Sometimes Life is a ZOO!

I realize that last week's post was about preschool language group, but this week's lesson turned out so cute, I just couldn't resist talking about it again.

As you can guess by the title of this post, we have been talking about the Zoo in preschool. Here's what we did:

First we read the book "1,2,3, To the Zoo" by Eric Carle. My kids were immediately excited about this book because the first page showed favorite item....a TRAIN! As we looked through the book (there are only numbers, no words), we sequenced the story on the white board using some train cars I made and magnetic numbers. Each time we turned the page, I had my kiddos start chugging like a train to see what animal was coming next. Those simple movements and actions always keep them more engaged!

Next, we made our own zoo cages with a styrofoam meat tray, yarn, and pictures. The students chose which animals they wanted in their cage and then got to close them in by wrapping the yarn around. I think this activity would have been even cuter if we used stickers. I got so much language out of this craft and the kids were excited to be zookeepers!

The last thing we did invovled my monkey puppet and a plastic banana from my play food. We played the game "Do you have my banana?" and here's how you play:

1. All of the kids sit in a circle and one child is picked to be the monkey.

2. The child playing the monkey goes away for a minute while the banana is hidden in the lap of another student.

3. The "monkey" comes back and asks everyone "Do you have my banana?"

4. Once the banana is found, the child who was hiding it becomes the new monkey.

I wish so badly that I would have recorded this activity and that I could have shared it with all of you. The kids were so into it because they got to use the monkey puppet. Some of them even made the monkey do funny voices! By the time the "monkey" actually found the banana, the kids were positively giddy and it was WONDERFUL! Plus, for my lower students, this was a great way to work on yes/no questions and identifying peers. One of my students with apraxia was able to engage with his peers because "banana" is a word he can achieve sucess with. It was just one of those moments where I was reminded of how stinking awesome my job is. I love that. And I love that it happens often. I know there are many different versions of this game (i.e., "Doggy doggy, who has my bone?"), so I would highly recommend you adapt it with a puppet of your choice!

I've included the train cars to go with "1,2,3, To the Zoo" for you below. Let me know what you think!

1,2,3 To the Zoo

Clipart for this activity was purchased from Scrappin Doodles.



Community Helpers!

One of my favorite parts of my week is the "Language Group" I teach to our preschool class. It's a short, 30-minute, theme-based lesson that is always so much fun. I love planning for it and I love giving my students the chance to practice language skills in such a functional way. Plus, since the preschool is a combination of typically developing peers and students who qualify for special services, my students get great modeling and social interaction throughout.

A couple of weeks ago, we finished up a unit on "Community Helpers." I always get so excited for this unit because talking about firefighters and policemen not only gets my kids talking, but also gives me a great way to practice and introduce "who" questions. Here are some things we did:

First, we sat as a group and sorted items that belong to a firefighter, mailman, or doctor. We introduced some vocabulary terms, talked about "Who would need this?", and "What does a _______ do with a ______?"

Next I divided the kids in to three groups or stations. I'm lucky enough to have my preschool teacher and a paraprofessional help split up the work on this! They are life-savers! 

Group 1 (or the doctors) drew pictures of body parts out of an envelope and then put a band-aid on the drawn body part. We targeted positional concepts, vocabulary, and "where" questions here.

Group 2 (the firefighters) sorted items as "hot" or "cold".  This was a great way to target the concept of temperature, answer yes/no questions, and even some of those higher level questions like "Could a toaster catch on fire?"

Group 3 (the mailmen) matched "letters" (index cards) with a variety of shapes/colors on them to a corresponding envelope. Then the kids had to put their letter and envelope in the correctly colored mailbox. This was by far the favorite of everyone, as they really loved these little mailboxes I found in the Target dollar section. It was a great way to work on sentence expansion ("Three green circles"), preschool concepts of colors/shapes/counting, the concepts of same/different/matching, and PLAY, of course!

I included all of these activities in a packet for you below. I would love to hear what you think and if you do groups in your school too!

