Can you describe a Thinga-ma-jigger? Freebie included!

 

I've been throwing out hints on my Instagram page this week about my little surprise. Many of you have responded that you too have one of these commercial mop contraptions at your school. For years I've been thinking it reminds me of the Thinga-ma-jigger from Dr. Seuss's The Cat In The Hat. Do you agree?

This year, I finally decided to re-create the cleaning machine and rallied my students to help. We used our executive functioning skills to visualize the big picture and plan along the way. Students brainstormed materials, created a list, and sequenced step-by-step instructions. We used latex gloves, mega phones, blow horns, a broom, spinners, and made spirals out of construction paper. We also borrowed lots of slinky sound tubes from our OT friends. 

Drum roll please....

Isn't it fun!

Our school maintenance staff were so accommodating and even agreed to drive it around for the week while wearing the signature red and white top hat!

No theme would be complete without a cool activity to go with it. I created a freebie describing activity to use as a stand-alone activity or Expanding Expression Tool Companion. You can see above that I started my bulletin board where students will display their work. 

Click HERE for link

I would love to see your Thinga-ma-jiggers and/or bulletin board! Just share your pix on my Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter page. Hope you have a whimsical week! 

Top 5 office to classroom ~ Life Hacks

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I love posting life hacks! And I know that you all love them too because they are my most "liked" and commented on posts.  I've decided to make it easy for you to view my favorite SLP office Life Hacks which may transfer into many other school settings. 

5. Are all of your students taking your pencils? Simply mark your belongings with your favorite duct tape. It takes no time at all and if you are decor obsessed, you can even match your room with the tape. 

 4. Pom Poms are one of my favorite crafts. You can use them for so many life hacks. From dry erasers (glue to the cap of a marker) to EET warm fuzzies, (Product here: Warm Fuzzies EET Companion Activity) these soft fuzzies  are useful and fun. 

3. Old tights or socks make great rice packs. My students absolutely love making rice packs. They work great for calming sensory kids and are something the kids can take home to keep warm at night. Here is a blog post and free sequencing activity on making them. 

2. Keep germs at bay with this simple little trick.  My students no longer throw their dirty tissues on the table~ yay!  

1. I hate when my testing books get unraveled. Search your craft drawers for a bead that will fit on the spiral and glue it into place. You can also use clay for this trick. 

Bonus: This is one of those Life Hacks that I use at home and work. It saves time and frustration to know exactly what type of battery all of those toys and electronics use.

I hope you found something useful in this post. Let me know your favorite Life Hack in the comments below. Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Instagram for some new surprises to come. 

Increasing Language with Visualization for Upper Grades

Many of our language challenged students are visual learners and we, as SLPs, can tap into this student strength to improve communication.  

I want to highlight a couple of new visual teaching tools that I have used this year with my middle school students and have found very valuable.

1.  Video Shorts:  You know, those witty and fun short clips shown before animated feature films.  These clips are perfect to target inferencing skills, predicting, asking questions, and drawing conclusions.  Many have no words and are also great for social skills of identifying facial expression, body language, and humor.  Follow my new Pinterest board for video shorts and check out Disney video shorts.  

2.  Normal Rockwell Prints:  I live in the town where Norman Rockwell lived when his artwork thrived.  His paintings are found all over the little town of Arlington, VT. I took these pictures at the local high school.  In fact, some of the young subjects in these famous prints are still alive and live in my town.  

Rockwell's paintings and illustrations are known for detail and vivid storytelling which is why visualization programs work so well with his prized prints. 

Try incorporating Rockwell's artwork into your visualizing lessons for amazing language results.  Pair with portions of the Expanding Expression Tool, Lindamood Bell's Visualizing and Verbalizing, or other methods to improve skills of comprehension, inferencing, critical thinking, and expression.  Here is a Pinterest board I've started with lots of Rockwell's work to get you started.  

You may also enjoy this related EET Companion Activity. 

Toilet Paper Crafts~ really

A beautiful, simple craft that is a snap to create and comes from reusing/recycling toilet paper rolls!  

Whether for Christmas, winter, or as an EET Companion, your students will feel so proud of this craft.  I would love to see yours.  Feel free to post pix on my SLPrunner FB page or Instagram @SLPrunner.  

You may also like Warm Fuzzy EET Companion!

Describing Turkeys

Turkey legs for language!  I had the materials and thought that this adorable Thanksgiving place setting idea by The Party Animal looked to be a quick and easy craft so I gave it a try.  

Instead of place settings, I made a describing activity to use with the 
Expanding Expression Tool.  

