In Spontaneous Speech

It is time to get ready to go back to school.

5 Aug

August 5, 2019 Cindy 0

I have worked hard on updating my TPT products this summer. For those of you who have purchased in the past, make sure you come back to freshen up your products for the next school year. You will be able to download the updated products without paying again.

You will mainly see differences in the covers and clipart. I tried to be more diverse and improved the quality. I made minor adjustments to the content and added a little extra. When I was reading some of the material, I had some of those “What were you thinking moments.”

Bundles provide a good value. You might want to consider them if you are a first time buyer and can take advantage of a 25% off sale.

In a few cases I added more to a product. I added another page of cards to “The Size of the Problem. People have asked for more scenarios so I thought I would add a little more value to it. It is included in the Social Skills Bundle. By buying the Bundle you are getting one product free.

I finished updating the complex sentence sets and they are also in a bundle.

If you are a new educator, take advantage of the free trials under the index heading at the top of the BLOG . I have been busy updating those as well. They are a good way to try out the cards on your students to see if they will work for you.

I know everyone is likely to be on a tight budget for materials. This site is meant to be a place where new and seasoned educators could get materials free or with minimal funds. It also needs to be self sustaining. There seems to be no way to do this without some advertising. Although TPT is probably annoying to some, I think it is better to have a self hosted BLOG site then have unrelated pop up ads that restricts the amount of access and downloads.

This brings me to my next topic. TPT has added a fee in addition to the commission if products are sold for less then $3. That is why you may have noticed products in the $2.00 range have raised in price throughout TPT. When a sale price is included, there is not much left going to the seller. I have adjusted some prices on products and tried to make them more worthwhile to buyer and seller by adding more pages. I am trying to keep the costs down by making my own clipart. They may not be as professional looking as some of the products, however the content is time tested. I appreciate those of you who have bought products and given me good reviews despite my odd clip art.

Click on any of the pictures and you will be linked to the product page on TPT. I hope you have a good start with your new school year.

Social Skills Updates

28 Jul

July 28, 2019 Cindy 0

The In Spontaneous Speech blog is in the process of much needed reconstruction and updating. The adventure started when I recently updated the Social Skills products on my Teachers Pay Teachers Site. This resulted in the free sample products not matching here on the site and needing updating. Of course it then became a cascading effect of changes, some external and some internal. However, I think you will like the changes. I will move on to the other headings later on, and I will keep you updated. Please read on to discover the changes.

First I updated the free product samples on the Social Skills Page, and they are ready for downloading. I started with the Social Skills Page since many of those cards were the oldest and seemed the most outdated. I used new clip art and added additional cards to some of these products.

When you have a chance, download the new free samples and replace your older ones. You can check out the new free samples by clicking on Social Skills on the index strip at the top and following the page down. You will notice the new buttons.

I switched the down load storage site so it should be easier to do downloads. In the past you may have encountered a two step process to get to the down load and sometimes may have received a message that the site had reached its maximum downloads. This was another complicating factor of the old infrastructure. When I started many years ago, I used Keep & Share, Photobucket, and a few other places as data storage sites. I had links going to 3 or more places and some of those places have since added restrictions. It made it difficult to figure out where problems were occurring if something stopped working. It became quite an undertaking to keep the links going.

Thank you for your product support because you have kept this site going and helped with the improvements since it’s conception. Very little is free in life so I am sure you aware that this site costs a bit to operate. The product sales have allowed me to get to a self hosted site with download capability within the site. This alleviated the need for multiple storage sites and all those links. I have been switching the links as I get to them.

This adventure also started because I started to cringe at some of the cards from those older sets. My clip art was less than stellar. Originally, I made them for my use and didn’t have time for frill. Now I have more time to explore digital art which was another interest of mine.

When I first started making task cards, I didn’t have experience with digital art or drawing tools you use on computers. I began drawing my own clipart because I couldn’t always find the clip art I was looking for. I wanted figures that were relevant to the content of the card and not the same figures everyone else was using. I didn’t want the clip art to depict very young children, because I know some of the students using my cards might be older than average for a grade. I knew older children may get put off by clip art that appears to depict young children. I also needed some very specific actions and objects.

