TPT Plunge - Linky Party

The Dabbling Speechie has a linky party that's all to do with our first loves over at Teachers Pay Teachers. Come take the plunge with me!!

One of the first products I paid for at TpT was "Timesaving Templates for TPT Sellers" from Speech Therapy Games

I have saved so much time using these templates to create my own materials. Using the "Slide Master" function in Powerpoint was a breakthrough time saver for me as well.

The products I've used the most this school year are hands-down the

Pronouns and Prepositions Value Bundle - The Four Seasons 

and 

 

Pronouns, Prepositions and Verbs - Holiday Bundle. 

This school year was a little different for me as half of my caseload was made up of preschoolers who attended sessions with their parents.I imagine it was much like a private practice setting. I loved having the moms and dads in the sessions to ask questions and be involved. These bundles were what I used to send home as homework. The graphics are adorable and the content of the packets perfectly aligned to my littles' goals. They took some time to prepare, but I was lucky enough to have some willing parents help out with the cutting. I stored them as sets in gallon sized ziplock baggies so the kiddos could grab one and take it with them after each session.

My best selling product on TpT has been Preposition Playground.

It targets the concepts of under, on top of, behind, beside and between. I'll be adding to this set in the next few weeks. 

My best selling item on Teachers Notebook has been "Camping is Fun - A Read-Along Book"

This story lists the items a family would need to take with them on camping trip. It mainly targets vocabulary. The Level 2 book includes questions, following directions and inferencing.

I hope you'll go over to The Dabbling Speechie and see what the other gals have posted. I've already added five products to my wishlist!

Moving house

As you may know, I'm a military spouse. My husband proudly serves the US Air Force. We have been stationed overseas in England for the past three years. I have loved living and working here more than I can say, but I am very happy to be coming home to the states. We will be back state-side in a few days' time and we'll be spending some time with family and friends. I'll be applying to new jobs and hoping and praying that all of our furniture and belongings make it back to us in good condition. The point is, I'll be out of the blogosphere for a a few weeks. 

I hope you all can take some time to be creative with me. 

I found these little beauties at a store here in the UK and I knew I had to have them, but I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with them. I'd love some ideas from all you wonderful people.

Love it and List It: Favorite Techonology

So last month's Linky was all about Fluency. If you missed that one, click here to read about all of my fav fluency materials.

March's madness is technology - and basketball, but I'm not a big sports fan so we'll still with technology here at Sweet Speech.

Click to see the other posts on this linky party

I love my iPad. We were really lucky to be able to buy an older first generation iPad from a friend for $100. (Thanks, Jeff!) I love that I didn't pay too much for it so that if it breaks I'm not out a lot of money. I'm not so thrilled that I've maxed out the operating system and many of the new apps I'd like to have are not available to download. SO, I can confidently tell you there will be a new purchase happening here in a few months.

I've read through all the other links and it seems that the iPad is a strong contender for the
"ALL TIME Favorite Techonolgy" award.
I've not been fortunate enough to have access to the SmartBoard for speech therapy, but I've played around with them enough in the classrooms to be more than a little jealous of those of you who do get one in your treatment rooms! I'm also very excited about being back in the "I own an iPhone" club in a few weeks. YAY! I'm really curious about these QR activities I've been reading about online. More on that later...  Since it seems I'm a bit behind on the technology in the classroom game, I'm going to take some time to share a brand of apps that have been amazing for me this school year.

Some of my new favorite not-meant-to-be-speech-therapy-apps-but-actually-are-GREAT-speech-therapy-apps are the games from TocaBoca.

The best money I've spent this school year has been on these apps! 

My preschoolers love the TocaTrain. 

My intermediate school students adore the TocaTeaParty and TocaBirthdayParty. 

I personally enjoyed the challenge presented by the TocaLabs app. 

My gifted artic kiddos would work so hard for just a few minutes with TocaBuilder

and my best friend's little boy begs for TocaHouse, though he's not so keen on doing house chores in real time. ;-)

What's great about these apps is that they're open-ended. There's no objective, no score, no limit to the amount of language you can use to enhance the game play. 

I just had a session this week with the TocaStore app where one of my kiddos with a turn taking skills goal was able to complete the whole game with minimum assistance AND he requested items appropriately, responded to questions in complete sentences and asked for more!! 

SUCCESS!

Most of these games retail in the app store for $2.99.

