Bucket o'Beans

When I was in graduate school, we had two Rubbermaids filled with beans. I had one client who LOVED them, and we used it weekly in some fashion.

I was at the dollar store this weekend, and had the sudden inspiration to make one for my students.  The card games have been fun, but some of my students have a hard time staying engaged for another card game.

I knew this week would be a perfect debut for something different. My students had a four day weekend, it's the coldest it's been in two years, and we can't do outdoor recess due to the cold
. 

I obviously do a better job of hiding them in real life! :)

 
My first group is fourth graders, working on language goals, including vocabulary.  I pulled out Live Love Speech's Snowy Synonyms, and pre-matched them in sets of 6.  Each student had 1 minute to find all six words in the beans and figure out the synonym pairs.  This particular group isn't made of strong readers, so it took some time for them to decode the words.  Overall, it was a pretty tricky challenge for them.  But boy, did they love it.

Thanks to Jenna at Speech Room News, I had a great countdown timer that added to the suspense.

My next group was a group of 5th graders who all work on /s/.  I buried 20 words to start, which were part of artic bingo games that were left to me by the SLP who retired a few years ago.  Each student had 1 minute to find & say as many of the words as they could.  Challenge accepted!  After the first round, they had another chance to beat their own score, and I added a few more cards.  My record for the group was 23. They loved it!  Up next were another artic group of 3rd graders with different sounds. Thanks to my Bingo cards, switching out the target sounds was easy.  While I was resetting, those that were working on phrases or sentences had to choose some of the words they found to use in a sentence.

My fifth grader was my victory, though. He has more than one goal area. When we usually try to work on straight up articulation, he uses a monotone voice, and tells me, "I have to be bored to work on my sounds. So I'll be bored now."  Um, not what you want to hear.  We started with 24 cards buried. On his first round, he got 9. When he heard the record for the day was 23, he bucked up.  His second attempt got 16 productions. Then 20, then 21, and then, finally, he got all 24.  That's 90 productions of the target sound when getting 10 productions most days is pulling teeth!

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good, and it wasn't even 10AM.  Easy, cheap, and flexible? That's a therapy material I can get behind!

Here's how to make your own bucket:
1 Rubbermaid container, shoebox size or larger (I got mine at the Dollar Tree)
A total of about 6-8 lbs of dried beans, noodles, split peas and/or rice

Because it's flu season, I do have all my students use Purell before dipping their hands in the beans.  I also make them promise to not spill beans all over the place if they want to be able to keep using it. So far, they have been pretty good about it.

I can't wait to find more ways to use my bucket in speech! 

Using Audiobooks

I love using books in treatment.  I have a few different activities that go along with specific books (Where the Wild Things Are, Stroga Nona, The Wednesday Story, etc.).

Sometimes, I just get tired of reading the same book for each group. And my students probably get tired of me reading to them all the time.  So in an effort to save my voice and add some interest, I've started to use some audiobooks.  It's great to pop in an audiobook and press play.  It's easy to pause them for questions, and the students love hearing the stories.  When I am doing a theme book (I usually do Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs in the spring, for example), it's great to check out an audiobook from the library for a few weeks.

Now, not all stories have audiobook offerings.  For those books, I like to turn to YouTube.


I use the app on my iPad, and it's easy to save books I use regularly so I don't have to hunt every time.  To prevent ads from popping up, I usually make the video full screen.

Here's a video of Where the Wild Things Are:

And one for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:

I usually like to follow along in the book while it is playing, because as you can see, some videos illustrate as it happens, but other books don't.

The other nice thing about using the audiobook version, is that I have a pretty good idea of how much time reading the story will take, which can help with lesson planning.

A coworker of mine went to a training last year, which advocated using audiobooks for kids with auditory processing disorders and for those with ADHD to increase audio training.  I suggest audiobooks regularly to some of my parents, but often they think it means a separate trip to the library and additional hassle or added cost by downloading audiobooks. This can be a faster way for parents to get the same outcome.  I like Tumblebooks (check your local library or school, many have a subscription) for the same reason.

*I get nothing for mentioning this app, by the way. I just like sharing useful apps that save me time/effort.

Hey look, I'm on Facebook!

Since I'm sure my friends/family were tired of my posts about speech pathology and likes and comments about speech pathology, and yada yada, I created a Facebook page for Language of Speech. Click below to "like" me. I would really appreciate it.

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A plea for School Counselors

 
OK, I know this isn't about Speech directly.  But, at the middle school and high school level, I know many of us work closely with our school counselors.  To boot, I have a personal investment in this, as my husband is starting a program later this month to get his school counselor certification (he's already a counselor).

