Why I use dot markers in speech/language therapy

Bubbles, Cariboo, and dot markers:  three things my students never get tired of, and are always excited about.  I don't know what it is, exactly, about those three things that make them just as exciting after the 100th time as they were the first time, but they definitely hold some sort of magical powers when it comes to the little ones (Teach me your ways, inanimate objects!).

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about why I use one of those items--dot markers--in therapy sessions, and what skills they help promote!

1.  Fine Motor Development:
Especially in an early childhood setting, there is a lot of collaboration between service providers, and we are always trying to promote our students' development and generalization of skills across people and settings.  Using dot markers is an easy way for me to work on development of early grasp patterns with those kiddos who are still pronating (wrist turned so that their thumb is down while they're holding their writing/drawing utensil).  I just give them a cue of "thumbs up!" and most of them can remember to turn their wrist.  From there, I can help facilitate moving from a fisted grasp pattern to holding it more with their fingertips (OTs, aren't you impressed with what I've picked up from listening to you guys in IEP meetings? Ha)  Side note: Teacher and OT friends, you're on your own, though, with scissors.  Teaching preschoolers to wield scissors is terrifying and I'm leaving that work to you ;-))

2.  1 to 1 Correspondence:
As I mentioned earlier, all of us service providers are working towards helping our students master and generalize skills.  1 to 1 correspondence is an early math skill I can help facilitate for the classroom teacher.  When I'm using dot markers, we can work on counting each dot as we stamp it, because I always have them stamp more than one on each turn!

3.  It's a quick reinforcer:
Some of my students need an immediate reinforcer to stay on task or to stay motivated.  When they enjoy dot markers (and I've yet to meet a preschooler who doesn't), their reward is immediate-- Practice 5 artic words, stamp 5 dots.  Easy peasy!  It also keeps them busy when their partner is practicing their targets, as well.

4.  Creativity:
Sometimes I feel like there's so much push for our little guys to master all of these academic skills at an early age, that creativity and learning through play can get left in the dust.  With all of the academic demands expected to be met in the classrooms, there is often limited time for art and play, and general creativity.  With dot markers, some of my kids like to switch colors throughout their picture or make patterns by alternating colors.  It's just a little thing I can let them do to foster some of their creativity, but every little bit helps! :)

5.  They have a clear ending:
Dot marker pages are an activity that have a clear ending.  It's a visual that lets my students see how much of that activity is left before we move on to something new or before they go back to class.  When they see that 3/4 of the dots are left, they know we still have a bit before our session is over.  When they see that they only have 5 more dots left, they can figure out that they've just about completed their work.  It's a visual reference of what they are working towards (ie peacin' out of speech and getting back to their friends-- ha! Just kidding (kind of.  for some of them.))


I love dot markers and include them in a lot of my TpT creations! You can find dot marker pages in my Apple Speech & Language pack, Print & Go Phonology series, Community Helpers Mega Pack, and my Spring Print & Go Pack,

For some freebie dot marker pages with an apple theme for Fall, Back to School, or a Nutrition unit, check our this free sample of my larger Apple Speech/Language pack here.  You can also find a lot of dot marker pages (or magnet pages, as they are called on this site) by theme at Making Learning Fun.

Are there any other go-to resources you love for dot markers? I'd love to see them!

The Best Thing I Learned This Summer

I'm so excited to have been asked to be a part of "The Frenzied SLP" group to bring you helpful tips throughout the year to stay #SLPstrong, and excited to bring you my first post with these wonderful ladies, as well! 

The best thing I learned this summer... Well, I've learned a lot of things this summer-- like painting a fence by hand with a paintbrush is awful, and that potty training male puppies takes significantly longer than it does with females, for example.

But, the BEST thing I learned this summer?  

The best thing I learned this summer was how to find my balance between being an SLP, and being a person outside of an SLP.

