The Weekly Review: Week 62

SLP Resource of the Week

Adventures in Speech Pathology has great speech picture cards. She has a card set for every sound including s, r, and l blends. Her card sets are more phonemically advanced than mine. Each sound's card set appears to be a one page .pdf with 12 color picture cards. The picture cards are 1-2 syllable words featuring the target sounds in initial, medial, or final position and the words include vocalic /r/ and blends. These cards are free and are great sets to move to when my phonemically simpler sets have been mastered or if you have a child who starts out ready to work at a level above the CV, VC, CVC level. These sets are great and are definitely worth adding to your collection. (And this blog has so many other wonderful materials for both speech and language activities. It would be well worth your time to check out the depth of material she provides.)

Ava, Michael, and the Weekly Project

Ever since my husband finished installing our very own deck level sprinkler park we've spent every evening on the deck. Once the kids have settled in and Ava's stopped insisting that Michael -not- get her wet, they've had a wonderful time. My husband and I sit way on the other side of the deck on the porch swing and just enjoy watching them play. It's been a perfect series of summer evenings.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

Ava's been working her way through all of her /s/-blends mixed together rather than sorted out. We're also working on /k/ in initial, medial, and final position and /sk/ blends (not mixed in with the rest). She's doing so well. When I think back to all of the variety of cues and scaffolding I needed to do to get a successful blend at the beginning and how exhausted she was after trying just 5-10 words I am amazed that she can zip through 75 in a session with very little cueing now.

Michael is working on /s/ and /f/ in all positions mixed together at the sentence level. He does best with picture cues and I've been trying to figure out a way to give him a wide variety of sentences with picture prompts. I think the flipbook format is going to be the way to go. I made up a test version with initial /s/, but next I'm going to just mix together all of my initial and final /f/ and /s/ cards into one big flipbook.

Weekly Homeschooling

Very little homeschooling went on this week. My husband had the week off in between his old job and the new one he'll start after the holiday and every day has been full to bursting with special projects. We've enjoyed our week together and we'll pick up the homeschooling next week.

Initial S: Free Speech Therapy Articulation Picture Flipbook

Make Your Own Initial /s/ Flipbook From Free Printable

To download click on the image to open it full size. Then right click on the image, choose "save as" and save the page to your computer.

I recommend you print on cardstock and laminate for durability.

Description

This is a modification of my free one-syllable initial /s/ card set. The first 5 cards are designed to be subjects placed into the initial position of the flipbook. The next 6 cards are verbs meant to be placed into the second position of the flipbook. The final 19 cards are objects to be placed into the third position in the flipbook. There are a total of 570 different silly sentences containing 2-3 initial /s/ words that can be made using this DIY flipbook.

Directions for Making the Flipbook

• Print cards on cardstock and cut apart.
• Punch holes in the center top of each card.
• Make a cover and back for your flip book using cardboard or two pieces of cardstock glued together. Punch three holes in the top of your cover and back. (Alternately, just put cards into a 3-ring binder.)
• Put the subject cards in the first hole and tie in place with string, yarn, dental floss, or anything else you have around that will work. Put the action cards in the center spot and the object cards in the final spot.
• Write in some sort of title on the cover and use with students.

You could do this with any of my cardsets. When I had the idea to try to make a flipbook I noticed that most of my cardsets have a few action words and plenty of object words. The sets tend to be light on words that make sense as subjects though. So supplement the subject words you find in any set with the "I, We, You, and They" cards above in first position. Then just sort through the other cards in the set to find additional subject, action, and object words and make as many flipbooks as you'd like.

Permissions

I give permission to copy, print, or distribute this card set flipbook provided that:

1. Each copy makes clear that I am the document's author.
2. No copies are altered without my express consent.
3. No one makes a profit from these copies.
4. Electronic copies contain a live link back to my original and print copies not for merely personal use contain the URL of my original.

