Welcome Back

Hello Everyone! Welcome back to another school year. I love this time of the year, all of the kids are so excited and everything is just....fresh. Fresh perspective, fresh teacher/student relationships and fresh supplies. I hope, that if you are like me and starting up the school year, you are having a wonderful start. The fresh beginning for students inspires me to do a little new goal setting and check-in for myself too!

Any new/old goals you are getting ready to tackle in the fall? 

One of the biggest goals that I always have at the start of a new school year is managing my schedule and carving out time to collaborate with teachers and communicate with parents. This always seems to be something that I am tweaking and fine-tuning. I have to admit that I have yet to find a system that seems to work for everyone involved. Any thoughts or systems that seem to work for you guys? I would LOVE your feedback!

There are so many things that I love about this time of the year, one of many being that fall is just around the corner. The ultimate signal of fall being here is pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, right?!?! I plan on cuddling in, enjoying all things fall and watch this school year take off! Have a wonderful start to your year.

Crack the Books

This is an amazing new resource that I happened across the other day. It's called Crack the Books. It's interactive books that you can download on the iPad for an entire class or small group and you can change the reading levels for each individual student. And it aligns to the Common Core! I know that we are always on the lookout for more resources; instead of having to reinvent the wheel. 

There is so much more to the books; interactive lessons and activities, built in quizzes and tests, the list goes on and on. 

Check it out and let me know what you guys think!

 I plan on using this a lot in my small groups and push-in classrooms next year. I will check back in and let you know how things are going. 

The link to the website is listed below:

http://mobile-educationstore.com/itextbooks

Articulation Mini-Books

Hello friends! It has been a little while since my last post. I hope that you are all doing well! Life has been crazy. We have officially entered the world of TCAPs (our state test), parent-teacher conferences and progress reports. Add our everyday job requirements of meetings, therapy sessions, reports and testing and it's the perfect formula for utter CRAZINESS!!!

Over the years I have created a couple of mini-articulation books that the kids can color, practice their sounds and not be completely overwhelming for parents to practice at home. Come check out my TpT store to find my "g" and "f" book.

Here is the link to the "G" Book and BONUS it's FREE

 

Here is the link to the "F" Book

 

I hope that you all enjoy and have had a slightly less crazy week than I have had.

 

Free Rice

I heard about this website at a conference that I recently attended and decided to check it out with my 4th grade students. The website is called freerice.com and the extremely unique thing about this website is that you can earn rice for people in impoverished countries. The students thought that this was the coolest thing!

I played around with the website a little bit and found that it has some pretty cool features.  Here are some of the things that I was able to do:

• Create an account for myself and my students and then form a group for my fourth graders. The website allows you to add up to 40 students under your account
• Set up competitions between the students  
• Select vocabulary words from a variety of sections. Some of the sections include; english vocabulary, math vocabulary, countries and spanish
• Give students their login information to access the site from home

It is a great resource for some extra vocabulary development and a unique chance for students to feel like their work at school matters and can make a difference. I will definitely be using this website for my older students for the rest of the school year. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Verb Charades

It's amazing to me how if I let my students move around during my session (even if it's just a little bit) it can change an okay session to a session where the kids don't want to leave my room. I created this activity to get the students up and moving. There are twenty cards that have different verbs with pictures that the students have to act out. It also gives the teacher a chance to have the students practice creating sentences with different verb tenses. Check out the link below to go see my Teacher pay Teacher store.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Verb-Tense-Charades-1120468

Wh Questions-FREE

I often find the need in my therapy session to do a quick comprehension check and want the students to answer the basic who, what, when where and why questions. So I finally came up with a simple worksheet that I can use for data collection and in a variety of settings. Plus, the best news is it's FREE!! Check out the link listed below to download the product from my Teacher pay Teacher store. While you are there don't forget to like my store (just a little plug)!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Wh-Questions-Worksheet-1094490

Hello Homophones

I have a new product in my TpT store, come and check it out! It's a worksheet focusing on homophones. The students have to match the homophones and then generate the definition of each one. There is an extension activity listed on the product as well. The link for the TpT store is below.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Hello-Homophones-1088632

Idiom Session

Today I worked on figurative language with my fourth graders. They are amazing and I am lucky enough to have only two students (for the time being) in that group. They work very hard and are invested in their learning and want to be the best students they can.

Here's what we did today:

• First I had them create a thinking map to review the concepts that we have already learned by stating the concepts, providing a definition and giving an example of each
• We have been working on idioms, metaphors and similes
• Then the students got to pick the game they wanted to play in order to reinforce the concepts
• I always have 2-3 games that I pre-select and then let the students choose what they want to do. This creates a little buy in and gets them more involved in the activity. 
• They wanted to draw common idioms and then have the other student guess the expression

It was a fun activity that captured their attention for the entire time. It was also a good check for me to see what idioms that knew and which ones we needed to review. Let me know if you have any questions!

Moby Max

The special education department at our school got some information about a website called Moby Max. It is an iterative website that allows you to create profiles on all your students. We just started using it, so I will do a follow-up post to let you know what I think. I have to say that it looks pretty promising.

Here a list of some of the features it offers:

• share students and their data with other teachers
• pre-tests
• lesson plans and activities to print out
• reinforces
• computer lessons for each individual student based on the pre-test
• variety of subject areas
• I'm most excited about the grammar and vocabulary section
• remote student login

Here's the link to check it out

http://www.mobymax.com

Homonym Worksheet-FREE

First Activity and it's FREE (can't go wrong with that)

I'm excited to announce that I put up my first activity on my teacher pay teacher store.

Click on this link to go over to my TpT store and check out my first free activity. 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/What-Do-You-Mean-1087127

It's a vocabulary activity that can be used for K-2 and it is focused on homonyms. Let me know what you think!

Welcome

Hello Everyone! 

I am so excited to welcome you to my new blog where we will be talking about everything speech therapy. I will be posting materials that I make with a link to my Teacher pay Teacher store (TpT), talking about successes and things that did not go so well in therapy sessions, products that I am using and loving on a daily basis and general speech therapy musings.  

Here are some things about me. I am a new mom to a beautiful, smiling, energetic little girl. She has rocked and changed our world in every way possible and I am learning to count my blessing everyday. I have worked in a preschool, private practice and have now landed at an elementary school working with kindergarteners through 5th graders. I love what I do, the kids that I work with and my teammates. In my free time I love to exercise, play sports, find new healthy recipes, I'm obsessed with coffee and tea and get filled up by spending time with my family and friends. 

If there is ever anything that you would like to see on my blog let me know! I would love to hear from you.