Here’s What’s Happening In November!

Here’s what’s happening, at least what I’m planning to happen during November.

We will be reading many Thanksgiving themed books. Here are a few of my favorites.

Students love this interactive pop-up book. I try not to hold it too far away as little hands always want to reach out and touch!

The bright photographs in this book, always get students talking. I can’t get through this books without some good discussion, which is a good thing!

Who doesn’t love a book with a little suspense? This is always a crowd pleaser with the students.
This catchy sing-song book is perfect for targeting vocabulary.

The repetitive simple text makes this book the perfect book for expanding language.

Of course we can’t have Thanksgiving without Granny!

We will also be reading a new book, that I hope becomes a new favorite with the students. It’s called Turkey, Turkey What Will You Eat? This is a fun, interactive reader that will target vocabulary, answering “wh” questions and using future tense. You can find this book, as well as some other fun Thanksgiving Activities in my new product on Teachers Pay Teachers.

We will be playing Thanksgiving Bingo, which is also available in my Thanksgiving product.

We will also be using other activities from the product that will help us to target spatial concepts, pronouns and possessives.

As far as crafts, I think it will be fun to make these leaf turkeys.

We will also break out the dish washing brushes to paint the feathers on these cute turkeys!

In our class meetings we will be watching more teamwork videos. We will also be continuing our class activities that help promote participation, cooperation, listening, communicating, patience and body awareness. Even though Halloween has passed, we haven’t had a chance to play the Name Web with all of our groups, so that will continue into November.

This is the plan. Hopefully we get to everything as well as some other activities that develop over the next few weeks!

Here’s What’s Happening in May

May is looking like it is going to be a busy month! To start with, it is Better Hearing and Speech Month (BHSM).

To do my part in helping raise awareness about communication disorders and how they can be treated, I am going to challenge myself to participate in the Instagram Photo-a-Day challenge hosted by Jessica over at Consonantly Speaking. I will TRY to post a different picture each day in May. Each day has a different theme. I’m a little worried about day 3 – decoration, not exactly my forte. You can find out more about the challenge here. You can follow me with my Instagram link on this website. We’ll see how I make out! Should be interesting!

What we are reading this month? So far I have plans for the following books:

These bright and engaging books are loaded with descriptive vocabulary and always get the students talking! We will be doing some related activities, games and crafts.

What kind of crafts you ask? Well, I thought it might be fun to make caterpillars with marshmallows. The students never know we are working on concepts, sequencing, following directions and vocabulary when we do arts and crafts! They just think we’re playing…and we are! Hopefully we will be making some other bugs. Still deciding on which ones… hmmm…

We will also be using the Spring Language and Activity Pack by Kathryn from Teaching Talking on TpT. The students love using the interactive manipulative pieces. This is already prepped and ready to go!

I just discovered The Alberta Speechie and love her fun, engaging, kid friendly, hands-on activities. In keeping with the bug theme we will be using one of her activities:

Students who are working on articulation and fluency have been enjoying coloring open target drill sheets like this one. We will be using more of these available for free on TpT.

Our lunch groups have been enjoying playing with this beautiful, wooden doll house that was donated to the speech/OT treatment space by a generous parent from the school. True confessions, Kat (the OT) and I MIGHT have had some fun playing, I mean setting it up for the students.

Our second grade class meetings will continue to play What’s Yours Like, created by yours truly, which is a spin on the popular, family board game. The students have been getting the hang of this fun game that the whole class or a small group can play.

I hope the students don’t have Granny withdrawal this month! This might be the first month we don’t read “An Old Lady Who” book. I think they’ll all be fine with the other fun things happening in the speech room!

Thanks for stopping by,

Renee

What’s Happening in April

I’ve been wanting to share some of the daily happenings that occur in the speech room. I love that fellow blogger ChelseaSLP posts her weekly lesson plans. I thought I might try to post a general preview at the beginning of each month. These are general ideas and not all children will participate in each.

WHAT WE ARE READING: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog, Leap Back Home to Me, Growing Vegetable Soup and Three Stretchy Frogs.

Language therapy in my speech room is almost always literacy based. I would like to devote more time to that in another post so I will leave it at that for now.

WHAT WE ARE PLAYING: We are using lots of games during articulation sessions. Let’s face it, drill work can be a little dry ( I might liken it to learning to conjugate verbs when first learning a foreign language). This is where we use a little trickery. We mask the dryness of drills with fun games, crafts and activities. This month we are playing Fill the Farm Stand Game. We are also using Roll and Cover Game boards found here on TpT. Students also like using the spring themed boards for Seasonal Chipper Chat.

