This week I’ve fielded the same question from a few families and therapists who have emailed me about kids who do not initiate. Remember that initiating means that a child takes the lead in an interaction or conversation. Initiating is important for language development because none of us can depend on other people to read our…
Here is another worksheet addressing the language concept of "not." This is a difficult concept to target, which is why I have made so many materials to work on it! Lots of repetitive practice is needed. You could also work on this using a set of real life objects (e.g., "Give me everything that is NOT blue. Give me all of the dolls that are NOT boys"). Click here to download! Please consider donating a dollar or two if you want to see more SLP materials!
Echolalia- Learn strategies for your Autism classroom. What echolalia is and how to reduce it with activities to decrease repetitive speech or non-authentic communication.
This is a follow up to my previous post about getting students to answer WH questions. Knowing how to answer questions isn't enough. After students have basic question answering skills they need to apply those skills to comprehension and fact recall questions. After all, that's what we need to be able to do in conversation. There are lots of ways to do this. I like to start at the level of sentences and work my way up. It's actually amazing how many of my kids can't do the following task: Read the story "Cindy has a small yellow car." Who has a car? What color is the car? Is the car big or small? Although, no longer surprised, when my student's can't do this, I'm always amazed at how they make it through the school day. So much of our learning is through auditory input and we test it by requiring them to answer questions. Link to document is below. There is a lot of practice material at the sentence level out there. Super Duper has a Auditory Memory for Details in Sentences deck that isn't in my possession, but is on my wish list. Their Auditory Adventures Pack does have a few pages of practice material at this level. As I am working on this skill with groups of 3-4 students, I quickly ran out of practice material. As a solution, so I made a list of my own. The Google Doc is here. After kids pass the sentences level there are lots of things you can do. Super duper has a bunch of other card decks that I use frequently. The Auditory Memory for Short Stories is great for elementary ages, where the Auditory Memory For Science Stories and the Auditory Memory for Science Stories are great for my 6th through 8th grade students. The No-Glamour Listening Comphrension Book by Linguisystems has a lot of stories at varying levels. As fun as the fancy card decks and materials are, my absolute favorite thing to use in therapy is picture books. There are so many questions you can ask about the stories and they are a GREAT way to engage kids in the therapy sessions. My favorite series are the Clifford and Bernstein Bears book. I love Clifford for the variety of topics, the clear sentences have the right amount of content and the pictures are great for lower levels of questions in mixed groups. Bernstein Bears are a little more wordy, and you will spend more time reading, but they are FANTASTIC for discussing social skills for your middle and higher functioning autism students. (I pair them with the Berenstein Bears Learn to Share Game and have been getting excellent connections). For older kids I really enjoy the Dorreen Cronin Books. They have just the right amount of higher level vocabulary for good dicsussion with some of my lower level and ELL students. I have been doing push in sessions in a 5th grade special education / ELL groups and these books have been a huge hit. We did Duck for President during their Government unit and they all had a lot of fun. I've done a couple of her other books with them and they really enjoyed them. Another big hit was a Christmas Present from a friend of mine. It was a great book for discussing what was happening, the effects of large amounts of penguins and making predictions about what would happen if more penguins kept arriving. I did it about a month ago and my students are still talking about it! I recommend it for grades 4-6. I'm entering to win free apps and you should too! And another app giveaway
Write better pediatric occupational therapy SOAP notes to speed up the documentation process and get paid faster.
“I found this super helpful! #phonetics #placeofartic”
Everything you need to know about speech delay in bilingual children. Includes infographics with milestones and red flags to look out for.
Free Online Guide - How to structure the sounds and letters for your product or business name.
For a dementia to be considered to be Alzheimer’s, it must meet specific criteria Memory impairment 1 or more of: Aphasia: language disturbance Apraxia: inability to carry out motor activitie…
Sometimes when working with young children on the production of speech sounds, it is helpful to provide the little one’s with a fun label, or name, for the sound(s) you are teaching. Providing a visual cue to go along with the label is also very helpful, to provide multisensory instruction. Several years ago I asked […]
Try pronouncing the words from left to right and see if you can feel where the sounds are being produced!
The 5 domains of language include: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Why are they important for therapy and language development? We will discuss why!
Unas viñetas de comic para completar en el idioma que queramos. Escritura libre, creatividad, etc.Os dejamos una serie de viñetas de comic para ser escritas por nuestros alumnos. Podemos usarlo en Lengua castellana, o para alguna lengua extranjera, por lo que nos sirven para distintos niveles dependiendo del uso que le queramos dar. Es una
Gestalt Language Processing Overview in 1 page format. Intro to GLP and Natural Language Acquisition. Perfect for SLPs, teachers, therapy centers, parents or anyone that works with an autistic child that is a gestalt language processor.
