Looking Ahead: Fall Break!

Yep, that's right; next week is Fall Break for me! It seems like August took forever, and September just flew by! So...what's in store for me next week?
Fall Break starts a day early for me...this weekend is "Sisters' Weekend"! Every year, my sisters and sisters-in-law (and my mom when she was still with us) hole up in a cabin in the mountains. Last year was the first year we tacked on Thursday night. I'm the 8th of 10 children, so we usually have a pretty good crowd on hand! What do we do? We are southern women spending a weekend during the fall together, so of course we watch football on Saturday! There may or may not be plenty of yelling at the tv. Sometimes we shop, sometimes we don't. Oh, and we eat very well!
I plan on relaxing, spending time with my father, reading, and, unfortunately, will have to spend some time writing progress reports. 
At the end of the week, it will be only 9 more weeks until Christmas Break!
Do you have a Fall Break? If so, what do you have planned?

Looking Ahead: Pirates Ahoy!

I had to improvise a little last week; I was out 2 days taking care of family matters, so I didn't have the time to do my original plans for Pirate Week. I still wanted to do something "piratey", and I needed something for my students to take home for homework, so I made Pirate Homework.
After the students completed the homework and we got the sheet in their folders to take home, they had a few minutes for a quick game:
I told the students that we were going to do Pirate Week-and-a-Half. My plans for this coming week are the same as last week. I have a couple of students who are working on following directions during pencil-crayon/paper tasks. I found Pirate Themed Following Directions Coloring Pack-No Prep (The SLP Scrapbook) that is perfect to use with those students. I modified as needed last week.
On a sticky note, I wrote a few "wh" questions for the parents to ask, put it on the paper, and they had their homework for the week. I plan on using a different sheet for this coming week.

My older elementary students who are working on inferencing will get a chance to try out Pirates Inferencing and Vocabulary (SLP Runner). I'm all prepped and ready to go!

This week is the last week before Fall Break. It's hard to believe that the school year is already 1/4th over. But, with the end of the quarter comes Progress Reports, so I'm sure I'll be spending one day working on those during break.

How did your Pirate Week go? Are you extending it more than 1 week?


Looking Ahead: Pirate Week!

Oh, boy! It's a "two-fer"!!! I'm combining my "Looking Ahead" post with Sweet Southern Speech's Pirate Day linky. 
Graphics from www.mycutegraphics.com
Since Pirate Day is 19 September, this is what I have planned for next week. To see what I have planned for Dot Day (which I'm turning into "dot week"), click here. (There may be a couple of freebies included in that post!)

I try to have enough materials to be able to mix things up from year to year. this year, I'll be centering activities around the book How I Became a Pirate (Melinda Long & David Shannon).

During 5 Minute Day, the students will be getting their homework ready in the independent station. 

The pictures below will be printed out on a single label sheet & cut out to make stickers. There is also an option to use a circle punch for pictures without the words.
Thanks to Road to Speech for the great idea to copy pictures on a label sheet & use as stickers!
Some of my students will work on "wh" questions by answering questions about the book.
They will also be working on making complete sentences using an interactive book:
My older students will be working on describing a pirate

And defining pirate slang.
We'll be ending the week with a team game:
My students love Pirate Week. What do you have planned?



Looking Ahead: Dotting the I

Halfway through one of my afternoon groups on Tuesday, I realized I had forgotten it was supposed to be 5-minute day...for the past 1.5 days! Yeah, even in a dream job things can get hectic!
I gave my students the choice to color, daub, or put a chip on the hotdogs on FREEBIE: Camping Speech Sheets from Jessica Finch (Everything Speechy)...all of them except 1 opted to daub them. 
My students loved  S'more Fun! from TLC Talk Shop on Wednesday and Thursday. No one wanted the stinky s'more, though. (No sense of adventure!)
I didn't see my kids working on social skills this week since we didn't have school on Monday & I had a system-wide speech meeting on Wednesday during their therapy times.
My students working on narrative/story retell began learning the story elements that go along with the Weber Story Builder

Now it's time to leave the camping theme behind, because the week I've been waiting for is here!!! If you'll remember back in Week 1, I talked about Dot Day.  I was so excited about it, but then I realized I was a month early! But now it's here!!!!  

Monday & Tuesday will be 5 minute day. My students like to play games...even if there's not a clear winner. I made this very simple, quick game for them to play at their independent station. At the end of the 5 minutes, they'll keep their game piece on the board. If there's time after each student has their five minutes with me, then we'll finish the game as a group.

For gameday, I'm going to use what I had planned on using a month ago, when I thought it was Dot Day:
We'll be reading The Dot (Creatology) by Peter H. Reynolds. Following that, they will take turns saying their targets, rolling the dice, and daubing that number of dots.

