Sticky Words Freebie

You know that feeling when you are giving the CELF to a student and you get to the formulating sentences subtest?  It's a mixture of dread and curiosity for me.  That subtest is not my favorite because sometimes scoring can be subjective, plus it takes forever.  But I'm always curious at how my student will perform.  It gives a great picture of how well he/she grasps language and its complexity.  Part of the reason, I'm thinking, is the word choices.  Targeting transition words and conjunctions forces them to have to think about how words and phrases link or stick together to create a certain flow and meaning.

So I'm trying to incorporate a little of these skills into my daily therapy.  We call them sticky words.  They help link or glue our different thoughts together.  I want my students to be able to speak and write cohesively.  I'm hoping that utilizing these will be a step in that direction.  This is why I made a sticky words board.

When we are creating sentences, retelling stories, writing, reading, etc., we talk about these words on the board and use them!  I love it when my kids find one while we are reading.  I have them pull it off the board and we talk about it and create sentences with it.

To make them I printed the words on bright orange paper and laminated.  Then I cut squares of magnet from this tape and affixed it to the back of the word.

Want some sticky words of your own?  Download them HERE!!

I've been going a little magnet crazy, lol.  I did the same thing with testing and classroom vocabulary.  I added visuals to give them something concrete to see, since these can be very difficult words.  We made it into a game, where different words are worth different amounts of skittles/m&ms/stickers.  We try to talk about them and define them.

Unfortunately, I can't share those with you because I don't have the rights to a lot of the images.  I just wanted to give you an idea of something you can do in your speech rooms!

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!

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!

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!

Shark Week in Speech with a {Freebie}

Shark week in the middle of the back-to-school hoo-rah?  I say that's a win!  This week we're celebrating a belated shark week in speech and you HAVE to check out all of our fun!

First, we're tying together our back-to-school theme with sharks by reading Don't Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward.  This book is super cute about a shark who likes to bite everything on his first day of school.  I think it might be out of print but you can still order it on Amazon HERE.
This post contains amazon affiliate links.

Next, I made this super fun shark out of an old tissue box and scrapbook paper.  He loves to eat artic cards and all sorts of therapy materials.  ;)

We also did a shark craftivity that included lots of teeth for target words and opportunities to practice following directions.  It's very similar to my dinosaur craft from a while back except this one has fun eyes and a cute dorsal fin.  Check it!

Grab the template for this for free HERE!

Also included in the freebie pack is this cute Do-A-Dot Shark worksheet.  Mark the bubbles each time you say a word or respond correctly.

What do you think?  How do you celebrate Shark Week?

To-Do List Stickers!! {FREEBIE}

As SLPs I think it's safe to say that we are all familiar with the list.  We make list of kids, a list of reasons why, a list of supplies, or especially a to-do list.  Though actually doing the things on the list isn't always the most fun part of my day, it definitely helps if the list is bright and cutesie!

Maybe something like this??  ;)  I made these adorable list stickers that can be printed onto label paper or sticker paper and stuck right onto your planner or binder pages.  Here's what mine looks like on my planner:

You could also print them on regular paper and cut them out.  Stick them wherever you'd like with washi tape or double sided tape.  They come in both color and black and white designs.  

Grab this freebie from my TPT store HERE.  What do you think?  I might just use these in my new Erin Condren planner that I just ordered as well!

Summer Worksheets with a Freebie! :)

Summer is right around the corner for me.  Only one more week of school left!  Woohoo!  If you've got longer, don't be too jealous.  I have to go back to work August 4th!!  Bleh so early.  But no worries.  I've got a new worksheet pack to get you through the craziness of  the rest of the year.

This one is similar to the rest of my homework packs.  It comes with 13 generic worksheets including do-a-dots, roll and color, tic-tac-toe, cut and glue activities, drawing, and more.

It also comes with 5 worksheets for /r/ and 5 for /s/ with the words already filled in for you.  :)

Cute right?  I've already used them with my kids and they loved it!  This pack is available in my TPT store HERE.

And for an extra special end-of-the-year treat, you can grab a couple of extra dot worksheets for FREE!  Just click here to access them!  

Happy end of school!