Simple BTS Games-No Materials Needed!

So it's that time again.  August has rolled around and here we are, ready to face another school year.  First off, where did the summer go?  I always wonder.  If you are like me, some years the beginning of school seems to come upon me much faster than I every expect and before I'm even prepared, it's time for my first day of therapy.  Some years in the past my caseload was so high, I didn't have enough time to fully unpack and get organized before the first day.  So I've had to improvise.  If you too are one who needs to improvise this year, and looking for a little help, here are a few quick easy therapy activities/games you can do with your kiddos the first week of therapy with minimal or not materials.

1.  Getting to Know You: 
Materials:  None are necessary, but paper/chalkboard/dry erase board are optional.
Purpose:  Simple game to use as an ice breaker returning from the summer time.  You can use this game also as a means of dynamic assessment for your students communication skills.
How to play:  Ask your students 10 simple questions about themselves. Examples, "What is your favorite color/food/song?", "What did you do over the summer?", "Do you have pet(s)? If so, names, types of animals?, "Tell me about your favorite book"., etc.  You can write their answers on the board if you have one. Have your students begin on one end of your tx room/hallway, and with each question answered correctly they can take a step forward (as big as they can).  The goal being they need to reach you/the other side of the room/end of hallway by the time they answer the 10th question.  Easy peasy!

2.  Summer Artwork:
Materials:  One piece of paper for each child, crayons/markers/colored pencils, file folder.
Purpose:  Simple directions game with goal to determine your students' ability to give adequate directions and follow directions.  Students will be directing other students on how to draw a picture that represents their summer fun.
How to play:  Each student receives a blank piece of paper.  Place file folders between students so they cannot see each other's papers. Have students take turns giving another student directions of items to draw.  Have them include the object name, color of object, and location on the paper to draw item.  By the end of the exercise, students should have drawn a picture that represented other student's summer fun!  Perfecto!

3.  "I'm thinking of...":
Materials: None are necessary, if you have objects/pictures present you can use those for support.
Purpose:  This is a type of 20 questions game.  The goal is for the students to accurately describe objects and other students to give logical suggestions based on those descriptions.  You can assess your students ability to define objects based on their function, size, color, material, location, etc. (assessing use of attributes).  You can also assess auditory comprehension skills of other students by listening to descriptions and making logical guesses.
How to play:  It's played exactly the way you are thinking.  Each student thinks of an object and describes it.  The other student(s) take turns guessing the item being described.  You can add to this game by choosing a category from which the students much choose their object or giving a limit to the number of guesses or the number of descriptions provided.  Just have fun with it!

4.  Sing it!:
Materials:  None are necessary
Purpose:  Language fun in music.  You can also assess some articulation skills dynamically.
How to Play:  Give the students a word or (if working on articulation, an initial or final sound) and let them take turns signing songs with that word (or a word with that chosen sound stated first) in it.  The student who can come up with the most songs wins.  

Ok so these are simple basic games you can do quickly and with minimal or no materials.  It's an easy way to get back into the swing of things, get come great dynamic assessment information regarding your students' skills after a summer off from therapy, and just have fun!

Have a great new year!

Back to School Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Back to School SLP Blog Hop!

You will get the chance to collect great back to school ideas for SLPs, win prizes and get freebies by touring 17 fantastic blogs!

Use the Linkytools at the bottom of this post to hop around the 17 participating blogs, collect ideas and the clues!

Can you believe it's that time again?  Summer is coming (or has come for some of you) to a close and the new school year is looming ahead.  So what better time to have a blog hop?

The activity I am going to share with you today is a whole class activity and its great for SLPs that will be pushing into classrooms and providing whole class lessons.  I love it because I think its a great way to find out how our students think about themselves, what they like about themselves and how they can find something good in others.

This is an example of the activity. As you can see I filled out the "Awesome" sheet and my 3 year old told me what he thought was cool about me. Awww...so sweet!  Kind words feel good!!! 