The end of last school year was tough.  I really struggled the last couple months of school.  I had a higher caseload than I'd ever had before, with more significant-needs students than I'd ever had before, and had more meetings in the span of two months than I had ever had before.  58 meetings in 60 days-- YIKES! Tons of evals from screenings and Infant/Toddler transitions, and a plethora of annual IEP meetings rolled into kindergarten transition meetings for many of my students in those last two months.

#mylife

I was BURNT. OUT.  I had a really hard time compartmentalizing-- probably in part because I was writing reports at home every night, but also in part because being an SLP is such a big part of my identity that I was feeling like my self-worth as a whole directly correlated to my performance at work.  I know I was doing the best I could, given my caseload numbers, needs of the kids, and the number of evaluations I had to complete, but I still felt like it just wasn't good enough-- I knew that some of my students could be making more progress than they were, and even though the circumstances necessary for that to happen were out of my control, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was still a reflection on me.

I felt like I was failing.

As paperwork consumed my entire being, I was not feeling inspired to come up with fun and engaging therapy activities.  A lack of inspiration when you're a blogger, too, is never a good thing.  Most days during those last two months, I could barely bring myself to look through my Instagram feed (and guys-- I L-O-V-E LOVE Instagram!) because it would be chock-full of wonderful, creative, and fun therapy ideas from other SLP bloggers, and I'd feel like a failure for not being inspired enough to come up with something noteworthy of my own to execute in therapy sessions and subsequently blog about.  Womp Womp.  Talk about a double whammy!

Something had to give, and I needed to find more of a balance this summer.  I like to visualize myself as having multiple "buckets" to fill-- with each bucket being a separate aspect of my personality (if you're not familiar with the term "bucket fillers," go here).  The "SLP bucket" is an important bucket for me that needs to be filled, but does not need to be overflowing while other buckets go empty.  I needed to be able to come back and be my best self in August for myself, my coworkers, and my students.  So, here's what I did to help achieve that balance!

1- Less time providing ESY services:  I dropped down from my regular 4 day/week position providing summer school services, to the 2 day/week position, and let another SLP take the 4 day slot.  This was one of the best decisions I could have made.  It gave me a chance to still make some extra money while taking some time to be away from the building!  I also had the chance to try out some new things I hadn't had time to test out during the school year, like doing a large group lesson in a prek room (I always do small groups but haven't done large group yet!) and using music with my AAC users (side note: One of those AAC/music ideas is going to be featured in the August issue of the ASHA Leader! Look for it when you get it!)

2- Less time being creative on the computer and more time being hands-on creative:  I put blogging and TpT off to the side for a little while this summer to spend more time being creative in other ways.  I finished some Pinterest projects I'd been wanting to do for a while, and got started on redoing our front porch and master bedroom.  During the school year, often times blogging and TpT and all of the things that go along with it are enough to keep my creative side happy and engaged, but I was craving something different and more hands-on, so I switched gears!

3- Less time perusing Pinterest for actual therapy ideas to start the new school year, and more time perusing for organizational ideas to help me start off the school year:  This small change has actually made a big difference.  Rather than going into full-blown therapy mode, I'm spending more time getting inspired for tips and tricks on how to make storage and organization more streamlined in my therapy room.  Can't completely turn off that SLP brain (nor do I want to!) but this is a way of focusing that energy towards ideas that will hopefully help me all year long!

4- Spending time with coworkers outside of work:  Spending time with coworkers is something that might seem counter-intuitive when I'm needing to find more of a balance between work and my personal life.  HOWEVER.... It has been such a fun summer with these ladies.  They are hilarious and have such big hearts.  We've been having bi-weekly-ish coffee dates, trying out various coffee shops in our area.  Outside of coworkers, all my other friends and my husband are still working M-F during the day, so naturally I spend a lot of time at home on my own.  I get anstsy after a while!  Spending time during the week with my coworkers is an added bonus to having fun on the weekends, too.  It makes me feel like I'm doing more with my summer!

