Halloween Articulation Inferences Activity

I know it seems early for Halloween, but if any of you are like me it might take some time to get everything printed and ready to go for the holiday, and I'm planning on a back to school sale at some point so you can pick them up for a deal!  As one of my previewers for the unit said - Halloween seems to come really fast after the school year starts!

I, as many of us do, have students working on both articulation and language goals or groups that are mixed with the two goals.  Articulation is self explanatory, but language you can do inference and word retrieval skills.  I am always looking for activities to meet both areas because it means we spend more time in the session working and less time shuffling materials.  My students in mixed groups also enjoy all being able to do the same thing and I also like it because there is always one student who wants to do anyone's work but their own.  This activity is designed to use for either or both need areas.

I have made three separate Halloween Articulation Inferences activities. (Linked to my TPT store)
Set 1 has K, G, L and vocalic L
Set 2 has TH, SH, CH and J sounds
Set 3 has S, Z, R and vocalic L
The Complete Set has all sounds listed above, but is a bundle price for 20% off the price of all three.

Each sound has 32 question cards, most cards have inference questions but there are a few holiday trivia questions.  That means each set has 128 therapy cards plus game cards!  The complete set has 384 therapy cards.

The level of difficulty of the inferences varies within each unit so word banks are included so you can vary the level of difficulty as needed for your students.  Blank word banks are also included so you can mix and match cards for your language students.  Each card is labeled by phoneme so you can quickly resort the cards.  The vowel sounds are labeled as VR and VL.

Two types of cards have therapy questions on them - House cards and green and orange tree cards.  16 of each type of card are in each articulation set.

This unit marks the start of something new I'm doing - including a list of standards addressed with the unit.  The list of standards is an example of what standards might be addressed, but please keep in mind that others may be addressed.  You should use your expertise and clinical judgment about the needs and goals of your students.  My intention is to provide a jumping off point and a quick reference for all the busy therapists out there!  I included Common Core Standards because that is what most people use and the Minnesota State Standards (since I am in MN and I look them up anyway). 

Of course there is a simple game included to enhance student interest.  The play is fairly simple: each student is trying to get the most different cards to make up their town, they can count each kind of house and tree only one time.  The student with the biggest town at the end wins!  Street strips are included for your students to put their houses on.  Special cards are lose a house and take an extra turn.  The extra turn cards can be added to the town.

 Halloween is my favorite holiday and one of the few holidays that seems universal for my multicultural, multilingual student population (who doesn't like free candy, anyway!).  Out of my 55 kids last year, only one didn't celebrate Halloween.  I'm super excited to start using this and to break out my Halloween stickers!

Simple Articulation Activity

I love smelly markers and so do my students!  I've been picking up these jumbo smelly markers at Michaels for a while now and now they have dry erase markers and highlighters.  I picked up a few of these and ended up using one during articulation therapy with a particularly challenging student today.

The brand of the marker is Scentos.  I pick them up at Michaels for less than a dollar each (retail a dollar, but you get a 15% teacher discount with your id).  If you don't have a Michaels, I've also seen them at Wal-mart and the Dollar Tree.  I originally bought them because they are everything I'm looking for in a marker.  Really big, has a face and smells delicious. 

My student is a reluctant therapy participant at best.  Today he did NOT want to practice his L sounds for anything.  He is not motivated by taking turns in games.  Not motivated by praise, doesn't like "finding" L's in books to practice.  If fact we are back on articulation after a 2 year break with language-only therapy for lack of participation.  Anyway, on a whim today, I asked if he liked smelly markers, of course he does.  So we used the smelly highlighter to highlight his words when he said them correctly 10 times.  He needed some cues to wait until he was done to highlight, and not to smell the marker while practicing.  The entire activity was done with him half laying on my table.  However, I'm counting it as a success because we did FORTY YES, forty words today.  This is completely unheard of, so I'm calling the activity a success. 

I have two more highlighter colors, so hopefully, with new smells the activity won't wear off so quickly.  I'm thinking stars or smiles on the picture next time.

Dinosaur Articulation R Silly Sentences!

Silly articulation sentences with all R sound contexts.  24 cards of each R sound context: Prevocalic R, R blends, ER, OR, ARE, EAR, AIR, and IRE.   192 sentences cards in total!

My students love anything with silly sentences for articulation practice, and with my current number of R students, I couldn't resist making this activity.

Check out this activity in my TPT store!

Game cards are also included for each level so these cards can be used either as a stand alone game or as stimulus materials in other activities.

I'm putting these cards up for free in my TPT store until 4pm central time today!  So grab it if you're interested, and please leave feedback!

Cariboo Cards!

