1 – Story Champs Intervention

I utilize Story Champs with so many of my students.  I wrote a review of it last year as well that you can view here.  Story Champs is flexible and I’ve seen really good growth from utilizing it.  In my mixed language/articulation groups, I’m able to target story grammar, vocabulary, articulation, and more with this tool.  There is also a Spanish Bilingual version available now.

Cost: $298.00

2 – iPad/Apps

I’ll just get this out of the way here.  I do utilize my iPad and apps frequently as therapy tools.  My iPad is much easier to take around to my quick artic sessions, screenings, etc. than a pile of artic cards or paper screeners.  I utilize it in various ways as well, using apps that aren’t solely for therapy as well.  I will say that we don’t ALWAYS use the iPad and I never let my students just “play” on it (unless they’ve earned free time after an assessment).  I typically sit next to them when we use it and I always hold it and have control in the session.  There are many great apps out there that can unleash your creativity as a clinician and apply speech/language skills in a different way.  I would recommend attending the upcoming XceptionalED Special Apps Update conference if you are interested in learning more.

Cost: iPad $329-1149  Apps: Vary $0-90

3 – Books

We use books constantly in therapy.  They are wonderful for mixed groups, themes, etc.  I typically find my books at thrift stores because they are so affordable there.  Occasionally I splurge on new literature.  There are so many great books that I won’t be naming them.  However – here are a few great lists by some of my favorite bloggers: Crazy Speech World; Speechy Musings Book Lists by Speech Sound and Books for Teaching Story Grammar in Speech Therapy; The Speech Space; etc.

Cost: $0.50-$20

4 – Super Duper

Honestly, for the most part I have moved away from the games and card decks from companies like Super Duper.  However, there are a few products that are flexible enough to be used for many goals and groups.  These are the products I pull on occasion to target 4-5 different goals in a session: “WH” Chipper Chat; Pirate Talk, What Do You Say…What Do You Do… At School?; The Question Challenge Card Game; Turtle Talk Fluency and Language Game

Cost: $55-70

5 – Board Games

We don’t play a lot of games but when we do, they address goals!  Now, I preface this by saying that most of these will need some adaptations made to make it work in therapy.  But that’s why we do the therapy and the material doesn’t do it.  Some of my favorites include Hedbanz, Blurt, 5 Second Rule Jr, Riddle Moo This, and others.  Again, I hunt thrift stores for these as I would much rather spend $3 on a gently used game than $15 on a new one.

Cost: $12-20

6 – Teachers Pay Teachers

I would be lying if I didn’t say that I utilize many wonderful materials from TpT.  Not everything on TpT is created equal and I highly suggest reading information and reviews carefully.  Also look for any information about the use of the product from the seller or others.  Some of my go-to resources include Editable SLP Assessment Templates; Cycles for Phonology Toolkit; Grab N’ Go “WH” Questions; Nyms-O; Nonfiction Texts Targeting Articulation and Language

Cost: $3-30

7 – Your School Campus

There is no reason to keep yourself inside the therapy room at all times.  Get out of there!  Within your school and on your campus are great opportunities for language and articulation.  We have done attribute searches (find something red, find something square), sound walks (find your articulation sound), and more.  Some of our favorite places to visit are bulletin boards, the playground, and my administrators (we like to ask them questions or tell them stories using our good articulation for example).  A big part of our job is moving the skills we work on from isolation into the general education environment.  These structured therapy times outside of the speech room can do just this.

Cost: Free

8 – Maps

A lot of my students have not been outside of the city they are growing up in.  They may travel to a nearby state or to Mexico to visit family occasionally.  We like to use maps – the bigger, the better – in my speech room.  We can use these to plan a road trip and read about/discuss attractions along the way.  We can hunt for cities that have their speech sound in the name.  We can talk about what we see around a place on the map (river, highway, city, park, etc.).  Maps are very interesting to kids in my experience.  They also love to use google maps to explore place they haven’t been or are just interested in.  We’ve used google maps to look at the house I grew up in – they LOVED that!  You can often get maps for free from local tourism shops, services like AAA, or from relatives who don’t want that atlas any longer.

Cost: Free

9 – Sensory Materials

I love integrating sensory bins and materials with my “everyday” speech materials.  We love using kinetic sand, fake snow, water beads, etc. to create a sensory component of our sessions.  I will often hide thematic/sound-based dinky doodads and other tiny items in sand and excavate them.  We may close our eyes and describe what we feel using our description details.  We might just put some laminated TpT cards or other stimuli in the sensory item and work on those.  Regardless of the activity, my students love working with sensory materials.

