Here is an oldie but (updated) goodie! Lots of messages from all you Bingo lovers out there — and there are a LOT of you! So I thought I’d share this open-ended favorite for a fun St. Patty’s Day week activity. Use this no-prep (just print and go!) activity to target a variety of receptive and expressive language skills — object identification/labeling, visual discrimination, auditory processing at the word/phrase/sentence levels, comprehension of WH questions, seasonal vocabulary, language formulation, use of vocabulary and related descriptive concepts — and also articulation/phonological skills. These open-ended boards are perfect for differentiated instruction and always a favorite it seems. Enjoy!
Who is excited about the 2022 Winter Olympics?! ME!! With the opening ceremonies happening today, I am really excited about sharing my Olympic love with my students. I plan on using lots of Olympic-themed therapy ideas from the amazing Home Speech Home page, as well as some of my own personal faves. Here’s one thing that seems to be a universal favorite — Winter Olympics Bingo! You all probably know how much I love open-ended activities that can be differentiated to meet the needs of a variety of students (hello, time-saver on planning! Side note: I used to tell my graduate students that if you you know your students well and know their goals and current levels of performance, then you can create meaningful therapy with an empty pizza box!) Fortunately activities like this Winter Olympic Bingo are a lot more fun and relevant than an old pizza box.
This Olympic-themed set is perfect for introducing winter sports that may be unfamiliar to your students. Events like curling, ski jumping, biathlon, or skeleton…say what??? I like to introduce these events and the corresponding Bingo board pictures by reviewing information on Olympics.com site. You just click on the sport you want to learn about, and you can learn about the history of the events, updates on the events taking place, and even see videos.
Skeleton event
Once we’ve reviewed the vocabulary, then the Bingo fun starts. What a wonderful way to celebrate winter and a world-wide tradition while targeting everyone’s speech-language goals? How are you highlighting the Winter Olympics for your students? I’d love to hear!
Halloween would NOT be complete without this favorite nursery rhyme — Five Little Pumpkins! I thought I would share the little set I made for my younger clients. This set includes all the story characters and elements to share the story, as well as coloring pages for students to cut and/or color to re-create the scene. Click the image below for previews. One of my favorites to share!! ENJOY!!
I’ve been having SO much fun creating more seasonal resources! With time to create, I’ve been dreaming up big and little ideas, which I am always happy to share. Here is a quick, little idea I had that I have actually been using in my own therapy room. I work with children of all ages and ranges of ability, so the variety keeps me thinking. I am seeing more children now who present with subtle language difficulties — they are verbal, articulate, and at first glance seem to be on track with their peers. But when you get to know them, you quickly realize that they need organizational language support and practice with both comprehension and expression. So I created this Halloween-themed activity set to provide scaffolded supports and practice with understanding and describing seasonal vocabulary. In this 7-page NO PREP set, I’ve included:
Formulating Descriptions Visual/Graphic Organizer
24 unique picture stimulus cards to:
elicit verbal descriptions of attributes
elicit formulated sentences
target wh question comprehension and formulation of responses
you can also print doubles of the cards to use as a matching/memory game! Always fun practice and extension opportunities.
10 WH question prompts to support verbal descriptions
24 WH questions to be used as stimuli for targeting of wh question comprehension and formulation of responses.
I’ve been having very good success with this set and with variations I’ve created over the years. The visual stimuli, graphic organizer, and structured wh questions appear to be a magic combo! Feel free to check it out if you want:
Happy November from LiveSpeakLove! As we polish off the last of the Halloween candy, many of us are gearing up for the next big holiday…Thanksgiving! November is typically a blur for me with the ASHA convention, American Education Week and anticipation of the ever popular Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa holiday season. But I always make it a point to very purposefully and carefully appreciate the moment that we have for Thanksgiving. I hope you do, too! To help get you get ready for Thanksgiving in the speech-language therapy room, here are a collection of Thanksgiving activities I made targeting comprehensive skill sets from the CCSS. These activity sets allow for differentiated instruction in individual, small group or whole class settings. Everything you need for this month in one spot…Enjoy!!