Students pick a leg and describe their word using the Expanding Expression Tool by Sara Smith.  Instead of filling the turkey legs with newspaper, you could fill them with the items indicated on the bag, prizes, or fun food!  

I filled mine with popcorn.  

You could even pop the popcorn in the paper bags.

Paper Bag Popcorn: 

              1. Put 1/4 cup popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag.  

              2. Fold the top of the bag over and tape.

              3. Microwave until there is more than 3 seconds between 
                  popping kernels.
              4. Carefully remove and open bag.  

I hope your students enjoy this craftivity.  Feel free to send your pix to my Instagram and/or Facebook page.  I love hearing from you! 

You may also like my Describing Turkeys product:

Everyday tools for increasing expression.

I love to incorporate fun hands-on activities into my service time with students.  This is tricky at the middle level, but there are usually creative ways to approach descriptive language with materials that are cheap and easy to find.  

Smelly Markers! 

 I could just eat the orange marker with its tangy candy smell.  These great tangibles are a fun tool to work on describing.  At level one, I have students get creative with naming the color (below).  Students provide a descriptive statement of the marker's scent for Level two (above).   

Paint Swatches:  

From fresh cut grass to sage leaves, your students will love acting as painting color pros.  Students can name the color and expand expressive language by describing the color in oral and written forms.  

See how your students can become jelly bean connoisseurs on my

 Tasty Expression post.   

Use these ideas for data points throughout the year!  

Now tell me: What's your favorite color, scent, or flavor?  

You may also like my new Expanding Expression Tool Companion Bundle pack.  A year of describing activities with data tracking forms.  

S…Peachy Feedback Linky August!

Don't you just love Nicole's new graphic for the S…Peachy Feedback Linky Party!!!   This is the linky where we reward those who take the time to provide feedback on our products.  August has been a month full of feedback and I had a hard time choosing a winner.  

Terri Drushell, I really appreciate your kind feedback for my new EET Companion-Warm Fuzzy Product.   Please choose a product from my store and my best to you in your new job this year.  Email me at: jenng12slp@gmail.com  

Head on back to Allison's Speech Peeps for more great feedback and to see if you too are a winner this month!  

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 Taking: I 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 Language: I 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 Companions: I 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.

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!

You may also like:  

April Language Activities   A Pictures's Worth 1,000 Words

How Do You Use It: Dry Erase

Speech Time Fun has a great linky party on using dry erase.  I'm behind the eight ball and didn't get this post completed by the link up date, but I really want to share with you what I do in my little speech room.  

Many of my students don't understand the concept of time and have problems with attention to task and sequencing.  The dry erase board has come in handy to schedule and sequence our therapy sessions.  With a dry erase schedule of what we're doing with our speech time, students are more focused on the lessons and know what is coming next.  They love checking off the completed tasks and usually have a "cash in" waiting at the end.  As you can see, I'm no artist!  However, the students never seem to notice or care.  

Life Skills

Here's how it works:  The first thing I do upon the student/students entering the room is to write up the schedule of my session.  While I am drawing (or writing) out the schedule , I verbally review it.   For example,  "First we will be working on calendar activities, second we are playing the basket game, third we will work on putting the pictures in order, and last you may add some beads to your necklace."  The Time Timer is a great visual and I show that visual on the white board.  The student checks off the activity when it is completed.

(EET Shamrock Link)

Notice how I don't use pictures for this groups schedule.  They are readers but still benefit from the schedule.  I also love having the lesson plan right in front of me as it helps me to track more goals and stay focused as well.  

Middle Level

Snow Day Sentence Scramble link

 Many of my middle school groups work on syntax and we use the dry erase boards for my monthly sentence scramble activities.   Each student in the group receives a scrambled sentence page and a white board.  Students work independently on their sentence pages and I check-in with each student to provide cues and mark progress.  The student erases the board when he/she is done and passes their card to the next person.  

Can you tell that I like my duct tape designs.  My dry erase boards were looking kind of dingy so I spruced them up with some colored tape.  I found this Scotch Expressions tape turquoise leaf design at Staples.   I use it everywhere to spruce up my office.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and find them useful in your work.  Head on over to Speech Time Fun for some more ideas on dry erase.  

You may also like:

S-Peachy Linky Party

I'm so appreciative of all of the kind feedback left over the last few days.  It's so nice to recognize the shoppers who take the time to leave feedback.   

Here is a feedback post that made me smile as someone knows how to use EET to help students make the most progress in all areas.  

Here's what itomes wrote about 

A Picture's Worth 1,000 Words.

Itomes- please email me for a free product from my TPT store.

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