Merry Christmas From Our Speech Room {& a Freebie!}

We've been decking the halls in speech this month!  From gingerbread men to Christmas trees, we've been busy!

I always like to start off December with a gingerbread unit.  The kids love it, and it never seems to get old.  A few of my favorite gingerbread books are:

• The Gingerbread Man (always a classic)
• Gingerbread Pirates - I found a cute unit to go along with this one on TPT here.  
• The Gingerbread Cowboy
• Gingerbread Baby - There are some great TPT resources for this one too!  Check out this free one from Mindy Stenger and this one from Super Power Speech.

We also decorated gingerbread men, did worksheets and 100-dot sheets, and played Gingerbread Speech!

After we finished our gingerbread unit, we went all out Christmas!  A couple Christmas books I frequently use are:

• Biscuit's Christmas Eve (with a freebie here!)
• There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell - I use Jenn's companion pack with this one
• Little People Christmas flap book - My littles absolutely love it.
•  I Spy Christmas 

Along with these books, we described reindeer with the EET!

We played Bingo and Cariboo and looked through toy catalogs.

We also made Christmas tree sentences and used lots of worksheets.

Whew!  It's been crazy but fun.

Lastly, I decided to give out little treat bags to some of my students.  Aren't they cute?

I made adorable speechy Christmas labels with funny little sayings on them to tie onto the bags.

A few of my students and co-workers usually give me gifts at Christmas time, so I made simple thank you cards to hand out.  There are fancy chalkboard ones for my co-workers and more cutesy-type ones for my students.  I tried to leave enough space for you to sign your name.

You can grab these labels and thank you cards for free HERE!

Enjoy!  Here's to your last few days before break!  Merry Christmas!

What's In My Cart Linky!

It's Cyber Monday!  That means it's time to empty those wish lists and carts you've been holding online.  Teachers Pay Teachers is having their big up to 28% off sale on Dec 1-2.  Get excited!

I'm linking up with Jenna to talk about what's in my TPT cart for the cyber sale!  Click on the image above to go to the original blog post.

Here are a few things from my store that might help you around this time of year!

Penguin Preschool Language and Penguin Phonology

Criteria Charts for Speech and Language - Complete Edition

100 Dot Sheets for the Year!

All of these should be big hits in your speech rooms.  Now for a little peek as to what's in MY cart!!

1.  Nonfiction Texts Winter Edition by Nicole

2.  Interactive Books: Winter Treats from Jenna

3.  Articulation Word Search Bundle by For His Glory

4.  Cariboo Phonology from Kari

I know these products will be just what I need to get me through the end of the year and then some!  What's in YOUR cart?  Be sure to check out Jenna's post at Speech Room News to see what everyone is buying.

Thanksgiving Fun in the Speech Room

Last week was all about Thanksgiving in my speech room.  I thought I'd share a Target dollar spot find with you that my kids had a blast with!

This came in one big roll of Thanksgiving fun.  I separated it out and made a couple rows, since my speech room wasn't big enough to spread the whole thing out!

We used EET stickers and talked about turkeys and other pictures on the sheets.

We did lots of do-a-dots and coloring and practiced our artic words lots and lots of times.

Some even glued pictures of words with their sound in them onto their sheets.

Overall, I'd say this activity was a success.  Their favorite part was probably getting to do speech on the floor!

What do you think?  Did y'all have any Thanksgiving fun in your speech rooms?

Orlando Fun and a FREEBIE!

Do you have the post-ASHA blues?  Or are you a little blue that you didn't get to go to Orlando and join in the fun?  If you've been following our hashtag #SLPbloggers on Facebook or Insta, you may have seen lots of fun pics and posts of our time at ASHA.  Here's a little recap, so you can re-live the experience a bit. ;)

We had our very own blogger table at the exhibit hall.  

We passed out a couple thousand flyers and made new friends and hugged the necks of sweet people who knew us from the internet.  We also took selfies and gave out goodies to everyone who would take them.     

11 SLP bloggers were hosting the table at the convention.  Check out the flyer to see who was there.  We even got to tell people about speech therapy blogs and Teachers Pay Teachers stores who had never heard of them before!  

Inside the ASHA store was a cool photo booth where you could take silly pics and sport all kinds of SLP paraphernalia.  Here I am with Maureen from The Speech Bubble SLP!  

At our booth, we gave away lots of freebies and raffle entries.  How sweet are these SLP buttons?

I also made cute little mini task cards to give out.  They target multi-syllabic words.  Aren't they cute?

For those of you who didn't get one at ASHA or were unable to go, I making this available to you as a freebie!  Just click HERE to download the page.  Print, cut, punch a hole in the corners and you're ready to go.  

