Pages

Sunday, January 20, 2013

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

Sunday, January 13, 2013

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

Friday, January 11, 2013

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.

Let's Talk Speech & Language review of 2 books targeting higher level auditory processing.


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. 


Let's Talk Speech & Language review of 2 books targeting higher level auditory processing.


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.