Testy yet trying

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Speech Card Set Activity: Initial F - I Have Who Has

I Have, Who Has? is a great game for speech practice. It is a quick-paced, cooperative game that keeps all students engaged, paying attention, and producing target words in a carrier phrase all at the same time.

Preparation

Print this I Have, Who Has? card deck.
If you need another target sound, make one of your own using one of my card sets (free, premium) printed two sheets to a page (to make them smaller). Then cut out the pictures of your choice and glue them onto handwritten I have, who has cards made from construction paper or cardstock.

How to play.

Distribute the cards as evenly as possible to the students. If you're doing individual therapy, divide them between yourself and the student and your productions will serve as models. The person who has the start card begins and asks, "Who has fan?" The person with the other fan card will say, "I have fan, who has phone?" Play continues in this manner until the group reaches the end. To make things easier, have the children turn over each card as it is "played". This will reduce the number of cards left that they have to keep track of.

Advantages

It is a fun, engaging cooperative game.
Each child practices saying two target words per turn in a carrier phrase.
It is a good game for practicing attention skills.
It has great re-play value.

Word List

fan
phone
fun
food
foot
foam
fight
feed
fin
five
feet
fetch
fuss
full

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A Concrete Demonstration of "Self Control" for Kids

This activity comes from Dustin Smith - the Teacher Tipster. All you need is a bottle of bubbles. If you want to get fancy, download the free "Self-Control Bubbles" label one teacher made and paste it onto the bottle.

Self-control is a really abstract concept for young children. Research shows that self-control isn't something you're just born with. It is a skill that needs to be practiced and can be improved. Start the activity by filling your room with bubbles and encouraging your children to pop them. Let them get a little out of control. Once all the bubbles have been popped and the excitement calms down, issue a challenge. Tell them you're going to fill the room with bubbles again. This time, their job is to NOT pop the bubbles. Don't pop them if they land on your desk. Don't pop them if they land in your hair. Don't even pop them if they land on your nose. Once all the bubbles have popped, talk about how hard it was to leave those bubbles alone. Tell them it takes self-control to not do something you really want to do. Discuss other times in a classroom that it is important to exercise self-control.

The best thing about this activity is that it should be memorable. The concept of self-control will come up again and again and you can refer back to the self-control bubbles to help them remember one very concrete example of when they succeeded. You might even repeat the experiment regularly to give extra practice and help keep the idea fresh in their mind.

If you're creative, you can think of other exercises in self-control and do one a month. You might put a pretzel on everyone's desk. Anyone who hasn't touched the pretzel by the end of the lesson gets two more. Simon Says, The Freeze Dance, and Red Light, Green Light are games that exercise self-control.

If you have any great activities for working on self-control, please share them in the comments!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Final J: Free Speech Therapy Articulation Picture Cards

If you like this free card set, you might want to check out the premium speech therapy kits now available in the Testy Shop. Kits include expanded card sets, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets and more in a single download.

Final /ʤ/ Card Set

(/ʤ/ is the phonetic symbol for the sound typically spelled with the letter "J".)

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 articulation picture card set is designed to be more comprehensive than the typical sets you might find elsewhere. The target audience for this set is young children or children with more severe speech delays that need intensive practice with initial /ʤ/ at a one-syllable level. No blends or vocalic /r/ sounds are included in this set. The set pairs the final /ʤ/ with as many different vowel sounds as possible to maximize co-articulation variety.

Key Features

This set includes 10 therapy cards with the target word and picture on the front, and the difficulty level and a carrier phrase on the back.
The words are all VC or CVC in syllable shape.
The words are easily understood by or easily taught to young children.
Combines the target sound with a variety of vowel sounds.
Words are sorted by difficulty level for an easy progression from easy to hard.

Permissions

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

Each copy makes clear that I am the document's author.
No copies are altered without my express consent.
No one makes a profit from these copies.
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. 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, w, j, s, z, l, th, ch, sh, ʤ, s-blends, and l-blends/ and more sets are being added regularly.