Speech-Language Room Makeover

Phew, we are already one quarter down this school year...now that is hard to believe! The last quarter the kids and I have been enjoying our new working space, so I thought it was finally time to post up some details about Operation: Room Makeover!

The project started on a weekend before the kids came back to school in August. Mr. Ludwig and I brought in the paint, paintbrushes, water buckets, and few hanging lanterns, and we spent our Saturday sprucing up Mrs. Ludwig's Speech & Language Room.

A look at before:
the lovely yellow tint of the cinder block walls

During:

There's Mr. Ludwig! Couldn't have done this project without him. 

See that window? Mr. Ludwig is allergic to bees. 

We had a few visitors fly on in, and I mustered up the courage:

Smack, smack (smack, smack, smack....bug killing is not my forte)

Yep, saved his life!

If you compare the above and below photos, you'll notice I got rid of my milk crate bookshelves and upgraded to two 9-cubby bookshelves from Target. One of my kids noticed and told me, "Oh, you got rid of your junky bookshelf!" Ha, aannnnnnd we might be working on social skills...but hey, you know what....I think she's right. :)

And the after:

It was a weekend paint project and then the additional accessories took a few extra evenings to finish (e.g. the corkboard squares covered in fabric above my desk and the curtain in the window).

Also a quick tip: I did some research on the 'net to figure out the best way to hang things up on cinderblock walls....hot glue! I tried it and it worked great!

Was it worth it? Yes, definitely! I figure that I spend over half of my waking hours in this room. It's good for all of us and we are loving our new home away from home.

Happy space. Happy place. Happy SLP. :)

Cheers,
Mrs. Ludwig

Spooky Speech & Language Spiders

Happy October!

Things are getting creepy in Mrs. Ludwig's Speech & Language Room with spooky spiders! 

Our door is covered!

I do admit, I HATE spiders (just ask my husband), but these little guys turned out pretty cute. The legs, bodies, and heads were all cut out and ready to glue together...and ready to target lots of different goals!

For the Sound Spiders, the kids said their sounds to earn a leg, and then they used my metallic markers to write words on the legs.

A quick definition lesson identifying the spider's category and attributes was drawn on the board. When I initially asked for the definition of a spider, one of my kiddos said ..."a spider is something that eats you"

And then we learned...

that by animal we meant insect (or the synonym, bug)

that by eats you, we meant bites you and makes webs

Here we have Synonym Spider. The younger kids had to find pre-printed synonym matches, use markers to color matching words the same color, & then paste the pairs on different legs. 

This little guy has describing words on his 8 legs.

Spiders can be....small, big, brown, black, creepy, hairy 

I pulled these pictures from a TpT product I found here!

Here we have Initial /R/ Spider:

And last but not least Synonyms Spider v2.0 (for the older kids). The kids picked a word (e.g. funny, spooky, scary) and looked up synonyms in the thesaurus. I spy lots of base words and suffixes, too!

We also read a few books about spiders from ReadingAtoZ (a resource I LOVE!) The Spider's Web and Tarantulas. And worked on various language goals with those!

Eek...spider webs everywhere!

That wraps it up for the Spooky Spiders! Thanks for checking in, and hope you're having a wonderful fall!

Mrs. Ludwig

Fluency Toolbox for Stuttering

Hi all!

I'm excited to write about a resource I started using/making graphics for last school year, but finally felt it was ready to share on the blog:

The Fluency Toolbox for Stuttering

You can find it in my TpT store here, 
and here's how I use it:

I use the toolbox as a visual when I teach fluency strategies to my students. We aren't curing stuttering, but we are giving them a toolbox full of strategies that they can learn to use and apply to improve their fluency.

When we learn a strategy, we add the tool to the box. At the beginning of each session, we choose a tool (or a combination of tools) that we are going to focus on for the day. The tool sits in front of them and serves as a nice visual reminder of what we're working on during activities.

To give the kids ownership of their toolbox and express their fluency style, they can choose a toolbox in red, green, purple, pink, blue, or yellow!

There are several strategies out there to target fluency. The strategies I included in the packet are some of the most commonly used across many different intervention programs (Healey & Scott, 1995).The strategies included and described in this toolbox are:

• cancellations
• pull-outs
• full breath
• stretchy beginning
• natural pauses
• rate control
• slow smooth & easy speech
• breath and speech together
• language planning
• talk in short sentences
• easy onsets & easy beginnings (same strategy just different lingo)
• light contacts
• continuous voicing
• preparatory sets &
• fake stuttering

A printer-friendly black and white version is also included. The kids can easily color their own tools!

Toolbox Assembly:

• Cut out the toolboxes
• Cut an opening on the solid black line to create the opening:

• Staple the toolbox onto an 8.5x11 sheet of paper

• Trim around the toolbox, removing the extra white paper
• Cut out the tools & add them to the toolbox as they are taught

And that's it!  Also included is an entire set of blank tools in my TpT product so clinicians can add any other additional strategies!

And there you have it! What tools have you found helpful with your students? I would love to hear!

Thanks for checking in!

Mrs. Ludwig

Reference:

Healey, C. & Scott, L. (1995). Strategies for Treating Elementary School-Age Children Who Stutter: And Integrative Approach. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 26, 151-161.