App Review: The Basic Concepts Skills Screener

Smarty Ears has many apps for speech and language therapy. This year, I was assessing a student for basic concepts, but I didn't have access to the BOEHM and I wanted more information than I got from the CELF. I searched the app store and found Smarty Ears' Basic Concepts Skills Screener.
*Disclaimer: I was not provided this app, but Smarty Ears has provided a free copy of the app for a giveaway. The views expressed are solely my own*

The Basic Concepts Skill Screener, BCSS for short, has 2 options for screening. There is a quick screener with 30 items and a full screener with 79 items. The BCSS measures comparative, quantitative, spatial, and temporal concepts.


During the screening, students are shown 4 similar pictures and a sentence written below is read aloud. The student touches the picture and then selects "next" to move to the next screen. If a student presses "next" before selecting an answer, an error message appears. This feature is very helpful for my students who are impulsive.

Other features include a notes tab for clinician use and the ability to change the selected item before moving to the next item if a mistake was made. If you can't finish the screening in one sitting, you have the option to save the test and continue later.


Finally, my favorite part of this app is the report it generates. The report includes lists of correct and incorrect concepts. The concepts are further broken down by type. Tables report the percentage of items for each concept type, as well as whether the skill has been achieved, is emerging, or not achieved. At the end of the report, there is a color coded visual for each concept type and age of acquisition. The best part about the report is that you can send it via email to a colleague or even yourself.

Overall, I really liked this app. I use it primarily with my younger students (ages 3-8), however, it can be used for older students to measure progress or current knowledge of basic concepts.

What I liked:

• The app is intuitive and easy to use.
• It is useful to assess pre and post interventions, to determine if further assessment is necessary, or to support standardized testing measures.
• The generated report is detailed and clear.
• The pictures are simple, clear, and colorful.
• Students hear a "ding" and see a swirl when they select an item, regardless if it is correct or incorrect.
• In the corner, there is a counter that tells you how many items have been completed

What I would change:

• There isn't currently a way to have the iPad repeat an item. If a student needs a repetition of the direction, you have to read it to them.
• Nothing else really. There are only 2 languages available at this time (English and Portuguese) so if you want to screen in other languages, it is not included in this app.

Basic Concepts Skills Screener is available on the app store for $29.99. If you are looking for an app to help you measure basic concepts for students on your caseload, check it out. There are tutorials and videos on the Smarty Ears website as well.

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Thinking About Social Thinking

Last week, I was able to attend one day of Social Thinking's conference in downtown Minneapolis with one of my co-workers. The day I attended was focused on Superflex and other ways to teach social skills. When I first started working in the public school system, I really had no idea how to treat social cognitive deficits. We  had covered the theory in grad class, but I didn't have a systematic way of targeting skills and improving behaviors in my students who qualified for ASD or pragmatic language services. I was not paid to attend this conference, but I wanted to share my thoughts on how it went.

I came out of the Social Thinking conference re-juvinate and feeling as though for the first time, I had a plan of attack for working with students to improve their social skills. So, what have I learned? Too much to share, however, I will give you my 3 point plan of attack for this year - just small steps to become a better speech language pathologist.

1) Teach social thinking vocabulary explicitly. Social vocabulary is not just teaching Superflex and the unthinkables. That's technically not even social vocabulary (what?!?!?). I've been jumping into Superflex without teaching the basic vocabulary. Social Thinking recommends teaching these concepts in order: thinking thoughts and feeling feelings, having a group plan, thinking with your eyes, body in the group, whole body listening, expected and unexpected, smart guesses, flexible vs. stuck thinking, size of the problem, and sharing an imagination. Taking it back a step, try helping your students understand what "social" means.

2) Teach how to evaluate social situations. What is the context? What is expected/unexpected? how do people feel when we do expected/unexpected? What do you get out of following espectations?
These are really the WHYS for learning social skills. Many of my students that I see for social skills group say, "I talk fine. I don't need speech." Helping them understand why they come to see me and what they get out of it is key.

