{Looking Ahead} It's Going to be a Mad, Mad Week!

Just to recap last week (since I didn't get it in gear to do a Looking Ahead post!):
This is what my table looked like last Wednesday. Since we're never in school for St. Patrick's Day, I miss out on all of the fun activities that I see a lot of you doing in your speech rooms. So, I extended St. Patrick's Day! We had a P.D. on Monday, so on Wed. my students either glued pictures on or wrote words on a shamrock to take home for homework. (Thanks to Bright Ideas SLP for this freebie!) That kept them busy when it wasn't their turn as we played St. Patty's Cakes from Putting Words in Your Mouth. The students had a great time trying to be the first one to have all 5 of their cupcakes on their table. When they put a cupcake on their table, I had them put a chip on the corresponding cupcake on their key card to help them see what they still needed. It was a hit!

Moving on to next week: We all know what happens in March, even if you're not a big sports person. If you live near a college who happens to have a decent basketball team, then you're probably more into the madness than others. I've never done a basketball themed week before, so I'm a little excited about doing this with my students!

5 Minute Day/Homework
Sparklle SLP has a brand-spanking new book companion for Salt in His Shoes (Delores Jordan, Roslyn Jordan).  (Let me take just a second here to reiterate how much I love her book companions! I love that she includes homework and a game: 2 required components for a book companion that I'm going to use!) For the independent station, the students will use the word list that Sparklle has graciously provided and will write words with their targets in the basketballs. And, their homework will be done and ready to take home at the end of the week!

For 1 of my "mixed" groups, I'm going to have a student who is working on retelling stories listen to a reading of the book Salt in His Shoes while I'm working with an artic student. This will actually give me close to 10 minutes with each student. When the artic student is writing the target words in the basketball, the student working on retell will use this from Sparklle's companion packet:
As you can tell, I use different terms than she does, so I just marked out her terms and wrote the ones that the student is used to using. (I use the Weber Story Builder from Super Duper) This student will take the flip book home, retell the story, and I'll have the parent sign a sheet in the homework folder that it was completed.

Younger students
This is yet another activity from Sparklle's companion. The students, after saying 3 target words, will glue a basketball around the hoop. Since all of my younger students are on the modelling phase on the word level, I'll write words on the basketballs of words they had trouble with during the session so they can take that home and work on it with their parents.

Language

Before we do anything, I'll show the students this Youtube video to help them grasp the basketball vocabulary. All Y'all Need also has several new packets centered around basketball. From Basketball for Speech & Language Therapy- Younger Elementary I'll be using:
Categories
And vocabulary
Laura has been busy; she also made a Wh? game! With a couple of my students who are in mixed groups, I will use the question cards as we play a group game (see "Games" below).

From Basketball for Speech & Language- Upper Elementary, some of my students will be using:
Basketball Text Passages
In her companion packet, Sparklle included an activity for identifying emotions:
Game Day
Again from Sparklle's companion packet, my students will actually have 2 different games to choose from:

An open-ended game,
Or a game to see who will have the most points at the end. 

Have a look to see what else is included in all of the materials I've linked. I only printed out and prepared those activities that are pertinent to my caseload.

{Looking Ahead} One Last Winter Hoorah

I missed doing a post last week. Eh, it happens. It's hard to know what to plan when it feels like Spring, but it's still Winter. So, I winged it. That means for game day, I opened my cabinet and let each group decide what they wanted to do. Since most of my materials are at 1 school, my mountain school kids didn't have the luxury of choosing their activity, so I took Hi Ho! Cherry O! with me; and they loved it!
This is the week before Spring Break, even though it's technically still Winter. We're out for St. Patrick's Day (as always), so I decided to give Winter one last "hoorah". I'm centering this week's activities around the book Snowmen All Year. Speech Made Simple has a packet that has me covered for the whole week.

5 Minute Day
The students produce their target "x" amount of times, then roll the dice. After that, they can use the cute winter stamps that a friend sent me to stamp that number of snowmen.

Concepts
This little activity is great for basic concepts: following direction and expressive concepts. Just have the students put the winter item (so what if some are Christmas items? I have a feeling they aren't going to care!) in a certain place on the picture (beside, on, under, over...you get the idea!). After he has created his picture, ask him where certain items are. I don't let my students get away with saying, "Right there." When they say that, I usually tell them that I don't know where "right there" is, so he needs to use his words. 

Game Day
The companion packet has me covered for game day! Speech Made Simple included an open-ended game. Students produce their targets "x" number of times, spin the spinner, then move the game piece. The 1st one to the snowman is the winner.

Additional Activities
Last week, I pulled out some "oldies but goodies". I have a few students working on following directions using paper and crayon/pencil, and they have really been struggling with Listening for Basic Concepts All Year 'Round. So, I grabbed a couple of books I've had for a while:
 This one uses concepts, so it really fits my needs well.
I had one student read the directions and follow them. The directions are a bit easier, but the activities increase in difficulty later in the book.
The above is a page out of Easy Stories for Grammar and Basic Concepts by Academic Communication Associates. I completely forgot I had this, but it worked well with my students. It has a short story followed by questions for the student to answer to work on grammar and basic concepts, as well as answering questions following a short story. 
Good ol' Matt & Molly! Another good one for answer yes/no questions and "wh" questions after a short story is read. I downloaded the free apps, but my students went through those fairly quickly, especially the "wh" questions since there are choices. I'm not sure if the paid app gives the options of no choices. An SLP who was at the school before me had quite a few of the stories, so I made sure those weren't thrown away when I cleaned up the first time I was at this certain school. They are coming in very handy!
Another book I forgot about! Not only is this one good for answering questions, but it's also great for teaching students to read visual cues. I can't believe I forgot about this one! My students who are working on beginning inferences have started working with this book. What a treasure! The student has to look at the big picture and answer questions about it. Then,they color part of the picture according to your very simple description. (Example: The grass and the plant leaves are the same color as the trees. What color will you use?)
Then, there are 2 smaller pictures. The student looks at both of them and answers questions about how they are the same/different. 

Is there a Spring Break in your future? 
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