Tuesday's Treasure Box: Inkless Tales

Elizabeth Bushey is the creator of all games, poems, stories, and much more at Inkless Tales. Her stories, poems, and tongue twisters are perfect for articulation practice. 

I like Hey Diddle, Diddle. Click on each character to talk about actions and more. 

Download finger puppets for the plays, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

Annie's Ice Cream Shop and Emily's Pizza Parlor are great therapy activities. 

Enjoy!

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: Halloween Apps and Apptivities

There are many Halloween themed apps that can be used for a large number of speech and language objectives.  I don't need to tell you about them as many other SLPs have done a great job on their blogs. AND, a few even created Apptivities - activities to use with the apps. 

Check out the list below to find FREE and budget priced apps along with FREE advice as to how to use them. 

Last year, Jeremy Legaspi, told us about 16 Halloween apps and how to use them in therapy on his post,  Appdapted: Halloween Themed Apps, at ASHAsphere.

SPEECH2U posted some of her favorite Halloween apps along with suggestions as to how they can be used at A gazillion Ghoulish Games and Apps. And, her 2012 post, Halloween Masks, tells how she uses the app, Mask Mania and other masks or head gear with a variety of speech and language skills. 

At Technology and Speech Therapy Corner, Heather Strebel, posted a FREE printable barrier game activity to be used with the app Monster Mash Lite. 


Enjoy!

Diana

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Halloween is Just Two Weeks Away and the Pumpkin is Stuck on the Vine: Speech and Language Activities for Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman

My favorite book for Halloween is Big Pumpkin written by Erica Silverman and illustrated by S. D. Schindler. I read this book many times at the request of my own children in the 1990s and am pleased that it is still readily available. 

My students loved the retelling the story with props. Visit The Home Teacher and scroll to the bottom to see her cute story props. Her nomenclature cards can also be used for storytelling. 

At Make Learning Fun, find a story stick, felt board pictures, a word wall, sequencing cards, and more. 

Find this at Chapel Hill Snippets

There are a lot of speech and language opportunities in the FREE Big Pumpkin Reports for students preschool to grades 3 at Teaching Heart.net

Find printable story props, made with Boardmaker, at Chapel Hill Snippets. 

Freda, at Frogs in First, wrote that this book works well when talking about story elements. Characters are clearly defined and there are only two settings and a well designed problem and solution. Check out her graphic organizers created for Big Pumpkin. 

There are eleven FREE activities, made for Big Pumpkin, at Teachers pay Teachers.  

Kat Anderson reads Big Pumpkin on Vimeo. This could be part of a great take-home activity.

Enjoy!!

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: Educreations for Speech and Language

Educreations is an app that I put on my iPad last year, but deleted it after thinking that it looked too much like math J. A few weeks ago a fabulous special education teacher showed me all that she did with the app and I had the need to take a second look.  

A Google search for Educreations provided me with links to math and chemistry tutorials, but searches for Educreations plus kindergarten and Educreations plus speech therapy gave me links to many activity ideas for speech and language therapy. Educreations is a screen-casting tool. It records everything that happens on the screen along with the audio. 

One IMPORTANT thing to know about Educreations is that it is very easy to share a screen-cast with parents through email. 

Tara, the SpeechyKeen SLP uses this app to wrap-up a session with upper-elementary and middle school students. Educreations is a motivating way for her students to give a review of the lesson, demonstrate what they've learned, and share with parents. Visit her post to learn more!

Describe pumpkins or anything else. Visit my description of the pumpkin that I drew here OR even better, listen to a kindergarten student describe his "army ant" at EdTech in Action - Exploring Educreations in Kindergarten.

At Word Work with Educreations by Natalie Keenen, one teacher tells how her students take pictures of themselves or an object in the room and put describing words all over their photo while recording themselves saying the words. 

Adventures in Speech Pathology

You can do so much with this app when working on speech sounds. I save articulation activities from sites such as Ms. Lane's SLP Materials and Adventures in Speech Pathology in my iBooks. Simply open the activity and take a screenshot so that you can add it to Educreations. Students can practice the activity and you can email the samples of work to parents. See my two examples* (wait for the second page) by clicking here. Take photos of your articulation pictures or activities and add them to Educreations. 

