/R/ You Ready?

I'm not quite sure how it happened....but this week will be my first full back at work. I would like to say that I'm bursting full of creative ideas for my room, but my brain has been pretty much focused on watching the summer Olympics and Chopped re-runs. Hehe.....I'm glad that I have this week to figure out my door decoration. 

It's empty, but it's my old "home" so to speak. I will be doing a large part of my day through inclusion so I'm not bringing as much stuff as I used to have in there. It will be much less distracting for assessments with just bookcases of notebooks and my TPT cards/card decks hidden away in the purple bins. My manipulative boxes and few games will be hidden away in the closet when not in use. 

I've been racking my brain for a little while on how to better serve my students in the inclusion setting. I'm really excited to try the Story Grammar Marker & Braidy that I bought back in April. I think that will help with many of my language groups. I will also be using the EET as always. However, I also have to figure out articulation beyond using Teddy Talker for my k-1 crowd. I prefer to do pull-out for students in the beginning process of therapy, but I want something that the teacher can see/reinforce after the sessions. I like the thought of interactive notebooks because it essentially makes a product of the student's growth. Plus, it's something that they can take pride in showing off. 

This Speech Sound Book is for /r/. I included a table of contents to make everything relatively easy to find. 

There's a word list because it always helps to have an idea of things to practice beyond the task cards I've made. 

There are practice cards and several different activity pages for the sound in all positions. 

My favorite part is letting the students track their own growth with this chart. You can print as many as you need and add them to the end of the notebook after each chart is complete. 

So if you want to test it out along with me, you can grab a copy of My /R/ Speech Sound Book here. (Please note that this is very much a trial and error project. I don't know that I will make anymore of these unless it goes well for my students.) 

Looking ahead to 2016.....

While I know it's just December, I decided to make my next product focus on New Year's so I can rest just a little bit easier during Christmas break. I'm looking forward to being able to walk back into the building after New Year's and know that I have an activity ready for my toughest group---the fifth graders. 

This Would You Rather? activity is designed for practicing articulation sounds at the carryover level. It's a nice break from reading passages, but it is also a great way to practice reasoning skills. I always make my students explain the reason why they would pick X and not Y.  

I created this activity on simple sentence strips that can be placed into many different types of containers. I'm going to use a pringles can decorated like a top hat, but some of you might use an actual hat if you have one.

Grab your copy of New Year's Would You Rather here!

Kicking up articulation therapy a notch.....

Between struggling with bronchitis for three weeks and watching two family members fight fraudulent credt/debit card charges, I have been less than motivated to do much of anything besides sleep. I did; however, discover several new materials recently that have made my life a little bit easier. 

My favorite finds are these two books of carryover stores from Say It Right that I found on Amazon. 

The Entire World of /R/ Book of Stories contains simple sound loaded paragraphs for /r/ in its various forms. Each story has 3 comprehension questions that students can either respond to aloud or write down. I typically end up asking more than just the three for additional practice at the spontaneous speech level. This book has been wonderful for my third and fourth grade students. Even though the stories are obviously fictitious, they hold the interest of my students in a way that some of the ones on Communication Connects do not (I can't complain too much about getting those stories for free though). The stories have some challenging words that I model but most of them are decodable. At $35, it is something that I would recommend for people who have a large amount of articulation students on their caseload.

The Big Book of  R Carryover Stories also contains sound loaded paragraph stories with comprehension questions for /r/ in its various forms. The stories in this book are longer and often more challenging than the yellow book. I've used it with fourth and fifth grade students, but I can see this easily carrying over into the middle school therapy room as well. I like this book because it is not nearly as difficult as the You Decide : Carryover Articulation Stories for S and R book that my previous district had. (Granted, that book is another great resource for more advanced readers/grade levels.) You can have each student read their own story at around 5 minutes apiece versus nearly 20 for the other. At another $35, it is something that I would recommend for people who have a large amount of upper elementary articulation students on their caseload.

Overall, I am really happy that I decided to bite the bullet and purchase these two books out of pocket. I can really envision using them for years to come.

Changing the routine

What do you do when you have students who get tired of your articulation drills? 

