Literacy Website Review {Technology}

Last school year, a friend of mine told me about roythezebra.com, a website that has an engaging fiction story, literacy worksheets, and interactive reading games.  The story is divided into nine parts and features the main character, Roy the zebra.  This is great to use as a group language therapy activity in the classroom. 

This year, I am currently enjoying using this resource with two language therapy groups.  Before reading the story, Roy the Tale of the Singing Zebra,  I ask my students questions to help them make predictions about what the story will be about. Then I read aloud the story during a  language therapy lesson in both a moderate intellectual disability class and a mild autism class. My students are enjoying viewing the story as it is displayed on the whiteboard and listening to my animated oral reading.  In one of the classrooms, I am using Mimio software that allows me to easily click through the pages of the story by touching the stylus pen on the white board. 

At the beginning of the story, Roy lives in a zoo where all his favorite activities of singing, dancing, and rolling around are banned. In part two, he is eager to escape from the horrible zoo and gets help from his friend George and his elephant friend Lucy. At the end of each part, my students want to know what happens next but they have to wait until the next weeks lesson.

I recommend that the SLP or teacher pause the reading of the story at times to model "think alouds" by asking questions. This helps check for story comprehension and teaches them to think while they are listening. This is especially necessary for students with language disorders because of the unknown vocabulary that is embedded in the story. There are discussion questions available for use after reading the story to further check for understanding. 

There are 27 literacy worksheets available or  3 for each part of the story that may be used after listening to the story. The worksheets address skills such as sentence construction, correct use of punctuation marks, capitalization, story sequencing, rhyming words answering literal comprehension questions, and character perspective taking. I think the worksheets are great to use as extension activities by the speech-language pathologist or the teacher as appropriate by the skill taught. However, I typically ask students verbal questions and ask them to orally respond due to time constraints during language therapy lessons. 

Additionally, this literacy website has interactive whiteboard lesson plans that can be paired with provided learning games to teach literacy skills. An associated worksheet is also available to be completed as classwork or homework. I have not personally used the interactive games, but have reviewed them online and told the special education teachers about them. Some of the learning games are free and some you have to pay $6.95 to access them.

Here is the list of the free learning games:
Alphabetical Order- sequence words in alphabetical order 

Double Consonants- add word endings (ff, ss, bl, br, cl, cr, ck, ng)

Singular or Plural- sorting activity to distinguish between singular and plural nouns  *This is a great activity for SLPs to use.

Long Vowel Phonemes- identify target sound blends by clicking on them to make new words *Certain sounds such as "er", "ir", "or" would be great to use with students practicing their speech articulation of vocalic /r/.

Rhyming words- identify words that sound the same or rhyme

Here is the list of the learning games available for purchase ($6.95):

Consonant Blends- targets phonological processing skill of blending and segmenting consonants to make CVCC words

Long Vowel Phonemes- complete access to learning game; add vowels to make new words 


Tim Bowerbank in the creator of roythezebra.com. He was inspired to create the character Roy, after a trip to South Africa. He requests that all users register on the website and subscribe to his literacy newsletter before using the free resources. 

I encourage you to integrate technology in your speech language therapy lessons or instructional time in the classroom. Thanks for the reading the blog today. 


Tamara  Anderson

August Children's Literature Reviews

I love using children's books in my speech-language therapy sessions with my students. I enjoy reading aloud to my students and popping in that oh so lovely CD to play an audio book for different group sessions. Either way it is a win win situation because students are typically engaged in the story and there are so many speech language objectives that can be addressed. 

Last week, I used the audio CD that read aloud the book, Teacher's Pets, by Dayle Ann Dodds. I was lucky to have multiple copies of the book so that my students could follow along with the read aloud. The audio teaches them to listen for a chime to turn the page. 

This is a delightful book about Miss Fry and her elementary school aged students. In their class, each Monday is sharing day. One Monday, Winston has the creative suggestion for his classmates to share their pets. Your students will love turning the pages to find out the pet each character in the book brings to school. This is a great way to discuss sequencing of story events.

The first Monday, Winston brought in his pet rooster. The next Monday, Patrick brought his pet tarantula. Then the class got to see Roger's cricket, Alia's goat, Amanda's dog, Jerry's snake, Megan's cat, Mitchell's mice, and so on. 

