Say & Color Plural Nouns For The Entire Year!! (Regular & Irregular!)

Many of you seem to be enjoying my say & color activity packs for the entire year.  I started creating this one back in September/October and have been putting off finishing it (due to other projects taking priority).  Lucky for you...another snow day here for me!!  Took advantage of this spare time and FINALLY finished this one!!!  I am so excited to share this say & color activity for identifying singular and plural nouns!!!  Did I mention it is for the entire year?!

On each page, students are provided with instructions.  They must color the pages according to the instructions to sort by singular or plural nouns.  Two separate pages provided for each theme for regular and irregular nouns.

Can your students identify which are singular and which are irregular?!  You can even have them use the words in sentences!! 

Black-and-white pages for easy printing.  No laminating required!
Themes for the entire year are included!

Themes included:
-School
-Fall
-Halloween
-Thanksgiving
-Christmas
-Winter
-Valentine’s Day
-St. Patrick’s Day
-Spring
-Easter
-Summer
-Cowboy
-Circus
-Ocean
-Pirates
-Superhero
-Space

You can access this activity pack in my TpT store by clicking HERE!

Sentence Ninja (APP REVIEW)

Smarty Ears apps has done it again, they created another great app that works on sentence production (verbally and visually)!  They contacted me recently and offered me a copy of their app to check out and share with you.  Note, the opinions are all mine!

This app was designed to facilitate understanding of how correct word order impacts sentence structure.

This app can be used with multiple students at a time (up to 5 students).  You can easily transport student data from Therapy Report Center or just add them directly into this app.  You can take their picture, select an avatar, or use nothing!  The choice is yours!

There are a variety of ways to adapt this app for your and your students' needs.  Look at the overall settings options:

At the bottom of the setting options, you will see "modify exercises."  By clicking this, you can select which specific levels and stimuli you would and would not like to address.  Have a student scared of clowns?  You can unclick the clown sentences!  Want to jump to a specific level/word structure and concepts?  You can do so here!

Now that my students and levels are selected, it is time to start!  To play, students will see a picture and words/phrases broken up.  They must drag the sentence fragments to the paper strip on the bottom (underneath the picture) to create a sentence or phrase (based on the goal in mind).  

After they correctly arrange the sentence or phrase, they can practice verbally producing it!  They can record and listen to their verbal productions.  This will be great for fluency and articulation students as well!  My students LOVE listening to themselves!  Once you are ready, just click "done" to move onto the next picture.

I don't know about you, but I teach my students to advocate for themselves.  I do so by teaching them to ask for repetition, help, hints, more time, etc.  This app has a "hint" button!  Student is struggling?  This button will give them part of the answer to start them off.  In the level below, I was provided with the first part of the phrase to start me off.  Obviously, the only piece left would be the next part of the phrase.  I like this feature to help students learn that it is OK to ask for help and what can be achieved once help has been provided.

You can see above the picture, there is a ninja image and "steps."  This will help you and your students see visually how many pictures have been completed and how many more are there in the level.  This is great for planning your time and to help with those students that keep asking "how many more?"

Done with the level?  Look below at the screen that will appear.  Students are rewarded which is great, it provides the data, and you can choose what you would like to do next (try a few more on this level or go onto the next level).  Don't want either?  You can click the "done" button on the top right corner to end the session.

Once done, you will be brought to the report center.  Here you can review the progress report, adjust the player level, and see the player reward wall.  I really like that the progress report shows the date, level and specifics of that level, accuracy, how many hints used, and other setting options.  This is great for those with HUGE caseloads like mine and it is SO hard to remember all of those details from one session to another.

Another amazing feature you can access from the report center is the homework feature.  You can access worksheets which you can easily print and/or e-mail from the app directly.  Are you someone like me that does not have WIFI access in your classrooms and ALWAYS forgets to print the worksheets out from home ahead of time??  You can open up the worksheets on  your iPad after using the app activity and have the students respond right then and there.  You can import the worksheets into an Adobe app and have students "write" on the app!  You can save it and print it out later to put into their speech folders.

Want to learn more about this $14.99 app?
Visit their WEBSITE or ITUNES!

If Only I Could Get Professional Development Hours For Following Blogs: SYNTAX!

Welcome to day #1 of "SLP Professional Development."  Today's topic is syntax!  

