September Articulation Home Practice Packet

One of my personal goals this year is to do a better job at consistently sending home homework with my students, as well as better educate the families that I work with on why homework is so important for success and growth in speech therapy.

 

To make sending homework a little easier, I started making monthly homework packets.  Here are just a few pages from the packet for your reference.

 

 

The packet includes a parent letter, homework log, monthly activity handout, word strips, mission speech possible strips, stamp sheet for word level practice, sentence level handout, and short story handouts.  All worksheets have one sheet available for custumization.  There are also worksheets for target sounds that are "ready-to-go."

 

My favorite component of this packet are the "Mission Speech Possible" strips.  There are five strips per page and all you need to do is write in a target sound and cut out one strip to send home each session.  They are spy-themed stips that would be fun and motivating for kids and there is little prep to sending home this type of homework.  Just cut the strip and go!

 

Check out more details about this packet and download the preview at my TeachersPayTeachers store here!

 

I hope to be creating a post about how I organize my homework materials once the school year gets rolling.  How do you organize and distribute homework?

 

Happy Speeching!

 

-Courtney

 

 

 

 



Making Resources Accessible

Well, hello strangers!  With summer wrapping up, I have been on the move to get organized.  Since I am switching districts this year and have moved all my materials out, I am starting to organize and go through everything once again.  This year I will be at four different schools so I am contemplating keeping all my materials at home for easier access, rather than disperse everything between the four schools.  In the past the maximum numbers of schools I have served has been only two, so this will take some figuring out for scheduling and accessing materials.  I am curious to see how others manage their materials when they serve many different locations, so feel free to share in the comments.  I would love the input!

While organizing my materials, I was looking through my resource binders.  These binders are truly one of the best things I have done in terms of organizing my own personal resources.  As speech-language pathologists, we attend so many professional development workshops, classes, and focus groups and with those we acquire a lot of resources and notes.  In year one of my professional career, I would stick my notes in hanging files or in folders I had laying around.  It was nice that they were tucked away and safe, but with them out of sight they became out of mind and I was wasting valuable information and resources that I could refer to when appropriate.  Then, beginning of year two, I decided to organize my notes and resources in a way that was functional and accessible to me.  Here is where my resource binders came into play.

 

I had these binders at my home office in my old district, but for now they are sitting on my window sill until I get a bookcase at home.  I categorized 1.5-2 inch binders into the following categories: autism, language, articulation, AAC, and social skills.  My goal is to attend more workshops and classes on fluency this year, so I hope to be adding a fluency binder in the near future.  What is really important is that they are categorized in a way that is beneficial for you!

 

Each binder is labeled on the side and front for easy reach.

 

 

 I basically label the tabs as I need a new category per binder.  Some binders only have five tabs right now and other binders have fifteen, just depends on your needs!  You also get a glimpse of my horrific hand writing.  You're welcome.

 

 

Basically, I just hole punch all my notes or print outs.  Any visuals or items that cannot be hole punched I place in plastic covers or pockets, which works out handy for visuals or examples I hang onto for teachers.  I prefer the tabs with pockets to hold materials or notes that I haven't hole punched yet.

 

 

 

 

 

Place the binders were you will have easy access, and there you go, resources you will actually use!

 

 

Happy Speeching!

 

-Courtney

Morphology Cupcakery

I'm not sure if it's the same everywhere, but here in my hometown, cupcake shops are all the rage.  Since I'm a little obsessed with sweets and treats, I thought I'd create a game around cupcakes!  Who doesn't like a delicious mini cake?  Plus, if I wasn't a speech-language pathologist, I would love to be a baker!

I had the delight of sorting through all my materials and realized I don't have a lot of games or activities that focus on grammar, syntax, or morphology.  So, I decided to focus on morphology for this game, specifically on past tense, plurals, possessive /s/, and present progressive tense. 

Hence Morphology Cupcakery!

 

This game comes with:

 5 Store Front Game Boards.

 

Matching Cupcake Cards

 

 Morphological Components Practice Cards with Answer Key (regular past tense, irregular past tense, present progressive tense, possessive /s/, regular plurals, and irregular plurals)

Stock your cupcakery shelves with deliciously cute cupcakes! Give each student one cupcakery board. Mix and stack cupcake cards face down on the table or place in a bag for students to reach into. Place one set of morphological cards (past tense, present progressive tense, plurals, or possessive) face down on the table top. Have students first draw the top card of the morphological set of cards. Have them fill in the blank to the card. If they get they fill in the blank correctly, they can draw a cupcake card. If they do not draw a cupcake that matches a cupcake (by color and cupcake style) in their cupcakery, they must put that card back. If they do draw a match, they place the matching card on their cupcakery shelf. Whoever fills their cupcakery shelves first is the winner! Use the playing cards for drill for quick practice and/or use the cupcakery game pieces as a fun reinforcer to any practice!

Take a gander at this game at my TeachersPayTeachers store here!

Happy Speeching!

