Just a Snowman {product swap}

 a review of Just a Snowman book companion from Let's Talk

Well, that groundhog predicted winter will never, ever, ever end, and he was right! We're in the midst of a blizzard as I type. School let out early Tuesday due to the snow, and a Wednesday snow day is pending today school is cancelled thanks to 6 inches of snow. I did get a couple days this week, thankfully, to use this book companion from Whitney over at Let's Talk with my students, and it is great!

Just a Snowman, by Mercer Mayer, is such a wonderful book for preschoolers during the winter time. It's full of winter vocabulary and activities, adorable Little Critter pictures, and it's not too long in length. Whitney creates super great book companions, and I especially love her Just a Snowman packet for my preschoolers. Here's what we did with her activities:

    

There are two versions of story comprehension questions included in the packet: one version with picture choices, and one without. For my preschoolers, we used the questions with picture choices. These were easy to use as during-story questions (see above), or as recall questions after the story was over. Tip: Write the page number the question cards coordinate with for easy sorting.

There are also picture cards included for detailed story sequencing, which makes it easy to adjust tasks for each student's ability level. For instance, I used just three pictures for one of my kiddos so she could unscramble and identify beginning, middle, and ending events:

    

A sorting activity targets winter clothes and summer clothes:

I did end up drawing a sun and a snowflake onto the sorting mats to help my littles out remembering the difference between summer and winter. Tip: attach to a file folder and laminate for easy storage/use. The clothing items were also great for targeting vocabulary. There was a regional vocabulary difference in the label for the hat (the picture is labeled 'toboggan', but here in Iowa we know it as a 'stocking hat'), but my students never knew since they can't read. We used them while reading the story to identify the clothing Little Critter and his sister were putting on to go play outside:

Additional sequencing activities include Building a Snowman and Making Hot Chocolate:

 we also used these during story reading

I love barrier games, and this one has amazingly fun pictures to go with it!

For my articulation students we used the Snowy Speech sheets after reading and identified words from the story with target phonemes:

The packet also includes awesome story maps, vocabulary sheets, and writing prompts! Since my caseload is of the preschool variety, I used the writing prompts as conversation starters, then wrote their answers for them, then had them draw pictures of what their answers would be. It was fun!

Additional activities include winter coloring pages, a snowball fight board game, compare/contrast pages, and What's Different cards:

I chose not to print these differences cards out, and instead we used these pages on the iPad. I am going to attach the snowball fight board game to the back of the clothing sort file folder to keep everything in one spot.

Overall, I highly recommend this book companion! It has adorable graphics, a wide variety of activities, and it's very detailed and well made. Get your own copy here. Let's Talk has a ton of other great book packets to check out. She's super thorough with her activities, and creates them specifically to coordinate with Story Grammar Marker. Be sure to browse through all her activities on Teachers Pay Teachers.

You can also find and follow Let's Talk around the web:

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(P.S. I found this video online of Mercer Mayer reading his Just a Snowman book!)

http://www.littlecritter.com/mmreadssnowman1.html

Disclosure: Whitney was so kind to provide me with a copy of this book companion for review. All opinions are my own!

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Abby prefers a hazelnut latte over hot chocolate after playing in the snow.

Bugs and Kisses {and giveaway}

a preview of Bugs and Kisses preschool articulation packet

Hellloooooo February!! Is it just me, or was January a reallllly long month?? A few too many "polar vortexes" (vortices?) for one month. I mean, it was so cold one morning, the banana I was eating in the car steamed when I peeled it. I am not joking.

Now that February is here, we have a lot to look forward to: the Super Bowl, all things love, the end of winter in sight, Spring Break! Let's get the party started with some new speech materials!

My newest labor of love is a preschool articulation activity packet! This baby has a sweet Love Bug theme and targets the following phonemes: P, B, T, D, K, G, F, M, N, and it includes bonus practice pages for S. Here's a sample of what's inside:

1) CVC Words in Increasingly Complex Contexts: These cards help students move towards using their phonemes in more complex contexts. They can practice their target phonemes in single words, then phrases, then short sentences. Pictures are included to help our non-readers with the words. (4 cards per phoneme, 40 cards total)

2) Final Consonant Deletion Cards: A lot of my preschoolers are working on eliminating final consonant deletion. These broken hearts will help highlight the final consonant in their target words. Help your students say the first part of the word, then point out the final consonant on the other half of the broken heart. Pictures are included to help our non-readers with the words. (6 cards per phoneme, 60 cards total)

3) Roll, Say, and Cover Games: I love these roll and cover games. This one is meant to be a head-to-head competition! Each player recieves a different color marker or bingo chip. Roll a letter die and a number die (use the Make Dice app if you don't have access to a letter die!), then find the word coordinating with that dice combo. Students practice that word before covering it with their marker. The student with the most words covered in the end is the winner. Two pages are included for each phoneme - one with the phoneme in the initial position of words, and one in the final position of words.

