Holiday Eye Candy

'Tis the season to decorate your fridge, speech room, or classroom with festive decor!  Also, these peppermint magnets make a great gift for your favorite teacher, therapist, or neighbor!  Inexpensive and takes less than 5 minutes to make a jarful!

Start with some self-adhesive magnets from Wal-Mart...inexpensive at about $2 dollars for about 20 magnets...and a package of peppermint candies from the candy aisle...  remove the sticky paper, stuck them to the candies, and done!     

Great thing about this gift is its way more practical AND more diet friendly than just a jar of candy!  Throw them in a mason jar with a ribbon and you have given someone some "fridge eye candy".

Happy Holidays and Merry Magnets!

Splash the Cash & Shop 'til You Drop!

It's time for some retail (I mean, speech) therapy!

No matter what holiday you celebrate, this time of year is jam packed with spending, shopping, and deals n' steals.  Coupons, ads, and catalogs come rollin' in and there is no escape from the potential spending spree which will leave us spent and reeling.  So, let's splash the cash and enjoy ourselves!

Here is an activity that can be used during speech-language therapy to focus on a variety of speech and/or language intervention targets, such as vocabulary (budget, retail, gift, cheap, expensive, purchase), perspective taking, etc.  We created a shopping list worksheet to use with a variety of catalogs and ads (e.g., Target; Bed, Bath, & Beyond; Ulta; Toys"R"Us; etc.).  We gave our students a budget and asked them to list five people they would like to  buy gifts for.  The students perused catalogs and ads to find the perfect gifts.  This required discussion about taking perspective and using the information we know about each of the individuals on our lists to determine what gifts they would enjoy.  Some of the points we discussed are included in the slideshow below.

You can be as creative as you'd like with the shopping list worksheet.  There are three boxes at the bottom of the sheet which can be used a variety of different ways.  You can have the students:

• cut & paste pictures from catalogs/ads of their three favorite "finds"
• cut & paste pictures of their three best deals or lowest priced items
• draw pictures of three places they will shop
• draw pictures of three gifts they would like to receive
• write three sentences about gifts they will purchase

The slideshow below can be used as a warm-up activity to get the students thinking about gifts that can be purchased for others based on factors, such as age, gender, interests, etc.  We chose a few celebrities to purchase gifts for and brainstormed as a group what types of gifts would be appropriate/inappropriate based upon what we know about each individual.  We concluded our dialogue by discussing gift giving/receiving etiquette (e.g., What should you say if someone gives you a gift you do not like?).

So, peruse, shop, & enjoy!

Click here to download the shopping list template.

Click here to download our Gift Buying Guide slideshow.

Leftover Candy Corn??...Thanksgiving Bingo!

Mounds of post-Halloween candy corn got you seeing orange?  Use them as Bingo chips!!! The prize for the winner??...they get to eat their candy corn bingo chips! 

This is a great activity for Thanksgiving day with the kids OR as a post-Thanksgiving speech therapy activity. 

For your kids: I give the kiddos this Bingo game, and they are outta my hair while I frantically fish giblets out of the turkey and burn pies.  I print out the boards, cut one up to use as the pictures that are called, give the kids a handful of candy corn and have them play until they run out of their handful or throw up, whichever comes first.  I've learned that giving just a handful usually prevents this and corn is in the veggie food group anyways.  They take turns choosing pictures and being the "bingo caller" and the candy corn are used as the Bingo chips.

For speech therapy: its a great way to target various needs:

• Articulation: students generate a sentence for the picture that is chosen before they put a "chip" on it, making sure they are producing the "target sound" correctly.  Also great for the goal of production of 2-4 syllable words, or CVC/CVCV/CVCVC words. 
• Langauge: Use bingo pictures for sentence formulation, including targeting verb forms, subject-verb agreement, using conjunctions, pronouns, etc.  Also perfect for vocabulary.
• Pragmatics (Social Language): Students can practice asking each other questions, answering by using the Bingo item chosen when its their turn (e.g., when a student chooses "stuffing", they have to ask another student a question, such as "Did you eat stuffing at Thanksgiving?" or "Do you like pumpkin pie?")

Print out the bingo boards below and get rid of that candy corn just in time to make room for holiday goodies!!!

Thanksgiving Bingo Board 1

Thanksgiving Bingo Board 2

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chitchat Time

Many of the students we see are working on conversational skills, such as initiating and maintaining conversation with peers and other individuals.  This can be quite difficult, especially for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  Some of the challenges of conversational skills revolve around difficulty with taking-perspective, making inferences, as well as other pragmatic language skills.  It is also quite common to have students who are able to initiate and maintain a conversation when the topic is of interest to themselves (e.g., dinosaurs, Civil War, etc.).

