Sidewalk Chalk and Speech Therapy: Taking your session outdoors

Some days (aka every day), a girl just needs some fresh air and sunshine.

While I'm fortunate that even though my room is on the small size with no cabinets for hidden storage, I DO have two windows in my room. You win some, you lose some...Who needs more storage when you've got sunlight, am I right?

Even if you're lucky enough to a) have a therapy room/office that's not a former closet or bathroom and b) have windows (I know, we're reaching for the stars for some of you here), sometimes those windows just aren't enough. There are days when my body is CRAVING fresh air and the feeling of sunshine on my skin. When I get to that point, I'm pretty sure my students are feeling that x10, so on nice days, when the patio off the PreK/K pod or the blacktop are open, I'll sometimes take therapy outside of the confining 4 walls of the therapy room. 

Cue: sidewalk chalk

My students LOVE switching it up (I'll never forget the time I told one of my preschoolers we were doing therapy outside with chalk-- his response was "YES! YES! YES! This is the best day EVER!!"  I mean, who am I to deny a child that kind of happiness?), and there are so many goals that can be targeted just using sidewalk chalk!

1.  Grammar:
a) Possessives: We draw a picture of a boy and a girl and draw objects around them (the girl's ___, the boy's ____, his ___, her ____).

b) Pronouns:  We use "he" and "she" in carrier phrases (ie "She has a..." "He has a....").  We draw clothing items/accessories on the stick people, or draw objects around them.

2.  Associations/Go Togethers:  I say or draw a picture of an object, and the student(s) I'm working with have to tell me something that goes with it, and then draw a picture of their answer (ie I say or draw "web," and they'd draw a spider).  I work on associations a lot with my 4 year olds going to kindergarten the following year!

3. Articulation: We draw pictures of words with their target speech sounds while we practice!

4. WH questions:  I ask a WH question, and the kids draw a picture of the correct answer.  For example, if I ask, "What does a bird build?" then they would draw a nest.

Sometimes I'll get the "I don't know how to draw it!" response, but I just encourage them to try their best and let them know that I don't care what it looks like, just as long as they try! Most of them are good with this response :)

What other ways do you target speech and language activities with chalk?? 



PS- If you're looking for handouts with more great ideas for chalk play (and lots of other outdoor play ideas!) to give to parents, check out this great "Summer Play" packet from SpeechRoomNews.  Shortly after I purchased it last May, I had a parent of a newly-evaluated student ask what he could do to work on communication skills over the summer.  Pulled this packet up on TpT, downloaded, hit "print" and off he went! 

PreK Pushin: Math & Communication Goals-- How do they go together?

Graph image by Creative Lessons Cafe

Push-in therapy.  In-class support.  Co-teaching.  Whatever you want to call it, going into the classroom to provide in-class support minutes to your students can definitely require some outside-of-the-box thinking if you're not the one who has planned & is leading the lesson.  I know--it's hard sometimes as SLPs to let go of having a set therapy plan at all times!

Depending on the schedule (a public school SLP's favorite thing!), you might have to come in during small group instruction times and just keep your fingers crossed they're doing a language arts-type activity and not something seemingly completely unrelated like, say... math.  As many preschool programs become more academic lesson-based rather than more play-based, you might be encountering situations like this more often when providing in-class minutes.

Sometimes, I come in and my students are at a group working on vocabulary (woot! My lucky day!).  Other times, I'm not so lucky, but with a little creative thinking, I can make it work.  Let's take a look at this math activity where the class was learning the concept of graphing.  As they took turns rolling a die with various colored baseball hats, they colored a box in the column of the same-colored hat they rolled.

Source: 2TeachingMommies

Upon first glance, one might be thinking, "Colors, counting, and graphing... completely unrelated to speech and language goals.  How do I target my students' goals doing THIS?"  Well, I'm glad you asked! Here are a few different areas of preschool speech and language skills you can target in an activity like this:

1.  MLU
This activity would easily lend itself to structured sentence building.  Working on combining two words together? My turn, your turn, my roll, I roll, you roll, blue hat, red hat, etc....  Three word combos? "I got blue" "I have red" "More yellow hats" "Two blue hats" "My turn roll" etc...