Cariboo is a favorite with my students, and with the preschoolers that one of my coworkers work with.  If you don't have a copy, it's not currently in print and can get really expensive online.  I see it all the time at places like Goodwill and other thrift stores.  The balls are easy enough to replace if missing and these cards will take the place of any need for a complete set!  I have both the older and newer versions of Cariboo and they fit both versions of the game.

The cards are designed to fit the game perfectly so you don't have to do any laminating.  Just print on cardstock and cut out and you're ready to play!  Because Cariboo is played with a key and kids don't handle the cards the game doesn't really need to be laminated.

I have made both a Language set for Cariboo and an Articulation set.

Cariboo for Language!

Cariboo for Language has two versions - Categories and Action verbs and both games have several ways to play.

Check out Cariboo for Language in my TPT Store!

Ways to play categories:

Describing – students need to describe the item before they can open a door

Category naming – students need to name the category the item goes to before they can open a door (some categories can be divided into smaller categories – ie: fruits/vegetables from food

Category matching – shuffle extra cards and students match the card they draw to a door from a matching category and label one way they are alike.  

Naming Items in Categories:  Students draw one of the cards with the category labels on them, they need to match the category with an item in it.  For a challenge – what else can they name?

Cards for the labels of the included categories are pictured below.  Each category as three corresponding items.

  Action verbs can be used for several therapy targets (pictured on the game above)

• Vocabulary Building
• Is/are verbing
• Regular and Irregular past tense verb practice (contains a mix but more than 15 of each to fill up the entire Cariboo board)
• He/She/They Practice

Check out Cariboo for Language in my TPT Store!
I also made Cariboo for Articulation which is divided into two sets available for purchase on TPT.

  The Early Sounds set contains the sounds:  P, B, M, N, -NG, T, D, G, K, F, V and L  plus 2 pages of L blends.  

All sounds have 15 cards of each word position.  

Check out the early sounds set on TPT!

 The Late Sounds set contains the sounds: S, Z, R, TH, SH, CH and J as well as 3 pages of S-blends, 1 page of Z-blends, 2 pages of R blends and 8 pages of vocalic R sounds.

All sounds (except TH) have 15 cards (a full Cariboo game) of each sound in each word position.  TH sounds have 15 cards of voiced TH sounds and 15 cards of voiceless TH sounds across all three word positions.

Grab the late sounds set in my TPT store.

Make sure you check out all of these items in my TPT store.

I put 3 pages of the D sounds up as a Freebie on TPT so you can check out the cards!
Grab the D Freebie here!

So now the big question - What other goals do you want to work on while playing Cariboo?

Sorry Cards for Articulation

I know that I haven't posted much lately, but I have been very busy not only seeing my students and doing paperwork, but creating these activities!  I was surprised at how much time it took to create this one, and I feel like I'm just getting started with the possibilities!

I was having so much with the Sorry games for Language, that I decided to do some Sorry games for articulation too!  The first three I created are CH, TH and S-blends, which complements one of my groups.  I decided not to mix sounds, as usually have to group kids by classroom and grade level and not by what sound they are working on.  I also thought that this would give me the most long term flexibility!

Sorry for S-blends

When using the Sorry cards students can work at one of two levels.
Level 1: The student chooses 1 or 2 words with their speech sound off the card to practice.
Level 2: The student reads the sentence focusing on all the words with their speech sounds.

Print and Laminate all cards and Have fun playing!

Sorry CH sounds

Sorry for S-blends

Please Comment if you grab these!

Grab the google docs here:
Sorry for CH Sounds
Sorry for TH Sounds
Sorry for S-blends

Articulation in Reading

 Finding books to engage kids for Articulation Practice in reading can be very difficult. I've attempted to have kids bring something they are reading in the classroom - either for fun or as an assignment, but it typically get's forgotten.  Then I have to choose - do I have the kids run back to their classroom to get their reading and lose precious therapy time or to grab one of my books.  I've been choosing to do my own books and my kids are usually very excited to read for me, and not in the classroom.  I've also used these books for reading in fluency therapy.  As an added bonus - a quick run to the copy room ends up in instant homework!

  

I continue to struggle with connection to the curriculum in my reading in the therapy room, but always worry when kids are bringing things at their reading level from the classroom.  I want my kids to focus on their speech sounds, not challenge the reading level.  Because I usually pick science-related books, my kids are learning during their session and I try to balance what I need them to practice and educational relevance.  

I've reviewing some of my favorite book series below.  Most of these are from school book fairs, with few picked up on Amazon looking for a specific series.  I've got other books I use, but these are definitely my, and my student's favorites! I have a pretty hard rule when kids are choosing books to read in therapy - once they pick a book no switching for today.  If they decide they want something different then they can choose it on another day.  When kids start switching books back and forth, it takes forever to choose something to read for a turn and there's usually a small amount of arguing.  I don't have time for any of this and one book per kid per day seems to be the best solution.