3) It will take time! I can't tell you how wonderful it was to hear these words from the pros. Working in the schools, we are constantly striving for meeting standards, making progress, being proficient, and helping students learn as quickly as possible. Research and experience both support that it takes students with social cognitive deficits time to not only learn the concepts, but also to begin to implement them. It doesn't take 1 year of an IEP, but many consecutive, consistent years of carefully thought out social cognitive intervention.

Apple Critic

Yesterday in Minnesota we had 80 degree weather. Today we got up to 58 degrees. Fall is starting to hit us and I am excited. It's time to bring out the skinny jeans, boots, and scarves. Oh - and apples!
Today I went apple crazy in the therapy room. My students became apple critics!

  We started off by talking about food critics and that a synonym for critic is "judge." What a great way to expand vocabulary.

I took my lovely sharpie collection and a piece of tag board to create  our apple chart. Then I headed over to my favorite grocery store and picked up 7 different flavors of apples - well mostly apples.
My various groups of students then used their articulation or descriptive language skills to describe the apples. We talked about how the apples look, smell, what their texture is, and most importantly what it tastes like. Then I asked them to rate each apple on a scale of 1-10 and pick their favorite.

 Here are 2 students taking notes on their thoughts of each apple. It was interesting to see the different opinions and a great opportunity to encourage different thoughts and perspective taking.

Just to have more fun (and because I am an evil therapist) I threw in a pear to masquerade as an apple. Some of my older students figured it out or at least said, "it smells like a pear." Those who didn't figure it out looked confused and called it gross. I guess if you're expecting an apple and you get a pear it might be gross.


When students first started describing the apples, they began with, "it looks like an apple, it smells like an apple, it tastes like an apple. With the help of my EET beads and cues, within 20 minutes students were describing the different apples as tangy, sweet, crispy, mushy, soft, pinkish-yellow, spotted, and more! Some of my favorites from the day were that one apple smelled like a rock and another tasted like a banana. Such creative minds at work. Plus, I got to snack on healthy apples all day.
Yay fall!

Summer Speechin'

For those of you who work in schools, summer is either right around the corner or you are already enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Summer break in my district starts on Thursday and I am so excited. My tiny closet of a speech room is heating up by the day and even with 2 fans, I'm having difficulties staying cool. Most of my treatment has been push-in this week to avoid dealing with kids having heat stroke.

As a child, I thought these breaks were for students; they're not. Breaks are for the school staff. I am so excited for several things. 1) No more super early mornings. 2) Time for naps. 3) Interviewing for clinic positions. Even though summer is almost here, my thoughts turn towards fall and how my kiddos will grow and fair over the summer.

Of course I could never just let my students go free for the summer. Luckily enough, several parents have actually ASKED for homework and returned it with their child over the past year. Maybe I've been doing the homework incorrectly, but I rarely receive the homework back after it's been sent home.

My new favorite version of "homework" is to give students a "homework word." This is something related to articulation, a vocabulary word, or our high stakes testing vocabulary word of the week (from Natalie Snyder's High Stakes Testing - vocabulary builder). I love how this works. The idea of these homework words are to pick words that the student uses on a regular basis and challenge them to use their awesome speech skills with it. For example, one of my students has been working on his /s/ sounds all year. With his input we picked homework words like "Sonic, Sega, super, and awesome," all staples of his daily vocabulary. WOW! I did not expect how well this would work for this student. Before I knew it, he was using his /s/ on these words in every day conversation. He even started to ask what his homework word would be. I started using this with other articulation students with great success and began expanding it towards my language and social skills caseload.

Unfortunately, I can't give my students weekly words or concepts during the summer break. Here comes the summer homework packets! Just a few of my favs.