I use them for reinforcement after the session, eliciting language from preschoolers, cause and effect for my grade schoolers, sequencing, predicting, conversational skills, pragmatics, and so much more. 

Have you tried these out? Which one is your favorite? 

Space Race - Grammar

This is the third posting in the Space Race series. 

Click the pictures below to be taken to the Receptive and Expressive postings.

Today, I'll be sharing the Grammar Section of the Space Race Super Bundle.

This one has just about everything you could want to target including:

• 36 pronoun cards (subjective, objective, possessive and reflexive) + four bonus cards
• 12 irregular verb cards + four bonus cards
• 12 irregular plural cards + four bonus cards
• 36 subject-verb agreement cards with sorting mats for is/are, has/have, was/were + four bonus cards
• 2 token boards for reinforcement

You can find this one in The BonBonSpeecher Store at TN or TpT.

Check in soon for the Social Skills Section of the Space Race Super Bundle

Space Race - Expressive Language

Yesterday I posted the section of the Space Race Super Bundle. If you missed that information, you can go back by clicking on the picture below.

Today I'd like to introduce the Expressive Language section of the Space Race Super Bundle.

Here's what you'll get:

• 6 cards targeting asking each WH question type
• 1 card for each WH question type with suggestions about the kinds of questions your students can ask - I found these to be helpful with my language kids as they has some trouble with this skill
• 18 cards targeting compare/contrast skills
• 4 pocket sized Compare/Contrast Sentence cards
• 10 cards with an action the students can describe/retell
• 12 cards with multiple meaning word to be used in a sentence
• 1 "Blast Off!" Board for reinforcement

You can find the Expressive Language section of Space Race at The BonBonSpeecher Store on TpT and TN now, or you can wait until Saturday for the bundle. 

Tomorrow I'll be adding the Grammar section!

Space Race - Receptive Language

If your caseload and scheduling problems are similar to mine, you've noticed that the only time you can happily pull students for treatment is during science and social studies...but wait.
That's not really true, is it? 

My science and social studies teachers are not always happy to have our shared students consistently miss out on their classes in exchange for speech therapy. I've always told my teachers that I love to incorporate curriculum into therapy sessions and that if they'd send me vocab lists and worksheets I'm happy to make those into therapy stimuli whenever possible. How many teachers have taken me up on this offer? Maybe three in over three years of therapy. But, I could see that my language disordered students were having issues in science class especially.

Have you reviewed a science textbook lately? No? Well, let me tell you what you'll find. Ready? High level language skills, reading/auditory comprehension, comparing and contrasting, predicting and inferring, multisyllabic words, prefixes and suffixes...
In short - 

It's all speech, baby!

So, I've begun using the textbooks to inspire me. 

Introducing... 

Click here to go to The BonBonSpeecher Store at TN

This one is designed to target vocabulary and speech language skills at the fourth and fifth grade levels using the Pearson texts.

Eventually the whole bundle will include all of the units pictured below.

But tonight, I'm only publishing the Receptive Language portion.

Click here to go to The BonBonSpeecher Store at TpT

Here's what you'll get:

• 4 pocket sized question reminder cards
• 6 cards targeting each WH question type
• 6 cards targeting one step directions
• 6 cards targeting two step sequential directions
• 6 cards targeting three step sequential directions
• 6 cards targeting conditional directions
• 10 cards with short passages and questions for listening/reading comprehension
• 10 cards with actions and 3-4 steps that can be put in order for sequencing goals
• 12 category cards where students listen to the items and name the category
• 1 "Blast Off!" Board for reinforcement

That's a whole lotta bang! You can find this first section with images of the cards and a preview of the file at The BonBonSpeecher Store on TpT and TN now, or you can wait until Saturday for the bundle. 

Milestone: Twitter Official

I'm a little behind in the world of social media, so you'll have to excuse my excitement over the breaking news here at Sweet Speech.

I'm on Twitter!!

You can follow my by clicking on the birdie button to the right or by clicking HERE.

It's still a work in progress so stay tuned for updates and such.

How are you using Twitter? Got any tips to share with beginners like me?

Fluency Linky Party

This is my first ever Linky Party blog posting!
AND it's all about one of my favorite areas of Speech-Language Pathology - 

FLUENCY!

So without further ado...ahem...

"These are a few of my fluency things..."

