Speech therapy for older children with articulation disorders can be challenging. Here are some tips for assessment, treatment, and carryover.

Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The

sign me up now! Find helpful ideas and engaging resources to support your special education students! And get back to doing more of what you love, teaching! DISCOVER IDEAS FIND INSPIRATION SAVE TIME ENGAGE STUDENTS

One sensory system, often under-recognized but important, is the vestibular system. Download a free poster with vestibular activities.

Tips and techniques for teaching the vowel sounds to your child.

Autism effects a wide spread demographic. One therapy that is often sought out to help those effected with Autism. ABA refers to Applied Behavior Analysis. It used to be referred to as behavior mod…

As the school year is winding down and you are thinking about all of the new things to include in your daily routine next year keep reading!!! The Expanding Expression Tool is an AMAZING resource that has helped my students become not only better writers but better communicators too. The Expanding Expression Tool or EET is used as a multi-sensory approach to improve oral and written language. Okay...so what does it look like and how does it work? Let's check it out..... What it looks like?: How does it work?: Each part of the EET serves a purpose. Check out the chart below to see what each color stands for. How can you use this to improve oral and/or written language? 1st- Select an item 2nd- have a student describe it 3rd- introduce EET 4th- have the student describe the item again and be amazed!! Example: You show the student penguin. They may say it's an animal that lives in the cold. After introducing EET the student will be able to share a lot more about the penguin. They will be able to tell you..... green/group: Animal blue/do: swim, walk/waddle, eat, lay eggs what does it look like?: black and white what is it made of?: comes from an egg pink/parts: flippers, bill, feathers, neck, eyes, webbed feet, claws white/where: Antarctica, zoo what else do you know?: males sit on eggs, mates for life, waddle and swim As the students get used to this their overall oral and written language will improve tremendously. You can use this tool in a variety of ways including, direct instruction, para led station, writing center, homework and more!! After my students were comfortable with EET, I set up an EET station in my classroom in lieu of my traditional writing center. You can even differentiate within EET. You may have some students who are just working on stating 1 word answers, but you can also have students practice responding in full sentences. Student 1 Example: Green/Group: animal Student 2 Example: Green/Group: The penguin belongs to the animal group. Overall, EET has been an amazing tool for my students and a wonderful additional to my classroom. We use this resource but you can also check out Teachers Pay Teachers for more. Or you can check out the original kit here! I hope you are able to implement EET into your day next year!! Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I have learned (the hard way) that not all social skill deficits are one & the same. In an effort to save time, I tried to have grade level social skills groups. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but once my groups got underway it became pretty clear that the children in my groups had very different skill sets. There I was, trying to save time by teaching all of my students social skills at the same time. While struggling to meet the needs of my students and keep them engaged, I had to ask myself, 'Was

Do you have students that continually forget to bring a pencil to class, misplace their homework, blurt out irrelevant comments, and struggle following multi-step directions? These difficulties can all be traced to working memory mishaps. What is Working Memory? Working memory is a cognitive functioning that enables students to remember and use relevant information to complete an activity. It also enables learners to hold multiple pieces of information in the mind and manipulate them. It is often described as a mental workspace that helps students stay focused, block distractions and stay abreast of their surroundings. How Does a Weak Working Memory Impact Students? Working memory difficulties will impact the following: Reading comprehension Mental math Understanding social interactions Completing homework Planning and preparing for activities Solving multi-step directions Writing essays and reports Following a conversation Test preparation Turning in homework Following and participating in group discussions What are Some Key Symptoms of Working Memory Difficulties? Trouble comprehending a story Difficulties memorizing math facts Problems making and keeping friends Requires many prompts to complete homework Forgets needed materials at home and at school Fails to follow all the directions and work is often incomplete Struggles with organizing ideas before writing and the finished product is often incomplete and messy Makes irrelevant comments and changes the topic of discussion Difficulties maintaining focus Misplaces things like pencils, notebooks, and homework Leaving studying for tests to the last minute How Can Students Improve Working Memory? Providing fun and engaging activities that require attention, mental manipulation, and following directions such as Red Light, Green Light, memory games and treasure hunts can help. However, ready-made activities that develop working memory activities can save preparation time. Come get some FREE SAMPLE ACTIVITIES. I hope you found this post helpful. If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave a comment. Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Go Dyslexia, in Ossining, NY. To learn more about her products and services, you can go to https://godyslexia.com/, www.goodsensorylearning.com, www.dyslexiamaterials.com & www.learningtolearn.biz

This worksheet addresses the basic language concept of "not." One of my kids can identify what doesn't belong from a field of 3-4, but it's harder to decide what is "not" in a category when there are only two choices. What's even harder will be alternating between asking what IS and what IS NOT in a given category! We will get to that soon! Click here to download!

I think we are ready! The schedule is done and we will have our first social skills group on Tuesday, the first day of school. Just in case the students have forgotten what the expected behaviors…

Problem Solving Activity: Develop your own question checklist using this tool. Structured questions for broad and deep analysis of your problem.