2.  Basic Concepts
Preschool math involves learning about quantitative concepts, and many of my students have goals for basic concept knowledge.  With graphing, you can work on concepts like more/less/most (Which column has more? Which one has less, blue or red?  Which one has the most boxes colored in?) as well as full/empty/no/none (Are there any columns that are full? Any that are empty/that have none/that have no boxes colored?).  I also targeted spatial concepts like "Color the box that's above/on top of  the yellow one you already colored"  or "The red column is next to the yellow column."  Throw in some size concepts such as long/tall/short columns and make comparisons, too!

3.  Pronouns
If you have a student in the group working on pronouns, have them practice using "he" and "she" to tell you what their peers just rolled "He rolled a blue" "She rolled red" etc... and even "I" if they are using "me" instead of "I" (I had a kiddo on my caseload where we worked on using "I" for two school years.  His teacher would model it/recast it with emphasis when he made an error, as did I, the classroom paraprofessionals, and his other therapists.  We all did the happy dance this Spring when he finally started using it in conversation!)

4.  Articulation
I generally do pull-out therapy with my artic/phono kids, but try to do a little in-class support when I can, in a natural environment like the classroom.  With this activity, I can work with my artic students on initial /f/ (four, five), initial /t/ (my turn, two), initial /m/ (me, my turn), and /p, b/ sounds for colors like "pink" "purple" and "blue."


Speech and language skills can be worked on just about anywhere, at any time!  How do you target communication goals in math or other seemingly unrelated lessons?

Community Helpers: Project-Based Learning

This year, my school district implemented Project-Based Learning (PBL) as everyone's professional development project for the year.  If you're not familiar with Project Based Learning, it's a teaching approach that's very student-driven rather than teacher-driven, and students explore a real world problem/challenge/question of their choosing while exploring possible solutions through various methods-- research, collaboration, etc...

An excerpt from Edutopia explains it in a little more detail:

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"PBL is the ongoing act of learning about different subjects simultaneously. This is achieved by guiding students to identify, through research, a real-world problem (local to global) developing its solution using evidence to support the claim, and presenting the solution through a multimedia approach based in a set of 21st-century tools.

Kids show what they learn as they journey through the unit, interact with its lessons, collaborate with each other, and assess themselves and each other. They don't just take a test or produce a product at the end to show their learning."

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I implemented PBL by acting as support for one of my preschool teachers in a Community Helpers project in her classroom-- "What do I want to be when I grow up?" was our driving question that began PBL! (Every PBL starts with the "driving question.")

We split the kids up into small groups during PBL week based on their chosen occupations.  The kids ended up choosing to be doctors, firefighters, police officers, bakers/chefs, engineers, and astronauts.  The teacher and I loaded up our library cards with books about each occupation so the kids could start their research on their chosen occupation!

I took the doctor group, and we started researching what a doctor does by looking through books, watching videos, and exploring through apps.  I also had a doctor kit out so we could explore the tools a little more!

• Virtual Field Trip to a hospital
• Interactive Book: Pediatrician 
• Calillou's Check Up App:

From those videos, we learned about what doctors do, why they are important, what they wear, where they work, and what tools they use.  Each student drew pictures of what they learned, using these booklets that you can download on TpT here.

The tools are from the play doctor kit that was picked up for pennies at a yard sale!

After completing the booklets, the kids decided on a project they wanted to make to represent their chosen occupations.  In my doctor group, the chosen projects were doctor bags, an otoscope, and an x-ray.  These are the finished projects.. They turned out pretty cute!

