SLPs Hopping Back into School!

Welcome to the last stop on the Back to School Blog Hop!  I hope y'all have grabbed some great freebies and discovered some fun blogs you may not have seen before!  Now you should have some nice resources in your pockets to help transition you from the lazy days of summer to your new super-busy and crazy therapy schedules.  ;)

In case you're just joining the hop, be sure and use the button below to head on over to the first blog of the hop...Crazy Speech World.  :)  I would like to encourage you to take your time and read through the posts.  You'll be able to get to know a lot of AMAZING bloggers!  The giveaway will be open for a week, you have plenty of time to enter!

Before we get to all of the prizes and giveaways, I've got a cute school-themed freebie for you to grab.  Perfect for this time of year.  Check it out!

This mini-pack comes with an open-ended game board that can be used with any targets or activities.

There are also 16 vocab cards that can be used for defining, describing, labeling, functions, or whatever you choose.

The packet also comes with 3 black and white worksheets including "Say it 3 times School Books," "Color/Do-a-Dot Apples," and "Roll a Sound Erasers!"

Love cute little games to play with my kiddos, and open-ended worksheets always come in handy.  :)  You can grab this FREEBIE at my TPT store.  Just go HERE!

Now on to some more blog hoppy fun!  Throughout your hopping journey you should have been collecting letters that spell out 5 school-themed words.  Hint...the letters of each word have similar graphics!  You'll need these words in order to enter the BIG giveaway on the Rafflecopter below.

The final letter you need is...

The fabulous prizes you can win in our giveaway include gift cards to TPT, Amazon, iTunes, and Pleated Poppy, Sarah Kesty ebooks, Smarty Ears apps, Lesson Pix subscription, and Social Thinking books!  Plus, there's a door prize for a $50 gift card to Erin Condren!  Love those planners!

A special thanks to all of our sponsors for donating so many fabulous prizes!

Enter using the Rafflecopter below!  The secret codes go in the order of the blogs in the hop.  So, the first word (beginning with Crazy Speech World's letter) will be the password to the first entry, etc.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Speech Reminder Cards Freebie

Is your schedule as crazy as mine?  For some reason this year seems a lot more nuts-o than usual.  Maybe it's because the teachers' schedules are pretty overwhelming as well.  I'm still trying to work out kinks and it's already the third week of school for me.

I thought I'd help some of the teachers out (and me too) by giving them some reminder cards.  This way they know exactly when the kids in their classrooms have speech.

I also do lots of inclusion/push-in with my students, so I wanted to remind teachers when I'll be coming into their classrooms to work with kiddos too.  These signs are perfect to hang up near their desks or on their bulletin boards.  Hopefully, this will help them remember to stick to their schedule/plan on those days.

You can grab these reminder cards for free HERE!  Hope you can use them!  Let me know what you think and please leave a comment below if you download.  :)

Graphics by The 3am Teacher

I hope you've enjoyed freebie week on the blog!  Be sure and check back tomorrow for some MAJOR fun and surprises!!!  :)

Common Core RtI Assessments 3-5 with a freebie!

Last week I posted my latest Common Core RtI assessment pack on TPT.  It's definitely something I'd been working on a while, but I'm so excited to be able to use it this year to revamp my RtI.

This product is very similar to my RtI Assessment Pack for K-2, except that it addresses third - fifth grades.  Each section comes with pre- and post-tests as well as progress monitoring sheets and probing materials.

• Third grade contains assessments for wh-questions, vocabulary, grammar, and language concepts.

It also contains progress monitoring sheets for each of the 4 sections

• Fourth and fifth grade standards don't focus as much on the ability to answer wh questions, so that section is not included.  They do include sections for vocabulary, grammar, and language concepts, as well as progress monitoring sheets for each.

• The packet also contains appendices and student sheets to be used alongside the pre and post-tests.  They include original stories to be used as the basis to answer several of the questions. 

• There's also a graph to track data.

• Last, I included cards for each Common Core standard addressed in the packet.

And as promised, I've got a freebie included for you.  You can download the WH-questions section for third grade for free!  Just click the "download preview" button on the TPT product page, which you can find HERE!

I'm also ready to giveaway a free copy to a random follower!  Just make sure you follow my TPT store and/or Facebook page and leave a comment below to enter!

Quote Posters Freebie!

My speech room is decorated similar to my blog design.  Black and white and yellow with polka dots and bumble bees.  You can check out THIS post to have a peek into how I decorated it last year.

This year I didn't want to change much.  I had to rearrange a little and add some things here and there, but the main decor is the same.  One thing that I just had to add this year was some pretty posters.  I put up some super cute ones from Crazy Speech World and Speech Room News, and they look fab!  Perfect with my color theme!

I wanted more so I made some fun and matching inspirational quote mini-posters to place on my cabinets.  Check them out!

