How do you use it? Clothes Pins Linky Party

Time for a linky party! This month Speech Time Fun wants to know how do you use clothes pins in speech therapy.

I use lots of clothes pins for my ArticulationProcess Posters. 

I write each student's name on a pin. As students make progress with their speech, they can move their clothes pin up the speech ladder. This has been an amazing visual motivator for my kids! They always ask if they can move up and the  also keep tabs on where their friends are!

Confessions of a Poor Phonology Student

We all have strengths… and we all have weaknesses. Some of us rock out whipping out fabulous IEPs and others of us can create a cute craftivity using little to no brain power.

Well, I confess… I have a weakness. I know, I know, I can hear all of you gasping at the thought. A speech lady who is not perfect in every area of life? It cannot be! Well I hate to burst your bubble but the nasty rumor is true. (I hope you can all hear the sarcasm in this! ;)

I am not so good at phonetics. I never really liked the class in undergrad of grad school. This is not a reflection of the professor, but rather my instinct to not love something that I am not naturally good at.  I used to poor over pages of homework for hours and hours saying words over and over and over and over and over. Then I would get someone else to say the words over and over and over and over. As time went on in my school career I got better at phonetics and transcribing. I had to practice constantly so I wouldn't forget what I had learned.

Then I got a job in the real world and was not required to test my own students. I only had to transcribe on rare occasions. Therefore, I was out of the habit of transcribing and it was a nightmare all over again!

Incase any of you can relate to not being a  super star in the land of phonetics I wanted to share a little treasure that made my life and phonetics class much easier!

Behold, Merriam-Webseter’s A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. This little treasure is a guide to using the International Phonetic Alphabet. It lists words and variations of the phonetic spelling. It was a great way to double check myself!

I hope that some of you find it useful too!

Teacher Appreciation Sale

Today and tomorrow TpT is having a site wide sale in honor of teacher appreciation week! Use code TAD13 for an additional 10% off!

To honor all the SLPs who work in schools, we are calling this the ‘Speecher Appreciation Sale’!

Stop by The Speech Ladies store to rack up on products that are 20% off! (28% off with your special code!)

Some of our new items include:

 

 

Articulation Process Posters (to learn about this product see this post.)

 

 

 

 

WH Question Scramble Card Game

This product includes 60 WH question cards, 12 bonus cards and an answer key. As usual, print, cut and laminate. Mix cards up and lay card stack face down on the table. Students draw one card at a time. The questions on the card are scrambled. The student must unscramble the words to ask the question, then other students may answer. Watch out for cats who may steal your cards! Whoever has the most cards in the end wins!

Enjoy the sale!

Articualtion Process Posters

15 DAYS TILL SUMMER! I don’t know about you, but summer can’t get here fast enough! I can tell my students feel the same way. Around this time of year, they tend to give up and seem to need a little extra motivation. 

My kiddos tend to be very visual, so I was brainstorming ways to create a visual chart so they could take an active part in their progress. Thus the Articulation Process Chart was born!

The idea is very simple. I took 6 steps SLPs use in articulation therapy and wrote out student friendly definitions. (I realize that you could break this down into more than 6 steps but my goal here was to keep it simple.) The 6 steps I used were generalization, conversation, reading, sentences, words and isolation.

I printed out the pages, laminated them and hot glued them to a ribbon. Then I attached the ribbon to a ring and displayed it in my classroom! It comes in 2 fonts - leopard print letters and pink polka dot letters. 

To grab this product go to Articulation Process Posters!

Each student was given a clothespin with their name and sound written on it. (If they are working on more than one sound they were given multiple clothespins.) The students put their clothespins on the current level they were working on. This has worked as a great visual to show how far they have come with their sound and how much farther they have to go. 

I wish I had done this at the beginning of the year so that they could have been focusing on reaching the top of the ribbon all year! I think that when they get to the top (generalization) I will let them pick a special prize form the treasure box as a reward!

As an added bonus, this has been a helpful visual for my teachers and administrators to see. So few of them understand articulation therapy and how it works. It has opened up opportunities for me to talk about what I am doing with my students and how far they have come!

What are you doing to motivate your students at the end of the year?

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Artic Worsheet Storage

 

How do you keep up with all your scattered worksheets? I can’t tell you how many pages of worksheets I have collected in just a few short years! I needed a way to stay organized and this is what has worked best for me!

I just use binders, page protectors (thanks Costco!), and tabs! It is very simple for articulation; I divide the papers by phoneme. For example all of my K worksheets go behind the K tab. Then I further organize by putting sheets in order according to position and difficulty level (initial K syllables, initial K words, initial K sentences, stories with initial K words, etc.). 

My notebooks sit on my bookshelf so they are easy to access! It has really helped with coming up with last minute homework! I just grab the notebook, flip to that student’s sound, pull the page our of its protector, copy and send it home! You do have to be diligent about putting the original back into its page protector or the system falls apart. For some reason I have liked this better than the filing system I used last year.

I organized my artic papers in August and have loved my notebooks! I am currently working on organizing language worksheets. 

How do you organize all your loose paper?