences. If you keep your framework similar, you can make new boards easily by using the same framework and only replacing the vocabulary you need for the new activity. I use plastic protectors and just slip the new board in. This has saved me from laminating.

Quite a few of my students are working on using two to three word phrases using carrier phrases such as “I have____”, “I want____”, “I need____”, and turn taking. I require them to use words or the communication board before manipulating something on the iPad. They then indicate Your Turn to the next student. I model this behavior as I play with them and it isn’t long before they are talking with me in a more natural context. It also works if you are working on subject pronouns and verb forms. I model which tense of the verb I want them to use such as future tense on something they “will” do. I am posting pictures of two of my boards I use with the apps “Play Home Lite” and “Toca Hair Salon”. Has anyone else discovered this works for you?

Making Descriptive Sentences for an Easter Activity

16 Mar

March 16, 2013 Cindy 0

I have five days left before Spring Break and I realized Easter is coming faster than I thought. It will be done when we come back from Spring Break and I haven’t even pulled out the plastic Easter eggs. The Easter eggs always add a little variety to the speech therapy sessions. In preparation for this, I updated the Descriptive Sentences Activity that is in the Expressive Language section. It now has 20 basic sentences and I added color and visual cues to the spinner. It is free at the TPT store here. I will print out the basic sentences and insert them in the eggs. The students will pull them out and spin the spinner to make more elaborate sentences. If they succeed they will keep the egg. If not, it will get thrown back into the basket. I will give some sort of little prize to the person with the most eggs.

Eggs-actly Descriptive Game Cards

3 Feb

February 3, 2013 Cindy 0

I made a set of egg cards a number of years ago that I always brought out in the Spring to go along with Easter Egg themes. They evolved from the barrier game cards that are available for download in the social language section. I decided they could use an update so I increased the number and difficulty and added a BINGO game. There is now a bigger range from simple to more difficult. The full set is at TPT. I put 12 of the cards for download here ( Eggs-actly PDF wordpress) . so you can try them out. I had a fellow SLP that works in the middle school use them this last week.. She said they kept the students interested which is not easy for this age group. They were able to progress into the more difficult ones. I did make some adjustments. I had made multiple color spots and they tried to tell the location of each spot. I thought that was a little too much so changed the spots to the same color.

These cards have been used with 3rd grade to 7th grade students to target descriptive vocabulary and to follow multiple directions. The cards range from two step (make a green star in a red triangle) to more complex directions that require 5 or more steps (draw red lines that intersect perpendicular to each other in the center, draw a red triangle in the upper left corner, a yellow circle in the upper right corner, a green heart in the lower left corner and a blue star in the lower right corner). The following vocabulary can be elicited: inside, parallel, diagonal, end, striped, spotted, across, center, corner, intersect, above, below, vertical, horizontal, half, between, left, right, perpendicular, heart, square, diamond, triangle, rectangle, and star.

I’ve also used them to elicit r,l,s and blends in multi-syllable words in spontaneous speech. They were especially good for practicing the th sound in that pesky word with.

You can use them in the traditional speech therapy games of matching, go fish, following multiple directions, and mystery card.

I also used the cards with a free app called Educreations. It allowed the students to use the iPad for drawing. It seems anything with the iPad is very motivating. I liked it because I didn’t have to deal with markers. I hope you have fun and let me know how they work for you.

Go For Broke or Maybe Gopher Broke.

18 Jan

January 18, 2013 Cindy 0

This was a difficult week to get through, mainly because the cold that has been running rampant through the school population finally got me. Even after taking a day off, I haven’t had as much energy. Our neck of the country was also settling in for a cold spell when the boiler gave out in the main building. It made the classrooms quite cold. You just never know what teaching environment you will have in these older buildings. I am looking forward to the three day weekend.

The title of my post this week refers to a video I put in the video section. Look for Gopher Broke. I used it this week to talk about prediction, developing conflict and story plot. It is a 4 minute animated video that does not have words and is great for interpreting what will happen next. I stopped it along the way and asked students what clues they noticed and what predictions they could make from them. We also talked about what details in the story made it interesting.

I used the video to lead up to my instruction on story telling. I have used a free app called “Toontastic” in the past that the students have really liked. Unfortunately some of my students are obsessed with fighting scenarios and can’t get past these to develop other forms of conflict or plot. They need help in getting their creative juices flowing. I came across Story Sticks on Sarcasm 101. I decided to try something similar and made my own story craft sticks. I color coded for characters, conflict, setting and miscellaneous like she did. However, I printed them out on paper and used a glued stick to glue them on the sticks. I then just color coded the tips and edges with a color crayon. I find writing on craft sticks is a bit difficult and hard to read so I opted for the paper. Click here to see what I wrote on the sticks. Story Sticks. You may want to make some changes to the list so I kept it in Word format.

Thank you and A Little of This and a Little of That

22 Nov

November 22, 2012 Cindy 0

I really didn’t know how to title this post but in the end this title seemed best. When I started this blog I thought of it as my contribution to all the people that mentored me and helped me through the years. Those first few years out of grad. school are a steep learning curve. I also wanted to help all the people starting jobs without materials. My stockpile was the only thing I started with some times. So this blog is a Thank you of sorts and a Pay Forward type of activity. Little did I know I would get so much back from my thank you. I’ve enjoyed the comments and suggestions people have made. I have followed links people have left and found a wealth of information and materials to add to my own. I have felt a kindred spirit from people across the United States. I have been honored by the nominations. Sometimes this blog is the validation that I chose the right profession. So Thank you to my readers.

This is the “This and That” portion of the post. I noticed I am coming up on 94,000 hits. Of course some of those hits are probably spam but even that is something. Someone thinks I am spam worthy. I often wondered when I started if anyone was actually reading and using anything. Then Pinterest came along and a flourish of new speech blogs and sites. I found that people actually wanted to link to me. This was good because that meant more readers. Well there is a point where you can become to successful and things start to falter. I started this blog using two free services: WordPress and Keep and Share. As with anything that is free there are some sacrifices such as advertisements you don’t have control over and a limit to bandwidth for things like downloads. There have been a few times where my bandwidth has been exceeded and people have not been able to do downloads on Keep and Share. I think this may become a problem in the near future. To handle larger loads I would need to pay for a subscription. I have struggled with how I may make this site self sufficient so it doesn’t come from the family budget.

I don’t like the idea of making a pay site because that goes against my initial intent. I really want people to feel like this is a sharing place and not a place they are pressured to buy materials. I decided teachers pay teachers may be my solution. Some of my activities could really use some updating and some people may like a colored version rather than the black and white. I will keep the black and white versions here and people can go to teacher pay teachers for an updated colored version if they like.

I am starting to update the Concept Development Activities in the Vocabulary section. I use them in my Kindergarten, RTI or push -in model. I added penguins to what use to be the Musical Chair Activity to make the cards more child friendly. Hopefully the pictures will help children who do not read.

The Musical Penguins for Concept Development is Free right now for a starter. I also posted the Train Sequence for Concept Development for a small fee. So go check them out and get a free download in the process.

For those of you who read all the way to the end, here is a reward.

The best thing I came across this week was from Chapel Hill Snippets http://chapelhillsnippets.blogspot.com/. On her November 18th post were directions on how to lock the screen of my iPad so students do not suddenly switch from their communication board to Angry Birds. This is a must have for many of us.