1. Focus on Fluency by Kristin Chemela at SuperDuperInc.

If you're new to the SLP world and are looking to make an investment I'd suggest the Focus on Fluency kit. You can find it at SuperDuperInc.com

The kit has everything you'll need to begin a fluency treatment program with elementary and middle school students. The website says grades 2-8, but I've adapted it and used it successfully with younger students as well.

Benefits: 

• The high quality materials are all there, nicely laminated and contained in the box
  (which has pull out drawers!). 
• The instruction book is easy to implement and comes with a CD for easy reproduction. 
• The icons are simple and easy for the students to remember.

Drawbacks: 

• The cost of the kit is a large factor, especially for those of us with small (or even non-existent) materials budgets, but that is why it's an investment.

I am not all about reinventing the wheel, so if you'd like more info and lots of picture previews for this product go and see Jenna at Speech Room News.

2. Easy Does It for Fluency (Preschool/Primary and Intermediate) by Barbara Roseman and Karin Johnson at Linguisystems

These books are also great resources, especially if you work with the little ones at the pre-school level. 

The Preschool/Primary version takes special care to discuss and provide suggestions on how to incorporate phonological processing therapy with fluency therapy. There are also great ideas on how to help parents become involved with fluency therapy at home, since that's where our little ones spend most of their time.

The Intermediate level is designed for grades 1-7, so this edition will cover a wide range of students on your caseload.  That's always nice, especially with fluency materials since you never know when a student will appear with fluency needs. This one book could give you everything you need to target all your students' fluency goals from analyzing their speech to desensitizing all the way up to maintaining.

Benefits: 

• Both sets come with very informational manuals and materials books.
• The materials books include a CD for easy reproduction. 
• Two levels are appropriate for target audiences.

Drawbacks: 

• There aren't many hands on, ready to go activities with these. They will require a bit of prep time on your part, but overall the efforts will be well worth the energy. 

3. Fluency Scenes (Elementary and Adolescent) from Linguisystems

These are card sets with colorful and detailed pictures on one side and prompts on the other side. The two levels present age-appropriate social situations which I find incredibly helpful with my older students who are "too cool for school" - you know the ones I mean!

Benefits: 

• Cards are laminated and durable. 
• Cards are grouped together to target stages of fluency therapy from establishing fluency to transfer and maintenance. 
• The cards are really all you'd need to complete a whole fluency session which is a nice bonus for those of us who travel.
• The pictures scenes could be used in mixed groups to target language goals (WH questions, problem solving, inferencing/predicting) and articulation as well. 

Drawbacks: 

• The cards come in a nice vinyl folder, but I'd prefer a box for storage.

***THIS JUST IN*** 

Linguisystems offers a Member's Only Sale twice a year. Membership is FREE and once you've signed up you'll get 20% off your purchase during the sale. Guess what, Speechie Friends?   It's SALE TIME! 

4. "Speech Guy" at TheraSimplicity

I've not seen a lot of people posting about TheraSimplicity and that's a shame! I first discovered them at an ASHA convention years ago. They have an amazing site FULL of beautiful resources. The one that I've used for fluency therapy is "Speech Guy."

Isn't he cute?!

There are multiple files for "Speech Guy" including his pal "Speech Girl" and multi-cultural options as well. Each one has a full color option or a black and white version. There are also blank bodies with the speech helper pieces on a separate page so you can have the students cut and paste them. 

I printed one for a student in my first year doing therapy. I laminated the pages and put Velcro on the back of each piece to make it interactive (and reusable). I would love to show you a picture of it, but my husband and I are in the middle of a pack-out to move back home from overseas, so there's no telling where it's located! I promise I'll upload a picture when I find it.

When I contacted TheraSimplicity for permission to use "Speech Guy" in this post they were so helpful and generous. They want you all to have one and gave me some great links to share with you. 

Click HERE to go to the website where you can 

- Download a pdf version of the Speech Guy and other samples

- Watch 2-3 minute videos on the basics of TheraSimplicity

- Create a 14 day trial which will allow you to print up to 10 items of your choice

Sounds great right? But here's the best part! 

If you use the code "sweetspeech" by April 1st
(no foolin' here) you can have a full year's access to TheraSimplicity for $49! 

That's a small price to pay for all the customized materials you can create. I'm pretty sure I'd have paid that just for Speech Guy and his friends! So don't miss out. Check out the free trial and I promise you'll be hooked!