Scholastic True False Books

Scholastic True False is an entire series of books - I only have five, but there are more available (and I want them...).  These are about a third grade reading level (if your school does STEP testing kids in 11-12 and above can easily read them with a little help on unfamiliar/technical/science words).  The books are interesting enough that my fourth, fifth and sixth graders also really enjoy reading them!  The books are structured with a true false question on the front of the page, and the answer with a paragraph about it on the next.  The format of the books engages all children in the group, not just the one or two who are reading.  The single paragraph nature of the second page is also a great length for a speech turn.

101 Animal Secrets and 101 Freaky Animals

These two books are about the same reading level as the true false books. Each page has one animal or animal secret with a paragraph about it.  I used these last year for S and R.  I copied about a bunch of pages and had kids highlight their speech sounds.  They really enjoyed doing these books and the pages copied well.  I have some extra fun, since two of my best friends have an unusual pet collection and they have two animals in the first 10 of the 101 Freaky Animals books (Legless Lizard and Bearded Dragon).  I make my student's guess which ones I've held, usually recently. 

 101 Most __________

These are an absolute favorite with my middle/high school aged students.  The reading level is about 5th or 6th grade, I've had a few high fourth graders that can read them, but even interested younger students get quickly frustrated.  Even though the reading level is early middle school, my older students get into the content of the books.  These have a lot more text than the previous two book series.  There are 4-6 paragraphs on each page.  I have kids read 1-2 paragraphs per turn and then they can select to continue reading the same page on the next page or switch pages.  I've heard all of the 101 Most Disgusting items several times by now, but my kids LOVE trying to gross me out and really get into it.

Back to School Challenge!

I saw something similar on another blog a while back, and would give credit, but I honestly don't remember where it was...  I've been meaning to have my students do a similar challenge for some time, and thought that back to school is a perfect time to get them back into the swing of things.  I'm really hoping that my challenging my students to skip past the sticker system and get a prize immediately we can get back where we were at last spring as fast as possible.

I'm going to challenge my articulation students to say their sound correctly 150 times during a speech session and reward them with a trip to the prize box when they meet the challenge.  I'm planning on giving my students several opportunities to get 150 correct productions in a single session.  During a typcial speech session, each my my articulation students has 200-250 total productions, so I'm hoping this is a reasonable goal for most of my older students.

 But, for some of my younger students and students who qualified for services at the end of last year, 150 isn't a realistic goal.  Thus, I give you the 80 correct production challenge.  As many of my students do know each other, I am going to introduce the half sheet with the challenge on it at the beginning of the school year to my new students, and then have them let me know when they are ready to attempt the challenge.

Now, I'm not going to leave my language and fluency students out.  I'm going to challenge my language students to tell me five things they did this summer and one thing they are excited about for the school year.  My school is focusing on literacy and writing, so my sheet does have fill in the blanks on it.  I usually expect my students to write 1-3 words, and of course spelling doesn't count.  The real challenge won't be in what I'm expecting them to be able to put on the paper, I'm hoping to be able to get some information about responding to questions, story telling, vocabulary use, grammar and all of that good stuff.  I'm hoping that by offering a price by completing the sheet to *my* satisfaction, I can engage some of my more reluctant students (and reward the ones that were always going to tell me!).

As of now I'm planning on doing the Language Challenge with my fluency students.  I've thought about having them tell me what they remember about stuttering from last year for the challenge, but then I remembered that I have several students who qualified last year and haven't yet started therapy...  As I've said above, my students all seem to know each other (even in a 1200 kid elementary school and across grade levels) so I'm planning on keeping things as fair as possible.  By doing the things this summer with my fluency students I hope to continue to build rapport and the safe space all of my fluency students will either be new to speech or in new groups this year.

The google docs are here:
Articulation - 150 Sound Challenge
Articulation - 80 Sound Challenge
Language Challenge


What is everyone else doing to get their kids back into therapy?

More Dice Articulation Practice!

It's my birthday - so I'm uploading a present for you!  Free articulation practice printable for everyone to enjoy!

Another sight word practice idea that I found on Pinterest and adapted to articulation therapy with the idea of starting to do some articulation stations.  I'm liking the sight word adaptations for articulation since it seems to be a fun way for kids to practice their words and do something different.  It also turns the articulation practice itself into the game which has been one of my personal goals this year.

Students roll the dice on their turn and add up the total between two dice.  They then complete the task by the target number.  After doing the activity/task students then get the number as points.  The points can be tracked throughout the session to determine who wins! I've found that these work better in smaller groups, because kids need guidance for some of the directions.