Articulation
-{FREE} Summer Articulation Homework Calendars from School House Talk
-{FREE} Summer Packets and Parent Letters from Speaking of Speech
-{FREE} Pictures from Mommy Speech Therapy
-{FREE} Speech Minute Calendar from me

Language
-{FREE} Summer Language Homework Calendars from School House Talk
-{FREE} Editable Life Science Vocabulary from me (middle school)
-{FREE} Editable Earth Science Vocabulary from me (middle school)
-{FREE} Editable Prefix/Root/Suffix Vocabulary from me

There are so many more, but these are FREE for anyone. Happy Summer!

Communication Graffiti

It's better speech and hearing month! Whoo hoo! I love nerding out this month. A few of the things I tried this year include: vocal hygiene presentation for staff, all school BHSM newsletter, staff email blast with Identify the Signs webiste, and Communication Graffiti (pictured above).

I got the idea for a graffiti wall from Jenna Rayburn over at Speech Room News. Because I have such a teeny tiny room, I actually had my students color on the paper after it was taped to the wall. This got such a great reaction from my kiddos and even from other students. I had students who have no services come up and ask to draw on the wall. That made my kiddos feel pretty good about coming to speech. 

Here is the finished product, with my slanted writing for the "I can" statements we used to guide our lessons. Ta Da! (or Da Ta as I used to say).

As you can see, I have some pretty good artists in my speech/language groups.

With my wide range of kiddos all the way from K-8, the wall had a variety of activities on it by the end. On the left you can see a word list for /s/ and /z/ from a student, a category circle, some drawings of vocalic /r/ words, a 3 part story, and some facts about stuttering. Below are some additional stuttering facts, and an idiom.  

A few of the other things we did on the graffiti wall were drawing some Unthinkables, using the EET to describe different things, and draw actions. Overall, this is a wonderful activity and really gets the kids to think about why they are in speech/language sessions. I plan to do this next year and with a new classroom, I should have more space (I'll even have windows)!

This graffiti is truly a work of HEART!

Lazy Day Therapy

While I can get creative with activities, sometimes I just need a break from thinking. Lucky for us as speech therapists, we usually have a stash of articulation decks. I even have decks of regular cards with pictures on them. these are my favorite because I can play regular card games with them and adapt them for speech therapy. Here are a few of my favorites.

Go Fish
Enough said, this is a staple.

Garbage
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. Deal 10 cards to each person with 2 rows of 5; keep them all face down. On your turn, you may draw from the top of the deck or the discard pile. The goal is to get the numbers Ace through 10 in order. If you draw a number (say an 8), you can place it in the 8th spot. Keep going until you can't replace any cards. Jacks and queens are "garbage" and need to be discarded and Kings are wild. The person to flip over all their cards and have Ace through 10 in order wins!
How to adapt: ask students to say the word on each card, say target words in sentences.

Just Guess
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. This game might seem familiar from the college days (ahem...). Hold the deck of cards. Look at the top card without showing the student. They are allowed to guess which value card you hold a total of 2 times. If they do not guess it right away, tell them if the card you hold is higher or lower than their guess. After the second guess, reveal the card. If the guesser was correct, the dealer must say the word on the card in a sentence. If the guesser was wrong, they must say the word on the card equal to the difference between their guess and the value of the card. For example, your student guesses 7, you indicate the card is higher and they guess 10; the card is revealed to be a Queen and your student must practice the word twice. When the student guesses the card on the first try, they become the dealer.

Crazy 8s
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. Try to get rid of all your cards. You can play any card of the same suit or same value as the one at the top of the pile. Eights are wilds and let you change the suit to anything you want.
If you don't have cards with suits, allow students to match the cards according to if the sound is at the beginning, middle, or end of words.

War
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. Deal out all the cards. No one is allowed to look at their cards. All players turn over the top card of their piles and put them face up in the middle of the table. Whoever has the highest ranking card takes both cards and adds them to the bottom of their pile. When 2 cards of the same value are revealed their is a "war." Players take 2 new cards, one face down and one face up on top of the cards in the middl. Whoever has the higher ranking face up card wins all the cards in the middle. Keep going until one player has obtained all the cards.