If you work in a school setting or with school-aged students, you probably have students that have syntax goals.  If not, you address syntax informally while working on vocabulary, verbal/written expression, and answering questions.

Over the last year+, I have posted TONS of freebies and TpT products that can be used to address syntax goals.  Here is a list of them if you do not recall:

Groovy Grammar

Lunch Bag Books and Say & Color Worksheet Freebies

Noun Nick & Verb Vicky file folder freebie

Teaching Past, Present, & Future Verbs

Noun-Verb Agreement Freebie

Ice Cream Parts of Speech Sort Idea

Using Tap Lights to Teach Past, Present, & Future

Grammar Uno-Like Game

Movie Parts of Speech

and so much more!

What are some strategies I use in my speech room to address difficulties using grammatical structures?

• Model!  It is so important for students to hear and see visually the correct grammatical structures.  
• Restate!  Restate their messages using the correct grammatical structures.  You can spend every session correcting your students.  If you are not working directly on grammar skills, just restate what they say with the correct forms to model it for them.
• When working on written expression, point out their errors.  Make them say it out loud so they can hear it for themselves.  Make them re-write using the correct structures.  Use dry erase boards to let them practice using that exact grammatical structure in a variety of ways.

What are some DIY activities you can use to teach, practice, introduce, or reinforce syntax goals?

• Have students practice identifying correct and incorrect grammatical concepts/structures.  Use buzzers/bells/signs or just let them raise their hands when they hear incorrect sentences.  
• Take a reading passage and substitute all nouns and/or verbs with the incorrect tenses.  Can your students identify what you did?  Can they fix the errors?  Let them rewrite/type the passage with the correct forms.
• Sort!  Have students read sentences or words and sort singular/plural, noun/verb/adjective, past/present/future, conjunction/article, etc.
• Visuals!  It can be on poster paper, dry erase board, or even on a post-it on the table!  Remind your students of the rules/strategies to assist them in recall!  Once they start mastering, remove the visuals and see how they do!

Are you wondering what your other favorite bloggers do and use in their speech rooms?

•  "I like to use sentence strips with blanks (e.g., "If I had a ___, it would be __" or whatever sentence construct I'm targeting). Then we add picture cards and add them to the blanks (e.g., noun cards for the first, adjectives for the second). Sometimes the sentences make sense and sometimes they're very silly, but that's what makes it fun!  The commercial product I like to use is Grammar Gumballs!"~Carrie from Carrie's Speech Corner and visit her TpT store by clicking HERE!
• "I use "Sentence Workout" app (from Virtual Speech Center) to target sentence structure. My students love and are entertained with this app."~LyndaSLP
• "For my older elementary students, I like to break them up into teams and give them worksheets on a specific skills, such as "conjunctions". Then, they have to work together to figure out how to identify the conjunction, or create grammatically correct sentences. It helps when my groups have varying skills, so I can team up a stronger student with someone who isn't as high. That way I can teach one lesson. By making it a competition to see who can get the most correct, the students are motivated. I also try to find games on Quia.com.  For my little ones preK and K, I try to find ways to play activities or games while bombarding them with grammatical structures such as building with blocks. I can have them say She is building, I am stacking, or I want a blue block."~Felice from The Dabbling Speechie 
• "For teaching question forms, I like to use SPARC for Questions. Using this book, you can address yes/no and wh-question forms."~Gold Country SLP
• " For preschool through elementary, I love doing barrier games. Another favorite of mine, is story wiring. For little ones. I obviously write out the story FOR them as they tell me, while working on the grammatical goals of the child, while older kids do the writing as we work. They then can illustrate the stories either between turns (in groups) or at home, if we run out of time.  I also use barrier games."~Katie from Playing With Words 365
• "For elementary students I've been using the app Grammaropolis. It plays fun songs as an introduction to each featured topic. IE: conjunctions. This is a quick way to pull the kids into the lesson each week and remind them the key ideas. Then we can get into direct instruction and practice."~Jenna from Speech Room News
• "I like to use Grammar Gum Balls and Grannie's Candies from Super Duper. I also use magnetic sentence strips with wet erase markers so the students can't erase them. I have preprogrammed sentences, and the students can fill in the correct responses with a dry erase marker."~Jess from Figuratively Speeching (you can view her TpT store HERE)
•  "I use something reminiscent of the old Fokes Sentence Builder. Many AAC systems use one of two color-coding schemas to organize vocabulary. This comes in handy when teaching syntax because you can teach color patterns (yellow green orange for SVO, for example). There are some visual supports for the two most popular color coding systems in this post (free download)."~PrAACtical AAC
• "I like to use flashcards or pictures of children performing actions along with the sentence cues from speakingofspeech.com ("He is ___/She is ___", "___ are ___", "___ is ___", etc.), then eventually fade the cues."~Jessica from Consonantly Speaking (view her TpT store HERE)
• "I also use the visual cues I printed fromwww.speakingofspeech.com and pictures I printed and laminated using google images...I also eventually fade the cues."~Christy Jones
• "To start, I use a lot of gross motor activities for marking syntax structures. For example, to teach future tense forms I may have a child move forward on a balance beam. To teach the past tense forms I would have them move backwards."~Speech2U (view TpT store by clicking HERE)
• "I use a program called Colorful Semantics to give my students visual supports as they're learning the parts of speech. Once we get through nouns, verbs, and adjectives, I start connecting Colorful Semantics to madlibs and other cloze paragraphs so we can see the color patterns in longer pieces of text."~The Thrifty SLP
• "I like to start by seeing if the kids can identify correct vs. incorrect syntax, so I will provide several examples and we discuss them."~Teach Speech 365 (and check out her TpT store HERE)
•  "I like using Post-Its in different colors for parts of speech to create sentences and then changing them around to form questions. But you can also do it to work on adding details, combining sentences, etc."~Jenn from Crazy Speech World
• "For my elementary kiddos I will have them give me words that I write on index cards, then they have to put them in order to create sentences. I also like using Jumbled Sentences for Kids, it is a free app."~The Speech Bubble

