Cyber Monday Sale on TPT: What's In Your Cart Linky Party

SAAAAALE!!! Teachers Pay Teachers is Having a Cyber Monday sale site-wide. While I have never braved the crowds on Black Friday, I love to surf for deals from the comfort of my couch and Cyber Monday is the perfect way to do so. Jenna over at Speech Room News is hosting her What's in Your Cart Linky Party and I wanted to join in the fun.

Many Stores, including mine - Speech Is Heart - will be 20% off. Don't forget to include the code SMILE during checkout for an additional 8% off!

To start you off, here's what you need from my store to get you through to winter break.

These visual strategies posters are perfect for decorating your speech/language room while at the same time reminding students of their strategies. Current version includes strategies for playing board games, greeting others, following directions, active listening, and more.




My Would You Rather for articulation R practice has been updated to be more readable, more colorful and to include better questions. Check out the whole bundle on Monday for a fun carryover activity for your students.

Finally, make sure to grab my Feeling Charades game for your next social skills group. This fun game is a great way to practice reading facial expressions and body language.


Now for some shopping. Here's what's sitting in my cart for the Cyber Monday Sale.

Articulation Smash Mats by Simply Speech.

Speech Scripts from The Peachie Speechie.

Talk to the Hand for problem solving by SLP Runner.

Time to get shopping. While you're at it, download my latest FREEBIE and let your fellow SLPs and co-workers know how much you appreciate them around these stressful amazing holiday times by giving them a Kudos note to celebrate their amazing-ness!

What's in Your Cart? BTS 2015 Linky Party

On Monday and Tuesday TPT is having a back to school love SALE! Yesterday we hit August and the countdown began. TPT is counting down with their back to school site-wide sale and my little store is participating. If you use the promo code (BTS15) you can get even more savings. Now is the time to dust off your wishlist and move things into your cart. I've decided to join up with Jenna Rayburn's "What's in Your Cart: Linky Party" over at Speech Room News to highlight a few coveted items.

Take a peek below to snatch some goodies from my TPT store!

Get the ball rolling with your social skills group through the game Guess the Feeling, a taboo-like game all about feelings.

If you are looking for a way to build curricular vocabulary comprehension, check out my Building Vocabulary through Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes. This a product that I am super excited about!

Another favorite is In a Pickle for L. This articulation game builds language and flexible thinking as well and who doesn't want to target everything at once!

And now, for the main event - what's in my cart! If I had an unlimited budget, this list would go on and on...

1. Prompts on a Stick from the Peachie Speachie. These look fantastic and I am looking forward to resting my voice or using these cues in a push-in session.

2. Social Group Curriculum for Middle and High School Students from Nicole Allison. I have materials for social skills for all my younger students, but almost NOTHING for my middle schoolers. This looks too fantastic to not have.

3. No Print Articulation Trivia: Bundle from Sublime Speech. So many of my students are working on carry-over of their articulation. I can't wait to use this on my new smart board.

Happy dance! The sale starts tomorrow, so fill up your cart!

Data and Attendance

Data data data BATMAN!

No matter where you work, collecting data is a big part of the work of an SLP. In my 2 years of working in the public schools, I have changed my data collection method 3 times before I found something I can actually stick with and not utterly despise. I have tried individual folders with goal sheets for kiddos - these were great in theory, but not so great when I had a group of 3 students all around a very tiny table; there was no room for folders. My next attempt was Google Docs. I LOVED this method for articulation because it showed a great progress graph, however, again within a group setting, this method was not always achievable. I found that if I switched forms on my iPad, the other form would delete what I added. Method number 3 was the winner: Labels!

The idea of using labels for daily logs came from Pamela over at Public School SLP. You can find the data labels she created HERE. At first I thought that purchasing labels would be super expensive. But, Amazon sells a generic brand set of 1,000 labels for around $10 and they work just fine with my laser printer. The best thing about labels for me was that at the end of the work day, sticking them onto the pages in my binder was a very mindless task that allowed me to unwind a little before facing traffic.

Even though I write the date on each label, I like to keep a separate page for attendance. I have 1 page for each month. I can track attendance on the computer or print off a sheet for each month. This allows me to see at a glance when students missed sessions, if they have been absent frequently, or if there are any scheduling problems. I created a form in Microsoft Excel to help me easily track the attendance of each student.

Each month has Monday through Friday with the date included. I mark student attendance after I print out the page and can easily see if they were seen one-on-one, in a group, or any other circumstances. I use a one letter key to mark the services students receive each month. Having the document in Excel also allows me to edit the student list. I like to list them in grade order.

I have found that this helps me document attendance very quickly and easily and can make 3rd party billing much simpler. Apparently our district is going to start using codes to document therapy this year, so I hope that this attendance method helps me to more easily completed 3rd party billing - time will tell!

You can find my 2015-2016 attendance calendar in an editable format HERE. Make sure when you go to print off the sheet that you highlight the area you want and select "print selection."

Planning for Fall

Summer is for relaxing, or so I'm told. I have been on an organization kick. Now that I am staying at the same school, I'm finally able to create a system that works for me. Over the past week, my latest project has been creating my very own planner. While many teachers love specialty planners, I found that the ones I wanted were out of my budget and not completely applicable to speech/language therapy. With all my free time and my clipart collection, I decided to create my own.

Ta Da! I managed to create something that I love. Printing it and having it spiral bound at Kinkos cost me under $30. The spiral binding came with a frosted plastic cover and back. So what's inside?

First off, I am very proud of the cover and think that I will love it all year round. To make the cover and back sturdier, I splurged for card stock and full color printing on those pages.

My favorite part of this planner is a weekly Bible verse from the book of Psalms to help focus the week on what is truly important. Beginning the week off with a reminder of God's love is a great way to start.

I created this planner to be as budget-conscious as possible. The majority of pages are black/white and gray scale to help you save money when printing. I'm planning to add editable covers when I post this as a product to TPT.

Each month has a 2 page spread with spots for writing down report due dates and tasks for the month.
Every month has an attendance sheet that I use. A FREE version of my 2015-2016 editable attendance sheet can be found at my TPT store HERE.

 Inside I created 11 fun note pages (example below). I can't wait to add notes or maybe just fill them with doodles.

Attendance on left                                                                             Notes page on left

The weekly layout has Plenty of room to lesson plan for each day. Each week has its own 2-page spread, complete with room for planning those back-to-back sessions. There's also a handy dandy checklist for each week so I don't forget anything. I see groups back-to-back and often have to plan for 15 or so sessions a day. Having the bi-color days helps me to differentiate the groups. I also love the to do list for the week on the same page. The Psalm for the week below says, "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him" ~Psalm 62:1.

Inside my planner is a section unique for special educators. Finally a place to put all IEP due dates. There are also pages for referrals, screenings, evaluations, and RTI logs. 

Inside you will find a page to store important information such as passwords, websites, emails, or whatever you want.

I'm in the process of laminating binder tabs to make finding the months and important pages a tab (tad) bit easier. 

Everyone has specific ways they like their information set up, but here is the way that I will be keeping organized this year. If you love this planner and want your own copy, you can find it HERE at my TPT store.

I have also created some stickers to quickly add to the planner. They can be printed on return address labels and are color coded for IEPs, evaluation planning meetings, evaluation results meetings, and conferences. Find them HERE at my TPT store. Maybe if I become motivated, I'll make more stickers. What other stickers would you like to see?

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?