Spelling rules and 44 phonemes. Here are some phrases/words to bring to your child’s attention. Silent e makes the vowel say its name.
I enjoy this lesson. We look at an image that has lots of things going on and I ask the student to Describe the Scene. If they have a low level of English, they might simply say, “Woman shop…
by Jarrett Lerner I’ve been wanting to make an activity book for years now. Something that could help kids – and kids-at-heart! – explore and develop their creativity, and turn to as a source for r…
It is very important to review the contents taught at school to test if we know them right or we should deal with them. Click over the pictures and comment your answers. The two first images are fo…
Basic vocabulary, like knowing prepositions, is necessary for beginning readers. Teach prepositions with this simple game.
After what seems like barely even a winter (not one single snow day or even a school delay for my county!) spring has officially arrived. I realized yesterday that there is very little time left be…
2 dice. One has the pronouns I, you, she, he, we and they on with pictures. The other has a +, - and ?. Tell the student a verb. The student then has to roll both dice and then make a sent
This comic provides teachers with a fun and entertaining way to teach or review subject verb agreement. A worksheet with answer key follows. This comic is part of a larger set entitled Grammar Comics: Sentence Problems." Look for it in my store! If you like this resource, you might be interested in these: Parts of Speech: Grammar Bundle Sentence Problems (Common Writing Mistakes) Middle School Language Arts Bundle Vocabulary Cartoons: Roots and Affixes Poetry Comics Bundle Hamlet: Comic Summaries and Activities A Midsummer Night's Dream: Comic Summaries and Activities Macbeth: Comic Summaries and Activities Romeo and Juliet: Comic Summaries and Activities Romeo and Juliet: Comic Summaries and Activities Intro to Shakespeare Activity Bundle Connect with Me! Visit my Teachers Pay Teachers Store Visit my Blog Follow me on Facebook Thanks, David Rickert © David Rickert All rights reserved by author. Duplication limited to single classroom use only. Electronic distribution limited to single classroom use only.
Many a time, you might have found yourself thinking that grammar and syntax are one and the same. Most people think so, and unless you are having a deep study on the two or either,
The activities below are available for free download, and are to be used in educational and/or private settings. They may not be used elsewhere or for other purposes (such as for profit) unless exp…
Boost your preschooler's math skills with these five fun worksheets!
Make reading exciting for your students with these fun phoneme segmentation activities for kindergarten! They are a fun way to support these essential literacy skills so you can set your students up for reading success. Thanks to new research about how we really learn how to read, we now know that it's more important than ever to fully develop our students' phonemic awareness skills before we expect them to read the written word! Students learn best when they start with something concrete and gradually move to the abstract. This new research about synthetic phonics tells us that our students’ reading abilities are directly linked to how well they can identify and manipulate the sounds in words. This makes sense. Speaking is a physical act; all of us understand it intuitively. Reading, however, is an abstract skill that requires consistent and explicit instruction. Our kindergarten kiddos need us to start with what they know - spoken language - so they can learn to read more efficiently and to ensure all our students are set up for literacy success. What is phoneme segmentation? Although it's easy to lump this skill in with the whole bubble of phonemic awareness skills, segmentation is about breaking a word into individual sounds. It's an intermediate phonemic awareness skill preceded by phoneme isolation and phoneme blending. They all fit within the umbrella of phonological awareness skills. Learn more about these different terms in Phonics vs Phonemic Awareness. Levels of Phonemic Awareness Phoneme isolation Phoneme blending Phoneme segmentation Phoneme addition Phoneme deletion Phoneme substitution At this stage, your students should be able to hear a word and break it into sounds. The word frog should become /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/. The word cat should become /c/ /a/ /t/. This can be taught in many different ways, and it's an essential skill to practise throughout kindergarten. How do you make phoneme segmentation fun & engaging for kindergarten students with a short attention span? I highly recommend getting hands-on! Use manipulatives and include a variety of physical movements, like drawing, playing, clapping, and more, to help make this learning as engaging as possible. To them, it will feel like play, but they’ll be laying the foundation for their future phonics skills and reading abilities every single day! 7 Phoneme Segmentation Activities for Kindergarten There are countless ways to practise identifying and segmenting phonemes! You can turn almost any material into a tool, depending on how you use it. You don't need to buy all of the tools right away, and you can often get by using materials you already have on hand! Be creative and focus on the skill, not the stuff. 