Superbowl Ads

Working on inferring with your students? How about figurative language?  We all know that ads are chock full of clever ways to get us to buy things.  And what better time of year than now to talk about ads with your students?  The Superbowl is the ultimate commercial experience, right? I mean, as long as you screen out all the inappropriate ads.  Here's some of my favorites that I've been working on with my students (some of these were leaked last week, so my middle schoolers got an ad preview!)



Oreo Whisper Fight: 

Mercedes "Soul"

My students loved figuring out who the "evil" character was, and were eager to share the clues they used to figure it out (yikes, those nails!).  They also felt really proud when they could state why the main character turned down the deal with devil.

Tide "Miracle Stain"
The great twist at the end makes it a funny commercial that my students really like.  Also a great commercial to talk about superstitions/signs.

Milk Mustache Campaign:
My students that knew "The Rock" did better with this than those that didn't, but it was a good chance to talk about how your previous knowledge can influence an inference (say that 10 times fast!). 

Toyota "Wishes"
 Understanding the idiom "spare tire" is essential in this commercial, and it was a great chance to see if my students could pick up the context clues to gather the meaning. 

Hyundai Team
As you can imagine, this really resonated with my middle schoolers.  Great ad to talk about exaggeration, and what they are really implying about the space in the vehicle. 

Sketchers Cheetah
Another good one for exaggeration, and determining what the advertisers are trying to say about the shoes.















Obviously, there are more ads out there, but these were just some of the highlights from last night.  If your try it with your older students, I'd love to hear how it goes!

Monday App: TED Talks

I am a HUGE fan of TED talks in my daily life.  I find the topics fascinating, and the speakers to be a mixture of entertaining and brilliant.  I am (like most SLPs, I think) someone who collects information.  I am intrigued by how the brain works*, and so much of what they talk about has to do with just that.  If you have spare time, there are some great talks by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about her experience of having a stroke and Jane McGonigal, who talks about how video games can change our world.  There's also a very funny talk about making a toaster.  I mean, there are hundreds of really interesting ideas on there, so do take some time to check it out.

You are probably wondering where I am going with this.

Well, I have a bunch of students that work on comprehension.  As much as I love reading aloud all day, every day, I try to find different materials to comprehend.  After all, my students are expected to sit through teachers talking in class, and comprehend information ALL DAY.  So listening to different speakers and learning about different topics is a good way to practice.

Enter the TED app, which is a free app that you can add to your iPad (or go to the website via computer).  There are a few nice features about the app: first, you can save talks, so you can find them easily for different groups.  Second, you can use the "inspire me" button to find short talks in a genre (looking for something persuasive? informative? funny?).

My students typically respond well to the talks.  I typically aim for the ones that are under 5 minutes, and then I'll ask inferential, concrete or prediction questions afterwards.  We might define words based on the context, or take a look at what was funny/why it was.  I usually use this with my 5th-8th grade crowd, and always screen first for too much technical language.

Here are my 3 favorite talks to get you started:
1. Thomas Suarez: A 12-year-old app developer.  My students love the idea that a 12 year old can design apps.  We talk about the apps this kid has designed, the steps he outlines in the talk, and how he has applied his skills to his school.  I've also used it as a launching point to talk about setting goals, we infer how we think he is treated at school (seen as a nerd vs. seen as someone cool because he can do what he does), and try to predict what he might do next. Some kids come up with pretty neat app ideas that they would want to create.

2. Joe Smith: How to use a paper towel.  This is a short piece on, well, exactly what it sounds like.  But it blows student's minds, and I'd like to think I am doing my part to save the planet while working on speech.  You know, two birds and all.  

3. Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter. This is a great talk for inferring.  It's also good for problem solving, and acts as a launching point for what things you would grab if there was a fire, what your family safety plan is, who you would call, etc.  


Have you used TED talks?  Got any ones I should find?  
Do you use something else for listening comprehension that your students like? 

*I once apologized to my college advisor, because I spent 4 years avoiding a neuroscience class, and completed my psychology degree without it.  When I got to grad school and ended up in 5 semesters of neuro classes and was the graduate TA who took over the undergrad class while the professor was on maternity leave? Yea, I felt it necessary to email my undergrad advisor to apologize.

Materials Wednesday: Common Core Matrix

If you are like me, your state standards were easy to select from: the choice for SLP's in my state was pretty much between 2 goals: a receptive goal and an expressive goal.  Almost anything we wanted to work on tied to one of those two goals.  

