Winners!

What a fun week it has been, reading all your entries and seeing all the support for SpeechRoomNews! Thanks for being followers! A special thanks to Smarty Ears Apps. If you didn't win, make sure you 'like' their facebook page - they have giveaways often!


So drumroll please......


The 2 winners, chosen by Random.org are:

mlemarJan 9, 2012 10:01 PM

Hoping it's my lucky day!! This would be an amazing app to have in my resource kit - I'm a country speechie w limited resources so every little 'corner cutter' helps! emily.meagher@live.com.au

Suzanne Herman, M.Ed., CCC-SLPJan 16, 2012 07:17 PM

I'd love to try this out for free before I buy it for my assistant SLP! Also thanks for linking to my blog at the Speech House. I get lots of traffic from your great blog! herman4@suddenlink.net

Congrats ladies! I emailed you so check your inbox! 

Did you guys have fun with that? I sure did and we had a lot of people comment - so I'm hoping to do more giveaways! Check back later this week and see what we're doing with sandwich week in speech! 

Articulate It App Review and Giveaway

I have something exciting for us today! Since I'm breaking in my new Ipad I've been trying out lots of new apps. This week Smarty Ears gifted me an app for their articulation application "Articulate It" to test out and review. The good news is they also gave me 2 TO GIVE AWAY FOR YOU!!! I have several Smarty Ears apps but was new to Articulate It.

Check it out in the Itunes store HERE.

 Best Features
+Covers every phoneme
+Covers phonological processes
+ Can use it in groups easily  - either one turn or multiple attempts for each child.
+Tracks data in detail
+ Recordings taken for sounds are saved into the data.

This app has everything your articulation cards have and more! The pictures are clear and appropriate. It was easy for me to set up before the kids arrived. I just clicked to pick which kids to add to the group session, and then added the target sounds for each child. You can also take notes at any point during the session, which might come in handy when working in groups. I like knowing that it's an app that I can use with my entire caseload (age 3-13) making it worth the money. I really appreciated the tutorial included within the app because I knew after watching it that I wasn't missing any great features because I didn't know how to work it!

The only thing this app is lacking, is some bumped up entertainment value and the ability to work at the sentence level. The kids got bored after one or two sessions. The Ipad is certainly more entertaining than my traditional articulation cards, but the newness wore off pretty quickly. Future updates might include some time of reward/game for completing a certain amount of trials (a game with their sound incorporated would be even better!) Adding a feature that turns the target words to target sentences would be desirable as well! Although any savvy SLP is going to be able to quickly create those sentences during therapy.

This is a great app that I would recommend for all SLP's and even parents who wish to work on carryover of skills at home. The price is right to have every articulation/phonology card deck into one app on the ipad. In the end, having an app that tracks great data, and includes Articulation AND Phonology in a single app, outweighs any cons I could think of!


So here comes the exciting part. To WIN A COPY OF THIS APP here is what you need to do. You need to...

1. Become a Facebook follower of Speech Room News

AND

2. Become a blog follower

(you can find both of those on the right hand side of this page.)

Leave a comment on this  page with your name and email! I will use Random.org to generate 2 winners one week from today!

Goodluck!

MLK Day

Are you looking for some Speech and Language Activities for Martin Luther King Jr. Week? Well so was I, so I did some digging around on the web and over at PediaStaff's MLK Pinterest Board. This is a peek at our week!


Writing/Video: One of the best activities we did was with a writing prompt. The kids filled out this writing prompt that models Dr. King's, I Have a Dream Speech. This was my example:

Grab the writing prompts here.

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/I_have_a_dream_younger.pdf

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/I_have_a_dream_older.pdf

The real fun we had was using the Ipad to record each other giving their "I have a dream" speeches. I can't show them to you, because I'm protecting the privacy of the students, so you will just have to trust me that they are very cute! We emailed them to the parents when we were done! SO FUN!! This activity was great for articulation and fluency. We played back the movies to listen for articulation errors.

Craft: I made up this little craft. You can grab it for free HERE!

We used it in speech to work on following directions, basic concepts and talking about reason Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is admired. Each kid picked their own word that was the most important after our conversation and added it to their sheet. We added little magnets to the back of them to take home and put on the refrigerator.

Videos: I watched a couple videos on the ipad.
 The first one was great for grades 3-5.
http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/famoushistoricalfigures/martinlutherkingjr/ 
And this second one I used for kids in grades k-2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Au81aHuSg
After the videos we had discussions and worked on WH questions, comprehension, reasoning etc. 