Now you can win a copy of Groovy Grammar for yourself!  

Enter to win below!

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Calendar Companion Pack! ((AND GIVEAWAY!!))

Many classroom teachers do "morning meetings" where they go over the calendar, weather, and other routines.  I like to bring calendars into my therapy room to target a variety of skills WHILE reviewing the calendar vocabulary. In the past, I have often found blank calendars on the internet.  I decided, why not create pages perfect for my needs!  I put all of the goals and activities I like to use in one spot just for you!!

In this companion pack:
Blank calendar pages are provided which can be adapted for each year by just writing in the numbers.  You can write in the numbers ahead of time and laminate the pages or leave them blank and have students fill them in as a following directions activity.

Color & Black/White versions are provided.

Activities to target a variety of skills using calendar pages provided or with any wall/desk calendar:
-Following directions:  Students will practice concepts while following multi-step directions (first, second, third, before, after, between, etc.).  Can be used with any month!
Students can input holidays, birthday, and other events such as field trips.  This can elicit conversation, work on following directions, build vocabulary, and answering questions.  A list of holidays/events per month is included (may vary based on year/geographic location).

-Answering questions: For each month, question cards are provided.  **16 question cards per month are provided!

-Compare/contrast:  use the Venn diagram provided to compare the different months of the year.  I even provided a visual with prompts to help students complete this task!

-Resources are provided for your assistance while using this activity pack!

-Articulation word list by sound related to calendar theme

-Say & Color:  Students can color a calendar after they practice producing their articulation targets!

-Verb Practice:  Use the various verb pictures to have students glue onto the calendar pages for the month.  They can practice  using the various verb tenses using the sentence strips provided!

-Write A Grammar Story: Students should use their verbs and noun tenses to write a story about their month.  You can give each student a different month to write about and have the group guess who wrote each one!

I think you will find this one companion pack can be used with a variety of students with a variety of goals of all ages!  You can easily adapt it to your needs!  You can access this companion pack in my TpT store by clicking HERE!

Now you can win a copy for yourself!! YAY!!  Enter to win below!

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Superhero Speech & Language Game Boards!

Do your students love superheroes?  Do they love playing games?  This fun-filled download I have created is for you!

In this file you will find:

A variety of game boards that can be printed and used to target a variety of speech and language skills.  All using a VERY popular superhero theme!  Grab your target cards, a dice, and game pieces and  you are ready to go!  Tons of flexibility for you to use your own targets and visuals/prompting.  Target vocabulary, syntax, question skills, pragmatic skills, auditory comprehension and more!

