Back to School Update

Lovely readers, I apologize for my delays in posting. As with most of you, I'm caught up with adjusting to the beginning of the school year. In upcoming weeks I plan on reviewing a few apps and adding my two cents as it pertains to middle school.  For now I want to share a few updates with you!

As most of you know, I've been placed in a larger room this year. I'm slowly beautifying it and organizing myself. This post will mostly cover my upgrades to the room, but will also cover a recent purchase (read on!) that I am very proud of.

One corner of my spacious room

This year I decided to purchase pocket charts to organize my students folders. I bought two pocket charts, using one for my 7th graders and the other for my 8th (located at the base of the chalkboard in the picture).  Each pocket was labeled by student class. This pocket chart organizational structure makes it much easier for students to find their work compared to the one large bin I has used last year. Feel free to ask about anything going on this corner.

Now on to the other corner!

The other corner of my room. I have a sink!

Notice the pink and blue student behavior charts. I've entered all my female students names on the pink chart and male students on the blue chart. After each session, if a student conducted themselves accordingly (followed directions, participated, demonstrated effort etc.), they receive a sticker for the day. Those who accrue five stickers will have earned a prize. This year, the prize options are Hershey's Chocolate Bars or Twizzlers (for those with chocolate and peanut allergies). I did this last year and it proved to be quite motivating. For those who required a great deal of motivation, I used student performance cards in conjunction with this behavior chart.

My bulletin board before its finishing touches.

After the final touches. Ta-da!

This year I put up a bulletin board in my room and created a post about it a few weeks ago. Since then I've added a few finishing touches on it. As you may (or may not) notice, I've outlined my popcorn with a black marker, as to make it "pop" more, also I stapled all the letters as opposed to securing them with thumbtacks. Lastly, I've added a hyphen in between "Speech" and "Language." What do you think?

Colorful circles cut out of construction paper.

 These Pinterest inspired circles are my recent obsession! After tracing circles of varying colors and sizes I pasted them on top of each other other and stuck them to the front of my desk. I've added them to my widows and doors as well. They add a bit of cheeriness to the room without being too cheesy for my middle school students. 

Love this hot and cold laminator, purchased for just under $20!

The purchase of my hot and cold laminator has really excited me. I'm now able to preserve all the wonderful checklists, activities, cartoons and seasonal images that I find on Pinterest!

Purchased this joke book today for $2.50 at Five Below.

I love finding joke and riddle books, as it is a great way to target higher level thinking with my students. It is a great way to end if your session runs a bit short. I'm very excited about using the one I purchased today.

What and how have you been adjusting to the school year? Stay tuned for my future app reviews.

Performance Cards

I was organizing my materials today and came across something that I began using towards the end of the year and will definitely continue with for the next. Speech performance cards!

Speech performance cards are used for students who need that extra incentive to cooperate during therapy sessions. Many of them were aware of the fact that they would not receive a grade for therapy and as a result didn’t put in much effort. For these students, I approached their teachers about having their performance in therapy play a role in their classroom grade. Luckily, the teachers were onboard!

At the end of a session, each student would receive a “grade” between 1 (lowest) and 5 (highest). I made sure to outline behaviors that can earn a score of 5. After a couple sessions I began to ask each of my students, “What do you think you deserve today?” They would also be prompted to tell me “why” e.g. “I think I should get a 4 because I was participating, and didn’t call out, but I was giggling with Andrew.” It was great to see the level of insight and awareness they had developed regarding the behavior of themselves and their peers!

After a “grade” was provided on the speech card, the student presented it to their teacher. The teacher would then incorporate it into their grade for the day (usually towards participation).

I found this to be a very useful system as students not only gained motivation to participate because they would get a “grade”, they also had to share the information with their teacher which further served as an incentive to perform and cooperate.

For those of you who need to add a bit more motivation into the mix I provide a sticker on a behavior chart for students who receive a 5 for the day. Students who receive 5 stickers in a row get a prize (I found candy bars to be super desirable)!

After using this system for a few days I began to have non-speech kiddos requesting to be seen for therapy!

