Learning to Read is a Ball {Review and Giveaway}

"What can I do to help my child improve their language skills?" This is a common question I hear regularly, especially now that I'm working with preschoolers. Although it may not be a mystery to us in the field, many parents (and other professionals) do not know how or what to do with their little ones when it comes to literacy.

Kimberly Scanlon's book, "Learning to Read is a Ball" is just the type of resource for those who are looking to work on important language skills but are unsure of how to do so.

In this simply illustrated book, you will find a 28-page picture book accompanied by a 17-page parent guide that covers techniques to develop oral language, strategies to improve vocabulary using synonyms and antonyms, methods of increasing print awareness and much more!

One of my favorite illustrations from the book.

Undoubtedly, children will find the illustrations and story line of "Learning to Read is a Ball" captivating. However, I believe the parent guide is the most valuable portion of this book. Not only will it provide strategies and tips to use with "Learning to Read is a Ball", but it also serves as a great jumping-off point for a host of other books!

The parent guide is a handy resource for parents and professional alike

Bottom line, I will definitely be recommending this book to the preschool families I work with. "Learning to Read is a Ball", can also serve as a lovely parting gift for many of my students who are transitioning to kindergarten.

So now that I've gushed over this wonderful book, you're probably interested in getting your hands on it! Lucky for you Kimberly was kind enough to provide a copy for me to giveaway. Enter below with Rafflecopter.


Please note that comments will ONLY appear once I've reviewed and approved them (prevents postings from spam-bots). If your comment doesn't appear immediately, wait a few hours. 



a Rafflecopter giveaway



Disclosure Statement: I was provided a copy of this app by the developer. No other compensation was provided. This review includes solely my opinions.

OverDrive - {App Review}

I love infusing literacy into my therapy sessions. When I don't have the ability to access a desired book I use the OverDrive app. This application allows you to read eBooks, listen to audio-books, and watch videos from your library. And because it's through your library, it's absolutely FREE!

Use the barcode located on your library card to access digital materials

To get started, add your local library to the OverDrive app. Afterwards sign into your library account using your account number and password. Once logged in, users are able to browse books by title, reading levels, subject, etc. 

Searches can be filtered by publisher, reading levels, subject, etc.

Prior to borrowing my book, I was able to view sample pages in my browser

After deciding on a book, users usually have the option of viewing it in a browser or downloading it. I chose to download and view it with my kindle app (I have an iPad). Users will not need a wifi connection to read it after it has been downloaded.

Download your book to Kindle (device or app) or to Adobe e-book reader

My library allows users to borrow up to 10 titles. Materials are usually available for digital loan anywhere between 7 to 14 days. If you need more time with your selections you can also renew them. Below you will find 2 images of an e-book I borrowed and downloaded with the kindle app.

Image 1

Image 2

The app is available for every major desktop and mobile platform, including Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, Kindle, NOOK, Windows 8 PC and tablet, and Windows Phone.

Although nothing can replace the experience an actual book can provide, I love that I don't have to deal with the added clutter they cause in my car and work bag (If you read my previous post, you will recall that I travel throughout the day). 

Do any of you use electronic books in your sessions?

Speech Cards {Review}

Hate not finding flash cards that target specific phonemes or concepts? The Speech Cards Pro app offers a solution. Users are able create their own flash cards as well as utilize the preloaded selection (4 decks with 10 images each).

Home screen with 4 preloaded decks containing 10 images each

Tapping on the image allows users to hear the name of the item on the card. Users are able to make their own recording and compare it to the already recorded target.

Users are able to be given no/full/partial credit

Some things I found useful:

• Users are able to select their own images (24 decks with 20 images per deck)
• Users are able to create their own recordings
• Users are able to create their own text to go along with the image
• Instead of just a "correct" or "incorrect" response, users are able to be given partial credit for their response
• Accumulated data can be emailed to parents/teachers
• If you decide to keep student data over a course of sessions, their performance will be summarized with percentages (Session Summary Reports)

You can choose to discard or keep student/session performance

Users are able to make their own deck with their own images.

I would like to see Speech Cards support more than 12 users (for data collection purposes) as I have way more than that on my caseload.

This app would be great to use to create theme related decks (curriculum, holiday, concepts etc.), sound specific card decks for articulation therapy, reading/sight words/literacy, social stories decks, etc. There are a variety of ways to use Speech Cards, how have you or do you plan on using it?

App Compatibility:

Compatible with the iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.

Disclosure Statement: I was provided a copy of this app by the developer. No other compensation was provided. This review includes solely my opinions. 

One Person's Trash Are My Treasures

A thoughtful friend who works for Penguin Books was cleaning out her book room last week and thought of me! She sent over an assortment of beautifully illustrated picture books. 

As you all probably know by now, I work with middle schoolers. They would undoubtedly not appreciate Ms. Sohan presenting them with “baby” books to read. How could I not have these books go to waste and incorporate them into therapy?

The solution? Cover up the words. Now I don't know about your students, but mine secretly enjoy books that contain pictures (the more the better) as it provides them a reprieve from reading, which many of them dread!

The words can be concealed with pieces of paper, index cards, post-its, etc. The now wordless picture book can be utilized with students who have difficulty with sequencing, story grammar, vocabulary, perspective taking, details/descriptions, cause/effect etc. The pictures will provide students with visual support to aid in the development of their literacy skills. Note, this can be easily viewed as juvenile to some middle schoolers, tread carefully and be creative! For more of a challenge, this can even be turned into a writing activity, where students create sentence for each image as to generate their own narrative.

Those of you who are more tech-savvy can utilize any voice recording program on your device to capture your students narrative (phone, iPad, etc). The narratives can then be replayed between utterances/pages and judged for its syntactical, semantic, and/or sequential appropriateness. Incorporating such technology will definitely serve to motivate even the most disinterested student.

Happy "reading!"