Frenzied SLPs: Thankful and Grateful Blog Hop

the Frenzied SLPs are thankful for our readers!

Halloween is over, and now it's time for my absolute most favorite holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas! I adore the coziness of November and December, all the get-togethers and extra time with family, some time off from work, and of course the food! It's just an awesome time to pause and count your blessings. The Frenzied SLPs are doing just that, and this week we are passing our gratitude along to our wonderful readers:

Three lucky readers will each win a $10 gift card to Starbucks AND a $10 gift card to Teachers Pay Teachers! Here’s how you can participate:

1. Read through the cycle of Thankful and Grateful posts from the Frenzied SLPs.
2. On each post, collect the character at the bottom. Don’t forget to write down the characters in order to discover the secret phrase.
3. Enter the Rafflecopter at the end of any post by typing the secret phrase.
4. An extra entry can be found on The Frenzied SLPs Facebook page.
5. You have until 11/13/2015 to read all the blog posts and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway.

Here are the things I am so very very grateful for in my life:

T: Teachers Pay Teachers and Technology

Starting this blog 3 years ago and creating activities for Teachers Pay Teachers has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. Schoolhouse Talk gives me an opportunity to be creative and motivates me to keep my therapy interesting and fun. I have virtually “met” so many new and talented friends through the blogging world as well as on social media. If you’re not on Instagram, I highly suggest you join. Every single day I am inspired by the things my fellow SLPs all over the world are creating and sharing in that virtual community. Technology is amazing!

H: Housing and Health

These are things that are so easy to take for granted. My husband and I are so fortunate to be able to afford rent on a spacious townhome which is in a super convenient location in our city. And we have no health issues limiting our daily activities. Completely blessed.

A: All my students

This year I am grateful to be working with the grade levels I prefer. I get to have fun and make a difference in the lives of PreK – 5th grade students every time I go to work. They keep me creative, they make me laugh, they are hands down the best part of my job.

N: New pets

In September my husband and I adopted two kittens and they have been so nice to have around! I won’t go so far as to call them my “fur babies”, but Callie and Lucy have sure been fun and I love them ☺

K: Knowing I make a difference

Every time I go to work, I have the privilege of doing a job where I make a difference in the lives of my students. Talk about a blessing! As SLPs, we get to help students learn to communicate and interact with the world around them. It’s such an important job and I am so proud every time I get to tell someone I’m an SLP.

F: Family and Friends

I don’t want to brag here, but I really do have the best husband. Tony, you support me, keep me grounded, believe in me, and make life fun. They say laughing adds years to your life, so I’m sure I’ll live to be 129 years old with how much you make me laugh. You know what else? He came with fantastic in-laws! I also grew up with the best parents who raised me right, and am blessed with 5 sisters whom I am so glad to say are also my friends.

U: each and every one of U!

Wow, I cannot say enough how thankful I am for you, my readers. The fact that people believe in what I write and create enough to spend their own hard-earned money on those resources blows me away! I love connecting with the readers and supporters of Schoolhouse Talk. A million thanks to all of you for the blessings you are in my life!

L: Life

Well, as you can tell from all the items discussed above, I have so much to be thankful for! Writing this post has helped me see I have a pretty great life and should feel blessed every day. Thanks for reading along ☺.

Here is my letter for the secret phrase:

Trot along to the next post and keep collecting those letters for a chance to win one of our three prizes ☺

Once you have visited all 22 blog posts and collected the entire secret phrase, enter the giveaway using the Rafflecopter entry on any post. Thank you for reading, and have a blessed holiday season!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Halloween Language Tricks and Treats

spice up your language therapy with these spooky Halloween activities

The Frenzied SLPs are back! This time we are sharing Halloween Tricks and Tips for Language :) Your therapy room will be loaded with fun, just in time for Halloween on Saturday! I started using Halloween activities in my room last week, and here's what has been successful.