Practice in Words

Practice in Sentences

The Google Docs are Here:
Roll a Word - Words and Phrases Level
Roll a Word - Sentence Level

Crash DIY Game for Articulation!

Crash!  Yet another articulation activity adapted from a sight word game!  The idea for this one came from a teacher in my building.  I also have every intention of making language versions to this game including: regular/irregular past tense verbs, plurals, questions ect.

To create this game you need:
Draw Container
35 slips of paper
Word list of target words
Baggies for card storage. 

My container is a (Target Brand) tall food container, I've also seen people using empty nut jars/cans ect.  I decorated a large sized index card and taped it to the outside.  I cut a bunch of standard sided index cards in half for my draw slips. 

Write Crash on 5 of the slips of paper.
Write 10 initial position words, 10 medial position words and 10 final position words (or whatever division of word positions suits your needs) on the remaining slips of paper.  Fold all your papers in half and put them in the draw containers. 

I only made 2 draw containers.  I've been putting the extra sounds into baggies for storage between sessions. 

Game Play:
1) Students can either have individual draw containers or share one if they are working on the same sound.  They draw out a word and practice it in words or sentences depending on their needs. After a student practices a word they put the word in front of them and it's the next player's turn to draw.
2) Students keep drawing words and practicing as play passes around the table.
3) Crashing!  When a student draws out a "Crash!" paper all of the words they collected have to go back into the container (or to the side).  Any words that are discarded after a crash aren't worth points at the end of the game or the student has to start counting again.
4) Winning - you can either decide to have the student who has the most words at the end of the session be the winner, or you can keep track of the biggest number of words collected between crashes and have that student win.

Custom Chipper Chat

A few weeks ago I found Angry Birds Incentive Cards on Pinterest (which is free on TeachersPayTeachers).  My mind immediately said - "Angry Birds Chipper chat?  I'm IN!"  I don't know what it is about Angry Birds, but kids love them.  Anything Angry Birds is welcome in my room (with the exception of the app itself - it is not on my Ipad and will not be on it...)

My kids also love using chipper chat.  I may have some pretty specific rules such as you can move your chips from spot to spot on the board but if they touch the table they're mine again, but my kids love the activity.  I find it a great way to encourage patience and respect between kids.  My students get to roll the dice for chips on their turn, but they also can earn a chip for being respectful on other students' turns.  It  really helps them think about what's going on and who's turn it is to talk.   
 
I was having so much fun with Angry Birds Chipper Chat, that I started thinking about other custom Chipper Chat boards.  I know my kids love the animals in grammar chipper chat, but it's nothing compared to their other interests.

 Creating the boards was super simple.  I found pictures online.  I found that Desktop sized pictures were best, but pretty much any kids show or movie comes in a desktop so it worked out ok.  I opened the pictures in paint and drew 20 circles on it with the shape tool.  I then pasted the pictures into a horizontal word document so I could control the print size.

I chose to make Disney Princesses, Thomas the Train, Mickey Birthday and Lightning McQueen for 4 specific K/1st grade kids that I work with.  The circles aren't perfectly even, they actually printed a little smaller than the chips.  I was very pleasantly surprised that even my most super-exact students with autism are not bothered by the circle sizes and are ok with the see-through chip going around the circle instead of in the circle.  I'm sure if you're more patient with creating boards than I was and use a real-life ruler on a chip and a ruler view on Paint you could do much better!

Princess and Thomas the Train

Mickey Birthday and Cars

Grab the Printables for my Custom Boards Here.

Roll a Word Articulation Game

I've got ever expanding numbers of kids in my articulation groups going into the end of the year as all the last minute referrals qualify, so I've been thinking through different kinds of articulation stations.  So when I saw the roll a letter letter labeling game on pinterest I knew I had to modify it for articulation!

The premise is that each student rolls one, or two dice depending on how many words you want them to practice on each turn.  After they practice their words the first student two finish a column wins!  If one student finishes a column with a could lucky rolls, you can always see who can finish the most columns.

I created a blank sheet that I filled out with 9 rows of words (54 words total, 27 in each word position).  I used the HELP to fill out this world list as I recently created a different activity using the No Glamour Articulation word lists. 

I then laminated all of my sheets so students could cross off with a dry-erase marker.

After I finished doing my articulation word lists for some of my current students I started thinking about other uses for these sheets!  Just think of all the language things we could practice: vocabulary, adjectives, regular past tense, regular past tense, plurals, verbs ect!

Get your copy on Google Docs!

Also Smartappsforkids.com has a giveaway for a free iPad 2.