Story Retell Beach Ball

When a teacher at the school I worked at as a Paraprofessional Educator retired, she had many things to give away. This amazing beach ball was one of them. It has about 6 different retell questions on it asking questions like the setting, characters and beginning, middle, and end. It is so nice that it is preprinted on there, but it could be made out of a normal beach ball and writing in permanent marker! My client loves throwing it back and forth to answer story retell questions!

Visual Schedule with choices

I have established a visual schedule for my client because he seems to need to know what is going to happen during the session. He also likes to be able to check each thing off as we go. Recently I have been giving him choices as to what he wants to do in what order, I don't let him choose what do to for the whole session, just three of the activities. Choices are always a good thing!

Token System

My client this semester tends to display some rather unsavory behaviors and so to keep those behaviors in check, I have adapted a token system. He starts out each session with 5 tokens and then however many tokens he ends up with at the end of the session, he gets to fill in those circles on the paper. If he gets all 30 tokens, he gets a prize. Prizes tend to be very motivating for him!

As it is obvious, it is necessary to have removable tokens to put on each day, or you cannot take them away when a negative behavior is exhibited. I use the smiley tokens from super duper.

File Folder Story Game

I haven't been taking pictures of all the activities I've been using in therapy lately, so here are a few new ones! My supervisor for my client this semester suggested making a File Folder game for my client. It is essentially a file folder with a candyland-like spread. Candyland is too young for my client, so I made it more age appropriate and added in elements of the story we read that day. The story we read was "Where the Wild Things Are." I added in a few other elements of past stories, to help him remember what we'd read before, therefore not all the elements are conducive to "Where the While Things Are." Here is the front cover: 

I obviously didn't use a file folder, just two pieces of construction paper. Here is the middle part, and main part of the game:

 

Because of obvious privacy issues, I covered up his name, it is at the far middle left, by putting the client's name in, it helps him/her realize that he/she is part of the game, an important part! The back side of the game:

You can use whatever game pieces you want to use, as you can see in the two piece spread, I just used some smiley super duper tokens. To make the game last longer, I used some pieces of paper with numbers on them instead of a dice:

Medial L and Final L tic tac toe

This is the same idea as the R tic tac toe, only using L words. The student is told to say the word three times and then places a chip on the word.

Vocalic R tic tac toe

I have the student say the R word three times and then he or she may place a chip on the word. This game only works for a group of two, or a student and SLP. I have had students take this game home and play with a parent or sibling as a reinforcer.

Egg carton button Toss

I found this idea online and used it during the week before Easter break. You can't tell exactly by the picture, but inside the carton, there are numbers where the eggs would be. I only had 1 and 2 points in them, but you can choose the points. I had a student say the word or sentence three times. Then I had the students toss a button (the website I found it on suggested a penny) and see how many points they got. We kept score and found a winner based on the points. This is a way to make it so that students with only a small speech problem and students with a larger speech problem can compete, but not based on their speech skills (because sometimes that isn't fair).

Parts of a story braid

Fluffball with eyes = Characters in the story

Star = where the story takes place

Red, green, and blue fluffball = beginning middle and end of the story

Clothespin = "hookup" or problem in the story

Bow = resolution of the problem, and end of story

This little story braid helps students remember what parts of the story they need to tell when retelling a story. It's fairly easy to make, but I found that using just glue didn't make the fluffballs stay on very well, I had to sew them on with needle and thread.

Update: I made this after seeing someone use it and didn't know these are commercially available. This is my own simplified version, the original is called story grammar marker and here is where to buy it: http://mindwingconcepts.com/story-grammar-marker

Easy games with Artic Cards

There are loads of easy and fun games to play with artic cards. Of the games I have come across here are a few: Play go fish with the cards (multiple player game) play a matching game with the cards (multiple players or single player), you can play any regular board game and have the students use a few cards everytime it's their turn. You can use these cards for almost anything. I have found the Super Duper cards to be the best cards to use, they are however rather pricey. Here is the link to the website: http://www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?stid=348

LINKS

Here is a cute blog of an SLP that has really good picture examples of ideas:

http://speechroomnews.blogspot.com/

The possibly best website for SLP activities on the web, a place for SLPs to share activities:

speakingofspeech.com

This website gives good tips to parents and also gives S/L activities:

http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/

This is a great website from MNSU for therapy materials:

http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster2/sptherapy.html

This is a website for potential client's parents. This website is for the United Healthcare Children's foundation Inc. and gives grants to parents of children with health problems. I read through some of the information and many of the clients were given money for Speech/Language services.

http://www.uhccf.org/

Around the World

I didn't come up with this game, my fellow SLP student did. It is a game worth sharing. Print out pictures of each of the continents and place them around the room. The students have to travel around the world, saying one or two words three times before moving on to another continent. Sorry I have no pictures of this, but it isn't hard to imagine. This is a good game because they are up and about not just sitting at a table.

Jeopardy

This is a cheap easy game that can be used with a group of kids or even just with an SLP and one student. The way I did this game was make the hardest sounds and sounds the students didn't like to make be the most points. Points in Jeopardy sure are motivating. The boxes are each flipped over artic cards (I used the ones from Super Duper). The game is played a lot like Jeopardy. I used a poster board and just taped the cards on carefully. I took the cards off for the students or else you might have ripped cards. Sometimes you have to manipulate the game and say "Johnny you can't do any more /or/ cards until you have done two more /er/ cards." Some kids struggle on different sounds or excel,  making this game slightly unfair. Thus the SLP has to manipulate it at times to make sure it is more fair and each student is practicing the needed sounds. This can be used at any level except sound and conversation level, so it works for word, phrase, and sentence level. To make this even cheaper, you could make your own artic cards out of construction paper.