**9 Game boards included:

-Articulation practice:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game board space.  Each space has a number.  The student must use their target sound that many times.

-Category Naming:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game board space.  Each space will have a category.  Students must express an item in that category in order to remain on their space.

-Parts of Speech Naming:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game board space.  Each space will have a part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, and pronoun).  Students must express a word that falls in that category in order to remain on their space.

-Synonym or Antonym?:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game board space.  Each space will contain a pair of words.  Students must express if the words are synonyms or antonyms in order to remain on their space.

-Question Fun:  Two ways to play!  Students will roll a dice and land on a game board space.  Each space will have a question form.  Students must either ask a question or answer a question using your own desired question prompts using that question form in order to remain on their space.

-Singular or Plural?:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game  board space.  Each space will have a word provided.  Students must express if it is a singular or plural noun in order to remain on that game space.  Can they also determine if it is a regular or irregular plural?

-Recalling Stories:  Use this game with any story (long or short!).  After reading/listening to a story, students will roll a dice to land on a game board space.  Each space will prompt the student to recall a key story element (characters, setting, title, etc.) in order to remain on that game space.  Not all items may apply.  Can your students recognize ones that do not?

-Tell Me How:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game space.  Each space will prompt a student to tell how to complete a task.  Students must express using an appropriate sequence in order to remain on that game space.

-Describing Fun:  Students will roll a dice and land on a game space.  Each space will contain an object.  Students must express a description in order to remain on that space.  Feel free to use this game board with EET (http://www.expandingexpression.com/).

You can access this activity file in my TpT store by clicking HERE!!

Product Swap Review: There Was A Silly SLP!

Today I will be reviewing Teach Speech 365's activity: There Was A Silly SLP (Plurals)!  

This activity includes an interactive story that is an original creation from Teach Speech!  It is about an SLP that gets glue all over her!  She gets stuck to 12 different nouns (regular and irregular plurals).  Adorable graphics, great vocabulary concepts, and so much fun!  It was easy to put together using my laminator and binding machine.  I added Velcro to each page and each picture.  I found there were two ways to use it:

• Keep the pictures Velcro-ed onto each page and as you read have your students "stick" the images on to the larger Susie page.
• Take all of the pictures off and as you read have students find the images and place them onto the page.

The activity comes with plenty of follow-up and preview activities.  I chose to try out a couple of them based on the needs of my students.  As you can see below, there is a worksheet which I chose to laminate and use as a board game, when the students landed on the different school locations, they had to express what the SLP got stuck to in there and/or something else they could have gotten stuck to based on location.  There is also a worksheet where students can glue the images into the correct sequence.

Some other great activities included are: following directions cards to use with the images and the large SLP Susie page, sorting regular/irregular plurals page, identifying correct/incorrect plurals cards, comprehension questions worksheet, and follow-up writing activity.

One of my favorite features is the pre- & post-test page.  This is great for collecting baseline data and progress!

Goals addressed with this activity:

• Plural nouns
• School vocabulary
• Prepositions
• Cause/Effect
• Wh- Questions
• Recall
• Seqeuencing
• Writing
• Following directions
• And more!

My students impression on the activity:

• They loved it!!  They thought it was hysterical that a person had glue on them!
• Loved the hands on activity!
• The images were easy for them to identify and express.
• Laughed as we walked around the classroom looking for other plural nouns to write in the follow-up activity.

Suggestions while using:

• I changed it to Silly Speech Teacher since my students don't refer to me as an SLP.
• I narrowed the choices on the comprehension worksheet to two to help them out even further or I used the sequencing worksheet first for them to look at that and help them recall the answers to the questions.
• Can do this activity over the course of several sessions in order to fit it all in!  Lots of opportunities for repetition and drilling!
• I gave my students clues for each image beforehand to see if they can guess it with my descriptions. 

Overall, I think this activity is AMAZING!!  I cannot wait to see what other "There Was A Silly SLP" activities Teach Speech will come up with next!  Click the links at the top of the blog post to learn more about Teach Speech and her amazing activity!  Have you tried it?  Leave a comment below!  I would love to  hear how you used it!