During class meetings in some first and second grade classes we have been playing a Spring Themed Taboo Game. Why are we playing? It targets describing, explaining, listening, drawing conclusions and participating in social interactions. Oh, and it’s fun. We are hoping to play a What’s Yours Like Game, in an adapted, child friendly version. This is still in the works.

To target some structural goals we are using Pronouns and Prepositions for Spring. The students love acquiring new seasonally related items for their boards and describing what they have. Many of the students can identify spatial concepts and follow directions involving them, but when asked to describe a location the response is often “it’s right here”. Not in my speech room! We will also be using spring themed barrier games (still in development). I am a huge fan of barrier games and I will probably devote a post specifically to that at another time.

WHAT WE ARE DOING: Hopefully we’ll get to some fun crafts like this cute garden picture. (Notice some similar themes between some books, games and crafts??)

Why are we doing crafts? Crafts provide a fun and meaningful context to target sequencing, following directions, concepts, vocabulary, and it’s just fun to do. It also provides students with a hands on experience that can be talked about at a later time (relaying past events).

Hopefully, we will get a chance to re-pot some of our plants. Why are we doing this? Three reasons. One, the re-potting provides the same opportunities as when doing a craft. Two, we use the plants as a daily “job” for some students. Three, they’re not going to make it much longer if they’re not re-potted. Can’t have a watering job with no plants.

JUST FOR FUN: The second grade boys who come for articulation therapy have really been into sticker charts. I decided to try to make my own and take their requests. I’ve only done a few and they’re nothing fancy but the kids don’t seem to mind. Help yourself here.

Spring vacation is the week of April 19th. Every year we think it will be the last year with a break in February and a break in April. Best to enjoy, in case it’s our last April break.

Hopefully these are just some of the activities we get to this month.

Renee

Today’s Co-Treat with the OT

Today we had another fun day of co-treat sessions. I’ve mentioned our lunch groups previously; today highlights a typical, traditional speech and OT group. Today’s group was comprised of six kindergarten aged students who all receive speech/language, OT and resource. Our group time is 30 minutes. In addition to the speech room, Kat (the OT) and I share a classroom for treatment. This group takes place in a classroom.

Here is a breakdown of how we run a typical group.

1. Students enter and put their schedule books on a designated shelf and proceed to find a poly spot on the floor for a GoNoodle video. Side note- we use poly spots all the time to help students become grounded and mark their space…more on that another time…

2. Students transition to the next area. Today it was to the carpet to read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick. Yes, we did have the Easter dilemma. Sometimes we change the words to Spring Bunny but since all of the students celebrate Easter we went with Easter Bunny. Sometimes we read at a table, sometimes we read on the carpet. We try to keep a routine with some variability. We want kids to rely on the language and not just the routine. Students take turns feeding the old lady, nicknamed “Granny” by one of students this week. Funny how the kids never get tired of “feeding” the Old Lady and anyone or anything for that matter.

3. We use a transition question to move to the next area for the next activity. Today students had to recall an item that she ate. Students aren’t allowed to repeat what another student has said so they need to listen to each other. Sounds simple but this can be a challenge for many of our kids. They are learning that this is a group expectation.

4. Today we borrowed a great idea from Katie from playing with words 365 Sequence necklaces! Graphics are courtesy of her site. First we had the students cut all the pictures of the items the Old Lady swallowed, in the correct sequence. As a modification for those students who have trouble cutting, we imported the pictures into Boardmaker and surrounded them with a bold outline, giving children a better visual of where to cut.

5. Next the students sequenced the pictures onto a necklace. Targets include: sequencing, fine motor for threading and following directions. Notice the cotton ball to hold the pictures in place on the end of string…feels a little better than a string knot on the back of the neck.

6. If we had the time, we could have had the students re-tell the story using their necklaces. Where does 30 minutes go?? Truth be told, we probably started late and went over late so it all works out.

7. Sometimes we have the students fill out a journal sheet to report on what they have done. Sometimes we send home a sheet completed by us so that the parents can ask about the session with their child. Here you can find a copy of the sheet completed by us: speech OT group communication. Feel free to copy for your own use or adapted use.

Why do I love co-treating with the OT? Well, first of all she has made me a better therapist. I now consider sensory, motor and regulatory needs in a way that I didn’t when I first started out. (That wasn’t on the grad school syllabus when I was in school). When you have that moment when a student accomplishes an anticipated skill for the first time there’s someone there to share the joy. When I’m feeling like the well of ideas is dry, Kat is there to fill it up and vice versa. No matter how good we are, we can’t see everything in a session. It’s always nice to have another set of eyes when reflecting on how the session went and what to do for next time. I could go on but I’ll save some more for next time..

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Today’s Co-Treat with the OT

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