Describing and Counting Bears

Today, I want to share with you one of my go-to activities with my students with ASD.  It is a packet of interactive books that are used to answer the question, "What do you see?" 

The packet is called: Describing and Counting Bears.

You may recognize this book, as I previously had something similar listed in my store.  Looking back at it, I did not like how crude it appeared to me (it was one of my first endeavors on TpT) so I have completely revamped it, and added two additional books.

These books are interactive books where you can create manipulative pieces with Velcro.

Here are some pictures of the first book, Describing and Counting Bears:

Sometimes I put the pieces on the table for the student.

Sometimes I leave the pieces on the storage pages provided.

 

 

I have also created two more books to go in this packet:

Describing Bears by Color:

Counting Bears:

You can get this packet over at my store, Speech Universe on TpT HERE.



Getting "Speechie" with a Good Book! If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

This weeks feature book is one of my favorite books that I read with my kids.  If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff.

Monica Locascio has a great Speech and Language Companion Pack to go along with this super cute book.

There are six different activities included in this speech and language book companion:

Interactive Book of Prepositions

 This is a really cute interactive book that uses Velcro pieces to attach pictures in place.  The book uses a variety of prepositions.

Singular/Plural Match Up

This is a simple matching game that pairs singular and plural forms of the nouns found in the book.

Object Function BINGO

 This is a cute BINGO game that describes each item's function.  There are "cookies" included in this packet to use as BINGO markers.  Monica also suggests using cookie cereal for the board game and BINGO as a fun treat.

Here, Mouse: An Emergent Reader

This is a really simple emergent reader book that identifies each item in the story.

 

Board Game

Cookie Jar Articulation

I didn't get a chance to use this activity in the packet this week.  I just don't have any students working on the sounds included in the packet right now.  The activity is really cute though.  You can cut out a "cookie jar" and place it around a can to create a cookie jar container.  Then, students place their cookies in the jar after they say the articulation word printed on each cookie.  Sounds included in this packet are /b/, /p/, /g/, and /k/.

This is a great packet that can be used with preschool and early elementary students.  You can find the book companion HERE.

You can find Monica at: www.molosspeechblog.blogspot.com or on Facebook.  Stop over and say "hi!"



Spring Bulletin Board Idea for a Speech and Language Therapy Room

I cannot even tell you how excited I am to be done with winter this year!!!  The snow and cold have been absolutely killing me.  I have been trying to will spring here for a few weeks now, and it is finally starting to warm up.  Hopefully it stays warmer!

Because it doesn't quite look like spring outside here yet, I decided to brighten up the hallway by my speech room.  I put together a Spring into Speech and Language bulletin board.

I had my students help me out with all of the flowers.  I still have some groups to work with, so the board isn't totally complete, but I wanted to share it today in honor of the first day of spring.  My articulation groups put their artic words on each petal of the flowers.  My language groups did some brain storming of spring words, and my students with ASD used some visuals to describe things they see in the spring.

Hopefully this pop of color in my hallway will continue to urge Mother Nature to allow spring to truly arrive!  Happy Spring everyone!

Spring Same and Different Activity

Spring is coming this week!  I am trying to will the weather to cooperate and actually allow spring to arrive!

I wanted to make a quick little spring activity to focus on same and different.

There are two different worksheets included in this product.
The first one focuses on the vocabulary term different:

The second worksheet focuses on the vocabulary term same:

There are also visuals to help students describe the differences that they can see.

Head over to TpT to grab this Spring Same and Different activity.

Hope you enjoy, and Happy Spring!

Getting "Speechie" with a Good Book! Llama Llama Misses Mama

This weeks book would be great for back to school time, but it is such a cute book that really, it is great anytime!  Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney is a cute rhyming book that follows little Llama through his first day at school.  The great book companion packet that I am featuring this week is by Kathy Grover of Speech All The Time.  This packet was designed for use with young children ages 3-6.

What is great about any book companion from Kathy is that she gives detailed lesson plans that typically cover four sessions.  The lessons are so detailed that they give you ideas for exactly what to say for each lesson.

I am going to present this packet a little differently than usual.  I want to go through each session and show you what you can do:

Session 1
All you need is a book, paper, and crayons.  Kathy guides you through a picture walk for the whole book with questions for each page.  She then suggests that you read the book.  Finally, there is a little craftivity that you can do with just paper and crayons.

Session 2
Materials Needed: Book, Large Character Cards, "How Do You Get to School" mat, vehicle pictures, Center pictures, "Things at School" cards.

First, Kathy suggests a discussion about the book.  There are character cards that can be used to display as visual cues.  She then guides you through reading the book again with questions for each page of the story.