ICT with Mrs. C has several good ideas that could be adapted to be used with many speech and language objectives. 

Scroll down the page at Lone Mountain Elementary School to hear students retell the story Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberly. 

I like Storytelling: Minus the Writing at mattBgomez, Kindergarten Teacher.

Educreations can be used as a writing or drawing tool during barrier games. Check out Eggs-actly Descriptive Game Cards at In Spontaneous Speech. 

Read how the SLP at peachy speech used Educreations to teach monthly themes in the areas of social skills and language.

Here is a link to a 10 minute tutorial made with Educreations that tells about all of the features of Educreations. 

I hope that you enjoyed my Tuesday's Treasure Box! If you have used Educreations and have more ideas, please share by leaving a comment. 

Diana

*Examples:

"2 Syllable Words: Loaded Scenes." Adventures in Speech Pathology. N.p., 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 1013.<http://adventuresinspeechpathology.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2-syllable-animal-scene-1.pdf>

"Ms. Lane's SLP Materials: Articulation: Sp Blends Sentence Flash Cards." Ms. Lane's SLP Materials. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.   <http://slpmaterials.blogspot.com/2013/06/articulation-sp-blends-sentence-flash.html>




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Describing Pumpkins

My most popular pin on Pinterest this month has been Pumpkin Observations, describing a pumpkin using your five senses, found at 2 Teaching Mommies. It didn't surprise me to find even more ways to describe pumpkins when I searched the web. (NOTE - This link no longer works, but all links below lead to wonderful describing activities.)

Find Pumpkin Anchor Charts and other ways to describe a pumpkin at My First Grade Backpack.

Create a Wordle with your describing words at Wordle.net. 

The First Grade Parade has several great describing ideas. I love that her students describe the pumpkins using similes.  

Make the pumpkin patch describing activity found at Carrie's Speech Corner.

Describe as you Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents Magazine with this cool app!

Conduct a Pumpkin Investigation at A to Z Teacher Stuff.

Many pumpkin activities, including adjectives to describe the inside and outside of a pumpkin, can be found at Simply Second Grade. 

Making Grammar Fun! -- Adjective Pumpkins! at A Day in First Grade. 

At TpT, there are over 200 describing activities involving pumpkins. Below are three of the more than 25 FREE activities. 
     Pumpkin Description 
     Describing Pumpkins 
     My Pumpkin Adjectives

Diana

© 2013

Tuesday's Treasure Box: i Teach with Technology

I stumbled upon i Teach with Technology when looking for good ideas for app related activities.  I found GREAT activities at Karen Ogen's blog Her language-rich activities are collaborative, hands-on, and use content-creation apps such as Popplet, Puppet Pals, and PicCollage. Karen doesn't have a huge number of posts, but what she lacks in quantity is certainly made up by quality. 

Students used Photo Cards for reflection following a field trip, retold a story using Face Talker, used Puppet Pals for a persuasive writing activity, and sorted solids, liquids, and gases using PicCollage.  

The blog isn't limited to app activities. Karen also shares teacher tools and websites. Pass on her Interactive Learning Sites for Education to parents and teachers. 

Enjoy!

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: TEACHERS pay TEACHERS

TEACHERS pay TEACHERS is my Tuesday Treasure as I have recently talked to several SLPs that did not know about TpT and a few others who did not venture to TpT as they thought that they would have to "pay" for all items. 

TEACHERS pay TEACHERS is a wonderful resource for materials. Not only can you find materials made by SLPs (who understand what we do), you can also find many curriculum based activities that show us what our students/clients are doing in their classrooms. Many materials are FREE and most others are very inexpensive. 

Two nights ago, I put "speech therapy" into the search box at TpT and found 8694 items. Of those, 2070 were FREE and 5583 were under $5.00.  

You can search by grade level, price and subject.  You will find white board activities, all kinds of forms for data and lesson plans, and any kind of speech / language activity imaginable.

Learn how to navigate TpT by visiting SLPs on TPT Resource List, a November 2012 post at Speech Room News. In addition to navigation tips, you will find a list of 83 SLP TPT Stores.  

Enjoy!

Diana

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