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Finding Your TPT Niche


Thanks Teach Speech 365 for throwing this linky party which highlights SLP bloggers interests and areas of speciality.  

I started teacherspayteachers a year ago this month.  My work is primarily with grades 5-8 and also with my school's Life Skills population which may span grades 3-8.  Most of my products are geared towards services with the middle school student and life skills populations.  

Calendar activities: All of our students follow a schedule and have to understand calendars.  It is amazing how many language skills are involved in calendar work: from understanding concepts to sequencing events I realized that a lot of goals could be incorporated into the functional skills of calendar work.  These monthly activities are labor intensive, however, it is worth the effort as I receive great feedback from my buyers and have begun to see major improvements in the skills addressed.  I almost have a year of calendars made and will update these calendars yearly for no fee.  This summer I plan on adding data pages to each month.  

Perspective TakingI recently traveled to Michelle Garcia Winner's  Social Thinking Clinic in  San Jose to participate in the Social Thinking Mentor Training Program.  I was able to observe Michelle working with adolescent groups of learners with social needs and talk with her about her passion for working with this age group.  This opened up my learning to a world outside of "pragmatic" language and sparked my interest in developing products that address the important areas of safety, problem solving, empathy training, and perspective taking.  Here are a few of my best sellers:  
  
Taking Perspective: Problem solving, empathy training, and perspective taking with situation cards and an emotion bank.
Safebook: Perspective taking and problem solving with social media.  


Figurative LanguageI love making these products because idioms and multiple meaning words are so much fun to work with.   I have a spring, summer, and holiday themed figurative language products.  Fall and winter are in the works.  


My new Spring Figurative Language product has multiple meaning words, idioms, personification, similes, and metaphors.  It includes at least two activities for each area as well as black/white printables for easy prep.  Data tracking forms are included for baseline and progress charting.  




Describing and EET CompanionsI received a grant last year and was lucky enough to be able to purchase the entire EET system and most of the extras.   The skill of describing is so important in all modes of expressive language and I've made all my activities of descriptive language easily able to be used with Sara Smith's EET.   

Dazzling Daisies comes with bulletin board daisies, printable daisies, cueing daisies, and describing data may be collected in oral and written forms.  


Language Logic: When I worked in the rehab setting I used language logic puzzles to improve critical thinking skills in my CVA and TBI patients.  Language logic activities are hard to come by for the school age population so I made some for my students and decided to sell them on TPT.  I absolutely love working on goals of critical thinking, problem solving, deductive, and inductive reasoning using these activities.  

Sentence Scrambles:  For some reason, most of my middle school students have a really hard time with the Sentence Assembly.  They present with long delays on standardized SLP tests and would have benefited from cues if they were allowable.  I made a variety of sentence scramble products to target this specific skill and have provided a cueing system in these products.  This is one area in which I have student work samples and evidence of improved ability (sometimes hard to find concrete data in our field).  I just tested a student for her triennial and she's moved up two scaled scores in this area!



 My Spring Sentence Scramble has been one of my go-to tasks.  They are so easy to pull off the shelf and work with groups of students.  You may use the writing paper (included) or have students use dry erase boards to sequence their sentences.  When they are finished, students just pass their scrambled sentence on to the next person in the group.  This gives me the opportunity to individually check-in with students, provide cues (cueing system included), and chart data.  

These are the primary areas in which I have multiple products in my store.   Thanks for hanging out with me and make sure to go back to Teach Speech 365 for more from your favorite TPT authors.

Bloggy Birthday! Huge Giveaway!!




Big things are happening in SLPrunner world!  One year ago I wrote my very first blog post and began my adventure to learning a million and one new things about technology and creating products.  

A friend encouraged me to get started on blogging and I'm so glad I did.  Since then, I've logged over 7,000 hours creating and sharing my products and ideas on my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Teachers Notebook shop, Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter accounts, and other venues of social media.    

To celebrate both my TPT and TNB stores are on sale and I have a lot of great prizes up for giveaway!

Giveaway 1


First up, you can win two of my most popular bundles!  Valued at over :  $32 These bundles include activities from grades K-12 with a little bit of everything!