Last week I used this book with my speech-language students with co-occurring autism, moderate intellectual disability, and learning disabilities. They all smiled as they listened and eagerly turned the page with each chime! After listening to the story, they verbally answered literal "wh" questions about the characters, setting, and events in the story. One of my students in my intellectually disability group  especially struggles with initiating oral expression. For her, I wrote out the questions and showed her a visual choice of 3-4 answer choices. After that, she did a fair job with indicating her responses with visual prompts from the story as needed. 

The previous week, I read aloud, Charlies Goes to School, by Ree Drummond. 

I love this story because the pictures are so vibrant as well as realistic and it is told from the perspective of Charlie, the ranch dog as he explores the ranch for the day. This is a great time to remind students about the meaning of the word fiction as the main character engages in activities that dogs don't do in real life, such as teach school to animal friends.  Charlie invites the reader to explore what life on the ranch is for his human and animal family. 

He introduces us to the other characters: daddy, cowboy Josh, mama, the kids, Suzie the dog, Kitty Kitty, ranch horses, cows, and Walter the dog. He tells us that his human family goes to school at home and gets inspired to teach his animal family reading, math, and history. Well you can just imagine how well turns out for the animals! They have difficulty focusing, want to play, and Walter the dog even falls asleep.  

Since I read Charlie goes to School aloud to my students, I modeled "think alouds" along the way by making additional comments and asking questions to check for story comprehension. 

I definitely recommend these awesome books for use during speech-language therapy lessons or reading class. 

I also recommend a rubric to measure students' abilities to orally retell fiction stories. The SLP or teacher records a score of 5 to 0 in each performance element category: characters, setting, problem or rising action, solution or falling action/conclusion. To calculate a score, just add up the points in each category. To calculate a story retelling percentage of accuracy divide the score by 20, that is the total possible points. I recommend audio recording your student's story retell for easier scoring using the rubric. 

This product was revised last week and it is available in my TPT store here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Oral-Story-Retelling-Rubric-819201

Thanks for visiting the blog today! :)

Tamara Anderson

Seven Keys for a Successful School Year {SLPs and Teachers}

*Stay Calm and Teach On!*

1.       Build relationships with students, parents, and staff.

2.       Keep focused on the academic & social successes of your students.

3.       Communicate kindly with colleagues.

4.       Keep calm and learn to juggle!

5.       Coffee is your friend!

6.       Flexibility is key.

7.     It is okay to laugh out loud!

Seven Keys For a Successful School Year {Parents}

                 *Stay Calm and Parent On!*

1.       Get to know your child’s teacher.

2.       Encourage your child to work hard  and ask questions.

3.       Enroll your child in non-academic activities (e.g. sports, music, dance).

4.       Listen to your child.

5.       Join the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and volunteer.

6.       Set boundaries for your children.

7.       Stay calm and talk to the teachers, speech language therapists, and all service providers.

SLP Resources for Back to School

Many students will return to school this week in the Atlanta area and other school districts will begin the new school year soon. This is a great time to gather new speech language therapy resources for students on your caseload with communication disorders. 

Thanks to Jenna at Speech Room News for hosting a "linky party" for SLPs to share their instructional recommendations for items in the Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) online marketplace. 

From my TPT store, I recommend my back to school theme products that target vocabulary and grammar skills. They may be used as a pre-assessment to collect baseline or beginning of the year data. They may also be used during guided instruction after a SLP or teacher mini-lesson about synonyms, antonyms, irregular plural nouns, irregular past tense verbs, homophones, and homographs.

You may purchase these here:  

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Baseline-Check-Synonyms-Antonyms-830267

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Baseline-Check-Irregular-Plural-Nouns-Past-Tense-Verbs-831665  

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Homophones-Homographs-1368710

I learned about a new resource to gather pre-assessment data and monitor my students' progress throughout the year. I plan on purchasing:

Natalie Synder's Language Progress Monitoring Tool (Upper Level) for Speech Language Therapy. This will be a great supplement to my baseball themed vocabulary and grammar data collection tools that are also available in my TPT store. 

These resources will also be great:

Kristine Nannini's Beginning of the Year Team Building Activities. This will allow my students an opportunity to get to know each other while practicing their language skills. 

Tech N Talk SLP's On the Mark Quick Check- Idioms & Figurative Language.  This will allow me to assess my 5th grade language therapy students' knowledge and retention of skills taught last year. 

Nicole Allison's No Print Bundle Pack . I can download this on my I PAD and save in I Books to address my students' receptive, expressive, and social language learning objectives. 

That's what I will be adding to my SLP tool kit this year! TPT will have a 10 % off sale Monday, 8/4th and Tuesday 8/5th. I have marked my products down an additional 10 %, so you will receive a 20 % discount when you shop in my store. 