I will say that I have even MORE respect for teachers after doing this project.  Within my doctor group, I had 2 kids with language delays, one peer model, and another student on an IEP for other needs besides communication. My one language student just needed some prompts to recall some of the information, but was pretty on task overall and could complete the drawings in her booklet independently.  The other student on my caseload needs significant wait time along with cuing to come up with answers.  She also says "I can't" or "I don't know how" during any activity that involves drawing, and won't attempt it unless she's walked step by step through how to draw it.  The peer model in the group FLEW through everything, and the other student not on my caseload needed a lot of prompting and cuing to stay on task.  It was such a struggle to feel like I was being effective and meeting the needs of everyone in the group, since they were all at *COMPLETELY* different levels.  I can't imagine what this feels like in a classroom of 23 students of all varying levels!

Overall, though, I'd say our PBL project was a success! We had to provide a little more guidance than what is probably *supposed* to happen for PBL, but when you work in a special needs preschool program, you have to adapt! After making their projects, we recorded short video clips of all the students talking about what they want to be when they grow up, what that job involves, what tools they use, where they work, and what they made for their project.

Does your school do Project Based Learning? If so, what projects have you done/helped with?

Chicken Soup for the SLP Soul

Imagine this scenario:

You’re a first year SLP—ready to take on the world after 6 years of school including 2 years of practicums behind you.  You’re a little nervous about being out on your own, but confident enough to know that while you don’t know it all, you know enough to be plenty competent in order to do your job.  You’re ecstatic that you’ve landed your first job!

Then... “Oh by the way, these several parents of children on your caseload are not happy because their kids didn’t get the services they should have last year.  It happened before you ever came and is something you had absolutely nothing to do with, but you’ll need to put out some of these fires.” 

Um.. What?! That was terrifying for me as a shy, quiet, first-year SLP trying to get my sea legs! I had no idea what I was walking into!

One of these particular students who didn’t receive consistent services that year was a little girl with Apraxia.  Her teacher had told me that the year before, she basically “squawked” because she had such difficulty with her speech. 

I first met the freckle-faced cutie pie with Apraxia at a “Meet the Teacher” night before school started.  She was a bit shy, but we were able to talk a little bit, and I adored her right off the bat! Then, I chatted with her mom and she asked about my previous experience.  Cue hundreds of butterflies in my stomach as I desperately tried to remain confident when saying that it was my first year.  I figured after the prior school year's debacle and some lack of speech progress the year before, that a brand-spankin’ new, first-year SLP was probably not what she was hoping for!

The night went well enough, but I was still really nervous about the whole situation when I got home that night.  My husband gave me a pep talk, though, and told me, “Just do your job, and they’ll have to love you.  You’re awesome! You got this” (Thanks, hubs!)

So, that’s what I did.  I "did my job," and both me and that little girl worked our tails off that year.

I remember the day when she finally mastered the /y/ sound we had been working on.  She had a w/y substitution, so the word “yeah” always came out “wah.”  To show off, her teacher and I asked her questions like, “Are you beautiful?” “Are you smart?” “Are you funny?”  It was so fun to see her just beaming with pride and self-confidence, answering "yeah" or “yes” to all of those questions.  She never seemed to struggle with /y/ after that! ;-)

I'll never forget when her /L/ sound popped into a word one day, too. Her name had an L in it, so it was a pretty big deal! I remembered her mom telling me at the beginning of the year that whenever someone would ask her daughter's name, that her daughter would turn to her and ask her to say it, because she said she "couldn't say it right" Well, let me tell you-- She was rockin’ those /L/ sounds like nobody’s business by Spring!

About a year or so later, in May 2013, on the first official Apraxia Awareness Day, I stood next to her mom at the kindergarten graduation program. She gave me the sweet card pictured above, letting me know how much she appreciated me and the difference I’d made in her family's lives (I still keep it in my desk, and pull it out to re-read on the extra tough days for a smile!).  Together, we stood there, and watched that same freckle-faced cutie who used to squawk and be embarrassed to even attempt to say her name, sing with her peers in her end of the year kindergarten graduation program.