What are some effective systems and techniques you’ve found to motivate your reluctant students?

Click here to download

If you download a copy of these editable performance cards, leave me a comment and let me know how it works out! 

Too Loud? {Review}

Although I’ve been spending time with preschoolers this summer, I frequently think about my middle schoolers (crazy isn’t it?) and the beginning of the academic year in September. Recently, I have been trying to brainstorm potential tools and/or methods I can implement to improve management of my speech groups. In my earlier post I discussed the use of a stopwatch to help students become more independent in their time management abilities. That got me thinking about what can be done to manage students’ loudness. There have been frequent instances where I’ve had to remind excitable groups to “keep it down” or individual students to bring their voices down. One student, lets call him “Dennis”, has a very difficult time judging his vocal volume. Don’t worry, the first thing I checked was to see if he passed his audiological assessment, and indeed, he has. Consequently, his peers tell him to “stop yelling” or on occasion “shut up” (kids can be harsh). 

This brings me to today’s post. It is a free app called TooLoud? The developers advertise this app as a tool to assist in determining environments that are potentially harmful to your hearing. For a classroom teacher or clinician this provides a great visual that aids in student management of group or individual loudness levels. A numerical value measuring the decibel (dB) is displayed along with a live line graph and sliding bar that indicates the environmental increase/decrease in noise.

Live line graph provides real-time representation of noise

TooLoud? can be calibrated to establish a baseline, as it recommends you set its slider in a room that measures 25dB. 

The app prompts you to calibrate in a silent room

Levels of loudness that are deemed “dangerous” or too loud are indicated by a red line graph and bar. Additionally, a warning will appear on the screen.

When the app detects it is too loud, red will appear, along with this warning

To serve as motivation, I plan on offering a reward to individuals or groups who are able to stay out of the “red” for the duration of their therapy session. TooLoud? can also be used to have students “catch” or point out when their peer is in the red.

Not only do the visuals provided by this app help students to monitor and manage their own loudness, but they serve to increase their awareness about noise in general. After using this a few sessions my hope is that “Dennis” and his peers will be more cognizant of not only their loudness, but safe listening habits

App Compatibility:

TooLoud? is available for download to the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. For those of you have a projector in your possesion, the iPad can be easily connected and projected onto a screen/wall. Unfortunarely, I have an Android operating system on my phone and am unable to access this app on it.  I guess I’ll be using my iPad for now!

Online Stopwatch

The academic year is winding down, and I’ve begun to take a retrospective look at my performance during this school year as an SLP. Was I effective in my therapeutic execution? Did I utilize my time wisely? Did I manage the behaviors of my students efficiently? Although the first two questions are very important, I couldn’t help but focus on the third. This was my first year working in a school with a reputation for having a “difficult to manage” student body. Since I service students in groups of 5, the staff felt that there would be no difficulties with behavior management.  Maybe it was wishful thinking on their part, but boy, were they wrong!

Many students have time management difficulties that often affect others in the group.  As our whole group has to wait for “Richard” to complete his independent work prior to us moving on. This resource is a website that offers various online stopwatches available for use on your PC or smartphone. Instead of having the constant time-keeping responsibility, this site allows for the responsibility to be shared. Typically, I vocalize the amount of time that will be set, turn the monitor (or phone) to the students and begin the timer. 

Once the time on the stopwatch has elapsed, it will make a sound that will alert everyone that time is up. It is worth nothing that some of my easily distracted students spend their activity time watching the stopwatch count down rather than attending to their task. I recommend looking over at your group occasionally to ensure that students aren’t zoning out on the image.

   

Users are not limited in the type of visual they can utilize, the site offers an assortment of options, ranging from an egg timer, a bomb, a candle, runners, and even swimmers!

 

Site Compatibility:

I personally have an Android operating system on my phone and find that the site works well. This site however, would not be beneficial for iPad users, as the iPad does not have the Adobe Flash compatibility.

Well, that’s it for now. Let’s hope this week is quick and painless, as Friday is our last day of this school year!