Many students on my caseload have language difficulties impacting their ability to answer simple questions — a deficit that has the potential for considerable effects on a student’s ability to perform successfully in their educational environment. Think about a typical classroom activity, and the types of things a teacher might say…odds are pretty good that a majority of a teacher’s utterances involve a simple or higher level wh question word (what, where, who, when, why, how, what if?) Reading comprehension is especially dependent on these powerful words (Who is the main character? What happened at the end of the story? Why did they make that decision? What do you think will happen next? Where did the story take place?) Math is also tied to these questions (What is the first step? When do you combine groups?) Because teachers continually elicit responses and assess skills, questions are routinely asked and answered in the classroom. Students with wh question difficulties need training on exactly what the individual words mean and appropriate referents that can be used as an answer. When asked a simple question like, “what did you eat for lunch?” a student with comprehension deficits might answer, “I eat my lunch.” Many times correct answers can be elicited with scaffolded supports such as yes/no questions or given choices. Systematic practice on these types of questions help students to more automatically comprehend the intended meaning and successfully respond. I often use visual supports to provide cues and structured practice on choosing appropriate referents. Here is a visual prompt that I use to prompt students in therapy activities and also to use in their classrooms as a resource during instruction:
Simple WH Questions
To help students differentiate between the types of simple questions, I often use a sorting activity (this activity works very well on my Promethean ActivPanel, where students can drag the pictures to the appropriate column. I also send home the hard copy for practice using verbal responses, or to use as a cut-and-paste activity):
And here are several practice activities I made to address simple wh questions:
I have had good success using simple, Boardmaker-created activities like these to provide structured training on wh question comprehension. As a student becomes more proficient at answering these types of questions, I extend this skill to simple picture scenes, story sequences, and eventually, story recall and comprehension in the classroom. I also spend time educating staff in using wh questions whenever possible, rather than simpler yes/no questions or even just plain directives. For example, instead of saying, “Put that paper in your folder please,” a teacher might instead present, “Ok, where do you think the paper should go?” Embedded opportunities to practice these comprehension skills throughout a student’s day help to reinforce the therapy activities and promote generalization of skills. Finding opportunity is really not a difficult task…questions are everywhere!
Enjoy the resources — click the images to download and thanks for visiting me at LiveSpeakLove!
I stopped at the store today to buy goodies and cards for my own kids to give their friends on Valentine’s Day. Our home is now equipped with pre-made cards and card-making supplies (for one child with a bit of artistic ambition,) treat bags and several kinds of candy doused with liberal amounts of pink and red. We are just days away from the holiday, and almost all of my kids are getting pretty excited. (Did you know that middle schoolers are now “too cool” for Valentine exchanges, even casual ones under the pretense of spontaneous candy-sharing?? Hmmmph.)
I am not necessarily a huge Valentine’s Day fan, but I do enjoy the chance to mark the swiftly passing days with entertaining, theme-related activities and the chance to celebrate with the people around me. I have popular, favorite Valentine’s Day activity set to share.
Valentine Bingo Boards – The term “Bingo” is used loosely, due to the fact that I use games like this to target almost every speech or language skill possible before we actually get to any of the “Bingo.” During a typical game, each student’s goals are addressed through differentiated activities involving speech production, identifying vocabulary given verbal descriptions, sentence formulation to respond to wh questions about vocabulary, or following simple and multi-step directions using unique ways to mark the square (no Bingo chips or dotters in my groups…we usually mark our squares by following directions like, “Draw a blue square next to the valentine card.”) We also use related vocabulary to highlight critical attributes and identify similarities and differences. Children often spontaneously share background experiences with the theme-related vocabulary and we take a few minutes to “turn and talk” to relate a past event or experience to a peer or peer group. What might look like a simple “game” to the casual observer is unquestionably a language-rich, engaging experience with opportunities for differentiated instruction tailored to meet multiple learning styles. Made with Boardmaker software, Bingo Boards are cinch to replicate for multiple versions using the “shuffle” tool. This 14 page set includes six unique Bingo Boards (all containing the same words, but in different positions). The set also includes 6 black and white Bingo Boards for students to color themselves, as well as a page of colored calling cards (I live to print two sets of the calling cards and then I also have an instant matching/memory game!). Enjoy this activity set, and feel free to let me know how you used them!
