This week, I had a lot of fun working with the book Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson .  I love the Bear series of books, they are just so sweet! To work with this book, I used an awesome book companion by Shannon over at Speechy Musings .  You can check out this companion HERE! This story really is very sweet.  It is about a bear who is hibernating while his animal friends have a party in his cave without him.  He eventually wakes up and realizes he has missed a lot of the fun.  Spoiler alert!  Don't worry, his friends console him, and he gets to join in too. Let me tell you about my the activities from the book companion that I used this week.  First of all, Shannon put some great cover cards in this packet to use to organize all of the cards.  Look here next week to see how I organize all of my book companions now.  These cover cards are a great way to keep your materials organized.  There are six different activities in this packet: Comprehension Conversation Start...

As some of you know, I am basically obsessed with using book companions in therapy.  I love the versatility of using the book to target a variety of goals and objectives in one session.  Teachers and administrators love that I am using real literature in my therapy.  The skills that we target with books always translate into skills in the classroom. So, because of my slight huge obsession with book companions, I got together with some of my other SLP blogger friends and have started a new weekly feature on my blog called: Getting Speechie with a Good Book!  This weekly feature will highlight one book companion from a fellow blogger each week.  I will show how I used the book companion with my students, and let you know what their favorite parts were. This week is my first installment of this feature.  This week we read the book  If You Take A Mouse To The Movies , by Laura Numeroff, and used the book companion from Mindy Stenger of the Speech Bucket. This book is one of my f...

I have two winter themed freebies for you! Winter Yes/No Questions The first one is a new pack that I just created for a little guy I am working with.  It focuses on yes/no questions.  There are three types: "Do they match?" "Is this a ____?" and "Can you ____?" The second freebie is an oldie but a goodie: Winter People Sentences: A 3rd person pronoun use game In this activity, there are three mats with visual sentence starters:     There are also three mats that do not have the sentence starter: There are 24 item cards that you can cut out and place on the mats: Thanks for letting me share my winter freebies!  I hope you and your students enjoy using them.  Please link back to Busy Bee Speech for links to  a whole lot of great winter and holiday themed freebies!...

So, I have articulation students coming out of my ears!  I can't even believe how many students I have found this year.  I dread going into the teachers lounge, because every time I do I hear, "Hey Jen, there's this student I want you to listen to.."  Well, I have taken an RTI approach with the majority of the these new finds, and am seeing them in small groups.  I want to get most of them out as quickly as I can, and in order for me to do that, I need them to really understand why they are with me. At a recent staff meeting, my principal started talking about learning targets.  She said that they are a bit different from Common Core "I can" statements, in that they are very specific about their target goal.  They basically break down a Common Core goal into smaller pieces so that students can understand exactly what is expected of them.  I found this quote in an article titled "Knowing Your Learning Target" by Connie M. Moss, Susan M. Brookhart ...

Wow!  I can't believe another year has almost passed!  This has been an amazing year for me.  Thank you to everyone who helped me celebrate my one-year blogiversary last week! One thing I have done this year, is to re-implement homework with my students.  I had taken a year off of sending home folders, and I really regret doing that.  I have reinstated homework with my students, and I (and their parents) couldn't be happier!  I realize now that the home-school link is so important for carryover and generalization of all speech and language skills.  I guess I always knew that, but after taking the year off of sending homework, I realized how uninformed my students families were about what was going on in the speech room.  Now, I have a direct link home every week with my homework folders.  I guess one reason I stopped doing homework folders last year was the amount of work I perceived to be involved with them.  I was constantly printing off new pictures and worksheets for...

I can't believe that it has been one year since I started my little speech blog!  I have learned so much over the past year.  Through blogging, I have become more creative and thoughtful with working with my students.  It really has renewed my enthusiasm for therapy!  I have also learned so much more about technology and creating new activities than I ever thought possible.   I have met so many awesome SLP's this year, and their ideas, energy, and wisdom amaze me!  All in all, this year has been AMAZING! As a thank you to everyone who has supported me over this last year, I decided to do a little celebration.  I am giving away a $25 TpT gift certificate and the winner's choice of 5 items from my store.  You can enter to win this giveaway in the rafflecopter below.  You can check out my store on TpT HERE to see what you could win! Again, thank you to everyone who has followed this blog, Speech Universe on Facebook, TpT, and Pinterest -never did quite get around to t...

Thanks to Jenna over at Speech Room News for hosting another month of her Love it & List it feature!  This month is dedicated to articulation apps. I love, love, love articulation apps.  They are so versatile.  I often use them in groups, or with my articulation RTI students that I see very quickly a few times a week.  Here are two of my absolute favorites that I definitely use every week: 1.  Articulation Station by Little Bee Speech.  The version I linked to is the free version so you could check it out.  You are able to buy each sound individually for about $2.99 each (range up to $5.99).  This is great to recommend to parents who want an app to work on at home.  They can simply purchase one or two sounds to use as homework (with your guidance of course).  You can also purchase the Pro version for $49.99.  This is expensive, but well worth the price. I love that with this app you can target specific phonemes in your choice of position in words, phrases, sentence...

Last year, I made some auditory memory activities for the circus and the farm .  My students loved using those cards, and some were asking me for some zoo cards.  Ask and you shall receive!  I have created Auditory Zoo: Auditory Memory Activities for Sentences, Riddles, and Stories .     There are four different activities included in this packet:   Auditory Memory for Sentences       Zoo Riddles   Auditory Memory for Zoo Stories      Zoo Story Retelling     Here are some pictures of two of the activities in use in my speech room.  The first one is the sentence repetition game.     This second one is my story comprehension cards.  They are 2 or three sentence short stories with comprehension questions.  I printed them front to back so that I could just cut them out.  I set the sheets up so that when you print back to back, the story will print on the back of the picture that matches.     These act...