-Courtney

 

 

Monthly SLP Bins

I am switching school districts for the next school year and had a chance to go through every. single. thing. I've acquired over the past two years.  This was daunting, but also gave me the opportunity to organize my materials.  The first thing I did was organize materials that are seasonal.  I had materials taking up space in my speech rooms that I only used maybe one week out of the whole year.  Or, I found materials I completely forgot I had.  What good are materials if I don't even remember where I put them!

To help with this, I created Monthly SLP Bins.

Right now, these bins are sitting in my garage, as we are preparing to move.  When we get to our house, these will have a lovely spot in our basement so I can switch out bins as the school year progresses.

I wanted to be able to switch out the bins quickly and easily, so I created bin covers using clip art from MyCuteGraphics then taped them to the inside of the bins.  I got the bins at Walmart in the office storage section.  They hold file folder hangers and have enough room to also hold games/materials.  

This is a top view of my February bin.  It has file folders containing books and printable activities, as well as a Valentine's Day mailbox I got in the Target dollar section.

This next school year is the first year I will be putting the bins to use and I am hoping to keep adding seasonal games/materials as the year goes on!

Happy Speeching!

-Courtney

The Carrot Seed

 I love the short and simple storyline of the book The Carrot Seed.  It is a great book to use with students who are just starting to learn to retell stories.  The plot is very simple and details are minimal, so it makes it easy for students to focus on the main events and putting them in sequential order, rather than worry about the frills and fluff of the story.

I have a created a "mini" companion pack for this story.  It focuses on retell, answering questions, turn taking, past tense (with verbs corresponding to the story), and also includes a general reinforcement board.

Although I mainly use this book for beginning retell skills, it also works great for very simple wh-questions and yes/no question.  

Another great activity to go along with the carrot seed is to act it out as you go along. I keep a large tub of pinto beans at my school for sensory purposes.  For this story, we use this as our "garden."  I have students "plant a seed" (usually just use small ball or pebble) and I have already put a toy food carrot in the beans.  The students use a watering can to "sprinkle" the water on the seed.  At the end, I have them dig around in the beans to dig up the carrot.   It's a great way to keep the book interactive and to keep the kids engaged.  But be warned, don't use with over oral kids.  They will put the beans in their mouth.

Check out this mini companion pack at my TPT store here!

On a completely unrelated note, four days until summer break!

Happy Speeching!

-Courtney

clip art credit to: the3amteacher, mycutegraphics, scrappindoodles, graphicsfactory

The Grouchy Ladybug

Happy Friday!  Next week's preschool theme for speech is...The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle!  I am a huge fan of Eric Carle and was so excited to create an expressive and receptive language unit around this book.  Oh, the possibilities!

The unit I created targets many different language skills, such as: vocabulary, sequencing, writing/grammar, turn taking, categorizing, following directions, and answering questions.

Here is just a small preview of what is included in the unit:

 

My favorite activity in this unit is the ladybug snack.  "Cooking" is something I did a lot with my clients as a grad student since it is such a great real life application that can target sequencing, following directions, and even expressive language if you have the child tell how they made it, but I haven't done much of it since I've been in the working word..  Not to mention fun activities like cooking can get a LOT of language out of some of the quieter kids.  Cooking in a group is also a great opportunity to work on requesting (have the child request materials) and turn taking.  You can throw in some problem solving skills by purposely forgetting a step or ingredient to have your kids correct you.

Check out this unit at my TeachersPayTeachers store here!

-Courtney

Articulation Folders

This year I started creating articulation folders for all my students who are working on speech sounds.  They were a little time consuming to put together at first, but have saved me so much time in the long run.  Here is how I organize them:

The first page is a form I got from mommyspeechtherapy (which is a GREAT site by the way!).  It helps me keep track of what target speech sounds we are working on and at what level they have mastered them.  However, with many of my mild-moderate speech delayed kiddos, I am moving to the complexity theory to target speech sounds and am not necessarily using the traditional hierarchy of speech sound acquisition, which makes this form a little obsolete for their purposes.  But, it is appropriate for some my kids and I still find it very helpful! 

The next several pages are my data logs.  Everyone has their own way of keeping logs and data and this is just what I usually find helpful for some of my kids (I use different forms for language vs. speech).  I usually take data (tally marks for accuracy) on a small white board, then transcribe the percent into the log.  I hated looking back on notes and seeing a bunch of tally marks!  It drove me crazy!

 

At the back of the folders, I insert practice words of all sounds in all word positions.  I usually use my articulation apps or Superduper cards for practice (among other things), but if I'm running late or forget materials between schools, the practice words come in very handy!  They are also great when working with groups of kids since they all have their own folder and words.  I used sticky tabs for easy access.  The folder pockets work great for homework sheets as well!

There are definitely things I would want to change or add for next year.  Specifically, I would like to add a page to keep track of all my probe data so it is all in one spot.  Right now I have separate binders for each school that contain student information, parent contact log, IEP minute logs, and other such various forms.  Ideally, for next year, I would like to have all student data and information to be in one place.  I'm only in my second year, so I am still figuring out what type of system I like.  

How do you organize student information and data?

-Courtney