4) 'SWEET' Token Boards: This is a reinforcement game to reward students as they complete their therapy practice. Collect your designated Love Bug and all the letters to spell 'SWEET' before anyone else and you will be the winner! Mats are included as visual aids to help students collect their cards.

5) Color by Number Pages: Roll the dice, practice a word paired with that number, then color the space according to the color by number key. This activity practices target phonemes in the initial position of words.

6) Love Bug Cootie Catcher: This is an open-ended fortune teller hand game which can be used to target any phoneme! Folding and Playing instructions are included.

7) Love Bug Dot Reinforcement: Another open-ended page with the cutest little love bug! He can be used to target any speech goal and is great to send home for home practice.

Bugs and Kisses is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and will be 50% off for the next 24 hours (until 9:30 am central time 02/02/14). I'm also going to give away a copy to a lucky reader! Enter the rafflecopter below for your chance to win :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Abby is wearing her new stocking hat knit by her sister along with fleece-lined leggings to stay warm.

Friday Funny

(source)

Friday Funny

TGIF!

Narrative Language Intervention Resources

a round-up of resources for teaching narrative language skills

There are so many resources out there for us to use when helping our students improve their narrative language skills! Yesterday I touched on Sandi Gillam's SKILL program, and today I thought it would be nice to corral a bunch of useful resources in one place. Here we go!

PROFESSIONAL PRODUCTS:

SKILL (Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy) (Sandi Gillam) - Complete program to teach individual story grammar elements, story retell, and independent story generation.

Story Grammar Marker (MindWing Concepts) - Complete program using icons to help children learn to tell and retell stories, improve comprehension, writing, and social communication.

Strong Narrative Assessment Procedure (Carol J. Strong) - Uses wordless picture books to assess narrative skills. Includes instructions for how to elicit and analyze story retelling samples, and how to develop an intervention program based on the results.

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FROM SCHOOLHOUSE TALK:

First off, a plug for my newest packet because I am just SO excited about it! I was so enthused after participating in some narrative language trainings recently, that I created an update to my Story Grammar Prompts packet. It's a complete overhaul!

This packet is jam-packed with goodies! Here's what's inside:

This might be my favorite packet yet! You can read more about it on Teachers Pay Teachers.

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ACTIVITIES/INFORMATION from other SLP BLOGGERS:

Scoop Up a Delicious Story  - The Dabbling Speechie

DIY Story Telling Rope - Miss Thrift SLP

The Importance of Narrative Assessments - Smart Speech Therapy, LLC

Superhero Story Telling Dice - Crazy Speech World

Make a Silly Story - Speechy Musings

An Introduction to Story Grammar Marker - Let's Talk

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APPS:

Story Grammar Marker - MindWing Concepts; $24.99

Story Wheel - EverAge; $2.99 (free lite version)

Story Pals - Expressive Solutions, LLC; $19.99

Story Builder - Mobile Education Store; $7.99

Toontastic - Launchpad Toys; FREE

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Abby is certain this list is not exhaustive. Leave your favorite narrative language resources in the comments below!

SKILL Program for Teaching Story Grammar Elements

an overview of the SKILL program for teaching story grammar and story retell

Last week I had the great privilege of hearing Sandi Gillam speak about her SKILL program. Sandi works at Utah State University and has been conducting tons of research to improve narrative skills in children. Through her work and research, she has developed the SKILL (Supporting Knowledge in Language and Literacy) program. It was so inspiring to hear Sandi speak! Teaching story grammar elements was not something that was included in my graduate program coursework, but narrative skills are highly emphasized in Iowa, so I'm very grateful to my employer for bringing in Ms. Gillam to speak with our SLPs for a couple days. I wanted to write a blog post or two about the information I learned as a way to help me summarize and sort through all the great information. Today's post will focus on the importance of narrative language skills and an overview of the SKILL program.

WHY TEACH STORY GRAMMAR?

The ability to give accounts of real or imagined events is a critical skill for children to develop as they grow. Narration, or storytelling, has a rich history in many cultures, and has ties to classroom instruction, early literacy, and the development of conversational discourse. Developing narrative skills allows children the ability to express complex ideas, interact socially with their peers by explaining things they've experienced, and it's a skill clearly stated as a required skill in the Reading and Speaking/Listening Common Core State Standards from Kindergarten on! This is a life skill we're talking about.

It's especially crucial to address these skills in children with language impairments. These children often don't get the gist of what is being said, have difficulties inferring, aren't actively engaged in comprehension, and may have poor vocabulary or semantic skills. Addressing narrative skills allows the SLP/teacher to address multiple goals: story comprehension, conversational discourse, vocabulary, semantics, inferencing - it's kind of an all-in-one package to improve multiple goal areas!