Spring Speech and Language Bundle: Seven spring-themed products with multi-level teaching options and data charting.  This bundle will get you through the end of the school year with ease.  

Social Pragmatic Speech and Language Bundle! : This upper grade bundle targets higher level emotion vocabulary, internet safety/problem solving, perspective taking, and provides an easy way to chart progress via student-directed social pragmatic rubrics. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway  


The next prizes come from some of my favorite SLP peeps!  I feel fortunate to have developed friendships with this group of kind, smart, fun, and talented professionals.   


1.  What's Your Number? Auditory Memory Practice: Straight Up Speech has made an activity for our many kids who have trouble with forward and reverse number memory.  It's so hard to find activities for these areas and this one is both fun and focused.    

2.  Singular Vs. Plural, Yes/No, Negation: My lower level learners had a blast with these adorable activity cards.  Lots of goals can be addressed in this spring-themed product from Just Wright Speech.  

3.  What in the World is a Subordinate Clause? Kathy Grover has made this product to include worksheets, cue cards, illustrated cards, and a game board.  Your students are sure to understand subordinate clauses after working with this activity.   

4.  Sequence Comprehension-Earth Day Theme: Earth Day is right around the corner and Rae's Speech Spot has created this adorable download which targets comprehension of short paragraphs and the concepts of: first, second, last, before, and after.  

5.  Social Skills Packet Targeting Table Manners: You should see the feedback from this jam-packed product made by Twin Sisters Speech and Language.  I know many of my students need help with table manners. 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

1.  Reading & Responding Interpreting Language with text messaging:  I'm excited to use this product for my observation next month.  Students really get into the text messaging social situations in this rare find by Putting Words in Your Mouth.  It targets an array of language and reading goals!

2. Superhero Spatial Strategies: Spatial terms can be conquered in this activity loaded product by All Y' All Need.  Check out the 42 4-star ratings for this superhero download. 

3.  Secret Code Inferences: These QR code activities are so cool!  Students love using technology to find the answers to their inferencing questions.  Thanks Jenn from Speech Universe for this two leveled activity.  

4.  Spring Complex Sentence Builder-You've struck gold with GoldCountrySLP's spring themed syntax product with over 50 cards.  You're sure to see measurable progress with this activity which targets many learning levels.

5.  Big Breath Articulation Drills /r/: The fun loving LyndaSLP123 has developed a humorous and functional way to practice speech sounds and help generalize them with Big Breath Artic.  

6.  Super Strategies for Word Retrieval- My buddy Jess from Figuratively Speeching has donated this 36 page products which contains posters, games, puzzles, and 5 word sets to work on word retrieval.  
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you to everyone who has followed me, liked my pages, provided feedback, and used any activity of mine to work with students.  I'm very grateful and humbled!


Now go have some virtual cake and ice cream. It's calorie free after all! 


You down with EET? Yeah, it's now Spring!



I am an EET fanatic!   I love Sara Smith's Expanding Expression Tool and the wonderful array of products that accompany the kit!  My students show fast, steady progress with this tool and parents and teachers can easily understand the cueing system to assist in the generalization process.  It's been almost a full year of incorporating the EET into my language goals and I love that I have solid baseline and progression data to share at IEP meetings and when writing progress notes.  

This season I am excited to bring on the bloom!  It's been a dreadfully cold and bitterly long winter in Vermont and we are finally getting a break in the weather.  My students and I were ready for some color and cheer so we've been assembling the Dazzling Daisies bulletin board.  The bulletin board inspiration comes from this great border sign and daisy cut outs which can be found at Scholastic.  

My EET Companion product has bulletin board size printables along with multiple colorful picture targets and black/white or color daisies.  The activities may stand alone as a describing lesson and/or may be used with the EET.  A favorite part of mine is the introduction to using EET for writing.  This is a first for me (going from verbal EET to written) and my students are showing an ease of transition.  



You may purchase this entire product for only $3.00 at Teacherspayteachers or at my Teachers Notebook store.  Click the pictures to directly take you to Dazzling Daisies.
Thanks for hanging out with me on this beautiful day!

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