The Enrichment Activities for the session include:
How Do You Get to School?

Discussion about Centers using Center pictures (mats):  This is great for comparing how the student's centers in their classroom are similar to the ones in Llama Llama's classroom.  There are also "Things at School" cards that they can use with the center mats to do a sorting activity.

Session 3
Today's session focuses on rhyming and following directions.  The materials that you need are: Book, Rhyming cards, Shelf mat and toy pictures.

The first activity is Rhyming.  The rhyme cards are made to represent words that rhyme from each page of the book.  You can place the card in front of the students while you are reading the page.  Then, when you get to the second word that rhymes on the page, pause, and point to the picture on the card to cue the student to say the rhyming word.

The next activity is Following Directions with the concepts top, middle, and bottom.
You can use the shelf mat and toy pictures from the "Things at School" cards.

Session 4
The last session focuses on story elements.  The materials needed are: Book, Story Element Circles, and Story Map.

Kathy does a great job of guiding you through using the circles and the story map.  The directions are again, very detailed.

Supplemental Activities
There are additional acitivies included with this packet that focus on Personal Pronouns "he" and "she", Present Progressive Verbs, and Final Consonant Deletion.

This is a great, detailed book companion that your preschool-kindergartners will love!
You can get this packet HERE.
You can find Kathy at her TpT store and on Facebook.  Stop by and say, "hi!"

Using PECS in ASD Social Language Groups

I work with absolutely the best social worker ever!  I get to work with her several days a week with our social language groups.  These groups are so fun!  They consist of students with ASD who are in self-contained rooms.  We bring in peers from the general education rooms to help us elicit more speech, work on social skills, and to be play models.

With the population of students that we have this year, we have 11 students who have either a PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) book or a high tech device to communicate.  We have been working really hard on getting students to use their books, and to communicate with a variety of communication partners.  Our students are in all phases of PECS from Phase II where they learn to travel, to Phase V where they are learning about using attributes in their sentences.  We are really lucky to be able to run these groups the way we do, because one of us is always able to act as a prompter when needed.

Our main problem with these groups was that we were not totally organized with implementing the use of PECS.  We had pictures for most things in the room, but we would often lose them, or leave them in a student's book and forget to make new ones.  Over a recent break, the social worker that I work with revamped the space we work in to make data collection, and the whole PECS process a lot easier for us. She did an amazing job, and agreed to let me show and tell you about it!

Organization!
Organization is not totally my strong suit.  I am more of an organized chaos kind of girl.  Thank goodness that my partner has strong organization skills!  First, she made a clipboard for each student.  We then printed cover sheets with each student's name.  On the clipboard is their data for PECS.  We use the forms provided in the PECS manual cd for collecting our data.

She also organized all of these PECS data sheets into files so that we can quickly grab any data sheet that we need.

See all of those boxes under our data sheets?  Those are chock full of small reinforcing items.  We printed lots of pictures for these items and try to always keep on picture of each item on the top of the box so that students can easily grab them.  If a student really likes a particular item, and requests it several times, we will just keep a copy of that picture in their personal PECS book.

Speaking of all of the extra pictures, check out this great binder that we use to keep all of our extras.

In addition to the boxes that have reinforcing items, we also have a variety of larger toys, puzzles, and games. A lot of our toys and games are things that I may or may not have stolen from my own boys.  A girl has to be resourceful!

Snack Time!

Food is a great motivator for our students, so we have started allowing a little snack time at the beginning of our PECS lesson sessions.  We have a snack area that is filled with all of those really bad things for you that the kids will absolutely exchange a picture/icon for.  We have chips, candy, pepperoni (one little guy's favorite), and of course Goldfish crackers.  We are very aware of items that we put into the bin, because we have students with peanut allergies.  When we have students with gluten free or other special diets, we usually ask the parents for some extra snacks to use with their child, so nobody is left out.

We also now have colored cups and bowls so that we can work on attributes.  We also work on attributes with candy and goldfish (who knew there were so many kinds), but sometimes a bowl works better because you can put any treat in it, and offer that bowl plus another colored bowl that is empty.  I know which one I would want!

Here is a picture of our snack table.  On the table, you can see some colored bowls, snacks, reinforcer boxes, a student's PECS book, and a topic board.  The topic board has all of the icons needed during snack time.  Students can use pictures from the board or their own books.  If a student is in an earlier phase, we will select the pictures for them and place them on the front of their book.

We have been having a great time using our newly organized space!  Our students have already made nice progress with their PECS phases.  I'll keep you updated on how it is going!


Jen