I can't get enough chevron and polka dots!  And the yellow and black look so cute in my room!  I just printed them on cardstock, laminated them, and cut out the squares.  These would be so cute on a bulletin board, door, cabinets, or wall.

It's also nice to be able to refer to the quotes when a student is having a rough day or needs a pick-me-up.

And in case your room is not yellow and black like mine, I included blue and purple posters too!  See?

Cute right?  You can grab these posters at my TPT store for free!  Also if none of these colors work for you, my friend Natalie Snyders has some more quote posters available in her store for free as well!

Enjoy!

Biscuit Goes to School!

It's Freebie Week on the blog this week!  That means each day I'll have a different mini-freebie for you, so be sure and check back!  It all leads up to some super fun happenings on Friday, so you'll just have to wait and see! :)

Biscuit is back and he's trying to sneak off to school.  I love Biscuit books, as I'm sure you're aware.  This one is a little different than the others though.  It's an "I Can Read" book, so I'm able to use it with more than just my preschoolers.  My first and second graders can practice decoding and comprehending with this one.  Check out Biscuit Goes to School.

You can still add velcro and place the pictures inside the book to practice vocabulary.  You can check out some of my previous Biscuit posts to see how I do it.

I've got a little mini-companion pack for you to use with this book, in case you need something for that first or second week of school!  Of course, it comes with some cute vocab cards.

You can use them for simple describing or labeling or velcro them inside to make it more interactive.  It also comes with apple comprehension questions to help with both answering WH questions and story retell.

Students can also draw pictures to retell and sequence the events in the story using this chart.

Also included is an open-ended coloring sheet that can be used with any target...artic sounds, language concept, fluency, etc.

Several of my preschool and kindergarteners are working on prepositions, so the packet comes with a section to target just that.  Just cut out and have students place the puppy in different places in relation to the school house.  

Hope you can use these!  You can grab these freebies HERE!  Happy back to school for those of you just starting :)  Please leave a comment below if you download.  

Love It & List It Organization!

I'm linking up with Jenna over at Speech Room News for her Love it and List it Linky!  This month's topic is organization, so be sure to head over to SRN and check out all of the fabulous posts.

If you follow my blog, you may have seen some of my organization posts from last month.

Check out 5 organizing essentials for your speech room HERE!  You'll be able to find some good reasons why to stay organized as well as important tools for how I keep my speech room together.

You can also check out how I keep my paperwork organized in planners and binders by visiting THIS post.

And finally, I've got 2 data collection posts with freebies!  You can check those out HERE and HERE!

I hope you can find some of these posts helpful!  I know it can sometimes be stressful to take on getting things reorganized, but I'm here to tell you that if I can do it you can do it!  :)

Happy organizing!

Basic Concepts Skills Screener ~ App Review

So excited to show you one of the newest apps from Smarty Ears!  Lots of my little ones are working on basic concepts, and this app is perfect for finding out exactly what they need.  Check out Basic Concepts Skills Screener!

This is the home screen when you open the app.  The lefthand column holds the list of students and the righthand column shows their screening info.

The upper left tab is the info tab.  Tap it and click "tutorial" to watch an overview of how the app works.  There is also a test manual that opens in pdf format.

The settings tab allows you to choose whether you want to test in English or Portuguese.

To get started tap "add student" and enter the student's information.

You can then select if you want the student to complete a full screening of 79 questions or a quick screening of 30 questions.  The full screening is supposed to take about 15 minutes to administer and the quick screening about 5 minutes.

Both screenings are similar in format.  The test questions are receptive and multiple choice.

An audio voice gives the question prompt and the student selects the picture that correctly corresponds.  Click "next" to go to the next question.  The app also keeps track on which question you are on with the tally at the bottom left of the screen.

This screening assessments targets the following basic concepts and provides detailed data on each:

• Comparative
• Quantitative
• Spatial
• Temporal 

Tap "done" to stop the session in the middle if desired.  You can also add notes while you're testing!  Just tap the notes tab at the top left.

Once the screening is complete, you can access the results.  It comes complete with detailed analysis on each concept category and where they stand in respect to the age of mastery.

You also have the option to email this data to yourself or open it in Therapy Report Center by tapping the blue tap at the top right of the screen.

What I dig about this app:

• It's great to help in assessing pre and post therapy or interventions in basic concept skills.
• It's very user-friendly and straightforward - which is great for the little ones.
• The concepts targeted are appropriate and results are compared to what a child should be learning at his/her age.
• Results can be printed and attached to any other screening or report.
• Good price for an assessment app.

What could make it better:

• I wish I could stop and start the test again if we were interrupted.  
• In the future I'd like to see some sort of pass/fail instead of just a description of what the child could or could not do. 

Overall, I think this app will be very useful with my preschool and kinders!  

You can grab this app HERE on iTunes for $14.99!  What do you think?