Better Hearing and Speech Month Flyer

In an effort to bring awareness to Better Hearing and Speech Month, I created a flyer to distribute to teachers regarding classroom acoustics. The information and awesome logo were obtained from ASHA's website. 

Grab your flyer here.

How are you promoting and celebrating Better Hearing and Speech Month?

Happy BHSM!

SLP Interview Prep

For the past few years I have been an ASHA S.T.E.P. mentor to aspiring SLP's at the undergraduate and graduate level. Graduate school preparation is a frequently discussed topic. I often get asked to prepare my mentees for upcoming graduate school interviews. Recently, performed a mock interview (via video chat) with my mentee. Below are a list of questions that I used and wanted to share with you all:

• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• If you're not accepted into graduate school, what are your plans?
• What do you know about our program? 
• Why did you choose to apply to our program?
• What other schools are you considering?
• In what ways have your previous experience prepared you for graduate study in our program?
• What do you believe your greatest challenge will be if you are accepted into this program?
• In college, what courses did you enjoy the most? The least? Why?
• Describe any research project you've worked on.
• How would your professors describe you?
• How will you be able to make a contribution to this field?
• What are your hobbies?
• Explain a situation in which you had a conflict and how you resolved it. What would you do differently? Why?
• Describe your greatest accomplishment. 
• Tell me about your experience in this field. What was challenging? What was your contribution?
• What are your career goals? How will this program help you achieve your goals?
• What skills do you bring to the program? 
• Why should we take you and not someone else?
• What do you do in your spare time?

My mentee reported that the mock interview helped her  better prepare for the interviews she subsequently had. 

For those who have already been through the interview process, are there any other additional questions you think I should add to my list?

SLP Spring Fever Blog Hop

Welcome to the SLP Spring Fever Blog Hop! 

You will get the chance to win prizes and get freebies by touring 12 fantastic blogs.  Here is the lineup:

1. Figuratively Speeching SLP
2. Just Wright Speech
3. Queen's Speech
4. Putting Words in Your Mouth
5. Straight Up Speech
6. The Speech Umbrella
7. Miss Thrifty SLP
8. Rae's Speech Spot
9. Speech2U
10. Word to the Wise
11. Let's Talk Speech and Language (ME!)
12. SLP for Me (Guest Posting on Figuratively Speeching SLP)

One lucky reader will receive a Grand Prize that includes the following:

• Codes for 3 FREE Hamaguchi Apps (see Figuratively Speeching SLP's reviews)
• 1 Code for FREE Sentence Builder Teen from the Mobile Education Store
• Codes for 4 FREE Songs from Music Therapy Tunes
• 1 FREE Green Big Grips iPad2 Case

12 Secondary Winners will receive a goodie basket featuring a Spring-themed activity from each participating blog owner/page owner in the Blog Hop.

Contest Rules:

• The rules of the contest are simple: You must decode a secret message.
• In order to complete this task, you will need to visit each of the 12 blogs in the order above and download their freebie(s).  Each blog's freebie will contain a special word that is part of a larger code made up of 12 words.  The special word shown in each freebie will appear in the same consistent "format" or "style" throughout all 12 freebies.
• When you enter the contest through Giveaway Tools on Figuratively Speeching SLP's blog you will be asked to type in the secret code.
• The contest will run from Sunday, March 17th, 2013 through Saturday, March 23rd, 2012.

Have fun and enjoy blog hopping with us!  Enjoy reading through the blogs, downloading the freebies, and participating in our Blog Hop!  Good Luck!

My Freebie's to Download:

• I have two Freebies for download.  Find the "special word" on one of the two following Freebies:
1.  PDF bundle of my favorite handouts, signs, etc., located here 
2. Word document bundle of my most popular templates, located here

Next Stop on the Blog Hop:

• Remember that I am the 11th stop on the Blog Hop. So, if you found your way to this blog post before viewing the first 10 blogs, you should start your quest at Figuratively Speeching SLP
• Next Stop on the Blog Hop is a post by SLP for Me, who is guest posting at Figuratively Speeching SLP.  Click on the cute little frog below to continue your quest on the Blog Hop:

9 Parent Tips to Facilitate Their Middle Schooler's Language in the Home {Freebie Handout}

Many of my parents are not aware that they themselves can target their child's language on a more consistent basis than I ever could. This handout was devised to educate parents and let them know that they too have an active role in improving upon their child's language skills. This would be great to give to parents during open school night or parent teacher conferences. 