We made an easy and fun tool that can be used during social language groups to provide students with a variety of conversational topics.  You can choose any topics you feel would suit the interests of your students best.  Since we work with high school-age students, we made cards for the following topics:

• Music
• You Tube
• Favorite Class
• In-N-Out (This is surprisingly an all-around, favorable topic)
• Skateboarding dog
• Weekend Plans
• Team Edward vs. Team Jacob
• Recent Movies
• Angry Birds
• Pets
• Facebook
• Beach
• 2012 Olympics
• American Idol
• PlayStation
• Sports

For the conversation cards, we found images of each topic we wanted to include, then cut and pasted them on 5x8 index cards.  We laminated the cards then hole punched them to put on a ring.  For students who have difficulty formulating questions and/or making comments, you can place a prompt on the back of each card.  A few of the prompts we used were:

                   "Do you like _________?"

                   "What is your favorite __________?"

                   "That's cool."

                   "I like that too."

The conversation cards can also be used to practice making small talk.  We used a few of the more general topics (e.g., pets, weekend plans) to discuss the topic of small talk and brainstorm questions and statements that could be used to initiate small talk with various individuals.

What are some of the topics you would choose?

  

Diary of a Socially Awkward Kid...School Etiquette Lesson for Teachers or Speechies

School days, school days, good old fashioned break-social-etiquette-rule days...  Ahhh...September, back to school, new school clothes, new caseloads, new students, new inappropriate comments, and violations of personal space!!!!  EEEK!! 

We both work at high schools, and we both do push-in collaboration lessons in classrooms where many students are working on pragmatics, or social skills...many students are on the Autism Spectrum.   We love kicking off the year with some basic "Do's" and "Dont's" social lessons so the students at least have some basic rules...and a spot to sit at at lunch!! (These rules actually benefit anyone 12 and over...sometimes we all need some social skills reminders).

The lessons my students love involve movie or TV show clips.  For this particular lesson I use the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) movie, and I have the students watch (from scene selection on the menu) the scene that begins with the junior high marquis, and I show it until they are walking home from school after their first day of junior high.  As the students watch I have them reference the worksheet below and put simple (+) or (-) in the column on the right to indicate if the behavior is something that is "ok" or "not ok" behavior for various school scenarios.  Click on the link below for the worksheet.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Worksheet

After the movie clip we have a follow-up discussion about some of the problems or social scenarios that came up on the first day of school and I have students discuss various solutions to these issues...and then take it a step further and have them figure out what the result or consequence would be.  Click on link below for the problem solving worksheet.

Back to School Problem Solving Worksheet

Class: dismissed...now go stay on topic during conversations and act appropriately in the lunch room.

Let's Get the Ball Rollin'

I love, love, LOVE children's books!  Working in the high school setting, I feel deprived.  I don't get the opportunity to use them and develop fun thematic activities around them...so sad!  Enter the book...Butterflies in My Stomach and Other School Hazards, written by Serge Bloch!  This book, as well as others by Serge Bloch, is funny, challenging, and totally cute...um, I mean cool.  Anyways, let's get into it...

Here is a lesson designed for a collaborative speech-language session within the classroom setting, although it can be used in any service delivery format (e.g., group).  At the high school, we try to do as much intervention in the classroom setting as possible.  The reasons for this are: 1) the classroom is a relatively more natural context for many of the skills we are developing;  2) it assists in developing greater communication between teachers and staff regarding our students needs and how we can better support our teachers and staff; 3) teachers are involved in implementing strategies and techniques to facilitate better communication and assist in promoting generalization and carryover; 4) it allows us to better support the curriculum; 5) we have found that there is greater "buy-in" by teachers and staff because they are able to see what we do, it becomes a team effort; 6) students love remaining in their classroom and receiving intervention among their peers (some high schoolers despise being pulled out of class for "speech"); and 7) many other great reasons!

This lesson is great for the new school year.  The theme is figurative language.  Although the illustrations in this book may look a bit juvenile, the language is challenging for many of our high school students, especially those with autism spectrum disorders.  In fact, each page of this book contains 1-2 figurative expressions.  Here are a few of the expressions in this book:

• wrong side of the bed
• heart-to-heart
• best foot forward
• in a pickle
• under the weather
• up a creek
• can of worms
• and many more!