Looking for Feedback

I would love to hear back from anyone who uses this card set flipbook. Let me know if you find errors or there is anything you would change. Comment on this page, or send me an email at testyyettrying(at)gmail(dot)com.

Where can I find more?

More sets are on my Free Speech Therapy Articulation Cards page. Other card sets include /p, b, t, d, m, n, h, f, v, k, g, s, l, ch, sh, s-blends, and l-blends/ and more sets are being added regularly.

Card Set Activity and Game Suggestions

1. 10 Card Set Game and Activity Ideas
2. Simple Speech Card Puzzles
3. Speech Card Stories
4. Speech Card Caterpillar
5. Speech Card Game: What's Hiding?
6. Speech Card Game: Speech Switcheroo (An Uno-Style Game)
7. Speech Card Set Activity: Magnetic Speech Cards
8. Speech Card Game: Speech Fours
9. Speech Card Game: Old Maid
10. Speech Card Set Activity: Bang!
11. Speech Card Set Activity: What's Hiding Behind Door Number...?
12. Speech Card Set Activity: Customizing a Homework Sheet

SLPs and Isolation - A Thing of the Past

It took me three years to complete my masters program in speech language pathology because my bachelor's degree and first masters were in different areas. It took three very full years to absorb the vast amount of information necessary to become certified as an SLP. The program must cover the basics to prepare you to work in a wide variety of settings. One SLP might work in a nursing home helping patients with swallowing problems, dementia, and aphasia among other things. Another SLP might work in a hospital settings with trachs and vents, premature babies, or stroke victims (among other things). SLPs are found in the schools and in private clinics working with children who have a wide variety of speech and language needs. The scope of material that must be covered in an SLP program is huge. They also must train you in basic clinical competence in a variety of settings with a variety of client disorders. It is an intense program.

Then, when you get your first job, you are assigned a mentor and you must complete a clinical fellowship year with that mentor before you get your clinical certificate of competence. And then you are on your own. When I graduated in 1999 I worked in the schools. In that setting, you are often the only SLP in your school. Often, you are the only SLP in 2-3 schools. At that time, there weren't really any SLP blogs or websites. ASHA didn't have a huge online presence. There was no Facebook or Pinterest. I remember feeling so isolated.

There were inservice days that brought all the SLPs in the district together, however those days were tightly scheduled according to an agenda that involved continuing education or procedural updates and didn't allow for much unstructured discussion. I remember desperately wanting time to simply talk with other professionals about my students. I had my first student with childhood apraxia of speech and I didn't feel I was doing enough to help her. I had a little girl with a severe fluency problem that I wasn't making much progress on. Did anyone have any really good strategies for sharpening up a lateral lisp? I wanted to trade creative ideas on how to make articulation therapy interesting. Or I would make some materials and not have anyone to share them with.

Today it is such a different world. I no longer feel isolated. If I want to see amazing things other SLPs are doing I can find them on Pinterest or by reading any number of SLP blogs. If I make my own materials I can share them myself on my own blog and know that I'm helping other professionals and parents. It is easy to keep up with ASHA's professional journals in the member section of their website. I can keep up with other sources of research in my areas of interest easily online. It helps me to be so much more creative and better at my profession. It would be pretty amazing to be starting out in this profession today with so many resources available at any computer with an internet connection and I highly recommend these types of resources to any practicing SLP today.


For example, start here:

1. Go to the Pediastaff Pinterest Board on Articulation and click on any picture/idea that looks interesting to you. That should take you to the original blog where Pediastaff found the idea. Then explore that person's blog for other ideas you like.
2. Check out other Pediastaff pinterest boards on other topics (language and grammar, early intervention, apraxia, and many more).
3. Alternately, begin again with any pinterest board that interests you and choose a pin you like. Look at the list of people that have repinned that pin to their own board. Many of those people are SLPs and have boards of all the SLP ideas they like. You can browse those boards and see collections of ideas that appeal to other SLPs. It's a rabbit hole. If you get started, you'll find hours slipping away from you, but I guarantee you'll come out of it inspired.