What I’m buying from January’s TPT must have sale…

I very much appreciate teacherspayteachers.com and all of the wonderful sellers who put so much time and energy into creating amazing resources for other professionals to use. I have often thought about blogging about all of the super helpful products I find and use, so here it goes.

For those of you SLPs who have not heard the news, some Teachers Pay Teachers sellers put at least one product on sale (usually 50% off) on the 7th of every month [#slpmonthlymusthave sale]. I usually try to limit myself to 1-2 purchases a month for awesome new materials (or else I would have no extra spending money left ever), but this month I have committed to these items which were too good to pass up:

1. Cycles for Phonology Toolkit: Assessment, Progress Monitoring, & Intervention by Speechy Musings  –> I’ve learned about using cycles for highly unintelligible students in graduate school; however, implementing this is a completely different story. This document is a steal right now at $8, with assessment protocols and materials.
2. Articulation Comics by Speech Time Fun –> These appear to be a great purchase for my mixed groups, with engaging comic strip/story as well as comprehension questions, vocabulary, incorporated social skills, etc.
3. Social Language and Behavior – Coloring Book Lessons by Super Power Speech –> Who doesn’t have students on their caseloads that can benefit from these great reminders like keeping hands and feet to self and following directions? Super cute way to introduce expectations at the beginning of the year as well as review throughout the year.
4. Winter Speech & Language MEGA BUNDLE by Fun in Speech –> This amazing packet includes articulation worksheets, an interactive describing book, vocabulary activities, and grammar activities. There will be something in this bundle for every student on your caseload!

Items that look/sound amazing that I would buy if I was richer (and they have been added to my Wish List for possible future purchase):

1. Articulation Playing Cards BUNDLE for Speech Therapy by Speechy Musings –> so many possibilities for these. So many games you can play with a regular card deck, and now the card deck has targeted sounds!
2. Articulation Game Boards Bundle by Speech is Sweet –> Because what students don’t love gameboards? I have used the sample gameboards from this seller in the past for engaging homework to send home with my students to complete with their parents.
3. Match It Quick Bundle – Later Developing Sounds by Speech Therapy with Courtney Gragg –> Looks like so much fun.

Check out all these materials and more by using #Jan17SLPMustHave on teacherspayteachers.com before it’s too late! And make sure to visit the website on February 7 for more great deals!

Still in graduate school or don’t have the extra $$$ right now? Here are some of my favorite freebies on TPT right now:

• Roll & Describe/Roll & Respond by The TLC Shop –> I recently have been very much obsessed with dice games in therapy, so this freebie is great.
• Snowbuddies Pronoun Smashmats by Beautiful Speech Life –> Love, love, love anything with Play-Doh that keeps my students engaged. Plus these just look super cute. Amazing to model and practice subject-verb agreement and pronouns.
• Snow Globe Categories by The Speech Attic –> great for any of your kiddos who are working on categorization/association.

As always, thanks for reading.

 

Working on memory

One of my favorite things to address with my patients is memory. It may partially be because I feel like I am exercising my own brain, since I try to remember what I want them to without looking it up as well. At times I also feel like my memory lapses from day to day about little things (like most people’s most likely) and I’m hoping to have effects from my own therapy haha.

I usually begin activities by introducing different strategies to the patient, such as visualization/imagery, rehearsal/rote memorization, chunking, associations with existing memories, making lists, etc. For example, if I’m targeting memory through immediate recall then delayed recall of facts from short stories, I may say, “I’m going to read you a story and I want you to try to picture what I’m describing in you mind. If you have existing knowledge about the topic, you can try to link the new information I’m telling you to that as well.”

Some other activities I use to target memory include:

• Immediately recalling predetermined auditory targets from sentences (example: “I want you to listen for a sport. The class played kickball at recess. What was the sport?” – you can then do it without a predetermined target depending on patient’s level – “The gray clouds covered the sky. What was the color?” –> also good for auditory attention
• Recall of recent daily events for the patient (example: therapy tasks from earlier in the day from ST or other therapies, if they had an important medical/other appointment I know about, etc.) –> good for orientation/memory of personal situations/events
• Delayed recall of 2-4 words/photos
  • You can introduce the idea of using weird associations to remember two targets (example: chunking together a picture of a guitar and a picture of strawberries by imagining throwing a handful of strawberries into the center of the guitar – you would most likely never do this, but it definitely helps a lot of patients remember the two photos better than if they try to recall them as two individual pictures)
  • I like expanding this eventually to a more functional activity such as having the patient remember a short list of items to find at the gift shop/cafeteria/etc. or having them tell another person (example: OT) a certain funny fact or story  the next time they see them.
• Recalling targets from an earlier therapy task (example: if I asked the patient to name some items from categories, I may ask them to recall some of the categories I gave them)
• Association cards (object to color for example – I cannot remember where the set I like to use is from right now, but if I do I will add later) – I will introduce about 5 sets earlier in the session and (depending on the patient’s level) may work on other tasks then ask them to remember the objects from the color or vice versa at the end of the session.
• Tasks with distractors – You can tell the patient you want them to remember the final answer is _______ (the sum of 4 +6 for example) and then ask them to do another question/task that hopefully is relatively easy for them (what is the first vowel after F?) and then ask “What was the answer I wanted you to remember?”
• Prospective memory for higher level patients – I really enjoy this one and can explain to the patient why this is so important. We use prospective memory every day, especially when we’re rehearsing things we have to do later in the day at work. One example task for a following directions pen and paper activity – “I want you to stop when you get to number five.” and see if the patient remembers to stop at the target. If you’re doing a word association activity back and forth with them, you can tell them to stop after you say/write a color. You can also ask patients to remember a few things and tell you them at a specified time – “I want you to stop me at 1:43 and tell me your wife’s name and favorite TV show. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing, you’re going to interrupt me and tell me these two things at that time.”

I can definitely not take credit for coming up with all of these on my own – my wonderful supervisors have set examples for a lot of these. I hope that someone else finds these helpful in planning therapy.

What about you? What are some of your favorite memory tasks/activities for therapy that I haven’t mentioned?

Thanks for reading!