Within the last year, I have acquired a notepad and stylet. I have been making digital art using the free app, Auto Desk Sketchbook. After trying other programs, this one seems to make the most sense to me. I love drawing without buying all those supplies that go with it. I discovered how to use layers, which allows you to revise drawings multiple times without having to start over, which is a real plus for me.

Before I close, a reminder to those who have purchased the full card sets on Teachers Pay Teachers, you will be able to download the updated versions free by just getting another download on the TPT site. They are all listed under the original titles. The card sets in the Social Skills Communication Bundle are all included in the update and can also be purchased separately. To get to the TPT site, click on the picture below.

I am ending this post using the thought process of Bad Thing and Good Thing. Bad Thing: Updating is a real headache and overwhelming after 7 years of building a foundation on trial and error. Good thing: Hosting a Blog has been a great hobby and learning experience. There was something cathartic about writing it all down. It gave me a boost and support at work when I forgot materials going between multiple work sites. I could bring up what I needed on a lap top or iPad. It was a great creative outlet. Finally, it forced me to look at my data files and create a better filing system.

With any such endeavors, there are a lot of chances for errors. Please let me know if there are errors on products so I can make corrections. It seems like a few always slip through. Constructive suggestions are always welcome.

Descriptive Bingo and Barrier Game with Egg Shapes

12 Apr

April 12, 2019 Cindy 0

This is a descriptive barrier and bingo game I made a few years ago. In February of 2013 to be eggs act. Sorry I couldn’t resist that. It was so long ago that quite a few of you probably haven’t seen or found that post. I thought it would be a good time to bring this activity back up for review for Spring and give you a free activity. I will put a sample download toward the bottom of the post that you can print and use.

This is one was one of my favorite activities because it covered so many goals in a mixed group. I used it with students from upper elementary all the way to high school. I found that my high school students sometimes needed a break from all that drill and pencil/pad pushing work. The vocabulary used is often found in math and science materials.

The cards can be used in a variety of ways to include bingo, matching games, go fish, following multiple directions, comparisons, and finding a mystery card that is described. You can use a pack of colored pencils and have students draw what another student describes. I sometimes used an app called Educreations which turns an iPad into a drawing surface.

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.
The cards range from eliciting two step directions (make a green star in a red triangle) to more complex directions that require 5 or more steps. For example: (draw red lines that intersect to form right angles 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).
They can also be use for articulation practice for multiple syllable words containing /l,r,s/ and blends. It provides opportunity for spontaneous speech during a structured activity.

This is a picture of one of the Bingo cards.

Click on the star below for a one page copy of cards you can print out. There is a full set of cards and bingo boards on my store at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Click for a direct link to Teachers Pay Teachers

More Tier II Vocabulary Task Cards

3 Jan

January 3, 2019 Cindy 0

Happy New Year! I hope you get off to a good start for the rest of your school year in 2019. I’m starting out the year with new vocabulary task cards. These cards are similar to the ones I made a couple of years ago using 4th grade vocabulary lists. This time I used Tier II Vocabulary lists from the 5th and 6th grade levels. I used as many words as I could that made sense within the context of the paragraphs I wrote. If you make it to the bottom of this post there is a free trial set.

They can also be used with older students who need supplemental help with vocabulary development. They do not have pictures that older students would find childish or refer to grade levels on the cards. There is a vocabulary list included for instructor reference.

Core State Standards put a strong emphasis on vocabulary words that occur frequently in academic text. These are referred to as Tier II Vocabulary. Students come across these words when reading Science, Social Studies and English text so not knowing them can make reading and understanding academic text difficult.

I am always trying to figure out how I can make the biggest impact on my students in the classroom and I think concentrating on vocabulary at the later elementary to middle school level can make a big difference with their comprehension. These cards use the words within short paragraphs so they address comprehension within text as well as giving context clues toward the word meanings.

I am going to give you a chance to try them out with a trial deck of 10 cards. If they work for you, you might want to consider buying the full set on Teachers-Pay-Teachers.

The full set has 2 sets of 16 sheets for a total of 32 sheets of task cards. There are a total of 120 vocabulary words presented on the cards. Set 2 is a duplicate of set 1 with the following differences. Set 1 has the answers on the right half but they are scrambled and the student will need to find the correct answers from the list. These are marked with Find the Answer. Set 2 has the correct answers provided on the right half and is marked as Answers.