Prompting Hierarchy- How I got duped! What you need to know about the prompting hierarchy. Snag the infographic and info perfect for working with your staff!

Our Spelling dictation words this week are focusing on plurals. I'm a bit worried about introducing this concept with ELL learners, so I th...

Teaching morphology can be a great way to help students with understanding unknown words, decoding multisyllabic words, and spelling.

Making anchor charts has always been hard work for me. In fact, I never liked making anchor charts for the classroom. I did it because it helps the kids, but I am not a fan of my handwriting, my drawing is even worse, and let's not even talk about the time it takes to make nice looking anchor charts. As teachers, we do not possess much of that thing called, "time." I mean really, I found myself shoving down carrots and ranch dressing (because I want to be healthy) then devouring allll the chocolate (because I really don't care about healthy anymore) while making anchor charts. 30 minutes later, lunch was done, anchor chart almost complete...and oops...I misspelled the title. I mean really? Rip it off the chart paper pad, throw it in the trash, and rush out the door. Unfortunately, I didn't wise up for a long time. 8 years of teaching...and a light bulb goes off. Pre-make the anchor charts. In the comfort of my own home...I make the anchor chart...on the computer. Then print, and glue! Done, done...and done. Now...I still eat all the chocolate, but now I get lunch and I am no longer in the need of anger management courses over misspelled words. I may sound like a crazy person to you...but I know you have been there too. Honesty is the best policy. :) Now, I KNOW I am not the first one that has ever pre-made anchor charts, or printed items off of the computer for an anchor chart. I am in NO way claiming to be the first to do this. But, I have been a TpT seller for a few years now and the idea just popped into my head..."if I make all of my centers, lessons plans, etc...why not anchor charts?" And there you have it. Below are a few of the anchor charts I have made and so far I love them and other teachers are loving them. I waited to do this post until I knew others found a need for these too! And yes! I was not alone! It was confirmed I was not crazy and other teachers, in fact, DO have anger problems when it comes to making hand-made anchor charts. Many people have asked what products are needed to make these. I purchased my chart paper and Astrobrights paper from Amazon. Those two things (well, with scissors and glue) are all you need! Each Anchor Chart also comes with a student journal chart as well! The students can glue these in their journals for an easy reference later! I have also completed my Writing and Grammar Anchor Chart Bundles. And newly added, I have completed Classroom Management Anchor Charts! These are also included in the big bundle...if you have purchased that, just redownload it from the My Purchases tab on TpT. I figured these would be very beneficial to make at the beginning of the year with our students then either hang them up all year as a reminder...or just pull them out to review from time to time. Just depends on the students. :) There are many more but I won't bore you with all of the pictures. I feel like Classroom Management must be explained from the beginning and reinforced often. I know these anchor charts will help keep that process streamlined in your classroom! Making these are fun and easy! Most importantly, it saves time and SANITY. Want these for your classroom? Click Here to grab them in my shop! (affiliate links are provided for your convenience)

Fluency (or stuttering) therapy is an area that many SLPs feel under-prepared to serve. While you may have had an excellent professor on the subject in grad school, it tends to be a lower incidence

Write better pediatric occupational therapy SOAP notes to speed up the documentation process and get paid faster.

I was in a heated IEP meeting one time, and a teacher angrily blurted out, 'What do you want from me? Do you want me

Understanding Executive Functioning Checklists are often used to help students who struggle with executive functioning, but research shows that pairing pictures with lists is critical to their effectiveness. Executive functioning is a key to students' success

This is a follow up to my previous post about getting students to answer WH questions. Knowing how to answer questions isn't enough. After students have basic question answering skills they need to apply those skills to comprehension and fact recall questions. After all, that's what we need to be able to do in conversation. There are lots of ways to do this. I like to start at the level of sentences and work my way up. It's actually amazing how many of my kids can't do the following task: Read the story "Cindy has a small yellow car." Who has a car? What color is the car? Is the car big or small? Although, no longer surprised, when my student's can't do this, I'm always amazed at how they make it through the school day. So much of our learning is through auditory input and we test it by requiring them to answer questions. Link to document is below. There is a lot of practice material at the sentence level out there. Super Duper has a Auditory Memory for Details in Sentences deck that isn't in my possession, but is on my wish list. Their Auditory Adventures Pack does have a few pages of practice material at this level. As I am working on this skill with groups of 3-4 students, I quickly ran out of practice material. As a solution, so I made a list of my own. The Google Doc is here. After kids pass the sentences level there are lots of things you can do. Super duper has a bunch of other card decks that I use frequently. The Auditory Memory for Short Stories is great for elementary ages, where the Auditory Memory For Science Stories and the Auditory Memory for Science Stories are great for my 6th through 8th grade students. The No-Glamour Listening Comphrension Book by Linguisystems has a lot of stories at varying levels. As fun as the fancy card decks and materials are, my absolute favorite thing to use in therapy is picture books. There are so many questions you can ask about the stories and they are a GREAT way to engage kids in the therapy sessions. My favorite series are the Clifford and Bernstein Bears book. I love Clifford for the variety of topics, the clear sentences have the right amount of content and the pictures are great for lower levels of questions in mixed groups. Bernstein Bears are a little more wordy, and you will spend more time reading, but they are FANTASTIC for discussing social skills for your middle and higher functioning autism students. (I pair them with the Berenstein Bears Learn to Share Game and have been getting excellent connections). For older kids I really enjoy the Dorreen Cronin Books. They have just the right amount of higher level vocabulary for good dicsussion with some of my lower level and ELL students. I have been doing push in sessions in a 5th grade special education / ELL groups and these books have been a huge hit. We did Duck for President during their Government unit and they all had a lot of fun. I've done a couple of her other books with them and they really enjoyed them. Another big hit was a Christmas Present from a friend of mine. It was a great book for discussing what was happening, the effects of large amounts of penguins and making predictions about what would happen if more penguins kept arriving. I did it about a month ago and my students are still talking about it! I recommend it for grades 4-6. I'm entering to win free apps and you should too! And another app giveaway