So what do you need for this activity?

• paper bags (lunch sacks)-1 for each student
• writing instruments-could be crayons, markers, pencils, pens, etc. 
• "I'm awesome because" paper, (one for each student stapled/glued/taped to the closed lunch sack)
• "I think it's cool" strips, copied and cut...at least slip one per child times the number of children in your class
• If your students are going to be cutting out the "I think it's cool strips" you'll need scissors too

What do you do?

This is a positive affirmation activity.  Students will leave their classroom with a bag full of complements from their peers and teachers.

Grab your "I'm Awesome Because..." Freebie here!

Every child gets a closed lunch sack with the "I'm awesome because" paper taped/glued or stapled to the bag.  Each child will fill out their forms with the information about themselves.  You can decide if you want the students to share their answers with a buddy (this would be a great task for social skills and when working on voice).  They can place the completed paper bags (open) on a back table in the classroom.  Either during this specific lesson time, or at various times during the rest of the school day (depending on how you want to do this), students can go to the back of the room, read their peers bags and fill out an "I think it's cool" strip for EACH of their peers.

Grab your "I think It's Cool" Freebie here!

By the end of the day, each child should have a paper bag full of really cool complements!  Keep in mind for some of these students (particularly the students with difficult behaviors or social skills issues) this may be  the only time they receive compliments from their peers so this can really be a nice activity for these students in particular.

What can be targeted?

This activity is so great because you can work on so many different goals:

a.  articulation, fluency, decoding can all be targeted in reading

b.  phonological awareness, spelling, encoding, literacy can be targeting in writing

c.  social skills (teaching our children with ASD to give compliments about something their peer wrote on their bag may be very tough for some of our kids so you may need to be there to help them form a nice compliment to their peers)

Check out all the cool prizes you could win on the Rafflecopter widget below!!!!!

The rules of the contest are simple:
* You must decode a secret message
* In order to complete this task, you will need to visit each of the 16 blogs and find the OWL CLUE
* The OWL CLUE will include one word that is part of the code. 
* You can enter the contest through Rafflecopter below or you can enter by heading back to Figuratively Speeching SLP's blog.  REMEMBER you will be asked to type in the secret code so write down all the words and unscramble the clue. 
The contest will run from: August 11th-17th

Enjoy reading through the blogs, downloading the freebies, and participating in our Blog Hop! Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My secret word is:

Happy Talking and Blog Hopping!!!

Tip Tuesday: Show me the data linky!

If you've been following Crazy Speech World's data collection link up, you know there are a number of brilliant SLPs out there streamlining their data collection in the most efficient means possible for their particular setting.  If you haven't checked the linky party yet, do so.  You may just be inspired to or can grab a few free data collection forms you could try!!!

I started writing this blog post before I knew about this link up in response to a follower requests on wanting to know how I keep data.  This link up just happened to fall at the perfect time for me to get this blog post finished so I could share it.  So here goes nothing!!!!

Ok so as school is beginning soon, I know as SLPs out there, you are gearing up for ALL the paperwork that must be completed BEFORE you can even see one student.  I had a request for some posts on how I track data and progress and then Jenn over at Crazy Speech World decided to host this linky party so I thought it was perfect time to share with you what I did when I was working in the schools.

My Lesson Plan:

I have very specific district data forms that I needed to fill out on every student.  However I needed some type of form where I could update lesson plans on a weekly basis and could keep track of my data.  So I made these lesson plans below.

This is an example of what my lesson plans looked like (all the names and goals are fictitious!)!  I simply created a word table each week...one table for each day of the week.

• As you can see I organized it by time I saw the students and which students were in the group I pulled on that day and time (the first column).  
• The second column is for the IEP objectives for each student.  
• The third column is where I planned the lesson/activity.  For my younger kiddos I would typically have at least 2 activities to keep their attention, but for older kiddos usually 1 activity was all we could get through in a 20 minute session.  This is also the column I changed and updated each week to show my new lessons which of course reflected the changes and improvements in my students's skills.  
• The final column is for data collection.  I always tried to type in all the necessary information (in my own shorthand) to keep data so I could save time tracking data during the session.  I also add a few spaces for extra notes I want to take.  Often times I used the margins as well, especially when taking qualitative data.   

