Friday Funny

Ahoy me hearties! Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

(source)

Enjoy yer weekend!

12 Days of Christmas Day 6!

We're already halfway through these 12 days of fun! Can you believe it?! I have really enjoyed giving you each of these free materials this week. I hope you are finding them useful! Today you get:

Ahoy Matey! {speech and language packet} This activity packet includes a variety of fun articulation, language, and vocabulary activities as well as open-ended reinforcement games to help make practice mega-fun for any student all year. Normally $3.00, you can download it here for FREE today only! While you're downloading, you should really follow my TpT store if you aren't already. (Hint: There's going to be a special surprise JUST for TpT followers later on in the 12 days!)

Don't forget to enter the giveaway that I posted yesterday! There are FOUR winter-themed activity packets up for grabs :)

Appy Hour: Story Wheel

an app review of one of my all-time favorites: Story Wheel

Do you ever watch The Price is Right? Wouldn't you just love the chance to spin that huge wheel and try to earn a spot in the Showcase Showdown?! Well, there's an app that lets me get a little taste of that big spin, and it's one of my all-time favorite apps to use in speech therapy. I'm talking about Story Wheel!

The Basics:
Story Wheel is a great way to help students build their understanding of how a story comes together, foster creativity, and improve overall oral language skills!

You can add 1-4 students to your story. During each turn, students spin the wheel and are given a random picture. Then they get to record themselves developing and adding to the story with each new picture that is spun. Each story uses 12 pictures. The full app has various themes, including Pirates, Knights and Princesses, and Outer Space!

How I Use It:
Language Goals - excellent for increasing MLU, forming complete sentences, picture descriptions, using describing or action words

Narrative Language - obviously, Story Wheel is an excellent app for building a complete story, including story grammar elements (characters, setting, cohesive beginning/middle/ending events, problem, resolution, etc.)

 
Articulation -  great for seeing how students can carryover their awesome speech sounds into structured sentences or storytelling/conversation contexts

Fluency - students can practice their fluency-building strategies at the sentence level or storytelling/conversation levels

 Good/Not-So-Good:
* I love being able to save stories and share them with teachers/parents via email.
* I love the fun themes that are available (I think the Pirates theme has the best pictures!)
* I'm so glad you have the option of re-recording each picture. Sometimes with my students we discuss their first recording, then go back and try to improve upon it the second time.
* I love how versatile this app is! I use it with almost all my students at some point.
* However, I wish I could select the number of photos in each story. For some sessions/students, 12 pictures can take a long time to complete.

Overall:
I'm a huge fan of Story Wheel! It's versatile and can be used with many ages and goal areas. And it's fun - my students love it too!

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Story Wheel is created by EverAge Apps and is available in the App Store (full version currently $2.99 at the time of this posting; theme packs available for $0.99; free 'lite' version also available).

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this app review. I simply think it's an awesome, useful, and versatile app that should be in the hands of every speech-language pathologist.

Leave a Comment: If you could be on any game show, which one would it be?

I would dominate at Wheel of Fortune!

Ahoy Matey! Pirate-Themed Speech and Language Activities

speech and language activities for International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Shiver me timbers mateys!! Tomorrow (September 19th) is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Have some fun celebrating with your students with these pirate-themed activities:

There's a Pirate Pronouns activity:

To target receptive skills, cut apart the pictures and put one on the circle. Tell your students where to place other pictures (on the squares) to see how well they understand various pronoun words. Expressively, you can place pictures on the squares and have your students use pronoun words to describe where the picture has been placed.

There's also a Pirate Speak-tionary included! Find a list of must-use words and phrases to help you sound like a real pirate. There are also flash cards to match the words to their definition. And a worksheet to define words and use them in sentences.

Despite their gruff voices, it's important for pirates to speak clearly! So have your pirates-in-training use these articulation drill sheets to practice their target words.

Little Pirates can also use these open-ended point cards alongside any speech or language activity to make things more exciting. Cards range in value from 1 to 3 points, and there are also bonus cards and foil cards included.

Two just-for-fun activities are also included. Three different roll-and-color sheets as well as large and small versions of an open-ended board game. You can pick up the roll-and-color sheets for {FREE} here in my TpT store.

There you have it me hearties!! I hope you have a super wild and fun International Talk Like a Pirate Day tomorrow! You can find the full activity packet here. Enjoy 15% off through September 19th! Yo-ho-ho!