Green Ooze! This was a super fun project that I was able to complete with a couple students last week, and will use with the rest of my older students this week. It's a great activity for following directions, sequencing, and making descriptions about the texture, smell, feel, and behavior of the ooze. If you'd like to make your own, here's an instruction sheet with visuals that I put together. This was so. much. FUN!

For the past couple years I've made a masking tape spider web on the floor during the week of Halloween. This is a reinforcement game students can play while they practice any therapy goal. I added point pumpkins and ghosts throughout the web and had students toss glow-in-the-dark spiders. If the spiders hit or land on any pumpkin or the ghost, students get that many points. So easy and simple, but the kiddos LOVE it.

Another perfect activity for this time of year is Ned's Head! My students can't get enough of this gross game and all the disgusting items packed inside Ned's noggin. I love to use this game to talk about making thorough descriptions of objects. We talk about the features of all the items inside - size, shape, soft/hard, does it have legs, will it be flat or bumpy, etc. We also look at the cards first and predict how those items will feel so they can be more successful at picking out their object.

S.L.A.P. for Halloween: I created this packet so I could use it with every language goal on my caseload - following directions, inferences, vocabulary, synonyms/antonyms/multiple meaning words, categories, plural nouns, past-tense verbs, story sequencing, compare/contrast, barrier game - it's loaded! Bonus - it's almost completely black and white printing!

These Sentences are Scaaary: This is a semantic absurdities packet, and my students have loooved it this year! Each student gets a sorting mat, then they draw a card and correct the semantic error in the sentence. If they get it correct, they can add the card to their mat. First student to fill up their entire mat is the winner!

Spooky Spiders Halloween Words: Need some seasonal vocabulary ideas? This packet has lots of great new Halloween words to learn, and they are sorted by phoneme in case you have some articulation students in your groups. I've been helping students look up the definition of their card, then they have to teach the rest of the group what their word means. Sometimes we draw definitions of our words on the back of the cards. You can also put the cards in a pile and play an open-ended game.

Build a Monster Play-Doh Mats (from The Speech Bubble SLP): My preschoolers and early elementary kiddos had a blast with this one. It's great for following directions, number sense, identifying colors, basic concepts, and body parts.

Apps: Don't forget apps - there are so many great ones! I especially love Mask Jumble Halloween, SagoMini Monsters, Millie's Book of Tricks and Treats, and Parents Magazine Carve-A-Pumpkin.

Thanks so much to Doyle Speech Works , Twin Speech Language & Literacy LLC, and All Y'all Need for hosting this linky. If you'd like to add your own ideas, feel free to join using the link below. The linky will run through October 30th. Happy Halloween!

An InLinkz Link-up

2015 Speech Therapy Room Tour (Part 1)

come see how I set up one of two therapy rooms I share this year

The new school year brought a lot of changes to my assignment this year. Instead of working full-time in one building, my assignment is now split between two buildings within my district. I spend 40% of my time (2 days per week) at the same school I was at last year, but I moved from 3rd-8th grades down to Preschool and Kindergarten. I had to change rooms, and this meant going from a full-size classroom all by myself, to sharing a room with the occupational therapist. Come see how it's turned out!

This is the view when you walk into the room. The OT has all her stuff on the other half. (The bookcase with the pinwheels is the divider.) I chose teal, apple green, and pink as the main colors, with snippets of orange throughout.

To the left of the doorway there is a narrow storage area. Two 2-door cupboards, a bookshelf, and this shelf set with paper cubbies. I keep handouts and homework pages for each speech sound and many other therapy targets stored there. It makes grabbing practice sheets quick and easy for this last-minute-planner.

Continuing around the room, there is a bookshelf where I keep therapy books. I also have a small whiteboard in this corner.

In the center of the room is an interactive white board. I added some positive quotes around it to try and cover up the green chalkboard peeking out. Did it work?