MLK Tic-Tac-Toe

You can grab this cute activity HERE AT BOARDMAKER SHARE.


News2You: If your school pays for you to have a News2You subscription, you can find their MLK information here 

Reading Comprehension: We used this worksheet. 

You can download it HERE.

APPS: If you're working with older kids, who are capable of higher level thinking you might want to check out this Ipad app. It's currently $1.99 and has 10 of Dr. King's speeches. I didn't try it because it's too high for the children on my caseload.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/martin-luther-king-speeches/id303791578?mt=8 

I hope you found something you can use in your speech room. What did you do to talk about MLK?

Ipad Ideas!

I'm falling more in love with my Ipad for therapy each week. Yes I have downloaded TONS of apps but today I wanted to share with you some non-app ideas.Here's a few FREE and easy things you should add to your safari bookmarks!

Hop over to Caroline Bowen's website and bookmark the Quick Screener articulation pictures.

You will have all the pictures you need without having to search for your screening forms (does this happen to anyone else!?).


One other site you can easily use with your ipad is Super Teacher Tools. They have a make your own Jeopardy game that doesn't use powerpoint. It's awesome! If you use this link you will have access to the game I made that is Irregular Verb Review. Grab it here:

 http://www.superteachertools.com/jeopardyx/jeopardy-review-game.php?gamefile=1325819154

With both of these sites you will need internet access (3g or wi-fi). I saved them as bookmarks so I can quickly pull them up with groups!

Are you using any other non-app speech and language activities?

Give a Mouse A Cookie - Please!

Wow! That two week holiday break went fast! Since it's a short week this week I took the opportunity to re-vamp my lesson plans for preschool for next week.

Why do I need to re-vamp you ask?! Santa brought me a shiny new Ipad 2! So much fun. I've actually had it for about 6 weeks now and I can't put it down. So this week I took my preschool lesson from last year and just added some Ipad options to it!

Here's a look at what we're doing.

For the whole group circle I will do the Book while giving each kiddo a felt piece (that I made with felt and fabric paint.) My Mr. Mouse lost his tail to a 3 year old last year!

The book has adapted pieces attached with velcro. It's such a great way to help the little guys or lower kids work on the book and the older kids can remove the pieces as we go and then use them to retell the story. I use the communication board to prep vocabulary and help answer comprehension questions.

You can download it here:  http://www.boardmakershare.com/Activity/628596/If-You-Give-a-Mouse-a-Cookie

I pulled out my matching cookies for my lower functioning and nonverbal kiddos. The switch will be labeled "I want cookie" to work on some basic requesting.

I have a few kids working on learning new signs. So I grabbed some of the items in the story (like milk and cookies) to play with. I printed the signs to send home with them to their parents.

To target pronouns I used the Custom Boards App to make these quick worksheets. I use these to make some simple sentences (She has a cookie. She is looking in the mirror.)

Grab them HERE and HERE

I have these little napkins and cookies to work on MORE/LESS

These cookies with items on them came from kidssoup.com. I use them with this sentence strip to talk about things on cookies. I use them for articulation mostly.

Cookie Doodle is such a cute little app.  The kids can mix all the ingredients together and then bake the cookies before you decorate them! I made these sequencing cards to work on following directions. You can download the app on itunes and the sequencing activities HERE.

And one last activity for you all! I used the app SeeTouchLearn.  This app is so flexible! I made these a few receptive language tasks. One set of activities is just receptive identification of nouns (Touch the Mouse.) Another activity was identifying the functions (What do you use to clean the floor?)


OK- that's a lot right? I always take a variety of activities and then pick 2 or 3 things to work on with each kid depending on the IEP goals.

Are you getting back into the swing of thing yet?

Vocab Sheets

I'm celebrating finally being on break today! Hooray!

Just a quick freebie for you today. Most of my 4th and 5th graders have curriculum vocabulary goals. Sometimes we use these sheets to write vocabulary definitions or sentences on. It seems to help them to have these sheets with a background that is a visual for the subject area.

We decorate the boring brick walls in my little speech room!

Download it for free HERE!

Off to pack my suitcase now! It's been a hard year for my family, so I'm looking forward to some down time to spend with all the ones I love! Hope you get to spend some time with your family! See you in 2012!

Thanks :)

Thanks for voting Speech Room News in second place in the EduBlog Awards!

If you're looking for a great resource of educational resources, go check out the website. It lists tons of educational blogs with all types of perspectives! You'll want to bookmark it and head back often to check out blogs!