Everything is Awesome!

Happy Summer everyone!  I've been hanging out with my children a lot and they have been playing a certain song over and over again so I got this idea.

I present to you Snappin' Sounds!  If your students liked my Candy Crunch articulation games, they'll love working on their sounds with this popular block theme.  

You can purchase the individual sounds of /S/, /L/, or /R/ or get all three HERE in this money-saving bundle.  

Have an Awesome Day!

Calendar Activities of Language Bundle and June FREEBIE!

* Update 9/14/14: Data tracking pages have been added to the bundle in order to track your students' month-to-month progress!   You may grab the progress charts HERE or re-download from teacherspayteachers.  Even if you don't have the entire bundle, these pages will help you keep tabs on the progress from the months that you do have.  Enjoy!

I'm excited to share with you a Year Full of Calendars for Language!  This HUGE bundle has been a year in the works and a labor of love.  My students have shown tremendous growth in their language and calendar skills.  Following directions, temporal/spatial concepts, executive functioning,answering "wh" questions, inferencing, and sequencing are just some of the many goal targets provided in these monthly activities.  

Here are some recent feedback comments:

For me, these calendar activities mean quick monthly prep, routine that students look forward to, functional calendar skills, and tangible language work samples for easy progress/data tracking! 

Not sure if they're for you, try a the month of June free HERE. 

For those of you who have collected the months of the year along this journey, I have the final July/August month completed HERE:

For those teachers, specialists, and parents who are interested in seeing month-to-month progress this bundle is the way to go.  You will save over 20% off the full price (worth 2 free months + free June). 

 Find it HERE. 

Purchase the bundle ANY time year as the calendars are updated each calendar year free of charge.  

Thanks for all of your kind words and feedback!  

Lava lamps, tie dye, and summer language!

Hi friends,  You may have seen my Tie Dye Language unit for higher level language learners.  I have added some fun ideas to go in with this groovy product. 

Lava Lamps!  Who doesn't love lava lamps and their bubbling fun.  I tried out this inexpensive and easy craft with my own children and am sure my older students will LOVE it too.  Here are the directions:  

Why end the fun there.  The "I Have Who Has" inferencing game found in Tie Dye Language, goes through all of the materials and associations with actually tie dying (For example, I have rubber bands, who has something that contains blobs of wax in a glass container?"

  I have never tie dyed before so I had to try this with my own three girls.  Here are the results:  

Following directions, sequencing, vocabulary, and memory recall are just a few of the many language areas that can be targeted through these fun hands-on crafts and activities.

                                              On Sale Now!

They all lead up to my many higher-level language activities in Tie Dye Language: students work on multiple meaning words, similes, metaphors, inferencing, idioms, and my favorite moods/emotions (with my Mood Ring match pages).  You can even find mood rings at many dollar stores and in bulk online.  These activities will surly be the highlight of your students' summer service time.  

Click here for my blog post with full details about Tie Dye Language and how it can make your summer planning a breeze.  

Have a rad day! 

Thought bubbles freebies!

I have loved using thought bubbles the last couple of months.  I'm not sure why I didn't incorporate these into my social language therapy sooner.  If you're in the same boat, have no fear and read on.  

Have you ever heard of Chogger?   

You must check out this amazing website which allows you and your students to create comics by adding thought and speech bubbles to your pictures.  My sixth graders are currently working with this website and having a blast.  It targets a wide range of meta-cognitive skills as well as social language and syntax.  

 Next up is my little gift to you for Teacher Appreciation and Better Speech and Hearing Month. 

Head on over to my store for my new Thought Bubbles Freebie.  You and your students are sure to get many laughs out of this product.

Here's some more great news! 

The TPT last sale of the school year is going on May 6-7!!! 

 My entire store is 20% off including already reduced bundles! Use the code TPTXO  to get an extra 10% off!  

You may also like:  

What's in Your Cart? Linky Party. Teacher Appreciation Sale!

Thanks so much for hosting another What's in Your Cart? Linky Party.  I'm so excited and honored that Jenna at Speech Room News highlighted my Topic Text Product on her page.  The next TPT store-wide sale is coming up May 6 and 7th.  

Here are some of my wish list items that I'll be purchasing during this last sale of the school year.  

My PlayHome Stores: 

I'm so excited to purchase this app companion activity.  My students and I love the PlayHome Stores app and this companion will be a great addition to help focus on language goals with iPad use.    

3 Strikes You're Out!

I think that this product will be perfect for my older students.  I have a lot of baseball players and problem solving and perspective taking go hand and hand with this activity.  Looking forward to downloading this!  

Shades of Meaning Puzzles

I put this on my wish list as soon as I saw Speech Time Fun post it on her Facebook page.  What a fabulous fun way to introduce the many shades of meaning.  

I have many spring themed products at my store and I thought I would highlight a few that will be on sale for 20% off.  Use the code TPTXO for an additional 10% off!

Spring Figurative Language

This is a comprehensive thematic product for older students who are working on higher level language functions.  There are many printable pages including black and white.  Data forms come with the pages to easily track student progress. 

Community Buildings and Helpers

This is my first Life Skills focus activity on Teacherspayteachers.  I have been using it this week with my students and they are doing so well.  It is  is loaded with 160 matching cards and 20 building cards in both floor and table size, and black/white coloring pages.  Check this one out if you work with the younger population or life skills students.  

 May Calendar Activities for Language

Warning: Try these calendar activities and you may get hooked.  I use the activities every month and receive a lot of great feedback on them as well. My students are making steady gains and becoming more skilled at reading a calendar, sequencing, understanding temporal and spatial concepts, and following directions.  

Thanks so much for supporting SLPs on Teacherspayteachers! May this sale bring you materials to make your end of the year planning a breeze.  

Fan Freebie

I have a new fan freebie on my Facebook page.  

Click on my Facebook page, go to the Fan Freebie tab, "like" my page, and it's all yours! 

Your students are sure to get a kick out of it! 

Thank you and enjoy!  

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.