The cards are placed on the sheets so you can choose to make double backed cards. For example card two (vocabulary meanings), folded to the back, would make a good backing for the card containing the (text).

You could also cut right half off and make a double backed card with the card containing (text) and the comprehension questions folded up to make the other side. You could keep all of them together and fold right half back to provide word meanings and answers to the comprehension questions on the back side.

Set 1 with the mixed answers will require a student’s thought process to get an answer. Set 2 provides answers for a flip side if you choose to make the cards part of a learning center and self checking. By making both sets I can differentiate the instruction for different needs and methods of instruction.

I am going to give you a chance to try them out with a trial deck of 10 cards. I hope this helps with your return lesson planning. Just click on the colored lettering below.

https://inspontaneousspeech.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/short-storyreviewcomprehension-II-5thppt.pdf

Carryover Activities for Speech Therapy

5 Nov

November 5, 2018 Cindy 0

No matter what goals you are working on with a student, there comes a time to move those newly developed skills outside your therapy setting. This is referred to as carry over. For some students we know it can be a real struggle. We all have experience with the student who does a perfect /s/ during therapy and then you see them in the hallway and they turn to you to ask “Is it my peech day?” All of that work does little good if it does not transfer to the real world. Therefore carryover skills are important to address. It is important to have this in mind from the very beginning.

There are things to keep in mind when planning tasks for carry over. It is important that the student is able to do the required task correctly in a controlled setting and hear the difference between his correct and incorrect productions before doing homework assignments on his own. If he doesn’t self correct errors he is likely to practice homework wrong which only reinforces errors. Homework should be given at the level where student is successful.

It is important to reinforce the correct behavior to get it established but after that don’t give immediate feedback every time. Instead, teach self monitoring by asking the student what they think about their production and then give feedback. This makes them responsible for their behavior and not as dependent on your approval. Children often work for approval and do not see the big picture. We want them to be self-disciplined and responsible for their actions. I often tell them they need to become their own therapist because they certainly don’t want me following them around all day correcting them.

As soon as students are at a spontaneous sentence level I encourage them to self monitor by using a hand counter or tally counter. They self monitor by making a click each time they observe themselves doing an assigned task correctly during therapy. This could be monitoring a correct speech sound, using correct grammatical structures, or using fluency techniques. All those things we tend to work on.

It is easiest to do this in an hierarchy. Train the student how to use the clicker when reading a word list or reading sentences that have the words they are working on. Then bring it up to the next level by working on more spontaneous productions. The Silly Sentences in the “Expressive” section are great for a reading task. It goes to the next level of spontaneous speech when student explain what is wrong with the sentence that was read. The Association cards in the “Vocabulary” section are also a way of getting more spontaneous output as the student explains how words are similar in meaning. I often have students working on vocabulary skills as well as sound production in the same group. With the clicker almost any task that requires a spontaneous response can work and meet a variety of needs.

There are a few bonuses for having the student use the tally counters. You can keep track with a second counter or paper and pencil, and compare accuracy of the self monitoring as well number of attempts with the student’s tally. The students finds it motivating to hit a target number of correct productions and you have data for your records.

The clicker can add natural controls at the level of conversational speech.
Often students get carried away with a conversation, and forget to monitor or allow others to talk. The flow is stopped if you need to remind them. The tally counter in their hand is a good reminder there is a goal in mind. When working with multiple students you can give an assigned number to tally before passing it to another student. The group can earn a chosen activity when they reach a certain number. For some reason the clicker by itself can be motivating to some students.

The “Social” section at the top has quite a few activities to encourage spontaneous speech in social situations. There are ideas for role playing in this section. Role playing is a good activity for practicing real life situations. Ideally you will be providing tasks that reflect real life speaking situations so students practice what they will actually be saying and then carry it over.

Here is a link to my “Home Work Rating Scale“. I have used it to get feedback from parents, teachers, and caregivers. The student becomes aware he is being listened to by others and parents know what can be expected from the student. I often use this sheet as an exit requirement. When parents have been part of the process, they are more likely to know and agree when it is time for a student to discontinue speech services.