Luck Of The Irish

While I won't be doing many activities in speech therapy this year for St. Patrick's Day (we're on spring break), I didn't want to leave you all without a few ideas.  I found these awesome ideas through Pediastaff's pin board for St. Patrick's Day.

This is what Speech Lady Liz would be doing in therapy

Click on the picture to get to the site link.  

Fun activity for talking about attributes

Articulation cards for /r/.

Multiple meanings, sequencing and evaluating statements

Phonemic Awareness

Synonyms

Working on blends

Plurals Bingo

So my thinking with this activity, is to print off my word sheets on the bottom right corner of this page and print on different colors of paper.  Then the kids cut and make the rainbow with their words and the different colors. 

What couldn't you do with this activity? These gold coins could be used for articulation(write initial, medial, final, word, phrase, sentence on the coins) or it could be used for language (put directions, prepositions, wh-questions etc.)

Great activity that works on putting simple sentences together and the concept of "on".

And lastly,

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Clover

A fun book to read to your kids that has some St. Patrick's Day vocabulary and love that she gives you the sentence strips with the pictures.  Hello sequencing!

These bloggers really have some great ideas! Make sure you go and follow their blogs and/or like them on Facebook...I know I have!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from a 25% Irish speech lady :)

Perspective Taking- Guest Post

This guest post is brought to you by Angela Cardenas.  Angela is a SCORES (social communication classroom) teacher in the school I work at.  She's not only my co-worker, but one of my favorite friends in Austin! With permission, I took this straight from her website.    Such a fun activity! 
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"Perspective taking is the essence of what I teach. It is embedded in all of my lessons. It is my favorite social skill, but also the most difficult to teach. The ability to see a situation from someone else's eyes is quite arduous for many people. This is especially true for students on the Autism spectrum. In social situations, it can be very trying to see another person's perspective because we get so wrapped up in our own thoughts and feelings about the experience. I try to provide my students with real life examples of what perspective taking looks like. This year was perfect timing...it was like the concept of perspective taking slapped me in the face the week before my planned lesson! I shared the following story with my students: The other day, my husband and I were on our way to school when we witnessed a hit and run car accident. Thankfully, the victim wasn't physically hurt. We tried to follow the aggressor to write down her license plate number, but she was like a maniac in a high speed chase and got away! I couldn't help getting emotional about the victim because I was imagining how I would feel in that situation. I thought about so many things...how my baby was in the car and what if he got hurt, how expensive it would be to fix the car, how unfair it would be to pay for the damages when it was clearly the wrongdoer's fault etc... Using this real life example helped the students to do some quality perspective taking.

Here's the lesson:
I start with showing them various shoes, ranging from a baby shoe to a high heel to a man's running shoe. I ask them questions about what they can tell about each of the people who might wear the footwear. We talk about who the person is, where they might be going, what they might like to do etc. We come to the conclusion that the people who wear the shoes are very different from each other and thus, have different thoughts and feelings. Then, we talk about the idiom, "Put yourself in someone else's shoes". My students LOVE idioms! We discuss how we can't literally put ourselves in certain shoes because they won't fit or we wouldn't choose to wear them because we are all so different. After discussing what perspective taking means using the visual attached below, I show them various pictures and ask inference/perspective taking questions. Some of the resources I use: "What are they thinking?" Webber Fun Deck, The Language of Perspective Taking, and Jill Kuzma's perspective taking resources. I also have a board on my Pinterest page (I've mentioned this obsession before, right?!) dedicated to Perspective Taking and Inference. I use those images to ask the students questions that get them thinking like the people in the scenarios. Then, I give them a page where they have to think like someone else to fill in the blanks. This is a great exercise for thinking like someone else!
Perspective taking is one of the most beneficial skills we can cultivate in our children. The ability to see things from different perspectives will make children more compassionate, flexible and understanding. One of my brilliant friends coined my favorite saying, "Perspective, pass it on!". I try to keep this in mind at all times and hope to instill this skill in my students and my son!"

 

Click on the above picture to grab the freebie, and click here for another perspective taking activity link. 

Am I not so lucky that I get to work next door to this master-mind?!?

Love ya Ang! 

Don't forget to email me your ideas!

March Take-Home Program

Articulation

Language

Almost spring break, almost spring break, almost spring break :)

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

I look forward to this theme all year.  I try and hold off until it gets closer to spring time, but sometimes I just can't wait any longer.  I generally use this with my older kids just because it's a longer book with more advanced vocabulary.   

Articulation:

Print off Boardmaker pictures or adds from a newspaper and have kids cut and paste foods that have their target sound in the word on the cloud (click on picture for freebie).  The child can list the foods or they can use the phrase "Cloudy with a chance of...". I like to have string go from one side of my classroom to the other, and then I hang the clouds from the string. 
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Language and Social Group:

Weather vocabulary match-up

There are a lot of idioms that have to do with the weather and these idioms are used quite a bit.  Idioms are hard for our kids with Autism to understand.  Talk about what these pictures literally mean, and then what someone is really trying to say when they use the phrase.  Click on the picture to download the idiom freebie. 

I have some students that love talking and learning about the weather.  I bought a poster of the United States and then I printed off some weather icons.  The kids make up their own weather report (it can be serious or a silly weather report). This is a great opportunity to work on articuation carry-over, grammar etc.

Use the trailer from the movie to work on inferencing, humor, feelings etc.

If you want to do a weather theme with your younger kids, here's a post from my friend Orlanda.  Check it out here.  

Email me and let me know of any other weather activities you use.  I know my students will appreciate it!