Cost: Free – $10

10 – Box of Highly-Preferred toys/items

If you work with students using PECS or other AAC devices/systems, having many highly-preferred items at your fingertips can be the key to unlocking their language skills.  I often keep several varieties of wind-up toys, light-up toys, poppers, sensory items, etc. nearby.  This allows me to quickly have students requesting with attributes and working on describing their items.  This can also help in motivating younger students to complete tasks and earn a preferred item.  I recommend looking in the dollar sections, holiday clearance, thrift stores, and even fast food meal toys.  Pro tip: keep these out of reach/sight if you aren’t using them or you may have a distracted and upset child on your hands.

Cost: Free – $4 each

Therapy is not all about the material you use.  It’s important to remember that the material is not the therapy, YOU provide the therapy and may utilize a material/tool in doing so.  What are some of your go-to therapy materials… share below!

To kick us off, I’ll talk about one of my all-time favorite SLP tools, SLP Toolkit (aptly named, eh?).  When I first met “Tool” and “Kit” (Sarah and Lisa being their given names) I loved their energy and after seeing their product was even more impressed.  I was not sure how much I would use the Toolkit but after over a semester of using it, I’m sure I’d would never like to go back!  Read on!

What is SLP Toolkit?

To find out all of the sweet specifics, check out their website or this video that SLP Toolkit put together which covers so much about the product… they do it much better than I could, so take a look:

SLP Toolkit Intro Video from SLP Toolkit on Vimeo.

What SLP Toolkit offers – Quick & Dirty:

• Present Level Assessments: Quick, thorough screening tools to assess a student’s strengths and needs.
• Progress Monitoring Tools: Criterion Referenced Tests and rubrics for a variety of speech and language skills.
• Goals: Measurable and customizable goals for targeted skills, levels of cueing, criteria for mastery, assessment methods, and assessment frequency.
• Caseload Management: Sortable record of your students’ demographics, IEP/Evaluation dates, service times, and treatment areas.
• Strategies: Tips to enhance speech and language skills. Used as accommodations in a student’s IEP.
• Daily Data option.
• Scheduling Tool.
• Ability to send student files to other SLPs using SLP Toolkit.
• Storage of all paperless information on a HIPAA-compliant server.

How I WANTED to use it:

You know SLPs, I wanted to use it with 100% of my caseload on minute number one of walking back into my therapy room after signing up.  I wanted to get present level assessments on EVERY student immediately.  I wanted to add their goals and accommodations into their profiles and have the information in there to utilize seamlessly and right away.  I wanted an A+ in SLP Toolkit… but in reality I probably got a C in my first semester…

How I ACTUALLY used it:

I began using SLP Toolkit in December of last year.  I definitely can’t wait to start using it at the beginning of a year instead of mid-year as it will give me some time to update levels, integrate new students into the caseload, etc.  Some of the main features I used SLP Toolkit for in my first semester using it were:

• the goals
• progress monitoring
• present level assessments.  (I sort of have a crush on the present level assessments.)

I used the present level assessments for a few things including annual IEPs and initial evaluations.  I loved these for those tricky little nuggets who have scores and skills all over the place.  When there is no cut and dry goal, SLP Toolkit helps me to identify skill areas that students are most lacking and what may be most impacting their access to the curriculum.  While I do not use Toolkit to qualify students, it is often what I use for RtI or as additional informal information that can be included in the evaluation and/or IEP.  I was able to utilize the strengths/ weaknesses from these in IEPs and then in writing goals.  I was also able to write very specific and clear goals based on present level assessments and progress monitoring.  I felt very comfortable and prepared in my IEP meetings.  Recently, after they added some great updates, a coworker was able to send me the “file” of a student who is moving from her school to mine!  In a district with as many transient students, this is an incredible resource!

How I WILL use it this year:

Like I said above, I am so excited to use this from day one this year.  I will have all students in my caseload and can add new students.  I will be utilizing the scheduling tool to make those first 46 drafts of my therapy schedule a bit easier to navigate.  I can also utilize the sharing feature to send the files to SLPs in my district to start their year off well!  I’m excited to use more progress monitoring for my students from last year and to share more beneficial strategies and tips with classroom teachers and parents as well this year!

Is it worth it?

Yes, yep, duh, of course, why not, oh yeah!  Why is it worth it?  It makes me more confident, organized, and diligent.  It makes it EASY to be good at progress monitoring and writing great IEPs and Evals!  If I was a new SLP I would spend almost everyday hugging my computer if I had SLP Toolkit (Great graduation present for new grads!).  But… you should probably just check it out for yourself.  You are able to sign up for a free trial where you have access for 5 clients so you can dig in and see if it is right for you.

You can also use this sweet code, SUBLIME17, to get 1 FREE MONTH OF FULL ACCESS or $19 off of an annual subscription!  So go on with your bad SLP self and sign up!

