A Closer Look and a Therapy Room Idea

Hello again! First of all, thank you so much for all of the support you've shown me over the last few days!! I really, really appreciate it! As always, you can follow my blog and/or my facebook page, which is www.facebook.com/wordnerdspeechteach I've posted a few materials on www.teacherspayteachers.com lately, so I wanted to take a closer look at a few of the resources that are ready to be used in your classroom! The first activity is my favorite!!! This activity includes 544 activity cards targeting the following phonological processes: cluster reduction, final consonant deletion, fronting, stopping, and gliding. There are 48 cluster reduction cards (/st/ and /sp/0, 80 final consonant deletion cards,96 fronting cards with /k/ and /g/ in the initial and final position, 272 stopping cards featuring /s/, /sh/, /ch/, /th/, /f/, /v/ in the initial and final position and /z/ in the final position, and 48 gliding cards with /l/ and /r/ in the initial position. To play this game, each student receives a “baking mat”. Students take turns drawing the “ingredients/baking utensils” with words on them to match the items on their mat while saying the word on the card. If they need a specific ingredient/utensil (if that spot is empty on their baking mat), then they put that card on top of that item. For example, if they draw a card with "sugar" on it and they do not already have a card on the "sugar" spot, then they put that card over the "sugar" spot on their baking mat. If they do not need the card and they already have that ingredient, they put the item back into the pile/bag they drew it from. The first student to draw all ingredients and baking utensils wins! Extra turn and lose a turn cards are also included. We played this game today in a few therapy sessions and my kids LOVED it! One of my little ones actually asked me how I find such fun "games" to play with them all the time!! They think they're playing a game while I'm teaching them to produce sounds correctly?!?! I'll take it!!! Here's a picture of the the game board. They're well on their way to filling the whole thing up!

My little Vanna White showing off the activity! I purchased a little reindeer bag from Target and used that for the kids to pull the cards out of.

I also have an activity on TpT that targets naming items in a category and includes 35 cards. Both concrete (name items that are green) and abstract (name items that make you happy) categories are included. To play this game, students pick a card and name any number of items that belong in that category - you choose the amount! My students have really liked this activity and they have enjoyed trying to avoid the gingerbread house that causes them to lose a turn.

The last activity that I have posted for sale on TpT is a Gingerbread Synonyms game. This awesome activity includes 64 cards (32 pairs) of synonyms to match, as well as an additional activity sheet in order to help students understand that synonyms have the same meaning. To play this game, any number of synonym pairs are placed out on the table, just like memory. Students must select a card and then try to find its synonym match. To increase exposures, if students select cards that are not pairs, you could have them choose one card and provide an appropriate synonym for the word to ensure that they know what they're looking for. (Pairs are in the same color to make finding a match in these 32 pairings a bit easier!) This activity also includes a *bonus* sheet to help students practice writing sentences while interchanging both of the words in the synonym pair. Students check "yes" if they can put both of their words into the sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence. There are four additional free activities on TpT, so feel free to check them out as well! (Click on the TpT button on the side of my blog to see all of these items.) As promised, here's an idea for a **free** activity to do in your therapy room. One area that I always feel as though I'm targeting is describing with attributes. Today, we made evergreen trees with attributes (with the help of Pinterest, of course!) First, I took green paint sample strips and cut them into triangles. Then, I wrote various items on the back of the triangle (e.g. milk, scissors, basketball, etc.) Students then had to write 3-4 attributes on the front of the tree/paint sample that described the word on the back of their paint sample. After we had all of our attributes written down, we read them to each other to see if our descriptive words were specific enough to help our friends guess the word. I think equally as exciting as this activity, was the fact that they got to use Sharpies. (These are pretty much off limits to my kids as I'm always worried that they'll color themselves, me, or something else in my room that just does not need any additional color!) Hope this activity (or a variation of it) might be useful in your room!

Thanks for reading! I have lots of fun things to share in the next few weeks! Let's just say that the Grinch is visiting our speech room this week for some pretty fun artic activities and tomorrow I'll be doing a co-teaching activity in 4th grade with Christmas lights and vocabulary!