As speech language pathologists, we are a legally required service, thanks largely in part to IEPs, which basically protect our jobs. If an IEP says speech is required, then a speech pathologist must be available to provide services. In my state, my caseload is capped, which further protects me.

School counselors have a number of responsibilities. Yes, they are the people that schedule students and figure out how a student can stay in band while taking AP Physics, Math III AND getting a PE requirement met.  They help the students figure out what comes after high school. They are the people that get transcripts in line for college applications, call in favors at local colleges, and find scholarships to make college more affordable. They are also the people that provide functional life skills to our students: teaching coping skills, how to write a resume, and the realities of things like what should be seen on a social media site. And they are crisis counselors who put out fires all day, and take care of those students that don't have IEP services who might struggle with issues at school or home that are temporary or recurring.  And they are a part of the teams that identify struggling students and place supports for them.  I'm sure I'm missing more of their job description, because it can vary between states and even districts.

There are 26 states that do not mandate counselors in the schools. This from a nation where every time there is a school shooting, we wonder why people "missed the signs". This from a nation that puts such a huge emphasis on College & Career Readiness Standards that 45 states/territories have adopted new standards to meet those goals. Yet we are not mandating staff members that are imperative in meeting these goals.

My state has "suggested" student caps.  One high school counselor that my husband & I spoke with prior to him applying to his program is responsible for 400 students. He feels lucky in his school, but he's worried that when a coworker retires in a few years, they won't replace her, they will just shift to him, which could give him a caseload of 1000 students.  With 400 students, he feels like he just gets it done (coming in early and leaving about 45 minutes after his contract day ends).  I know we all put in extra hours, but I also know that school counselors help make my job better, too.

Please take a moment (and really, that's all it takes!) to sign this petition by Monday, January 14th.

Pickles to Penguins game

My husband and I have some friends that we've known since college, and we get together with about once a month.  Usually, they come visit for a weekend, and we pretty much spend the weekend playing board games.  Yep, a full weekend of board games, party games, and card games.  I'm talking about Risk, Scattegories, and less well known games like Dominion, Pandemic, and Ticket to Ride.

You can imagine that holidays are a chance to give and get new games for our group.  Most games aren't appropriate for therapy, or would take WAY too long to setup/play during a school therapy session.

So, imagine how excited I was when a game that we bought for my friends turned out to be a perfect game for SLPs.

I present to you:

Pickles to Penguins picture from Amazon.com

The game is terribly simple.  The deck is a series of double sided labeled photographs (are we not excited, SLPs?).  Each player gets a certain number of cards, and place 5 out, either side up.  Two cards get placed in the middle of the table, and players attempt to unload the cards from their smaller decks onto the middle decks by using COMPLETE SENTENCES to explain how the card from the middle and the card they are playing are related.

So, I might say the Airplane and the Stove (from my hand) are both made of metal. And someone else might say that they cook with the frying pan on the stove for the next card/point.

Here's a video to help make my point:

It's a pretty fast-paced game, and probably took us less than 3 minutes for 3 players. But of course, I would imagine it to take a bit longer with students. 

I really like that the cards are photographs and labeled.  Imagine other uses:
- Category naming
-Sentence building
-Labeling
-Describing (a la Headbanz)


 Have you used Pickles to Penguins in therapy or a game that is similar? 


*For the record, I am getting nothing for this post.  I just happened to think it was a neato game that will now be on my wish list.

Materials Freebie: Snowy Speech Packet

Does anyone else have progress reports due the week you get back?  Between that and 8 IEP meetings on the 14th, I needed a little something to help transition the kids back and make my planning a little easier.

I was inspired by Sublime Speech's Halloween packet.  Since using them back in October, my students have been asking for another packet.  Well, ask, and they shall receive!

Enter the Snowy Speech Packet, which is a new freebie I whipped up for articulation kiddos.  Word lists are included for /s/, /r/, /l/, "th", "sh"/"ch"/"j"



I love packets like this because I can use them in stations while I work with 1 student one on one with my older students.  The students love them because it lets them get creative, and they love being able to share their pictures.  Plus, taking them home and sharing them with family is great practice!

The first activity is using the word lists to develop a story.
 
The students then come up with their own spell to chant for a snow day (boy, my students want a snow day so badly! They started asking in November!)

Next, the students use 3 words from their lists to draw a winter scene.

After that, they use 6 words and put them in sentences.


Last, but not least, they try to come up with 3 more winter words with their target sound.



You can grab it at my TpT store.  Because the idea was so heavily influenced by Danielle at Sublime Speech, this product will remain free.  I just ask that you please leave feedback if you download it.