I work with many students who need work on categorization of items.  I have several kindergarten students as well as some of my older students with ASD who work on this goal.  I love having a very visual, but simple way to work on this so as not to overwhelm students.  I made an activity that can target categories in a variety of ways. Category Sorting  is an activity available on Teachers Pay Teachers.  With this activity, you can target both sorting and expression of categories. Sorting:   Laminate and cut out the 8 mats and all 24 item cards.  You can put out two mats at a time or up to eight depending on the skill of the student.  Some of my students with ASD have a really difficult time when there is too much in their visual field, so I usually limit the amount with them.  Expression:   The student can state a sentence for each item such as "A cow is a farm animal" or "A bathing suit is summer clothing." I included a sheet of items picture...

I am totally addicted to the Teachers Pay Teachers website!  I have bought so many great activities there this week.  There are also a ton of great freebies.  My laminator is going to be working overtime! Some of my favorite activities that I purchased came from these stores: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Miss-Speechie http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Nicole-Allison http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Denise-Polley http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Natalie-Snyders http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jenna-Rayburn-26 I can't wait to get everything printed and using the activities with students!...

I am always looking for new ways to keep my daily notes with students.  Right now I have a manilla folder for each student that I keep in a small file container.  On the left hand side of the inside of the folder I keep the student's most current IEP goals and objectives.  On the right hand side I keep a data sheet and any informal assessments I have done.  My data sheet is pretty simple.  I have boxes with the date and time on it.  I have an 'I' for individual and a 'G' for group which I circle depending on how I see the student.  This helps me when I bill for Medicaid.  I keep data with +/- marks and write down a simple description of the target activity. How do you keep track of your daily data? ...

I currently have a student who has had speech for several years.  He has come such a long way, but still has difficulties with multi-syllable words.  He always just kind of mumbles through the middle syllables.  He does not have a specific sound that he needs work on anymore, however his intelligibility is not always great because of these multi-syllable words.   I decided to make an activity that will target these words for him and make it fun.  He loves games, so I decided to use a board game format for him.  I also made a game board that has words written on each space.  I made a large version of this and can also print out a smaller version to send home as homework.  You can find Race Day Multi-Syllable Words at my TPT store.   Please check it out and provide feedback.  Thanks! ...

In my school district, the speech-language pathologists were asked to work with at-risk Kindergarten students on phonemic awareness skills.  I have a group of four students who I see four times a week, a half hour each day.  I focus on the foundational skills of phonemic awareness.  The main areas we target are: recognizing and producing rhyme, counting and blending syllables, blending onset and rimes, isolating and pronouncing initial, medial, and final phonemes in CVC words. I wanted to make an activity that targets some of these skills and has a winter sort of theme.  The following activity is what I came up with: The first activity is Clapping Syllable Bears.  My students had fun with this activity.  The students picked a card and then I read the word while they clapped the syllables.  If they clapped out the syllables correctly, they got to keep the card. The next activity is Blending Mono-syllable Words Koalas.  These cute koalas accent a simple actvit...

Hi! My name is Jen, and I wanted to start a blog as a place to document and share my ideas that I use in my speech room. Speech Universe will be a place where speech and language ideas can grow! My first activity that I want to share is an activity that I have been using with several of my students who have Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Many of them have goals that target commenting on objects color, shape, size, and quantity. I decided to make an activity that targets two of these concepts: color and quantity. Describing Bears by Color and Number has been a great activity that my students have enjoyed. I laminated the pages, velcroed the pictures, and bound the pages into a book. I did leave a velcroed page out so that students can easily access the picture cues. I have been amazed at how quickly students who previously were not able to use a sentence to describe are not only creating these sentences visually, but also speaking the sentences! They are even starting to general...