And that moment, right there, is why I am an SLP. Moments like that far outweigh the negatives, and I can't imagine doing anything else for a career!

Want more stories to warm your heart or make you laugh? Hop on over to the next blog, and keep reading! Don’t forget to keep collecting numbers at the end of each post so you can add them all up at the end and enter into the raffle for some AWESOME TpT gift certificates!   My number is:

Happy Hopping!

Thanks Felice at Thedabblingspeechie for organizing this awesome hop, and thanks to all of these ladies who shared their sweet stories!

An InLinkz Link-up

Potato Head Play

Mr. Potato Head is a toy that many of us SLPs have used in therapy with little ones.  It's always been toted as a "must-have" for anyone working with early intervention/prek.  I love my potato heads (I scored a big tub full of heads and accessories at a yard sale last year!), but I'll admit- there was a point in time when I first began my career, where I wondered how I could *really* use it in a variety ways besides the very basics like labeling body parts and requesting.

If any of you new to the field/new to this population have wondered the same thing, or maybe if you're a more seasoned SLP just looking for new ideas for this toy... Here are some other ways I've been targeting many other speech & language goals through potato head play with my preschoolers!

1.  Pronouns:  I have pieces that let me work on both "he" and "she" during play.  I have eyes with eyeshadow and big eyelashes, earrings, big red lips, purses, etc... so I can not only work on "Mister" potato head but also his female counterpart :)  I model a lot of "HE has green shoes on today" and "SHE has a pretty yellow purse"  and try to slightly emphasize the different pronouns.

2.  Basic Concepts:  I model comments like "He has a BIG nose and LITTLE shoes" "Here's his hat! It goes on top!"  "I'm putting her eyes ABOVE her nose"  Or, if I want to check understanding of concepts, I can say things like, "I have his shoes! Do the shoes go on the top or on the bottom?"

3.  Final consonants:  Purse, nose, arm, feet, eyes, hat, top, put, on, in, take, out-- all great words to model and practice with final consonants during play.  I like to sometimes hide the pieces in a sensory bin (ie my box of beans!) so they dig for parts and then we name the item and do short phrases like "Put on ___"     "___ on top"   and   "___ goes in"

4.  Plurals:  Talk about all the pairs your potato head has! Model plurals by talking about the potato head's two ears, two eyes, two shoes, two feet, two hands, two arms, two earrings, glasses, etc!

5.  Action words/-ING verbs:  Make your potato heads do all kinds of silly actions! "He is running" "She is shopping"  "He is dancing" etc...


What other ways do you play with potato heads?

For the Love of Speech: Valentine's Blog Hop!

Welcome to your next (or maybe first!) stop of the "For The Love Of Speech" blog hop organized by Lyndsey over at Speech to the Core and Elizabeth over at Speech Owl! You're in for some sweet treats!

I am SO very thankful for each and every one of you who take time to read this blog, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and those of you who download freebies & paid items from my TpT store.  I wanted to share the love that I've been feeling! :)

Hop through each blog and download a Valentine's Day freebie-- we each have a different component to make up a full lesson plan to target a variety of activities!  Mine is a little pronoun-themed activity:

You can grab it HERE.

After you've downloaded my freebie, hop on over to Speech Sprouts (by clicking the image above) to check out what fabulous activity she has for you!

Movin' Mondays (...on Tuesday): Transportation Toss

I'm a day late for a Monday post, but better late than never, right?! One of my goals in therapy this semester is to get back to incorporating movement into my therapy sessions.  Today, I wanted to share just a simple vocabulary activity I came up with for our Transportation unit in preschool (I love all of the cute winter-themed activities I am continuing to see everyone posting on Instagram & Facebook... but I just can't do winter anymore!  <insert sign language for "all done" here> So, onto new themes, we go!)

This activity just uses basic transportation images found here (I went with real photos for this activity) taped to beanbags.  I took three containers and taped on pictures of water, a road, and a cloud for various modes of transportation, as well.