You can also catch Sarah and Lisa of SLP Toolkit when they present their FREE course “5 Mistakes to Avoid in Data Collection” at the upcoming SLP Summit!

SLP Toolkit is a great Tool for SLPs and Speech/Language Therapy… I hope this little lovefest (aka review) was helpful to you.  If you have other questions/comments, add them below and/or contact SLP Toolkit!

I’m an SLP and I enjoy long walks… down the hallway?

Most SLPs have a packed schedule.  Trying to organize therapy minutes for 60+ students across multiple grade levels and goals into about 30-35 hours per week is extremely difficult.  I’m not sure about you, but I end up with sessions back-to-back nearly all day.

Each year I’m surprised with how long it takes me to walk to and from my students’ classrooms.  This year I’m on a very spacious campus.  For example, if I have 1st grade students scheduled at 9:00, I am leaving my office with my previous group at 8:58.  It takes a few minutes for me to gather all of them from their classrooms and organize them.  It’s 9:02 when we leave their pod area.  We begin walking, as briskly as their 1st grade legs will move, and arrive at my room at 9:05.  By the time they are sitting and calm and I begin our activity or lesson, it can be nearly 9:10.  At 9:28 we must depart to return to their rooms.  We don’t walk silently, I’m trying to engage them in conversations that further target their therapy goals but it is difficult to do without bringing along materials.  I feel like I’m missing out on so many minutes of potential therapy each day.

I know that part of the solution is students moving about campus and arriving to my room independently.  While my older students should be able to come to me on their own, there are those beginning weeks of learning schedules as well as those students who demonstrate “difficulty” with getting from their classroom to me.  And eventually I’d like to be able to send my Kindergarteners and 1st graders back on their own but we’ll likely be starting our sessions together for a majority of the year.

To take advantage of these minutes of transition, I’ve developed these Walk ‘n Talk cards to keep on hand.  I have included a majority of the targets my students work on in 16 prompt cards (printed 2-sided) that I can use as we walk across campus.  I can have students practice articulation for 3 more minutes, warm up with some reminders and questions, practice fluency carry-over or conversation skills, etc.  These cards are available here!

I have really enjoyed having prompts on-hand during our transitions and it has also been something that I can utilize for quick articulation and language RtI and screenings, provide to teachers for RtI and carryover in the classroom, and send home for parents.

I would love to hear from you on this topic.  Are transition times something you struggle with as well?  How do you take advantage of those minutes?

Have a great week!

Recently, I had the opportunity to look over a new assessment: Kindergarten Language Benchmark Assessment (KLBA) which can easily be administered in 3 to 4 minutes during universal screenings of Kindergarteners.  It can also be used for monitoring growth over the school year.

Materials included in KLBA.

The KLBA assesses four areas correlated to future reading success and academic skills:

Auditory Comprehension: Student’s ability to ask and answer questions.

Following Directions: Ability to listen and follow directions.

Categories: Vocabulary (expressive and receptive) through category questions.

Narrative Language: Comprehension and Language abilities through narrative prompts.

Record form: Same to be used for 3 quarters in Kindergarten.

Overall, I found that this was very easy to administer.  I was able to quickly move through the stimulus items and score during testing.  After administering, students are compared to peers in their school, not national norms.  This makes it a great tool for school-based RtI guidance.  It allows you to see which Kindergarteners need additional assistance to catch up with their peers in these skill areas.

For example, if Student A scores within the top 75% of the Kindergarten class, they continue with Tier 1 intervention.  If Student B and C score in the bottom 25% they are moved to Tier 2.  At the next screening Student B is demonstrating growth so they will stay at Tier 2.  However, Student C is not demonstrating growth so they will be moved to Tier 3.  For more Check out this great handout.

Another look at included materials.

Scoring practice is GREAT for prepping and to answer questions during scoring.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this to SLPs using the RtI model for Language and who are interested in school-wide and/or district-wide Kindergarten screenings that can be used for progress monitoring as well.

For more information, check out the KLBA site including their blog.

For another great review of this, check out Crazy Speech World‘s thoughts on her blog!

Thank you to Naomi R. Konikoff, M.S., CCC-SLP and Jennifer Preschern, M.A., CCC-SLP for the invitation to review this new assessment.

I’m a huge advocate of making certain things easier about speech and language therapy.  One thing that has always driven me crazy is toting around oodles of paper copies of articulation screeners.  Luckily Little Bee Speech (and a few other app companies) has delivered the goods with their articulation test/screener.

Choose between Screener and Full Test, adjust settings, view information/tutorials, and see results from the start page.