Community Helpers Packet

Short Week, Big Test

Hey all! So this week has been a very short week for me. We had President's Day off, and then the "Snowpocolypse" hit Kansas. No school Thursday or Friday for me! While I know I will have to pay for the gift of time later, I am very thankful to be drinking my morning coffee at a much slower pace than normal today. Especially because the coffee goes well with the almond cookies I made yesterday. You can find them here. I added a 1/2 a stick of butter and an extra egg to the recipe, as I didn't want to make them "crisp" like the recipe describes. I also added extra almond flavoring....love that stuff.

Anyways....as I mentioned before, the time has been great, but also leaves me a bit timid for the upcoming week. Our students are beginning the Kansas State Reading Assessments next Tuesday, and it is always such a long week for them. I haven't been asked test any of my students that require accommodations, but most of the students I see do require some sort of accommodation/modified assessment. I think all educators can feel the pressure to put in their part in order to ensure that their students are set up for success with these tests.

Last year (my first year/CFY), I was a little unsure of how I could best help my students, until my IRT (Instructional Resource Teacher- like a mentor for first year teachers in the district....she is AMAZING! Shout out to Sarah!) gave me this handy little paper with the title "12 Powerful Words that Increase Test Scores and Help Close the Achievement Gap," which was adapted from the original by Larry Bell. Since a chunk of my students have vocabulary goals, I thought that targeting "test" words throughout the quarter would be a great way to boost their confidence when testing and increase their success. I think it's important to remember that sometimes the vocabulary of a question can be tricky for a student along with the content/vocabulary of a story. Words like predict, analyze, and except can be difficult. But, if you give students the tools to understand the question they may be able to use context along with other strategies to answer questions correctly.

So....the download of the day is a selection of the 12 words (plus a few add-ins) as flashcards. Now, I realize that typically these words are best taught by actually engaging the students in activities and linking to previous knowledge, but I wanted something to use in addition to those activities as a quick review. I hope you find them useful! What are some ways that you have found boost your student's success and confidence during assessments?

Test Vocabulary Flashcards

I'm Lovin' It!

There are two things I'm loving this week: 1) It's conferences...which means an extra day off  (although the time is definitely earned) and 2) It's Valentine's week!

I've always felt that the store bought valentines just don't get enough use or appreciation. We all know how much time it takes to fill them out and stuff them with candy, and then they are most likely thrown away. Sad! So, I thought I would try and get a little more use out of them by incorporating them in to activities. Here's what I came up with:

Articulation: Students find their sound in a photo or written phrase on the Valentine and write it in a heart

Expressive Language: Students describe a Valentine using the template as a guide for the Expanding Expression Tool. For students with descriptive language goals who are not using the EET program, we just played "Go Fish" and asked for cards by describing them.

Language/Vocabulary: Students find new or unfamiliar words/phrases (vocabulary/figurative language) on a Valentine and fill in the template.

Perspective Taking: Students pick out a Valentine and determine an appropriate person to send it to.

I picked out some Transformers, Madagascar and animal Valentines to use in my room. So far the variety has helped me to please quite a few kiddos. The packet is attached for you to try out! Leave a comment and let me know what you are doing in your rooms to celebrate this week!

I'm Lovin' It- Valentines Packet

Clipart from Scrappin Doodles

Friendship Jeopardy Game

As you saw in my previous post, I have a few students I target social skills with. While I do spend time discussing and teaching the skills/strategies, I also love to give my students a chance to practice these skills. You can work on social skills by playing almost any game, but I wanted something more specific for them. Therefore, I created the Friendship Jeopardy game. Now, most of my students didn't really know what Jeopardy was, so I had to talk to them about game having categories and that each question is assigned a dollar value. Even though they had never seen the game show, they were hooked once I told them they could earn pretend money! Who wouldn't be?!?!

The game is attached for you to use and try in your rooms. To make the game podiums, I glued the squares on the first two pages of the attachment to small, manilla envelopes. Once the envelopes were laminated, it allowed the students to write/sign their names and track their money by using a dry erase marker. It was great to work on some math skills, too! To play the game, I laid the money on the table under the category labels. When you're playing it, I encourage you to ask a few follow-up questions to your students (i.e., "What might this person think about you if you said that?", "How might that make you feel?")....I never let mine get away with a short answer! I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think!

Game download: Friendship Jeopardy

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?