The kids got to pick a beanbag out of a pile, and we worked on picture naming and some WH questions.  After talking about the pictured item for a little bit, they had to decide which container they should toss it in-- water, road, or air.

 

It was a super simple activity, but they got to move around a little bit and throw things (I mean, what 3 or 4 year old doesn't enjoy that?), so they enjoyed it!

For added movement, try adding some simple yoga to your therapy! Act out each mode of transportation as you work on naming the pictures-- try boat pose for boats/ships, chair pose for a tractor or cars with arms extended out in front of you rather than vertically, or warrior 3 pose for airplanes!

How can I use that to target language? - Letter Tiles -

“How can I use THAT to target my student’s language goals?”

It’s a question I’ve thought to myself more than once going into the preschool rooms to do push-in therapy with my language students.  When I push in to the classrooms to provide therapy, I often times just follow the child’s/teacher’s lead and take whatever they are working on or playing with & figure out how to put a speech/language twist on it.  At this point, with it being my 4th year in preschool, I've become pretty good at making just about anything a language activity, but it definitely takes some creative thinking at times-- for instance, using letter tiles to target pronouns & spatial concepts!

The other day, I walked into a classroom at centers & the student I was going to work with was playing with letter tiles.  One of his language goals is for subject pronoun usage-- “he” “she” and “they.”  We started spelling out names of people who are important to him-- his brother, his mom, and his teacher.  I modeled sentences for him like, “HE starts with an A” or “SHE has ‘T.’  SHE has an ‘I’” etc… as we put each letter in the sequence.  After we were done with a couple different names, we compared.. “THEY both have an ‘A’”  “THEY start with different letters.”  After we were done, I heard his teacher modeling for him, too, emphasizing pronouns-- “Were you working with Miss Kari? SHE’S the best, isn’t she?” -- Double bonus! :)

You could also use the tiles to target spatial concepts..

-”Put the “A” on top of the “K””

-”Put the “C” next to the “D”

-”Put an ‘M’ above the ‘N’ etc...

-After putting a sequence of letters together, you could ask which letter is first/last in the row.

It’s an easy way to hit spatial concepts for your goal, while also working on letter recognition, which the ECSE teacher is likely working on, too!  If they are not at the level of letter recognition yet, you could step it down & do it by colors-- Put a blue letter under a green letter, etc… while still modeling the letter names afterwards.. “You’re right! the blue N is UNDER the green M”  

I know letter ID isn’t necessarily a goal we work on as SLPs, but my teachers try to work on language goals for me, so I try to model academic concepts for them, too!

WH questions is another potential area to target.  It depends on whether your student needs visual supports or not, but you could ask questions about what you just spelled with letter tiles-- ie, if you spelled “hat” you could ask “Where does a hat go?”   If you spell “sky” you could ask “What do you see up in the sky?” etc...

What other ways can you think of to use letter tiles to target language goals?

"What's In Your Cart?" Link-Up-- Tpt Cyber Monday Is Here!

Linking up with Speech Room News today for her "What's In Your Cart" link up! The TpT Cyber Monday sale is here & there are SO many great materials I've had my eye on-- it's hard to narrow it down! But, here are a couple of my new items I think you'll want to check out, as well as a handful of items that have found their way into my cart :)

Here's what I think you should take a look at from my store-- two new winter-themed interactive phonology units.  I have SO many phono kids on my caseload this year, so I need a lot of new materials to keep them engaged & motivated.

Up first is a Build A Snowman Phonology-- Your students will get to build a snowman by placing snowballs and snowflakes all around a large picture scene

The second new winter item in my store is Decorate the Tree Phonology-- your kids get to decorate a tree with silly lights and cute ornaments all while practicing their phonological targets!