My one bulletin board is brightly decorated, but holds minimal items at the present time (including FREE Speech Sound Banners!). I was planning on hanging a bunch of my materials that are on rings, but they were too heavy and I couldn't get them to stay hanging on the bulletin board! Any ideas? Underneath the bulletin board I have milk crates holding all my picture books, pockets with artic cards, and my precious laminator.

On the other side of the room are file cabinets full of student files, testing materials, and themed/seasonal therapy materials. Three bookcases full of goodies also help form the divider between my half of the room and the OT's side. You can see her therapy balls peeking out behind the tallest bookshelf. I sewed a curtain for the shelf that held the games, but I think I need to add a second curtain to cover the tallest bookshelf too. All those fun toys are right at eye level for my 3-year-olds! By the way, I bought a clearance set of sheets from Target and used that for the curtain material. Yards and yards of material for $8!

I. love. having. windows! The sun shines in during the morning and it's so cozy. The windows look out onto a small courtyard that is between two wings of the building. It's been nice to see the leaves changing! A simple fabric garland and leftover wedding lanterns decorate the windows. I also crafted up some pinwheels and a banner for my desk. Plants are also something I love having in my therapy room. They just seem to make things a little more homey.

Desk organization: student working folders on the left, office supplies in front, sticky note command center next to my chair. Don't forget family photos on your desk!

That's it! Any questions?

Friday Funny

My husband and I are now proud kitty owners!

In celebration, let's see what we're "kitten" ourselves into:

Happy Weekend everyone!

Frenzied SLPs: Fall Articulation Ideas

quick and easy activities for articulation practice this autumn season

Hi! Twice each month, The Frenzied SLPs collaborate to bring you oodles of ideas and suggestions related to a specific speech pathology topic. This time, I'm so thrilled to be joining The Frenzied SLPs with ideas for Fall-themed articulation practice!

I share my time between two different buildings, so I prefer to use activities that involve minimal prep. And with articulation students, I want to make the most of our time together and pack in tons of practice. Let me show you some things we've done this season...

- Die Cuts: I love using the school's die cut machine for seasonal activities. This year I cut out leaf shapes in various colors and had students write fall-themed articulation words on the leaves. They could take these home for extra practice.

- Tech Search: Look through a book or do a "fall"/"autumn" Google image search. How many Autumn-related words can you find that contain your target phonemes?

- Leaf Rubbings: Bring the outdoors in with leaf rubbings! You can write artic words on the leaf veins and students can have art and artic practice all in one.

- Hide and Seek: I cut out pumpkin shapes (using that handy die-cut machine again!) and wrote fall-themed articulation words on each side, then hid them around the room. For groups, each student could only collect the pumpkins that had his/her target sound.

- Go for a Walk: Enjoy the last of our beautiful warm weather before winter comes. Look for things around you which contain target speech sounds.

- Don't Spill the Beans: I don't know about you, but in my therapy room this is one of the most requested games of all time. At Easter we used real jelly beans to play the game; try using candy corn or autumn-colored M&Ms this month. Students have to practice their sounds before each turn.

- Craftivity: Paper plate crafts are always a favorite of mine (see here, and here, and here!). This year we made fall wreaths. Sometimes students wrote their target words on the leaves, and others we just left plain and practiced our targets while we crafted.

- Carryover: For students who are moving towards generalization of their speech sounds, try playing the I'm Going on a Picnic game, but change it to "I'm Going on a Hayride" or "I'm Going to the Pumpkin Patch".

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Don't forget to go back to the Frenzied SLPs and read everyone else's fun fall ideas! The link-up this month starts at Doyle Speech Works. Feel free to link up your own ideas!

An InLinkz Link-up

Speech/Language Learning Targets

help students understand their speech/language therapy goals and progress

Does your district require you to post student learning goals? Where I work, we follow the Marzano teacher evaluation model, which does require us to post learning goals. With special education, it's a little more tricky to post goals since everything is so individualized. And you know with speech/language students that we have dozens of different therapy goals that we work with.