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

The SKILL program is one resource for teaching story grammar elements and improving narrative language. The program consists of three phases:

PHASE 1: Teaching Story Grammar Elements - Character, Setting, Take-off, Feelings, Plan, Action, Complication, Landing, Wrap-up

Highlights:
- The use of scripts for teaching the various elements helps you develop a systematic instructional routine and become more efficient with your teaching (students can focus on the content rather than the task).
- Icons are included for each story grammar element and are used consistently throughout the program.
- Various teaching strategies include co-telling, bingo, parallel story development/retelling practice through the use of storyboards.

PHASE 2: Moving from Simple Stories to Elaborate Stories

Highlights:
- Students are taught to add dialogue to their stories (which assists in increasing linguistic complexity).
- The addition of Complications to stories helps make them more complex.
- Lessons in adding adverbs to help elaborate on Action

PHASE 3: Becoming Independent Storytellers

Highlights:
- Students move from creating stories based on sequential pictures, to single-picture scenes.
- Self-scoring rubric gives students independence by internalizing the story grammar elements and moves them away from using the icons.

Each phase of the program includes an exit checklist of tasks a student must be able to perform before moving on to the next phase. By administering exit tasks, any areas of weakness are exposed and teaching suggestions are provided to address those areas.

I hope you'll consider adding the SKILL program to your teaching repertoire. It is designed to be used by speech-language pathologists, classroom teachers, special educators, and ELL specialists.

Stay tuned later this week for more information about instructional strategies for teaching story grammar elements!

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Abby is overwhelmed by the insane amount of useful knowledge she learned from Sandi Gillam. Who is the best speaker you've heard during professional development opportunities?

Winter Mitten Craftivity

these mittens are a quick and cute activity to target multiple goals

This week in my speech sessions we did a winter craftivity! I loved this activity because there was minimal prep time involved, and I could use it to target a lot of different goals. I pre-cut a mitten template from multiple colors of construction paper, and also had probe pictures cut and sorted. Then we went to town crafting!

For my preschool language students working on expanding utterance length, we used carrier phrases as we glued our pictures onto the mitten: "The cat is on the mitten.", "The rocket is on the mitten.", "I want robot please.", etc.

For other students we used location words in relation to other pictures to talk about where we were placing each item: "The present is under the robot." Other students practiced following directions after I instructed them where to place each picture. And with some students we talked about describing words, functions, or categories.

Students with articulation goals were practicing their target sounds in words, phrases, or sentences before gluing on each picture.

When we were done with the pictures, we had fun adding ribbon and glitter! This also provided excellent language opportunities for my kiddos to describe colors, shapes, make requests, and take turns. We had a blast!

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Abby wears grey mittens, but is not impressed with the touch-screen compatible variety. What color are yours?

2014 Goals

What are your professional and personal goals for 2014?

I debated setting New Year's Resolutions this year because, like most people (I think), I'm not very good about keeping them through the year. (Case in point: I've had the same quilt I've been working on for, um, 8 years now?) The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized there were definite ways I'd like to improve various aspects of my personal and professional life in 2014. After some time reflecting on these goals this week, here's what I've come up with:

 graphics credits: Graphics From the Pond

Personal Goal: Procrastinate Less
I'm a huuuuuuge procrastinator and always have been! In college and grad school, I found that I would strive when deadlines were looming and I could maintain the most focus when time was short and I didn't have any other option! However, now as a working professional I'm sick of it and I'm going to do my best to change!

SLP Goal: More Timely Paperwork
This goes along with my personal goal. No more finishing progress reports in between parent/teacher conferences or printing out student graphs as I walk into an IEP meeting. No more waiting until the end of each month and entering in all my data into student graphs at once! No more waiting until the night before a meeting to write an evaluation report!

Blog/Teachers Pay Teachers Goal: Average 2 Posts Per Week
My goal is to average 2 posts per week. Some weeks may be more, and some weeks may be less. I don't want this blog to take over my life. I want it to be a creative outlet for me. And with less procrastinating from now on (see Goal #1), I hope to start scheduling more posts in advance if I know work or personal commitments are going to amp up during a certain month and take away from my blogging time.

Organization Goal: Create an App Spreadsheet
The agency I work for generously provided me with a 16GB iPad, but this is nowhere near enough memory!! I am constantly downloading free apps, and deleting apps to clear more room, and then the apps I delete get lost "in the cloud" and it's difficult for me to find them again. Or, if I go back and look at apps, I can't remember what they're for! So, my big goal for the year is to create a spreadsheet with the names of the apps I download, and categorize them into goal areas. That way I'll have a quick reference to help me reload apps, and to find the apps I need when lesson planning. It seems pretty daunting right now to think about starting this process, but I know it will be super helpful for me!

Just For Fun Goal: Read 25 Books
This summer I got myself a library card and went to town reading just for fun. I don't think I've read recreationally since before college! I'm using Goodreads to keep track of the books I've read, and the books I want to read, and have set a goal to read at least 25 books in 2014. I've already read two so far this week! (If you haven't read "The Paris Wife", I highly recommend it!) What is the best book you've read lately?