Have a great week! 

Tamara Anderson

On a Mission {Build Successful Lives}

Hey there! I just got back to Atlanta yesterday from an awesome weekend trip to Dallas, Texas! It was my first time visiting the state and was impressed with the beauty and diversity of the area. The people were quite friendly as well.  This was a great way to finish my summer break as I return to work full time tomorrow! 

---­­­­--------Please pause for a moment of silence------------

Here is a picture of me in Uptown aka West Village. 

By the way the pizza at Union Bear is delicious! Everyone in Dallas loves this place. 

Here is a picture of my friend and I visiting the African American History Museum. 

This is a must see and has great history about the community of North Dallas.  

Today I plan on getting some last minute rest and go walking with a friend later so that I will feel revitalized for the 2014-2015 school year! Woah....I can't believe it! 

While in Dallas yesterday, I visited my friend's church and the pastor was talking about being on a mission daily to serve others in our community. I was sitting there thinking....hello...that is my personal and professional mantra!! In my life, my relationship with Jesus Christ/Yeshua is of # 1 importance, followed by my family, friends, career, etc. I truly believe that my belief in my savior, my guide, Jesus Christ/Yeshua enables me to do all that I do and provides me with my next steps. So to hear the pastor talk about that yesterday in church was another confirmation that God/Yahweh is amazing and personal! 

I encourage all of you to join BSL Speech & Language's mission and build successful lives through service to others! I am committed to improving the communication and lives of children with special needs. Go on a mission in your community this year!!

Love, 

Tamara Anderson

Dallas Skyline

Learning Disorders {Parent Resources}

There are many children and adolescents that have learning disorders. Their challenges may impact their ability with language processing, reading, writing, and math. Learning disabilities is another term that is synonymous with learning disorders. According to the National Center of Learning Disabilities "LD is more than a difference or difficulty with learning-it's a neurological disorder that affects the brain's ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information." 

Many students with receptive (listening comprehension) and expressive (oral) language disorders are also diagnosed with a co-occuring language based learning disability in the school setting. Why? A child's ability to listen, comprehend, and explain information directly relates to their ability to read  and write. Literacy skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing are all interrelated skills. 

In the area of reading, a child may have difficulty decoding or sounding out words, reading fluently, and/or understanding what they read. This contributes to a child reading below grade level in elementary, middle, high school, and beyond. Therefore, it is critical that children with reading disorders are identified quickly and receive intensive intervention from a reading specialist or special education teacher. Dyslexia is a term used frequently by professionals to describe students with reading disorders. However, not all children with reading difficulties have dyslexia. 

In the area of math, students who struggle with reading will have difficulty understanding and solving math word problems and other reasoning tasks.  A child may also have dyscalculia or difficulty learning math concepts. A child may struggle with recognizing numbers and symbols, learning and remembering math facts, or difficulty coming up with a plan to solve math word problems. The NCLD gives a more in depth description of dyscalculia here: http://ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/dyscalculia/understanding-dyscalculia?start=1#FOUR


The National Center for Learning Disability provides a great breakdown of the differences between dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia (written expression difficulties).

Here are some warning signs for dysgraphia courtesy of NCLD:

Just having bad handwriting doesn't mean a person has dysgraphia. This is a processing disorder that may change throughout a person's lifetime. Writing is a developmental process. Children learn the motor skills necessary to write while they learn the thinking and expressive language skills to communicate their ideas on paper. 

Dygraphia: Warning Signs by Age

Young Children Trouble With: Tight, awkward pencil grip and body position Avoiding writing or drawing tasks Trouble forming letter shapes Inconsistent spacing between letters or words Poor understanding of uppercase and lowercase letters Inability to write or draw in a line or within margins Tiring quickly while writing

School-Age Children Trouble With: Illegible handwriting Mixture of cursive and print writing Saying words out loud while writing Concentrating so hard on writing that comprehension of what's written is missed Trouble thinking of words to write Omitting or not finishing words in sentences

Teenagers and Adults Trouble With: Trouble organizing thoughts on paper Trouble keeping track of thoughts already written down Difficulty with syntax structure and grammar Large gap between written ideas and understanding demonstrated through speech

Reference: http://www.ncld.org/

Although this blog is geared towards pediatric communication and learning disorders, it is important to know that some adults continue to demonstrate characteristics of learning disorders. However, they can lead successful lives once they learn strategies to overcome their difficulties.