The Gift of Gab: September 2013

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Rules of Speech

In an earlier post, I mentioned that one of my goals was to develop a common social language in the speech room. After working with and teaching students who need social communication instruction, I realized that implementing social-based rules would benefit all of my students in the speech room. Here's what I came up with:

Using these rules as a foundation not only encourages better social thinking in my room, but also gives us a way to talk about social communication and the importance of it. I use the above five rules with most of my students, but I have a shortened rule list that I use with younger students. Here's what it looks like:

When I'm teaching and reviewing these, I put them in a little chant/dance to help the kids get in to it and remember it. Each rule has a specific action to represent it, which I adapted from the idea of "Whole Brain Teaching". So far, my students have really responded well to this and I think it's helped define the expectations in my room even more this year! I attached the rules for you to use as you wish!

The Rules of Speech

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Theme Therapy

In my last post I mentioned that I was working from weekly themes in order to establish greater consistency for my students between sessions and also to ease up the planning process a bit. In my previous years, I used "seasonal" materials often, but found that I often needed some extra things to fill the space and time between the holiday and seasonal activities. My original inspiration for doing themes came from a post I saw here on Simply Speech. The post was written by Jenn Alcorn, the author of Crazy Speech World. Jenn also posted about her themes on her own blog here. I even used the free template Jenn offered to get my own theme plans going. Here's what mine looks like:

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Long time, no see (or type rather)!

Hey hey hey! Look who decided to re-join the blogging world after a whirlwind summer and start to the school year! THIS GIRL! I am excited to be back and already have some ideas about some speech room happenings a want to share with you this Fall. Here are some updates on my life:

- I did summer school this year at one of the preschool sites this summer. I LOVED it even more than I did last summer and had a great time doing my language group lessons with a different bunch of kiddos.

- I got a PUPPY! I am the proud puppy momma of a black and white fur nugget I named Darla. Here’s a picture of her that I took after I found her climbing in her toy box:

- Upon returning to school in the August, I had to wait a bit to get in to my room as my school was still under construction from a renovation started last spring (big ugh). However, I now have a BRAND NEW speech room and I LOVE IT! I will post pictures once I feel like it’s at a good point for sharing!

The summer was a great time for me to relax, but also a time for me to reflect and set some goals for the current school year. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Have more consistency across sessions for my students. I’m planning on improving this by revising my planning binder and also implementing themes this year.

2. Develop a common social language in the speech room. I’m planning on improving this by incorporating social language concepts in to our speech rules.

3. Incorporate more opportunities for movement. Now that I have a bigger room with enough space to move around in, I want to use it to my advantage!

Those are my main focuses for the year. Do you find yourself doing this between school years too? What kind of goals have you set for the year?

As I mentioned in my first goal, I’m implementing themes this year in order to ease up planning and provide consistency. Look for some info in my next post about what I’m doing for thematic units!