An additional bonus is that we all work with special needs kids, so these friends "get it" in the way that other friends don't--they understand my love of all things school/office supply-related (ha), they understand the emotional toll working with special needs kids can take on you, and they also completely understand the passion I have for what I do, because they have that same passion in the same or related fields.  I can be 100% supportive of an awesome project a friend is doing at work, or empathize with other friends going through stress at work, but I can't fully understand their excitement or stress in the way they experience it, and vice versa.  It's not a bad thing-- it's just different.  

----
I love being a speech-language pathologist and SLP blogger/TpT creator, but I've been working hard to find a balance between all of my "buckets" this summer and am going back to school in a couple weeks feeling more refreshed than I have the last two summers.  I'm going to work really hard to keep a balance this school year, even if it means having to write out and schedule specific times in the evenings to help me stick to it-- for example, 
7-9pm: Blog & TpT
9-930: Read my book
930-1030: Watch a tv show with husband

It seems a little crazy but I think it just may work! 

What are some ways you are achieving balance between work and personal life? I'd love to hear your ideas! If you want to read about what some of the other SLP bloggers have found to be the best thing they've done this summer, click through to some of the blogs below!  And, if you want to link up, too, follow these instructions!

An InLinkz Link-up

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?

Favorite Games for Final Consonant Deletion

As SLPs, many of us use games as general reinforcers while working on a variety of speech/language targets.  A lot of times, the games may have nothing to do with the target we're working on.  Some games & activities I've been using this school year with my phono kids, though, have turned out to have great opportunities to work on specific words pertinent to their targets AND to the game. Preschoolers learn a lot through play, so when I have the opportunity to use meaningful target words for artic rather than the drill/take a turn/drill/take a turn method, I take it! The following games/activities are my favorites to use when targeting the phonological process of Final Consonant Deletion:

1.  First up is this cookie jar game I made.  The cookie jar image comes from MyCuteGraphics, and is just pasted into a Word doc, stretched out, printed, and attached to a tissue box with a hole cut out of the middle.  The cookies are just circles cut from brown construction paper with black marker dots on them for chocolate chips.  So. Simple.  But my prek students LOVE it!

Words to target for FCD: eat, hot, out, plate, in, on, gone, time, scoop, chip, bake, take, make

2.  Honey Bee Tree game:

This one is played just like Kerplunk, but has leaves/bees/honeypot in a tree rather than just sticks and marbles. 

Words to target for FCD: in (putting leaves in, putting bees in), out (pulling leaves out, bees falling out, taking bees out), drop (dropping bees in) down (bees fell down), turn (my turn/your turn), buzz, bees, gone, come/home (one of my kiddos liked to make the bees buzz away for a second, and I would have to tell them to "come" and then she would have them fly "home" for each turn)

3.  Potato Head

This should come as no surprise, but there is an abundance of great words to target for FCD with everyone's favorite spud!

Words to target for FCD:

final t: hat, foot/feet, out, put

final n/m: in, arm

final s/z: eyes, nose, toes, purse, any other plurals

final f: off, 

final p: top, hop

final k: take

4.  Don't Break the Ice:

Words to target for FCD: turn (my turn/your turn), in (work on as you set up and put ice blocks in), gone (all the blocks have been knocked out), hit, out, knock, break, ice

Do you have any specific games you use for particular speech or language targets? I'd love to hear about them if you do!

Speech Trading Post

Some of us bloggers got together to do a Speech Trading Post (shout out to the ladies of Sounds Like Fun for coming up with the idea!) where we swapped materials and used them in our therapy sessions.

I got the chance to take Angela & Kim from Speech Trading Post's "Bugs & Slugs" pack for a test drive.  I spend several weeks doing bug-themed activities, so I was excited to try this out because it involves MINIMAL prep, and I was even MORE excited that some of it was a no-print/no-prep option! (Because with 30+ kindergarten transition meetings on top of all the annuals and evals this time of year-- Ain't nobody got time for prep!).