If a student was absent, at the nurses office, in assembly, field trip etc. I would write in big letters across the row so I had a paper trail as to why I didn't see that student that particular day.

All of this information was then transferred to the district required data sheet (always kept my lesson plans as a paper trail just in case the school ever had a mediation or due process situation I had to be part of).  I usually transferred from am students's info during lunch and my pm students's info at the end of the day.  The district sheet recorded progress on a point scale,but I always wrote a narrative of the activity and detailed description of the qualitative and quantitative data for a student just in case I ever had to explain what I did with a student on a particular date.

I had worked with younger kiddos where I lost time walking students to and from the therapy room so I had to build in extra minutes in my day for "transportation".  However, a co-worker, who serviced older school-age students was able to save some time but making her students (with the classroom teacher's help) responsible for walking to the therapy room on their own.  So she didn't have to add any additional time for transportation.

When working with teachers/aides taking data:

Isn't it the BEST when you have a teacher that is willing to help track their student's speech progress?!

I worked with some wonderful classroom teachers who were willing to do just this.  How did I get them to do this you ask? Here are my tips:

1. Keep things as simple as possible by providing all materials needed for tracking
2. Ask staff to decided what time of day (what activity) would be the easiest time for them to track (it was usually during their small group time)
3. Randomly check the data sheets during class time and ask the teacher every few days how the student is doing in the classroom (a little bit of accountability always helps!)

So what was my system? (I cannot take credit for this system...an early childhood teacher I worked with helped me with this b/c she is brilliant!)

• Each student had their own folder.
• Inside their folder was a classroom data collection sheet (like the example below)
• I gave the teachers sheets of blank labels hooked to a clip board (usually only 1 sheet at a time b/c those things are pricey and if they are only tracking data for a few kids, it will take a while to go through 1 sheet...plus I LOVED when they asked me for more label sheets...means they are keeping data).
• Each day they took data (I was happy with 1-2 days a week...lets be realistic here!), they would write it on one of the labels and place the label in of the of boxes on the data collection sheet.
• I'd check the sheets periodically (gave them new sheet and labels when needed) and kept the completed sheets to show at IEP meeting time.  This is a GREAT way to show parents speech is NOT done in a vacuum and that the entire staff is really trying to help their child grow and learn.

(Keep in mind you may have to train a teacher or aide how to take data and what they are looking for before putting this system into place)

Why did I use labels instead of having them write directly ON the data sheet?  I have found its much easier for a teacher to carry around 1 clipboard during the day than several different student folders (then taking the time to open the folders, pull out the sheet, take the date, put back in the folder, etc....not going to happen!) Sometimes teachers are actually taking data on numerous kiddos at one time or in various situations so its much easier for them to take data in the moment (wherever they are on their labels sheets clipped to the clipboard) and simply transfer at the end of the day (or when they had time) by just sticking the labels on the correct student's sheet.  This just seemed to be the way that worked so I ran with it! :)

And that's it!  Those are the two primary ways I tracked progress in the school setting.  Want your copy of this classroom data sheet?  Well you can grab it here!!!

In private practice I am back to writing good ol' fashioned SOAP notes.  I tend to write a lot and I have tried a narrative type form previously however I didn't feel like it was super efficient.  So I recently decided to change my SOAP note form.  This is what I came up with.  Not sure how I'm going to like it yet but I'll try it out for a while and see.

Want a copy of this SOAP note?  You can grab it here!

Anyway, that's how I track data!  I hope you enjoyed this post and this link up.  I know I've really enjoyed reading all the other posts and great ideas out there!!!!

How do you take data?  Let us know your system by commenting below!!!

Happy taking...and tracking!!!