This by no means is an exhaustive list, just things that I've noticed a majority of my students could use improvement upon. 

Access your handout here

I hope you all find this a useful resource.

Enjoy! 

Workbook Giveaway

The kind folks at Great Ideas For Teaching have agreed to send one of you lucky readers a copy of one of the four activity books that I've reviewed thus far. As these activity books are priced $29 and above, I encourage you all to spread the word!!

To enter the giveaway, please take a look at the bottom of this post. I'd love to hear which of the workbooks you'd like and why. Please note that comments require my approval prior to appearing (this prevents spambots from leaving odd and irrelevant public comments).

Once a winner is announced, they will be contacted and asked to provide a mailing address so that the book may be shipped.

Feel free to take a look at prior book reviews to help with your decisions:
1.  Processing Auditory Messages Exactly and Totally,
2.  Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills
3. Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills
4. Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) 

I recently added the Pinterest hover button to make sharing even easier. Simply hover your mouse over the image of interest and click the red Pinterest image. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Testing Sign {Freebie}

Annual review time is here!

This door sign was created to deter staff and students from banging on the door while an evaluation is taking place. My previous sign apparently wasn't explicit enough, as students would continue to knock and repeatedly turn my door knob (gotta love it).

Please leave a comment if you download :D

Enjoy this freebie!

Click here to download

Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills & Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) {Review}

As this is my first post for 2013 let me just start off by wishing you all a Happy New Year! 

I will be reviewing 2 items from Great Ideas for Teaching that can be utilized to target auditory processing skills for those with higher level abilities. 

Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills ($32) is meant to assist students in learning to interpret events, gaining an understanding of concrete and subtle interpretations, and helping to grasp the main points of each event. Students who have may have trouble working through Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills should check out my review of Auditory Processing of Early Language Comprehension Skills to determine if it would be a better fit.

While looking at an image, students are read a story about the picture. Various questions that gauge specific comprehension skills are then asked. Questions are related to sequencing, context clues, inferencing, as well as time and spatial concepts. 

The review questions are simple and straightforward, requiring students to recall important details from the brief passages (e.g. What is the horse's name?) Questions get progressively difficult as they prompt students to form their own conclusions, separate subtle information amongst stories, make predictions, and retell the story. See below for sample pages. 

               

Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) ($32) includes questions that target similar skills as Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills with an emphasis on sequencing. Images are provided to students as they listen to a two or three part story. There is an abundance of questions provided for users, which I personally appreciated as it saved me some preparation time. Take a look below for a few sample pages. 

I use both books with my students to aggressively target note-taking skills. Middle school is a time to develop and hone the skills needed to succeed in high school, college, and beyond! Instead of having students listen to me read each of the stories, I require them to jot down salient information. Once their notes have been taken, they are encouraged to recap the passage using the information they have recorded. Afterwards, I have a student read the passage back to me while I take my own notes on the whiteboard. This models how students should be taking notes themselves. As a group, we compare their notes with mine and discuss ways to improve upon their notation skills. 

Another important skill I impress upon my students when note-taking is the use of symbols and abbreviations. It was surprising to see how many of my kiddos were trying to write down the sentences verbatim. Text messaging language is a frequent example I use to drive home the benefits of using shorthand. I also found a handout from the University of North Dakota to be a helpful way to introduce and review abbreviations.

There are an infinite amount of resources available for us to utilize with students, but there is also an infinite amount of ways to utilize the resources we already have. Auditory Processing of Higher-Level Language Skills and Comprehending More Complex Auditory Information (Sequencing, Concrete Details, Subtle Clues, Social Language) are both easy to modify and extend into lessons targeting critical thinking, memory, visualization, and so much more!



Disclosure Statement: Great Ideas for Teaching, Inc. provided resources for testing in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed in this review are mine. No other compensation was provided.