Therapy Week in Review 11/15/2013

Since my intern is handling Mondays and Wednesdays for just a few more weeks, I'll be discussing Tuesdays and  Thursdays.

On Tuesday, I had a student come to speech for the first time, so part of the session was spent reviewing procedures.  Then, we played a little "Super Turkey" from SLP Gone Wild.  This group now has 3 students on Tuesdays:  2 are artic, and one is artic & language.  One of his objectives is to make complete, grammatically correct sentences using classroom vocabulary, so when the other 2 students were taking their turn, he was suppose to scan the QR code (the code was one of his vocabulary words) and have a sentence ready.

I started off with reading "Bear Says Thanks" by Karma Wilson.  As I read the book, every time the student heard his/her sound, he/she put a chip on the page, "Bear Paw Prowl" by SLP Gone Wild.  I did this activity with a first grade group, a third grade student, and a fourth grade student.  I was a bit surprised at how much trouble some of the students had with this.  I'll definitely be doing more of this in the future.

My preschool student used "Bear Paw Prowl" a different way:  After he said his /f/ sound in syllables and words a few times, he rolled the dice and put that number of chips on the board.

 One of my students worked extremely hard on Tuesday.  We read the book and did the comprehension questions.  When he answered incorrectly, we went back and checked his answers in the book.  We started with the "easy" comprehension questions (with cues), then did the more difficult set.

 My 4th grade language group worked on Inferencing, using an activity by SLP For ME.  I downloaded the activity onto my iPad and we talked about the "posters" that help teach how to inference.  I printed out the cards, although I don't think I really needed to.  This activity was Thanksgiving Themed, and the students could relate to the inferencing situations.  

 Another language student played this board game that I took from "Turkey Tidbits:  A Reading for Meaning Activity Pack" by Andrea Crawford.  We also used the describing cards from "What Am I" from Queen's Speech.  

 When I walked out of my school on Tuesday, it was pretty gloomy.  I looked off into the distance and saw a spot were the sun was hitting the mountain.  I absolutely love the setting of this school!  It is just beautiful!

We continued using the "Bear Says Thanks" companion packet.  This time, my artic groups played the open ended game that was included:

I found the image of the turkey on google images from http://www.aldiko.com/blog/happy-thanksgiving.  The Make Dice app has the option to put in a background image, so I switched it up a bit from the boring 1 color background to make it a bit more festive.
In the picture above, one of my students worked on deciding if the verb said in the sentence used the past, present, or future tense.  He really had a hard time with this; looking back, I would have covered up the "future" and just used past & present since he is working on past tense.

My language group worked on Author's Purpose and Interpretation from SLP for ME.  I downloaded this activity onto my iPad, too, to save on printing and laminating.  Plus, even if it is just me reading the passages to them, they like working from the iPad.  Dana (the developer) was a little concerned that it would be too advanced for my students, so I went into the activity thinking I would have to modify it for them.  I was a bit surprised that I really didn't have to.  I did have to point out the hints to them, but they did pretty well with determining the purpose.

Friday is my "Breathe Day".  That is, when I don't have to participate in a Preschool Evaluation on Wednesdays.  Friday began with a group of 1st graders who played "Super Turkey".  After that, I had a walk-in preschooler.  He really likes the Bingo Dauber Art from DLTK.

Therapy on Fridays consist of only 1 group; everyone else is seen individually.  I have a couple of students working on AAC; in the afternoon I have 3 artic students who are all seen individually.  I got plenty of use out of "Super Turkey"!

This was my table as I got ready for the day:

It was cold (and Friday), so that could only mean 1 thing was necessary:  Gingerbread Latte from Starbucks!  It got my day off to a good start!
How was your week?  Did you find that you had to modify materials for your students?  Do you try to use the same materials for all of your students?