Here is another worksheet addressing the language concept of "not." This is a difficult concept to target, which is why I have made so many materials to work on it! Lots of repetitive practice is needed. You could also work on this using a set of real life objects (e.g., "Give me everything that is NOT blue. Give me all of the dolls that are NOT boys"). Click here to download!

Teach students about the many different types of analogies with this anchor chart. Student participation is included in the completion of this anchor chart!

So, YAY! We finally sold our house and moved! What a big job...and time zapper! Thankfully we were able to find a great rental (and by great I mean good neighborhood, clean, good size, etc.) close by until we are able to move closer to home (Vermont!) Of course, with all the moving I've had very little time to blog! However, I took a little time today and got a new product up on TeachersPayTeachers - an irregular verb foldable graphic organizer. It's more of a resource, than anything else, but I'm already seeing my students pull it out and use it - so that's what I consider SUCCESS!! Like my other FGOs, there are several choices to pick from to print, so it allows for easy differentiation! To buy this graphic organizer, head on over to my TeachersPayTeachers Store!

Conjunctions are joiners or connectors that bring together words, phrases, and clauses. A few of these important words follow: And But Or Nor So For Until After Because Since To teach my son about how these words are used, I created an activity we'll be able to do again and again, with a template I'll use for practicing other skills too. To get started I printed several pages of these right and left hands. Download a 1-page PDF here. I used colored papers, but that's not necessary. After they were printed, I laminated and cut them out (including the hole inside the hand); yes, this is a bit of a pain but with a small craft knife, it went rather swiftly. Once my hands were done, I cut some small strips of paper. Now I got busy writing parts of sentences on right and left hands with a fine-tip dry-erase marker. I also wrote the conjunction that would join them on the blank slips of paper. Here are some of the sentences I used: During the race I swam and ran. I got today's mail and put it on the desk. Mom was tired after exercising at the gym. I stayed awake until the sun came up. Molly hated peas because they never stayed on her spoon. Do you want popcorn or peanuts? I do not like broccoli so I chose corn instead. By laminating, the dry-erase markers wipe clean making the hands reusable! When my son came home from school we read a great book by Brian P. Cleary. I'm a huge fan of his Words are CATegorical series and this book delivered the same whimsical illustrations I expected with the simple, clear definition of conjunctions my son needed. My son also watched Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction" video; I remember it from when I was a kid. This little song is certainly handy (and mighty catchy too; my son was singing it later that evening)! With the hands laid on the table, it was up to my son to determine which conjunction was missing and join the hands together by looping the paper with the conjunction through the hands and stapling it. My son made quick work of the task and was excited to have joined the sentence fragments with the correct conjunctions. Next time, I might scramble the fragments to make the exercise more challenging for him.

Kids and young adults need extensive practice in strengthening their executive functioning skills. Executive functions are the processes in our brains that help us accomplish all tasks from beginning to end. We use them when we plan our day, organize our materials, begin a chore, focus on important

We all try to be Flexible Thinkers. Ask your child “What was your flexible thinking moment today?”

When teaching a phonics skill it’s often helpful to use a key word and picture to help the students remember the sound to the letter combinations. For the or/ore/oar phonics bundle, my fabulous artist created “corn” themed borders and game boards and they turned out absolutely adorable! This phonics bundle contains 11 hands-on activities for teaching […]

Social scripts, also known as stories, are one of the most effective and simple ways to provide support to kids with autism. A social script is a short narrative written in first person that discusses one problem situation. So, they come in especially handy for really any situation that comes up. So

Free Printable preposition game for toddlers and preschoolers to help develop gross motor skills, fine motor skills, vocabulary and visual discrimination.

What are phonological processes and phonological delay? Read to find out.

I am going to use this worksheet with one of my clients who is working on using correct personal pronouns. Such a difficult skill to master especially in children with autism! I usually give a lot of cues at first, such as asking "Is it a boy or a girl?" and then having a visual chart that shows boy = he, girl = she, 2 people = they. Click here to download!

Now, this is a concept that is new to me. I found out last week that a colleague of mine uses this method with her class of special ed kid...