Of course, we have all spent time getting familiar with the Common Core State Standards.  What I realized very quickly when starting to use them was that I was NOT going to be able to keep them straight in my head.  Not when they change each grade level, and I was now working with students K-8.  That's way too many numbers for me to remember.  It's also a HUGE time waster to figure out where to find an applicable standard each time I want to write a new goal or make a lesson plan. 

Enter my Common Core Speech Pathologist Matrix for grades K-12. A one page reference sheet that provides a corresponding Common Core Standard by grade level and goal area.

See?  So if I have a student that is working on articulation, I consult my handy dandy sheet, and know exactly where to look in my (free!) Common Core Standards App that I talked about on Monday.  I find it especially handy for language goals, so I know exactly what my students should be expected to do regarding story retells or vocabulary.  I also can easily look forward or back a year to determine what skills will be needed or may be lacking.

The goal areas are for the topics listed below.  You can see for some areas, it's not a goal we target in the K-1 groups.  I don't write goals for analogies for kindergarteners, but I might work on categories, which I probably wouldn't work on with older kids.

I refer to my matrix constantly.  At IEP meetings if I have to develop a goal, this saves me a ton of time.  If I am looking for educational impact, it's nice to have this as a reference.  It's also great to have when I am talking with the special education teacher and we are discussing how our goals might overlap, and how we will each target an area. In fact, I keep a copy of this on my clipboard at all times, as well as a copy hanging in each of my offices.'

Although in the end, always use your professional discretion. There may be more than one CCSS that targets a goal area, and if you feel that said standard is more representative of what you want to target, please use that one. I am certainly not the be all and end all expert on this.

This is obviously my way of organizing the CCSS.  Does anyone have a better way? How big was the change from your state standards to the CCSS?  How is your district doing with the shift?

If you are interested in purchasing my matrix, you can get it here.

My Apps Monday

Some of my middle schoolers are...not thrilled about coming to speech.  I have to pull most of my students from their study hall, which means that they miss out on the chance to get their homework done before they go home.  Plus, many have been in speech for at least 6 years, and they know what's hard for them.  Working on things that are hard for them isn't exactly fun, and I get that.

Typically, I have 1-2 activities planned for the session, and if we have time, the last few minutes can go to homework.  For some students with vocabulary needs, I might scrap my activity if they have work that is vocab heavy that we can incorporate.  This year, I was lucky enough to not have to pull many students from different teams at the same time, so I don't have to worry about groups that aren't working on the same material.

My favorite app to use lately for my vocab kids has been the (free) Flashcards+ app

 

Having kids come straight to my room after lunch instead of study hall means the incidence of forgotten text books is pretty high.  Rather than wasting 10 minutes sending the student back to his/her locker for a textbook, I find out what they are learning about in science or social studies, and *boom* flashcards readily available.

How, you ask?  Well, Flashcards+ has a button in the bottom right corner that lets you add a deck from Course Hero or Quizlet. So, my seventh graders that were studying the atmosphere last week?  I put in atmosphere and got a bunch of choices. You can preview first to see if the words are familiar (my kids like to check fist so they aren't being quizzed on words they don't know).  A quick easy (and free!) download, and the deck is yours. When they changed to the water cycle this week, it was a very easy to get a new deck (the water cycle was also a great thing for my fluency and artic students to talk about).   The thirteen colonies?  Easy peasy.  Downloading the deck is almost instantaneous, which is good, because we have a terribly SLOW wifi connection.

Each card has the word on one side, and a swipe to the side flips it for the definition.   There is a check mark, so you can check the ones the students know and leave the others unchecked. You can chose to practice only the unchecked ones if you want to go back at the end to run through the ones the students struggled with.  Swipe down for the next card.

Of course, I could make my own cards when/if I need them using the app.  However, with how quickly topics change in the middle school setting, I love the fact that there are other people who have already done that and that it's fast an easy to generate relevant material. They also have idioms and other figurative language terms.

Most of the vocab that I have found tends to lean towards middle school through high school group.  I haven't found much for my elementary kids, but I haven't done extensive work to find it, either.  You can't add pictures, so it's text heavy.

Have any great decks from Flashcards+ that I should look for?

**I am not getting anything for mentioning this app.  It is, after all, only my second post.  But I always appreciate hearing about apps that are user friendly, and even better if they are free!**