Cute video to go with "10 Apples up on Top"

A while back, I posted some visuals to go with the book "10 Apples up on Top". 

Now, my teacher friend has alerted me to a wonderful video to go with this!!!

Your kids can now enjoy an entire multimedia experience---hands-on with the visuals (see link in the first sentence), reading the book, and singing along with the above video!  Here's a SmartBoard lesson to go with the book too!

This is the fun part of my job!





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Fall Prepositions Bingo---free printable

Happy Fall !!!!  Leaves have not started turning here, but the days and nights definitely are starting to have a chill in the air.  I love it.

Here's a quick fall preposition bingo game.  As many of you know, I already have many similar printables, but none for this season.  Kids can practice using prepositions--over, beside, between, on, and in---as well as some common fall vocabulary words.  I use Chipper Chat disks and the magnet wands---but other tokens, pennies, or disks will work.  This works in color or black/white printers.  Low budget therapy---that's what North Carolina is all about!

entire printable

Click here for Fall Prepositions Bingo in pdf


Click here for Fall Prepositions Bingo in Boardmaker

















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Yes, Siri! Voice to Text makes Therapy Note Documentation a Smooth Experience!

Many of you have newer iPhones.  I have an iPad Air.  I have shaved valuable time off of my therapy session documentation by dictating my notes into the iPad.  My colleagues who have iPhones do the same.

Handwriting is going by the wayside!  I have terrible handwriting, but when I type or dictate, my notes are detailed and organized (and Medicaid compliant).

How do we set up notes for dictation?  First, make sure Siri is enabled on your iPad or iPhone.

1.  Create Google forms for each student. Google forms can have specific questions geared to your students' IEPs. I also have a place on each form for a synopsis of the therapy session.  Tutorial for this is here.

2.  Add the child's Google form to your home screen on your iPhone or iPad. Keep in mind that you need to have an Apple gadget that is more recent than an iPad 1 or 2.  A tutorial for adding the Google form to the home screen is here.

3.  Then dictate your notes!  When you open the form, touch a cell.  The keyboard will open, and you will see a microphone icon in the bottom row.  Touch that, and talk......slowly.

Play with it, and find the lingo that Siri will recognize (although I'm totally amazed at how well Siri recognizes what I say).  Complicated names are hard, so you will want to proofread and edit a bit.  It's faster than handwriting, and looks great on a spreadsheet.  I use it a lot....with my door closed.  When people walk by my room, they may think I've lost it when they see I'm talking to my iPad.

Perhaps it seems like a lot of work frontloaded?  I find that this saves so much time in the long run that the time is well spent.  

I want to thank my Chapel Hill colleagues who enlightened me about Siri and voice-to-text dictation.

I'm sure there is something similar for Android devices.  This will be a later blog topic.

My Feelings Book---translated into Indonesian

I realize that my readers probably have no use for a book translated into Indonesian; however, did you realize that 1 out of every 30 people in the world live in Indonesia?  It's the 4th most populous country in the world. 

When we visited there this past summer, we stumbled upon a school in Bali for handicapped children.  Keep in mind that public schools in Indonesia do not offer special education---so this school is private, and seems to be funded by kind folks who are Dutch.  I totally loved the school, and the short visit.  Kids are kids--same everywhere in most ways, and I saw my American kid friends in the faces of these Indonesian children. 

During my short visit, it seemed to me that the kids could use some simple adapted books in Indonesian, so my wonderful daughter (living in Indonesia volunteering for the Peace Corps) translated the feelings book I had found on Boardmaker Share.  Here it is.  Most of you won't need it, but I'm hoping that this finds its way to that little school in Bali. 

Click here to download the Indonesian feelings book in pdf


Click here to download the Indonesian feelings book in Boardmaker.

Child selects which icons make him feel happy, sad, or mad.  

Original book in English

Go here for the original feelings book in English.

Apples Everywhere---printable book, free as usual

It's apple time!!!!

Here's a simple printable book which is like many of my past ones---"Apples Everywhere".

15 pages of fun and apples.  

Students can match icons to pages, and you can use the blue shaded icons as a sentence strip. 


Download 'Apples Everywhere' in Boardmaker.

Download 'Apples Everywhere' in PDF 

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Student Self Monitoring Visuals

How has everyone's school year been so far?  Several long trips and granddaughter babysitting has taken its toll on my blog postings!  Sorry!

I have a delightful young man this year on my caseload.  He's funny, and shares freely all of his knowledge about baseball.  Apparently his dad is a high school coach who he also played for the minor leagues at one point.  My student appears to be athletically inclined as well.  His one problem is a lisp which is a bit distracting to the listener.  I told him when he's a pro, he will definitely want to have good speech for his television interviews! 

I feel kids need to know their goals (this student and I have read his IEP together), and need to have a system to monitor progress.  I've devised an interactive way for kids to see where they are and where they are going in terms of speech sound production.  You'll need velcro, a file folder, and little pictures or words in a hierarchy---isolated sounds at the bottom, conversation at the top (or parent/teacher report). You will also need something to easily represent the sound targets. Each student has his own interactive chart as pictured below. 

If you want something even more simple, you can use a system like the one pictured below.  This image was lifted from a nice blog, The Communication Window.  Apparently, this therapist uses clothespins---each student has a clothespin with his name and moves it up as he progresses.  I guess if a student has more than one sound in error, he might have several clothespins.  Several students can share the same visual, which is nice if you don't have time or space to make a chart for everyone. 

Hopefully, you all have some way for students to track progress, especially if sound errors are simple, and more traditional articulation therapy is being implemented.  Let me know your ideas!






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