 Little Bee’s Articulation Test Center offers a wide range of goodies in their comprehensive app.  It’s incredibly complete and easy to use.  If you’d like to learn more about the details of the Screener or Full Test, I suggest you take a few moments to view the video tutorials below.  This will help you to decide if this is the right tool for your iTherapy box!

Screener: Choose appropriate age/phonemes to screen, mark errors in as much detail as you’d like, record notes, etc!

In the elementary school that I last worked in, I utilized the screener portion of this app to screen RtI students.  I loved the mobility and flexibility of this app.  Plus, this screener is more motivating than the screener forms and easy to use with non-readers.  I could simply mark if a child made an error or be very specific with the type of error or substitution that was made.  I also loved the notes section where I could jot down things that happened or were noted during screening.  You all have incredible memories but we can all use a little reminder sometimes!  The notes section is perfect for this and is available throughout testing for use.

Full Test: Much like the screener – choose positions and if a sample is needed. Progress through stimulus cards.

I love how clear the stimulus photos are.  They are also great for vocabulary during testing!  You can even turn the photo to face the child with one easy click.  Perfect for sitting across from students during testing without having to turn the ipad for them and trying to mark the test upside down!

Speech Sample: These colorful scenes record the entire conversation that you have with the client. It is interactive and you can click on objects/animals throughout for prompts.

 The Full Test is also great for gathering even more information.  While this is not yet standardized, it is a great tool for progress monitoring, gathering detailed speech samples, and more.  I have also used this as a more detailed screener for RtI students.  While I could not include the results from the prompts into formal SpEd testing, I often used the speech sample portion of this test as an addition to the GFTA, etc.

Results are comprehensive and easy to utilize in reports to teachers, parents, and for your own files.

 I love the easy to use results section. Ready-made results are easy to tweak for your own reports for parents, teachers, and for student files.  I also love that recommendations for phonemes to address are given.  This makes transitioning over to Articulation Station a breeze. (yes, we used that great app too!)

Overall, this app is a must-have for SLPs using an iPad for therapy.  No, it isn’t standardized yet and some may not be able to utilize it for formal testing purposes.  However, for progress monitoring, screenings, and RtI, this app is extremely valuable!  I look forward to utilizing it with my Pre-K and EI students as well.

 Little Bee is having an incredible sale on this app right now – Take advantage of 50% off!

Only $24.99!

If you’d like to win a copy, enter below!  Enjoy this incredible Back to School Buy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You know that good ol’ standby, “hangman”?  It’s a great game but a totally worn out format.  Erik X. Raj has re-vamped this classic to appeal to our articulation clients of now in his new app, “Secret Mission Articulation“.  Here’s more about this newbie app…

This fun and animated screen welcomes you to this app.  There are commonly misarticulated sounds ready for you in every position and blends!  This app is a collection of 600 (no typo!) sound-specific words for articulation practice.  And the huge bonus is… it is totally MOTIVATING (gasp)!  This app has quickly become a favorite of my elementary artic students.

Simply choose a sound and then a position (or mixed which is awesome for carryover or multiple clients!)

Students are then shown this secret mission screen.  You can choose to hear the hilarious Erik Raj tell you about your mission by choosing “Hear your secret mission” at the top of the screen.  Or, you can be boring and just begin guessing letters.  For added fun, and practice, we say an articulation word before guessing and they are only allowed to guess a letter that is in the word they just said.  Otherwise, you can just play the plain ol’ method which is much like hangman.

As you guess, your letters are turned yellow and correct letters are added to the word strip below.

When you have finished the word, click “enter” to solve the secret mission.

After each completed mission, you will see this animated screen.  You can practice the word here.  We use it in sentences or phrases depending on the level of the client.  You can hear the word said to you or select to try another mission.  You can also access the home screen from here.

 

Pros:

• Totally motivating.
• Great for younger students as well as hard-to-motivate older students.
• Inexpensive – $4.99!
• Colorful.
• 600 sound-specific words.
• “Mixed” words option is great.
• Perfect for use/extra practice at home.

Improvements:

• A built-in data collection method would be sweet.

 

• Colorful Illustrations
• Great content
• A sampling of most sounds/processes
• Hilarious content
• Motivating
• Separate card with the words used
• Small, easy to transport box for traveling SLPs

• Wish the included intro card had the whole sentences instead of just the words listed to allow the stimulus card to be placed on the table when the clinician is reading it.
• This is a stand-alone deck (much like other fun decks) but there are no matches so most games will need to be additional to the product.
• I think this would make a GREAT App!  (hint, hint!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: Kim Patterson, author, provided a copy of this material to Sublime Speech for review.  No other compensation was provided and all opinions are that of Sublime Speech.