I've got usual routines for those students who need them, and I'm going to start hitting "wh" questions hard with a couple of students, thanks to the Interactive WH question Megabundle from Speech2U.

That's what I have planned for this week. What do your plans look like?



Progress Monitoring: Baselines and Beyond! {Frenzied SLP Linky}

It's the beginning of the school year...time to figure out where to start with your students! Where do you start? How do you measure their progress? My Frenzied Friends have some tips/ideas to help you sort things out.

With my articulation students, I use a couple of things. First, I use the S-CAT.
It's a great way to have something on paper to compare progress from year-to-year. I can look back and see how a student did the previous year, as well as determine what (if any) contexts work to his/her benefit. The downside is that it does take a little time, and the student just repeats words, phrases, then sentences to you. The upside is that you can get a percentage correct from the responses, and, as stated previously, you can see if there are some sound combinations that work better than others for the student.

For baseline data, I use my artic cards. Since I only have 1 set of Webber Artic Cards to use between 2 schools, I use those at 1 school, and my artic cards that I made a loooong time ago for my other school. I take data (either correct or incorrect) on the productions attempted (first attempt only) with all of the cards in that deck (28). And there I have my baseline data.

I progress monitor my artic students through therapy data. At the end of the session, I put a dot on a chart to indicate their accuracy for that session and they draw a line to connect the dots, but only if we went through all 28 cards. If we didn't get to all of them, they don't complete the chart. (I think it came from Year 'Round Lifesavers and Timesavers for SLPs from Super Duper, but it would appear that it's no longer in print.)
http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae71/mpkcoop/long%20pin.jpg
It's a bit tougher to compile baseline data for my language students. I use the old HELP books from Linguisystems. Since most of my students' goals target more than just 1 thing, I'll have them complete the last 10 items (those are the most difficult) that coincide with their target. Then, at the end of every 9 weeks, I'll use those same 10 items to check their progress.

Honestly, I don't think it matters what you use for your baseline data & progress monitoring, as long as you're consistent. If you're not consistent, you're not getting a good representation of progress.

HUMONGOUS shout-out to Sparklle SLP, Speech2U, Talkin' With Twang, and Speech Sprouts for getting this linky together and for doing all the work!
If you're a blogger (or on Facebook), we'd love to hear from you. Just link up below!


Using Google Forms to Make a Therapy Schedule

Whew! This year, it seemed like it was harder to make a schedule than I ever remember. My state passed a new law that mandates more "unstructured" recess which is great for the kids, but not so great for those of us trying to make a schedule.
The SLPs in my school system had some training on using Google Forms to make a schedule, but, since it was held 2 days after I got home from vacation, I opted out. Plus, I had it in my head that going back to having the teachers choose their 3 best times for their students to be out of the room wasn't going to work. Famous last words! 
As it turns out, at 1 of my schools, my way of having the teachers mark out the times on a grid that didn't work for them left me feeling extremely frustrated. I did a little bit of research and figured out how to use Forms to make my schedule. Not only was it easy, but it worked!!!

Questions? Comments? Leave 'em below!
**Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission*

Looking Ahead: 4 Weeks of Therapy Already?

Finally! A week that went "semi" as planned! I didn't go all out and decorate my room, but "camp week" was a success.
Following directions (FREEBIE!) from Panda Speech. There's a 1-step and 2-step included!
I was able to use the Camp In Speech and Language from Sparklle SLP with all of the students on my caseload (minus a few students...and 1 of them really could have used it!). My kids loved the game that's included in this packet! 

WEEK 4 of therapy, y'all!!! We're halfway to Fall Break! With the Labor Day Holiday on Monday, I decided to extend my camping theme just a little bit longer.
Tuesday will be 5-Minute Day at my mountain school. Last year, I started having the students do an activity for their homework during their independent station, and it worked really well. They'll take home their first homework sheet next week...the sheet that they completed earlier this week from Speech Camp: NO PREP Articulation from Speech is Sweet
Since my kids already have their homework ready, they need an activity for their independent station, and I found just the thing: FREEBIE: Camping Speech Sheets from Jessica Finch (Everything Speechy).
I have to be completely honest: at this point, I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with my students who work on social skills. With my Narrative Retell students and my students working on describing/defining, I started using Nonfiction Endangered Animals for Language, Comprehension, and Vocabulary from The Speech Owl
Hopefully I can get the Interactive WH Question Megabundle from Speech2U ready over the weekend for some of my students who have a hard time with "wh" questions. My plan is to start using this next week. I'll keep you posted on how it goes, and if I'm able to get it ready!
For the game of the week, I've downloaded S'more Fun! from TLC Talk Shop (Psssst....it's FREE!). It looks like a fun game that my students will enjoy.
Those are the plans for next week right now. How is your planning going?


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