Memory
Shuffle the cards and spread them into rows face down. Try to find the most matching pairs while practicing your target for the day. When you find a match, you get to go again.

Spoons
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. Each player is dealt 4 cards. You may only have 5 cards in your hand at a time. Place plastic spooks in the middle of the table, one for each player minus 1. The dealer starts play by looking at the top card, deciding if they want to keep the card, and then passing along cards they don't want. When a player collects 4 of a kind, they grab a spoon. All the other players try to grab the remaining spoons. Whoever does not get a spoon loses.
Sometimes I'm afraid of students grabbing, so I have students put their finger on their nose and play "pig" instead. The last player to put their finger on their nose loses.

Golf
Use a 52 card deck with articulation/language words included. Place 4 cards face down in front of all players. No one may look at their cards. Before beginning play, each player may peek at one card once. On your turn, you must either draw the top card of the deck or the top card of the discard deck. If you draw a card, you may use it to replace one of the 4 cards in front of you, but you are not allowed to look at your cards before deciding which to replace. Place the drawn card face down and you must discard the card which was replaced. Each numeral card scores face value (Ace=1, 2=2). Jacks and Queens score 10 points. Kings score 0 points. The player with the lowest score at the end of the game wins.

Figur(atives) of Speech

Figurative Language. Ugh, sometimes this makes me groan. In a K-8 school, I know that most of my language kiddos who stick with me into the older grades will be facing this within the classroom. Figurative language is particularly hard  for students with language disorders because it's not concrete. Most of my kids hate the poetry unit, which is happening right now because April is poetry month. Picking out rhyme is easy, but then I start asking my students about words that sound made up and are hard to say: alliteration, onomatopoeia (that's hard for me to spell!), metaphor, hyperbole (or hyper-bowl as they like to say), simile, and personification. These are long words and hard to remember. I keep the definitions of each figurative langauge element on my wall for my students to quickly reference. I'd rather have them get the definition correct than guess 4 times and confuse themselves more.

April 30th is going to be "Poem in Your Pocket" day at my school. As my 6th graders GROANed, I explained how Katy Perry's music is poetry and has example of figurative language and that got my students' attention. We started by talking through Katy Perry's song "Firework" which has examples of metaphors, similes, and onomatopoeia. I then asked my students about their favorite artists in order to create a new material.

Altogether, I used 42 pop songs to teach figurative language. By the end of a 2 week period, most of my students could identify similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and hyperboles. You can find the materials I made in my TPT store. I had alot of fun with this "Figurative Lyrics" unit and my students keep asking to do it again. I promised to revisit it, but we have more goals to work on in the mean time. :)

Structured Conversation

The speech and language classroom is a great place to practice students’ IEP goals, but so many times that is the only place in which they successfully meet their IEP goals. As speech language pathologists know well, mastering goals in the general education setting is the first step towards generalization.

So many times I find it tricky for a student who is working on articulation to move from reading passages to conversation. That is because I have difficulty finding stimuli that focuses on their speech sound. One of my favorite games to play with my students who are working towards correct articulation in conversation is “Would you rather.” This game is surprisingly difficult! Students often are considering their options at the same they are speaking, which makes it harder to remember to use the correct articulation - mimics unstructured conversation. The issue I have found is that I can’t seem to just make up “would you rather…” questions on the spot. So, I created small cards that give the question for us. This game has led to many laughs, confusion, and great carryover practice for my artic kiddos!

So far, I have managed to create would you rather questions for r, r-blends, l, l-blends, s, s-blends, and SH/CH. All questions are appropriate for kids. I print my cards on colored card stock in black and white to save money, however, the cards can be printed in full color.

You can find my Would You Rather cards on my TPT site HERE.

Which other sounds would you like to see made for this game?