*****

Now, for the items in my cart from other sellers: 

1.  Positional Concepts with Sid the Kid from Maureen over at The Speech Bubble

2.  Winter Fun Pack from Mia at Putting Words In Your Mouth 

3.  AAC Starter Kit from Felice over at Thedabblingspeechie

4.  File Folder Songs for Basic Language from CC at Super Power Speech

What's in your cart that you're excited about? Be sure to click the link below the first image at the top to head over to Speech Room News to see what other SLP bloggers have in their carts! You'll probably find a lot of great items/sellers that you weren't aware of previously!

Turkey Talk- a Thanksgiving craftivity!

Need a quick, easy-prep activity to use for Thanksgiving? I've got you covered! I used this super cute craft with my articulation students this morning & it was a huge hit-- the kids were SO proud of their turkeys & were eager to show them off to everyone!

Trace a large circle onto brown construction paper (I used a paper plate as a template), as well as a small one (I used the inner circle of a paper plate that I cut out).  Use multiple pieces of paper at once to cut out multiple circles, noses, and legs ahead of time.  You'll have to wait on tracing the hands, obviously, until your students are with you, but you can cut out multiple hands at the same time, too, once they're traced, to save time!

You'll also need some construction paper in other colors (I used Fall colors) for the "feathers", orange triangles for the nose, and googly eyes.  Just glue the head and legs onto the body, and the feathers anywhere around the body you'd like! This one pictured was totally student-driven; he apparently had a VERY clear idea of where he wanted his feathers to go.. and it turned out so cute! I love it!

You could easily write speech words on the feathers (which I did on another one) or glue pictures of their words onto the feathers (think Jumbo Articulation Book pictures).  I'm sure all of you creative SLPs can think of other things to do with it, too-- how else would you use this fun craft?

Staying Positive

As SLPs, we have one of the BEST jobs in the world.  Seriously.  We help people communicate--what could be cooler than that?!  We teach vocabulary to children in school so they can access the curriculum and collaborate with their peers.  We give alternative methods to verbal communication by teaching a child with Autism how to use a communication device.  We help retrain a stroke patient's brain in order to learn how to speak again.  We teach correct articulation production so that a child can be understood by those around him.

We are making positive changes in our students'/patients' lives every single day.  Every. Single. Day.  However... it is really easy to get wrapped up in all the downsides of our job.. as a school-based therapist, maybe it's the 4 new students that just got added to your already-too-large caseload.. or the 7 annual IEPs that are due next week, or the meeting that got changed that no one told you about, or the 65 progress notes that need to be completed... or all of the above!! With so many demands placed on us, it's easy to get discouraged.  But, in spite of all that, we have one of the most amazing and rewarding jobs you could ask for.  I really, truly, believe that.  Those little breakthrough moments where your students/patients have those "aha!" moments are what makes all those not-so-great things about our job bearable.

Today, I decided to make myself reminders of why I do what I do to keep me going and keep me inspired on the days that are harder than others.  I started writing down all the positives I could think of that had happened with my students over the last week or two.

One of my little guys on the spectrum said my name for the very first time, and then wouldn't stop turning around, looking at me, saying my name, and giggling! :)  My little one with Down Syndrome used a few words spontaneously at center time with no modeling!

A couple kids I'm doing Cycles with got their L sound in isolation & in syllables.  Another one who's been working on the /f/ sound for forever said "four" and "five" with a BEAUTIFUL /f/ at the beginning, independently while he was counting!  Another one of my students who is suspected to be on the Spectrum came over to me at centers and made lots of eye contact showing me her toys, and kept touching me if I turned away, to get me to turn back and interact with her.  She didn't even acknowledge that I was right in front of her at the start of the school year.

My goal is to write down at least one positive thing that happens each day and place it in a box, so when I'm feeling stressed out & like a failure SLP (because let's face it, we ALL have those frustrating days where it feels like no one is making progress!), I can open the box, read through the positives, and remind myself of the big smiles those kids had on their face when I was so excited about their breakthrough moments.  And, to remind myself that the work I'm doing with my students is too important to be bogged down by all the other things.

Helping people is the reason we all got into this profession... And a daily reminder of that never hurts :)

What's something positive that happened to YOU today?