Turn it into something that resembles a game! In this case, I had to really sit down and ponder how to re-vamp the good old "S" slide (as we call it). The idea of using Chutes and Ladders didn't hit me until I pulled out my board game one day after school. I modified it to include some of the reminders that I use during my sessions as well as giving ample practice with our sound slide. 

So far, it has helped to break up the routine.

Grab your copy of Slides and Ladders for Lateral /s/ here.

Get ready to color!

 We've had too many grey skies around my town lately so I decided to create a simple craft that would add a bright spot of color to the any grey day: articulation coloring pages.

As you can see from the picture below, the coloring pages I created are in a sense open-ended. You can have your students copy down words from your articulation deck or worksheets in whatever position they need. This gives them extra practice using those fine motor skills before they get to enjoy the coloring aspect. Students who are at more advanced levels can make up phrases or sentences for each word that they write on an attached sheet of paper, for example.

P.S. If you have coloring perfectionists, I sometimes play a familiar song (Do you want to build a snowman?) as a way to give them an idea of how much time they have to color. I give them a warning in the last 30 and 15 seconds. It doesn't help for all kids, but it's another trick to keep in your toolbox.

Grab your copy of Sounding Boards for Articulation here.

Around round of grumpy cat

In celebration of the last two weeks of school, grumpy cat is making another appearance with more articulation phrases. This time he decided to tackle: initial /t, n, g, d, and v/ at the two word phrase level.

Grab your copy of the freebie here.

Grumpy Cat is back!

My grumpy category activity was such a big hit with my language students that I had to make a packet for my articulation groups too. I decided to go with initial phrases as I have so many new students working at the phrase level right now. 

The only big change I made with these cards are the clear circles. This way the cards can still be used with a hole puncher or can be laminated for use with dry erase markers. I will be doing the latter of the two choices this go round since I don't want to kill a bunch of trees every year. 

Who will be buying more binder rings this weekend? *points to self*

Grab your copy of the initial phrase packet (for /r, s, l, b, and k) here.

Because I've been on a DIY kick lately....

Craft sticks are really a gift from heaven (or whatever wonderful place you believe in). They hold endless possibilities as a tool for speech therapy. You can make Popsicle puppet people to work on following directions, turn them into a pick-up-sticks game, write vocabulary/parts of speech/articulation words on them, etc.....I love them even though some of my articulation students confuse them for the flavored tongue depressors we use to produce sounds in isolation correctly. (Many of my articulation students swear they taste exactly like suckers.)  

The jumbo colored ones are probably my favorite craft sticks of all. It's hard to find them so I recommend buying several packs. (Something I learned the hard way.) The bright colors are quite eye-catching and a great way to distinguish different targets. I decided to create an activity for my higher level articulation groups (loaded phrases/sentences). Students get to select a card to complete the sentences.

I broke the colors into minimal pair sets with 4 initial, 2 medial, and 4 final sound sticks for each sound. I wrote on both sides to get an extra bang for my buck.

This project can also be used to target carryover practice. The student(s) can develop their own story or conversation using the phrase as a topic starter. It's a fun way to let them use their creativity and inadvertently work on some language skills too.

 You could also use paint sticks if you have large handwriting.

I plan to store my stick collection in empty soup cans. I figure I'll have plenty of those sitting around once cold weather hits.

You can also make some general phrase sticks for open-ended practice. I took some smaller craft sticks from the Dollar Tree and wrote many of the phrases I use for 1 target phrase practice, such as "Do you see the...." and "Buy a new....". Again, the basic sticks can be used for activities that go beyond just articulation practice.


Recently, I purchased the Funny Flips books that were part of Super Duper's clearance sale to add in more amp up my advanced articulation groups' sessions.

I'm still a bit on the fence about these guys. My students love all of the goofy picture combinations and new word targets (2 years of the same artic decks can be a little boring). The boy's head with a girl's dress gets them every time. However, the names picked for some of the faces in the /k/ book are horrible! We've ended up inventing new names that are a bit more age appropriate for my younger students. The /sh/ book has a few names that are tough for my older students, but for the most part I just need to model those once. The Turn and Talk book is nice in terms of its format. I can just set it up to the right position and let my students tell me the words that they see. Some of the target words are a little odd, but it's a nice way to add variety to drills. It's also much easier than the constant card shuffle.