I have a set of learning targets that I have been using, but needed something portable that I could take with me if I was working in classrooms or hallways, and would also allow me to quickly let students know what they are working on. My district has also talked extensively about using scales with students to give them some insight into how they are doing. Thus, this little flip book was born:

Features:
- 88 different learning targets with "I can..." statements
- student rating scales on each card to discuss progress
- blank cards for you to write your own student goals
- full-page blank targets
- tabs to make it easy to flip to the content area you are working on

You can pick up a copy for your own therapy room here. I hope they are useful for you and your students and help you score points during those teacher observations/evaluations!

Sticky Note Command Center {free download}

use this free download to help keep your to-do lists organized

Hello friends! By now I'm sure you are all getting into the swing of the new school year, but if you're anything like me you have a million things on your list of things to get done, and random sticky notes posted everywhere! I had so many notes and reminders jotted down that I was actually forgetting things, so I decided to do something about it.

I created a sticky note command center for my desk! Now all my notes are in one spot for each building I work in and hopefully I won't be forgetting any more important things.

You can download your own sticky note command center here. The pages are editable so you can label the boxes to suit your own needs. There are two colorful versions, a grayscale version, and a blank version so you can add your own background to match your room decor. Enjoy!

(Please leave feedback if you download - it helps me know what to keep or change about the materials I create. Thanks!)

Using Google Forms to Get Started with Scheduling Therapy

use google forms to get started with the scheduling process

When trying to attack the daunting task of scheduling therapy in the past, I have handed out scheduling forms for teachers to attach their schedule or to write down the times that will absolutely NOT work for me to meet with students from their classroom. This has worked fine, but still resulted in me shuffling through a dozen different teacher responses to figure out how to fit my students into the times available. And you know there are never enough times available.

This year I decided to approach this in a different way at one of my buildings. I created a Google Form for teachers to fill out in which they can select all the times that WILL and WILL NOT work for me to meet with their students. Here's how:

Step 1: Sign into your Google account and go to Google Drive.

Step 2: On the left-hand side of the screen, click "new", then "more", then "Google Forms".

Step 3: Make sure to name your Form at the top, and then you can start adding questions. The "Question Title" is where you type what you want your question to say. This is what will show up on the response spreadsheet (more on that later). I made my first question "Name" so that I would be able to see who each response belonged to.

Step 4: Select the Question Type. Google Forms has a lot of different question types, but for this scheduling form's purpose I chose "Checkboxes" because I wanted teachers to be able to select more than one answer. You can also choose whether or not you want your questions to be required. I used the "Help Text" to provide further instructions ("Please select all times that would work for students to go to therapy.")

Step 5: To add another question, click "Add item". You will go through the same steps as you did to create previous questions. In this case, I created another question that allows teachers to select all times that do NOT work on a specific day of the week.

Step 6: This is optional, but at the bottom of my form I added an additional question using the "Paragraph text" option. This is a space where teachers can type in any other information that might be helpful for me to know.

Step 7: When you've added all the questions you need, you can change the look of the form by clicking "Change theme".

Step 8: When you are ready to send your beautiful form out to all your teachers, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "Send form". A pop-up box will allow you to copy a link to the form or type in email addresses to send invitations to.

Once people respond to your survey, their answers are automatically compiled into a handy spreadsheet for you to see their responses all in the same place! Now you will be able to have just one form to refer to when attempting to schedule students. (cue heavenly music)

Unfortunately, you're still on your own to put it all into an actual therapy schedule...but at least this is a great starting point! I liked that I wasn't shuffling through a stack of notes and teacher schedules to figure out where to put students on my schedule. So will you try this out? Let me know how it works for you!

If you'd like to watch a more detailed video tutorial, this is a great one on YouTube.

P.S. I also see this being a great tool for creating progress monitoring "quizzes" for students working on vocabulary skills!