I added a few more cards to the stack, so even if you did pick one up, you may want to download to add more to your deck!

Even though I got sick on the last day (boohoo!), this was an AMAZING experience!  Hope to see you all next year in Denver!

ASHA Bound!

Wow, it's finally here!  Tomorrow SLPs from all over the country will be traveling to the great city of Orlando for an amazing time of learning, collaborating, venting, exploring, chatting, and more.  Guess who's going to be a part of it this year?  Me!  I'm super pumped to be co-hosting a blogger booth with my oh-so-fab bloggy friends.  So pretty PLEASE drop by and visit at booth #1359!  You'll be able to enter to win lots of exciting materials plus score a few freebies!

Check out everybody that will be there!

There will be different contests and prizes at the booth each day (plus CANDY of course)!  You can find the contest schedule and lots more details at ashaslpbloggers.blogspot.com.  Here's a little preview:

And if you happen to stop by the booth while I'm there, you'll be able to grab a little freebie especially from me!  So come by often or find me around the convention and mention my blog.  I'll have some business cards and extra freebies on hand to give you!

Are you going to ASHA?  Hope to see you there!

Verb Quest App Review & GIVEAWAY

Smarty Ears has recently released a new app called Verb Quest.  It's cute, kid-friendly, and has a fun witch theme.  So many of my students have difficulty understanding verbs.  Having an app that targets verbs specifically is great for addressing these skills and collecting good data.

Check it out!

Tap "play" on the home screen to get started and add players.

Choose the level at which you'd like each player to work by tapping modify.  There are 20 levels that include simple, irregular, past/present/future, progressives, modals, and much more.  (It gets really complex!) If you master the level by getting 10 sentences correct without a hint, it will automatically progress you to the next level.

Hit start to begin.  To play choose the correct word or phrase that fits correctly into the target sentence.  Once you get it right, you have the option of recording yourself repeating the sentence to practice speaking correctly.  I LOVE this option.

The target screen shows whose turn it is at the top of the screen, the accuracy at the bottom left, and a hint button on the bottom right.  You can change the settings by tapping the top left corner.  You have the option of changing the background, displaying the hint and accuracy, using automatic progression, and recording correct responses.

When finished tap "done" to end the game.  This takes you to the reports room where you can view each student's progress.  You can analyze their data by session or by level.

After a student completes a level, they win a virtual trophy to put on their virtual shelf.  ;)  This for some reason, is super motivating for my kids.  Sometimes they ask if they can play "the trophy game" to earn more for their shelves.  Haha. 

Recap of what I love about this app:

• It's unique.  There really aren't that many other apps out there that specifically target verbs.
• The graphics are appealing and motivating for students.
• You can record your student repeating the sentence using the correct verb form.  
• It automatically progresses you to the next level once you've successfully mastered a level.
• The rewards are motivating for students.

What could make it better:

• The hint option just gives the student the correct response.  I wish it would eliminate an answer choice instead.

Verb Quest is $19.99 on iTunes.  Check it out HERE.  

Smarty Ears gave me a free copy of the app to giveaway!!  Enter in the Rafflecopter below to win a copy of your own.  The opinions of this app review are my own.  I was given a copy of this app to review, but no other compensation was provided.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Criteria Charts for Speech & Language {FREEBIE} edition

When I'm in and out of classrooms on my school campus, I see lots of things like this.

And this.

And this.

We are all about criteria here.  Teachers are constantly being encouraged to have students self-assess and give feedback on how they are performing.  If they have a clear cut goal and know what they need to do in order to get there, it's a little easier for them to reach that goal.

I really wanted to implement this system in my speech room to have a consistency with what my kids are learning in their classrooms.  Plus, I want to give them as much exposure to having to rate/assess themselves as possible, since that concept alone is hard for my language disordered students.

I created some charts with visuals and have already found that help my kids so much.  When they are paying attention to how they do, they put forth much more effort.  Now, I'm in the process of creating a huge packet with lots of specific speech and language objectives as well as blank editable pages!

But for now I've got this FREE version for you to check out.  :)

It includes 4 general criteria charts for language, articulation, voice, and fluency.

Student cards or strips, whatever way you'd like to use them

And 6 "Why don't I have it?" cards/chart.  This is my favorite part.  My kids can often look at their performance and tell whether or not they have mastered the skill, but they don't know why.  This will help pinpoint what they need to do different and whether or not it's something they can work harder to fix.

What do you think?  You can grab this freebie at my TPT store HERE!  Don't forget to leave some lovely feedback while you're there.  ;)

And stay tuned for the full version coming soon!