1. Listening to Sounds in Words This is the easiest and most simplistic phonemic awareness activity. Your kids need only their ears (and maybe some fingers) to identify and segment the individual phonemes in different words. It will take time for your kindergarten students to get used to this concept at the beginning of the school year, but if you keep modelling and practising, they'll get it! Start by modelling this practice yourself. Break apart words verbally. Starting with your thumb, lift a finger for each phoneme you hear. Examples Dog: /d/ /o/ /g/ House: /h/ /ow/ /s/ Chin: /ch/ /i/ /n/ 2. Sound Boxes Also known as Elkonin boxes, sound boxes are a phenomenal way to support your students to identify the individual sounds in words. This practice supports orthographic mapping, which helps your students encode these spelling patterns to their long-term memory more efficiently than traditional memorisation. These are best to use when your students have had a chance to isolate and blend sounds together, but you can also use them from day one of your instruction. Essentially, students listen for the different sounds in a given word to get used to breaking them up. When they're ready to start writing, add the letter or groups of letters representing that sound in each box. For example, digraphs would go in one box since they represent one unique sound. This visual approach really makes this abstract concept easier to understand. It's such an effective skill that I recommend using it with your whole group, small groups, or independent practice every single day. Any time you introduce a new word from your word list, run it through a sound box first! You could also use these googly eyes to make it even more fun! There are a bunch of great sound box activities and templates on my site to get you started: Animal Word Mapping Mats CVC Orthographic Mapping Activities Free Printable Word Mapping Templates 3. Interactive Digital Slides Since we have so many little things to track every single day, I highly recommend incorporating custom digital slides! I created them to be interactive to keep interest high, evidence-based to make them powerful and effective, and convenient so you won't have to worry about hunting down missing materials again. I have a variety of slides to support different phonemic awareness skills, including: Phonological awareness slides: These are perfect for the beginning of the school year! Practise counting the words in sentences, identifying the beginning and ending sound in words, and more. In the 'count the sound' slides, the sound buttons are animated to flash as you say each sound. Heart words interactive slides: Instead of teaching sight words the old-fashioned way, teach them using the best evidence-based practices to help your students learn them faster than ever. As part of The Hive, you'll also have access to my plethora of sound boxes and phonics activities! The Hive is an intuitively designed and nimble digital teacher planner, but it’s also so much more. It includes literally hundreds of custom-built apps, downloads, printables, and more, so you can set up your entire day in just one program. You'll be able to incorporate these phonemic awareness activities into your daily lessons and routines with no extra prep at all! Join The Hive today and check it out! 4. Rhyming Games One of the best ways to teach young children phoneme segmentation is by playing rhyming games! Kids love listening for rhyming words, and there are so many great rhyming books for kindergarten to reinforce this skill. Most rhyming focuses on the vowel sound, which can be tricky to identify as they often sound similar. Start by identifying word families (-all: ball, call, fall, etc) and then incorporate these rhyming words activities. Once they're ready, challenge them to listen for rhymes in longer passages, like with these poetry games. 5. Missing Sound Task Cards One fun, accessible way to practice this skill is to incorporate picture cards with missing sounds. Students will need to say the name of the item on the card to identify the lost sound. Note- this is a more advanced way to practise segmenting, as it also incorporates phonics skills. For example, if there is a picture of a pig and the letters __ig, students will need to think or say the word
Using brain-based learning strategies & playful stories, Secret Stories® phonics approach helps students remember sounds to letter patterns. Here are examples of r controlled vowels, th digraph & more.
October 2017
Resources, tips, and materials to help you, help children with autism
Check out this free speech therapy verbs conjugation chart! It's the perfect visual for teaching and practicing tenses of basic verbs!
Need some fun, active learning activities for teaching prepositions in Kindergarten, first grade, or second grade? This post has 5 ideas to get you started!
Section general grammar tips. Teaching English online has become more and more popular in recent years. Through the following courses below, we will show you how to adapt your existing skills and knowledge to suit this specific area of the teaching world.
This free opposites game is great for teaching opposites to kids in preschool or kindergarten. It's a great tool for teaching opposites to ESL learners too! #kindergarten #esl
So, YAY! We finally sold our house and moved! What a big job...and time zapper! Thankfully we were able to find a great rental (and by great I mean good neighborhood, clean, good size, etc.) close by until we are able to move closer to home (Vermont!) Of course, with all the moving I've had very little time to blog! However, I took a little time today and got a new product up on TeachersPayTeachers - an irregular verb foldable graphic organizer. It's more of a resource, than anything else, but I'm already seeing my students pull it out and use it - so that's what I consider SUCCESS!! Like my other FGOs, there are several choices to pick from to print, so it allows for easy differentiation! To buy this graphic organizer, head on over to my TeachersPayTeachers Store!
One of my favorite language arts lesson to do in teaching students about synonyms. Using the idea of a "synonym roll," every year my students are extremely engaged by the lesson. Want a terrific synonym lesson complete with the outlines for the cinnamon rolls themselves? Here is my lesson plan typed up along with 36 words with synonym examples, 3 different sizes of rolls, and a synonym brainstorming page for students. Synonym Roll Lesson Plan You can also head over to my TPT store and download the outlines.