Thanks for reading all this. I did warn you that Fluency therapy is my favorite! There are loads more resources and links to follow out there. Get on over to the linky and see what you can find.

Sound Books for CAS

Let me begin by saying I'm new to the world of Childhood Apraxia of Speech. I've only worked with a few students who have been officially diagnosed with CAS and a handful more who exhibited symptoms similar to those described by ASHA and who responded well to the six steps relevant to treating CAS outlined in Christina Gildersleeve-Neumann's ASHA Leader article from 2007. I am very much learning as I go with this one.

What I do know is that CAS is difficult to treat. It's labor intensive and time consuming. In my opinion, CAS is more stressful to treat than any other diagnosis under the SLP's broad umbrella of services. Luckily, we have a lot of colleagues out there who have broken down the proverbial doors. I would encourage you to check out Testy Yet Trying where Amy Ellsworth, a fellow SLP and mother, chronicles her journey with CAS. She also sells treatment card sets and worksheets. I've learned a lot from her blog. (I've listed some links for more information, resources and materials at the bottom of this posting.)

My biggest challenge with CAS treatment has come in the form of finding and funding appropriate materials for my students. There are many great products out there, but they are very expensive and often they do not meet the exact need of my students at the time I need to treat them. Some may be too advanced or contain words that aren't useful. So, like we do, I began to create some CAS materials of my own.

We know that students with CAS struggle in their attempts to repeat syllables and have inconsistent errors with consonant and vowel sounds. We also know that many of them tend to have trouble with prosody. We also know that kids love to talk about animals and vehicles, and this is where I got my inspiration for Sound Books.

These books are designed for you to be able to edit the text to suit your students’ capabilities. If your student isn't able to produce “Moo!” for the cow noise, but is able to produce “MMM!” then edit the text to reflect his level of production and work toward a higher level.

The expressions given are suggestions only. Please feel free to add more text, take away words entirely, change the sounds to fit your colloquial needs (perhaps the dogs in your part of the world don’t say “Woof!” for example) or change the length/complexity of the utterances.  

You can use the file in a number of ways to target a variety of treatment goals.

• Target vocabulary
• Print as cards and match animals to sounds or sounds to animals
• Have articulation students give the animal a name with their speech sounds and then tell a story about them
• Add prosody and intonation aspects to the sounds on the cards for students with CAS

These products are available as individual files below or you can purchase the bundle at TpT and TN. 

Farm Animal Sounds Book

Ocean Animal Sounds Book

Jungle Animal Sounds Book

Transportation Sounds Book

Holiday and Seasonal Sounds Book

More Resources and Information:
TestyYetTrying
MommySpeechTherapy
SpeechRoomNews - Apraxia Search
Linguisystems - Apraxia Materials
SuperDuper
Kaufman Speech Praxis Materials


Gildersleeve-Neumann, C. (2007, November 06). Treatment for Childhood Apraxia of Speech : A Description of Integral Stimulation and Motor Learning. The ASHA Leader.

Celebrating Hanukkah - Book Companion, SWEETIE and Giveaway

My favorite way of doing speech-language therapy is with books. I have always loved to read and I enjoy bringing stories to life for my students the way some of my most beloved teachers and librarians did for me. I'm sure you've seen the term "book companion" floating around the blogosphere. These are great products that support the way you're already reading books to your students. Many of these products include games and activities to accompany the book but all of them target a skill or goal that your students have. The best ones create an entire week or more of therapy ideas and lessons - and all you need is a copy of the book! If you're anything like me, you've got quite a collection of children's literature and you probably already own the publications you'll be needing for the book companions out there. But, if you don't have a personal copy, ask around your building. Teachers are great about sharing with SLPs and I've been able to find almost all of the books I've wanted in my school's library. Once you're stuck on the book and the amazing activities that go along with them in the book companions you'll want to have your own copy.
This posting contains AmazonAffliate links for your convenience.

I've begun working on a book companion product that is Hanukkah themed. I hope to add to it in the coming school years. My students aren't usually aware of the traditions that people of the Jewish faith practice each holiday season. This product will help them to understand the magic that is The Festival of Lights.

With this BonBonSpeecher product students can make latkes, the delicious fried, potato pancakes with the game that goes well with Mrs. Greenberg's Messy Hanukkah by Linda Glaser. There is also a sequencing activity for this book.

