Light bulb moment....

     A few weeks ago I just had one of those fantastic "light bulb moments," when inspiration hit and an idea for a lesson became so very clear. I love when that happens...I just wish it happened more often!

      Anyways, I've been talking about the idea of being a "rock thinker" and a "flexible thinker" with some of my social skills students. These ideas stem from the amazing "Social Thinking" curriculum you can find by Michelle Garcia-Winner. My students and I discussed what a rock thinker might do versus a flexible thinker and also how this could impact the thoughts that others might have about us. We even role played a bit using some of the materials I found from Jill Kuzma on her website here.

    After all of that discussion, they still had a hard time thinking of ways to become a flexible thinker and strategies they could use to avoid being a "rock". It seemed that the concept of being flexible was a little tricky to understand. My thinking was that if I could provide a stronger visual to support what it meant to be "flexible", then maybe they would understand the concept better.

     So, this lead me to think, "How can I teach/show the idea of flexible?", "What material/object could I use to incorporate the idea the brain?"......and then all of a sudden it hit me. SILLY PUTTY! I remembered that when I was younger, I loved to use silly putty, flatten it out to copy from newspaper comic strip, and then stretch it out. I wanted to use this same idea to show my students how the brain can become flexible and stretch from something it was stuck on. Here's what it looked like in my room:

I found Silly Putty in the dollar toy section at Wal-Mart, so this activity was cheap and easy to do. First we drew things that our brains get stuck on. We used newspaper print paper and pencils so that the drawings would transfer. You can see in the picture above that one of my students gets stuck on Sonic the Hedgehog game.

Next, we spread out our Silly Putty and transferred our drawings on to it. We connected this with out brain being stuck on something.

Then we looked at what was stuck on our "brain." The kids loved this part. I felt like a speech magician for teaching them this!

Last, we talked about stretching, being flexible and how our brains can change too! Teaching success!

Overall, my students really seemed to enjoy this lesson. Not only were they engaged, but I felt like it really provided them with a better idea of what being a "flexible thinker" meant. Hopefully it sparked a "light bulb moment" in them as well!

A Speech Room Tour!

One thing I love to read about is how people organize their classroom space and materials. Like most SLPs, I have an incredibly strong compulsion for list making, laminating, and labeling. Nothing makes me feel better than having an efficient and organized space to work in! However, don't think for a minute that I am able to maintain my room to that standard all the time....there plenty of those days where the organization takes the backseat to writing IEP's and monitoring progress! Anyways, I decided that in an effort for you to get to know me a little bit better, giving you a peek in to my "home" would be a great idea. It's not very big, but I make do with what I have! Here it is!

This is the view of my room from the door. As you can tell, my love of cupcakes became the theme of the room for the year. My bulletin board is actually a mirror I covered up with fabric. While I loved the idea of having a mirror in my room for therapy, I was concerned it would just be too distracting for many of my students. On the wall behind the therapy table in the hanging shoe organizer, I keep my objects which are organized by speech sound. I bought this great ABC objects kit last year off of Ebay and doctored it up to work for speech sounds. 

Here's a closer look at what I keep next to me during daily therapy sessions. In the teal bin I keep log book sheets, clipboard, full page visuals (wh-questions, Expanding Expression, talking "toolboxes"), a quick drill articulation folder, and dry erase boards. The clear bin has three drawers for the following: daily preschool materials and visuals, elementary visuals and quick games, and markers/crayons. The last thing you'll see is the file box tub which is next to the wall. I keep my theme box close to me at all times. Right now I have out my January/February tub, so I hold all of my related books and activities for winter, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, and President's Day in there. Last year I felt like I had a lot of wasted space by housing all of my theme materials for the entire year in my filing cabinets, so I like that I can change them out a little bit easier this year by keeping some at home. 

This is what the back wall of my room looks like. The cabinets on bottom hold all of my games, testing materials, and craft supplies. The shelves on top hold all of my resource books organized by category and card decks. I also keep my stash of wind-up toys in there....those things always save the day! 

Here is the wall that is closest to the door and opposite of my bulletin board. Just some extra storage and a nice white-board space. 

A view of my desk and filing cabinets. I keep some "quick-reference" binders in a crate on top of the cabinets and then have letter sorting trays on my desk with the categories of "to do," "upcoming," and "file/put away" on them. 

Here's the inside of one of my game drawers. I really wanted an easier way to find my materials outside of alphabetical order, so I decided to group them by target area. I cut some colored file folders so they would stand taller and laminated them to divide things up. It has REALLY helped me find and store things a little more efficiently. 

The last thing I'll show you is the hanging file organizer behind my door. I saw this idea on Speech Room News last year (yes, I'm sure you all know that blog...it's FABULOUS) and knew it would be really useful. I snagged some great articulation practice pages from mommyspeechtherapy.com and also added some articulation sound scenes from a book I own. The finishing touch was adding a cover to each of the folders. I labeled each folder with a sound name and description of how to produce it. Last I added some pictures from a website (http://www.rachelsenglish.com/) and supplemented with some photos of one of my speech graduates. They are SO useful! 

Anyways, that is the grand tour! Like I said, at times it can be neater/messier than what was shown here, but above all I think it's really about finding something that is functional and makes you more successful from day to day. What are some ways that you have found to make your space work better for you? 

I'm back!

        I don't know about you, but I am glad to be back in a routine again. I loved traveling over the Holidays (back to Iowa to see my family and out to visit my boyfriend in New Jersey), but it is so nice to have a sense of normal. I had every intention of doing a "back to school" post last week, but before I knew it, the week was over! Ahh! I guess that's just life though!

        Anyways, I have a new game for you today! It's inspired (or "pinspired" I should say...haha) from this post right here:  http://preschoollessonplans.info/1484/snowman-color-matching/

Not only did I find it cute, but I thought it would be great to address a variety of goals, particularly with my preschool students. So, after a little work and frustration with computer graphics, I made my own version. We played it today in speech and I have to say, it turned out great! To add some extra excitement to the activity, I used my Image Spinner app (FREE!) to start off each turn. I like the Image Spinner because I can upload pictures to make it unique to the activity. I can also add audio. You can modify the spinner to just have audio if you're working on receptive vocabulary, too. Here's what the activity looked like in my room today:

I loved that I was able to target a variety of goals with this activity. Here are some ways I used this game today:
- as a basic reinforcement game
- identification of colors and color matching (also the concepts of same and different)
- answering yes/no questions ("Does your snowman need mittens?")
- answering wh- questions ("Where does the scarf go?")
- requesting in phrases ("I need a hat")
- expanding phrases (adding color words to nouns i.e., yellow boots)
- understanding of winter clothing vocabulary

        This activity was also great for a couple of my friends who are working on increasing intelligibility within a carrier phrase! I've attached the game for you below and I hope you enjoy it. The last page of the document has clothing items in gray in case you want to make your own spinner!  Let me know what you think!

Snowman Game