Sunday, March 18, 2012

Dollar Challenge

Todays post is a little challenge for all you fabulous SLP's! I obviously like to make therapy fun. If it takes a little extra prep from me to keep them engaged each week, that's fine with me! Even though we're having a blast in The Speech Room, we're getting a lot done too.  I challenge myself to get many trials each day and now I'm challenging my students as well. That's how I came up with the idea for the Dollar Challenge for students working on articulation goals.



This is the Dollar Challenge! I had these giant money posters that I took from the 'give away pile' at school. They inspired me to create something new for the kids! To beat the dollar challenge, the students must complete 100 repetitions of their target sound (in words) in one therapy session! 100 pennies equals a dollar and 100 speech sounds does too!



This is the printable I made to go along with the challenge. Some days when we're working on teaching strategies, oral placement and development of the sounds - we might only get 20 actual words said! On Dollar Challenge days, we're working strictly on drill. At the beginning of the session I tell the kids it's a dollar day and they know what they need to get done. It's funny how fast their side conversations and stalling tactics fall away! They 'sush' each other so they can get more words done and don't hesitate to remind me that they are in a hurry if it takes me too long to write data. I use my sound packets in the pocket chart for this activity, so the kids have plenty of words on hand and can independently chose targets to say.

If they meet the dollar challenge, the students get to place their name on a dollar and place it onto the board. Once a week I am doing a drawing from those names. The winner gets to visit the prize box.

Grab that download here!

Can you beat the challenge twice in one session for 200?! How else do you motivate your students to complete large numbers of repetition? Stay tuned for my language idea that uses a similar strategy!

Another Quick Tip **Smart Apps for kids is a website I use to find great apps for our speech/language students. They are giving away 4 ipads right now. Go check it out!  If you still haven't joined the craze this could be your chance!