Bus Report Cards
Are behavior goals included in some of your students' individualized education programs? The Speech Ladies offer their system for tracking students' behavior on their bus rides to and from school, along with a free download of their "report card."
"How it works: I give the bus driver a stack of 'report cards' at the beginning of each month. Each morning he checks the appropriate boxes (and sometimes writes notes about the previous afternoon) and gives the paper to the student. The student delivers the paper to me (or classroom teacher) on the way to class each morning. If the student has met his goal at the end of the week, he receives a reward. Simple, effective and easy documentation. I love that it is very concrete and my students know exactly what is expected of them."
Downsized Homework Gets Done
Losing homework seems to be an epidemic among America's school children, and as a result, speech-language homework assigned by SLPs often goes undone. Luckily SLP Erik X. Raj of Detroit has found a remedy: Just shrink the homework papers for portability and bonus "cute factor."
"I came up with the idea to create my own homework worksheets, but instead of making my dittos the size of standard paper, 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall, I made them pocket-sized. These dittos are about the size of a cell phone and have been working GREAT!
"I have been handing out pint-sized homework assignments, and I have found that once the homework is physically in the student's pocket, the black hole cannot make it disappear! Eureka! (And since we speech-language pathologists love data—my homework return rate is now hovering around 80 percent, which is terrific when you compare it to the initial 30 percent.)
"In celebration of my wonderful discovery, I made you some FREE teeny tiny multiple choice articulation question dittos ... These are perfect for students who are working toward improving their initial /s/ sound."
Verbs, Verbs, Verbs
Frustrated by the limitations of leveled readers for some of your students? You're not alone. To better target vocabulary skills of atypical learners, SLP Ruth Morgan of Chapel Hill Snippets has been posting books, apps and observations randomly compiled into one blog post to help fellow SLPs locate some of her found verb treasures.
"I like to make adapted books. The reason for making my own, or adapting the ones I find, is simple—the leveled readers in our school book room simply aren't designed to teach language. Vocabulary is often not controlled, and the syntax structures become too complex early on. The school's books are designed for typical language learners who need to learn to read. My adapted books are designed for kids who may be able to 'word call' a bit, but need to learn sentence structure and vocabulary."
Quality Apps Cost Money
As much as everyone loves free things, the Speech Dudes offer a "contentious" reminder that it's often better to pay for quality:
"In economics, there's a concept known as the 'anchor point.' As the name suggests, it's the selling price at which you drop your anchor when you bring a new product or service to market. Once an anchor is set, new folks tend to cluster around your safe harbor and drop similar anchors. And when people start purchasing products, this anchor becomes the standard against all other similar products are measured. The average price of an app in 2012 was $1.58, which is 87 cents cheaper than a cup of espresso-based coffee.
"The best anchor point for a consumer is usually free. If I want stuff, and the stuff costs me nothing, how bad can that be? Well, the obvious thing is that there's a little thing called quality that gets factored into the equation, but you'd be surprised (or not) how much quality will be sacrificed on the altar of Free. And in the early days of iPhones and iPads, the majority of apps were free—which became, and remains, the anchor."