 Students will love learning to play the dreidel game after reading the folk-tale The Magic Dreidels by Eric A. Kimmel. The Jewish Outreach Institute has a high-quality Virtual Dreidel game you can play with your students. Click here to access the game: http://joi.org/dreidel/
The site requires version 6 of the Flash Plug-In.  

The BonBonSpeecher product includes two sets of comprehension cards for The Magic Dreidels book. One set is only text and the other set has picture choices for younger students.

Most of my students are very familiar with Christmas. Many have not even heard of Hanukkah. The two holidays share a lot of similarities and students can compare and contrast the winter traditions of Hanukkah and Christmas with the story of little girl who gets to celebrate both holidays in Light the Lights! by Margaret Moorman. The book companion contains vocabulary cards that can be used in a Venn Diagram.

I would also suggest some of these games, books and songs to complete your study on The Festival of Lights.

If you check out the preview file for Hanukkah is The Festival of Lights at Teachers Notebook, you'll find a SWEETIE - a free vocabulary activity!
Also, be sure to enter the giveaway at TN! Giveaway ends on December 6.

I hope you enjoy your Holiday Season.
Happy Hanukkah to you and yours!
And as they say here in the UK - Happy Christmas!

One Day Left for Super Savings

They've done it again!! Big sales at Teachers Notebook!

Go check out The BonBonSpeecher store for some HUGE Holiday Savings!

WH Halloween Read-Along Book

My kids are very interested in Halloween. We've been covering harvest and pumpkin vocabulary for the first part of the month, but they just can't wait to tell me all about their costumes and favorite candies. It makes me so happy to see their excitement. I showed this picture to one of my little ones.

She told me it was called a "scare pumpkin."
Don't you just love it?!

I've added another Read-Along Series Book to Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers. It's called "Who? What? When? Where? Halloween!" and it was really fun to make. 

The story line follows the Trick-or-Treaters as they make their way to the haunted house asking and then answering WH questions for each of the characters. 

I think it would be fun to have the students make up answers to the questions before turning the page to see if any of them are close. You could work on prediction and inferences as well as Halloween vocabulary.

As always, the download includes three useful sizes. I like to print one full page for the teacher's copy. I laminate the pages and then bind them with the book binder or metal binder rings. I can then leave it out on the book shelf for the kiddos to look through again. The full page copy can also be uploaded to your iPad for digital viewing. There are half page sizes for small group activities as well as quarter sized pages for take home practice and carryover skills. 

This one is on sale in The BonBonSpeecher Store this week, so stop by and pick one up!

Halloween Fun

The month of October is just not long enough for all the cute, fun games and activities I want to do with my kiddos! I sometimes pull out different games for groups just so I can play the all the ones I like!! I look at it as a perk of being the speecher.

This week I want to show you some of the Halloween games I've made and link to some fun, fall and Halloween themed games that my fellow SLPs and teachers have created. So let's get going!

This first one is called "Trick-or-Treat Inferences" and it's available in The BonBonSpeecher Store at Teachers Notebook or Teachers Pay Teachers. It's designed to target inferencing skills, vocabulary, categorization, turn taking and reasoning and deduction skills.

The product includes one page of card backing that looks like this:

There are four "Trick" card and four "Treat" cards to accompany the 28 clue cards. Clue cards describe iconic Halloween characters and popular Halloween candies.

Game play instructions are part of the download as well, and there's a cute points card that can be printed, downloaded to an iPad, or projected onto a SmartBoard in the classroom. Kids will love guessing at the clues and won't even realize they're targeting goals!

Here's how you play:

Each player gets one guess per clue. The teacher reads the first clue on the clue card to students.

If a player guesses correctly after one clue, 3 points are awarded and the student keeps the card. If no one guesses correctly, play continues with the point value decreasing to 2 points and so on. If no one guesses correctly after all clues are read, the teacher keeps the card.

“Trick” cards take away one clue from the following card - the following card will be worth only 2 points max.

“Treat” cards allow all clues from the following card to be read at once – card is still worth 3 points.

The player with the most points at the end of game time is Trick-or-Treater of the Day!

Click here to grab this game from Teachers Notebook or Teachers Pay Teachers.

______________________________________________________

I'm planning to use this set from Speech Room News with my preschoolers. 

They loved the version for "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves" so I know they'll be excited to see this one for Halloween. You can visit Jenna's page to get more info on this amazing Book Companion Pack.

The SLPRunner has some creative fall activities. See them here at