For this lesson in particular, I scanned each page of the book and compiled it into a powerpoint presentation so that the entire class could follow along via the projector.  As we read the story, we stop to discuss each idiom or expression.  I have found that many of our students struggle with the concepts literal vs.  figurative.  If these concepts are too difficult for your students to grasp, focus on using the pictures and plenty examples in your explanation.  For example, I typically ask, "I am a very busy bee today because I have three meetings, an appointment, and tons of therapy to do before I go home.  Am I really a bee?  Do I have yellow and black stripes?  Do I have a stinger (that would be pretty cool!)?  Do I fly around school (somedays it feels like i do!)?"  To facilitate greater comprehension, ask the students about times when they have had butterflies in their stomach, woken up on the wrong side of the bed, been in a pickle, etc.  You can even be more specific and provide examples that perhaps the students can relate to, such as, "Who has felt nervous, or had butterflies in their stomachs, on the first day of school?"  I have found that students love sharing their own experiences with the class and it gives us a chance to repeatedly talk about/use the expressions.  

We included a worksheet which you can use to review a few of the expressions mentioned in the book or send home for homework.  You can even write a few common idioms or expressions on the board and have students draw their own interpretation of the expression.  Have fun with this activity and let us know how it turned out!

End the Bulletin Boredom!!

Time for a classroom/speech-room make-over, after all, isn't it fun to accessorize your workspace?!  We were tired of wasting precious time on the traditional classroom/speech room bulletin board...unstapling and stapling up themed borders, cut-outs, etc., month after month...BORING to look at and such a time waster!  Not to mention the bins of bulletin board borders and art that was being stored in our rooms. Way easier and more efficient to just add, make, and use themed magnets on a metal sheet!  By using a metal sheet, and cutting it with metal snippers to fit a frame, it takes minutes to just change out the magnets to fit the season, holiday, etc.  

 We purchased some thin sheet metal at our local hardware store and cut it with metal snippers to fit a cheap frame.  First, attached the metal to the wall with strips of super strong double-sided adhesive (we used "Gorilla tape" from the hardware store).  Then, used the tape to attach the frame to the wall to "frame" the metal. 

We bought strong, round magnets at the hardware store and then used coupons and the teacher discount at Michaels to buy silk flowers, a package of leaves, and some felt Halloween ghosts, pumpkins, and bats to be able to sustain our magnet board until December! 





Just used a glue gun to glue magnets to the flowers, leaves, etc.  Now we just stash them in a ziploc, and pull them out when its time for a switch! 

Stay tuned for more bulletin board fashion and speech room couture for the winter months!!

Let the Games Begin!

What is that you say?  The Olympics are over?!  Wa- wa- waaaa (sad trombone).

Olympic fever does not just dissipate over night my friends.  That is why we are just now posting our Olympic-themed activity...or at least that is our excuse anyway.  Now, we can hope, that many of our students have heard about the 2012 Olympics, talked about the 2012 Olympics, and/or have hopefully seen the 2012 Olympics.  We can hope that they have built some knowledge or experiences relating to the Olympics so that we may further explore the vocabulary, figurative language, and concepts involving the Olympics.  Relating to students' experiences regarding the topic allows them to be more engaged and focus on what they're being asked to do, rather than processing a foreign topic and generating definitions, answering questions, etc.

The gold medals have Olympic-themed vocabulary for the students to define and/or use in a sentence, the silver have idioms/expressions for students to interpret, and the bronze are key words (adjectives, actions) that describe an Olympic sport or related term that the student must use to determine the answer.

Use the paper bag "torch" as a grab bag for the medals, having each student draw when it is his his/her turn.  Gold medals are 3 points, silver are 2, and bronze are 1.  We like giving the student the point value regardless of if they answer correctly.  They hold on to their "medals" and points are added at the end...which of your students will achieve "Phelps" status?!

Click here to download Olympic medals page 1

Click here to download Olympic medals page 2

Click here to download the bronze medal questions 

If you are interested in making your own medals, visit http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/olympic_medals_to_print.htm

Here's how we made our torch...

Ta-da!

Come and Knock on Our Door...

We've been waiting for...You!

Welcome to our blog!  We are two speech-language pathologists looking to have fun with therapy and engage our high school students in cool and fun ways to improve their communication skills.  We hope to share ideas, activities, and resources with fellow SLPs, educators, parents and anyone involved in serving students with communication impairments.  Since we both work with different populations of high school students, we hope to provide an array of activities for various skill-levels.  Although not uber crafty (we can admit it!), we enjoy creating new activities, incorporating technology, and integrating pop culture whenever possible (teens love it!).  It's all about having fun...am I right?!

Please feel free to comment and share posts as often as you'd like!

Joanna & Kari Ann