The no-print portion of the packet can be used in iBooks on the iPad, so it's easy to pull up whenever you need it! It is a very colorful mini book highlighting a different bug on each page/slide with fun facts about the bugs.  It definitely grabs the kids' attention because of the vibrant colors, and you're incorporating some non-fiction work into therapy, too-- win win!

Cute bugs and WH questions-- yes, please!  Great way to work on comprehension.  Angela & Kim have a page included with comprehension questions they came up with, or you can use your own. With younger kids, you can ask questions as you go along, asking comprehension questions as you read, but with older kids, you could wait until the whole slide is read, or after several slides are read.

Another feature of the packet I loved targeted basic concepts & following directions.  If you have younger students, you probably work on following directions and spatial concepts quite often. 

This activity is played like Simon Says, but "Queen Bee" says directions instead of Simon :)  This activity can be easily adapted to be more simple, and played without the "Simon Says" component to just work on spatial concepts (Put the bee below the jar;  Put the dragonfly in the jar), but if you need to add a twist to make it a little more challenging, "Queen Bee says" is where it's at :)  I liked that there was just 1 page of bugs to cut out and the jars were just in easy rectangles for cutting out.  Hardly any prep time involved!

The other thing I really liked about this packet was the roll & color page. I forgot to take a picture of a finished, colored page, but you can see what it looks like below!

I love open-ended activities because I can use them with a variety of goals.  I have some kids that LOVE coloring and others who love anything competitive-- so for some, we just colored, and with others, in groups, we saw who could get all the bugs colored the fastest!

Kim & Angela are graciously letting me give away this pack to another lucky follower, and I'm throwing in my Spring Print & Go Packet into the giveaway, too. Two packs that cover a variety of goals with minimal to no-prep options-- you can't go wrong there!!  To enter to win, head over to Instagram and comment on the giveaway post with your email for a chance to win. A winner will be chosen at random on Sunday evening.  

  

Paper, Pencil, and Paperclip Challenge

Let me start out this post by saying that I was NOT skilled in the art of improvising when I was doing therapy in grad school.  Not. At. All.  How times have changed... :)

I'm linking up with Felice over at Thedabblingspeechie for her paper, pencil, and paperclip challenge! I'm sure many of you have heard the quip from a supervisor at some point in school that you should be able to do therapy with just a paperclip.  I personally don't remember ever being told that, actually, by any of my former professors or supervisors, but I've had multiple coworkers and other SLPs I know say that they were told this in school! (Maybe I was told this but the thought of doing therapy with no materials at that time was too scary and I just blocked it from memory...)

Doing therapy on the fly comes second nature to me now, and I feel like I could do it with just about any sort of materials.. including just a paperclip if I really had to! I'm glad Felice let us use a paper and pencil, too, though ;-)


1:  Articulation spin

I drew a spinner with numbers 1-6 using paper and pencil, and we used the pencil and paperclip as the spinner! My student spun the "spinner" and I gave him a word to say the same number of times as the number he landed on.  At one point, he spun the paperclip so hard that it flew off the table-- then this little guy was REALLY into it, and kept "happening" to spin the paperclip off the table on "accident." .. ha.


2.  Following directions using spatial concepts (We just used the same piece of paper from the previous activity since I came to the prek pod only armed with one piece of paper!).

I just had my student follow different directions placing different items on top/under/next to, etc....  Put the paper behind your back, in front of you, on top of your head, etc...  Put the pencil on top of the paperclip.  Hide the paperclip under the paper.  Put the paperclip next to the pencil.  Draw an X above the paperclip.  I think you get the picture!  If your kids are at the point where they can work on the concepts expressively,  they always love to be the "teacher" and tell you where to place things!

Click the first picture in this post to head over to Felice's blog and see how other SLPs are getting creative with paperclips, pencils, and paper!