Quick & Easy Back to School Tips {Guest Blogger}

Hey everyone! I hope you had a great Wednesday at work today. Today I am the guest blogger at Allison's Speech Peeps. Head on over to her blog and read my three tips for Back to School! I've included  a link to freebies from my TPT curriculum store to keep you motivated this school year!

Tamara Anderson

Building Successful Lives

BSL Speech & Language

Back to School Baseline Data

Hey everyone. I know that many school based speech-language pathologists have already returned to work and many will start back soon. Tomorrow will be the beginning of my 4th week back at work and 3rd week for students. After the initial excitement and sleepiness of going back to school and work has worn of, speech-language pathologists need to make sure that they take baseline data on their students' IEP objectives. For many kids there will be some variability in their scores from the end of the school year to their beginning of the school year data. However, with a quick re-teaching of the skill they are back to where they were previously. 

Some of you may be thinking, so what really is baseline data? This is the data, percentages, or measurable information that you collect to informally assess specific skills outlined in a child's IEP objectives. ASHA's Evidence Based Practice Glossary states that baseline is "a benchmark, measurement, or calculation used as a basis for comparison." 

Many SLPs consider the first data point gathered on a skill an accurate measure for baseline while I have heard others say that they consider 3 data points as baseline data. I have created several quick informal assessment and/or progress monitoring tools that will make it easy for you to gather this data. Just click here to access these digital downloads to help simplify your SLP life.  

I have assessment tools for oral story retell, basic concepts, vocabulary (Tier I semantic processing- object function, similarities, differences, etc), associations, wh questions, irregular plurals, irregular past tense verbs, speech fluency, speech intelligibility, synonyms, antonyms, multiple meaning words, and English/Language Arts Tier III curriculum vocabulary.  I have personally used these tools frequently in my speech language sessions with students on my caseload. 

I suggest making several copies of the forms that you need to record baseline data and keep them in a binder. I typically select the forms that I need for each student and place them in my daily student therapy files. Using informal assessments/progress monitoring forms have truly improved my ability to quantify the skills of my speech-language students. This also helps as I record progress check data throughout the school year.  

I hope you have a great school year! Make sure you subscribe to 
my blog: Building Successful Lives by entering your email in the right hand column above. This way you will get my blog articles sent directly to your inbox. I look forward to you reading what I have to share :)

Tamara Anderson

Speech-Language Curriculum Assessments

I am absolutely thrilled about my newest product, Speech-Language Curriculum Assessments that is available in my TPT store!!! It is designed for use by speech-language pathologists who support teaching the language underpinnings of the 3rd grade English/Language Arts Common Core State Standards. Other grade levels will be available in the future. 

                                         

I provide educationally relevant speech-language therapy frequently and this product is a great way to assess students knowledge of the language underpinnings of the Common Core Standards related to skills that SLPs instruct. This is a must have if you work as a school based SLP. SLPs have the clinical skills needed to provide direct vocabulary instruction that will improve students' ability to learn the standards. Here are some examples of terms assessed in red below.

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This product contains 13 curriculum assessments that are informal standards based evaluation tools in a cloze sentence format with a word bank.  They can be used to collect baseline or pre-assessment data and for post-assessments after the vocabulary words are taught in speech-language therapy sessions. 

The assessments provided will evaluate students' understanding of the vocabulary skills that are needed to master 3rd grade standards. As a bonus, I have also included English/Language Arts vocabulary assessments according to categories such as types of nouns, types of sentences, parts of speech, story vocabulary, types of literature, types of writing, figurative language, and prefixes.

I hope that this product will assist you in providing educationally relevant speech-language therapy services!  

This product pairs well with my language interventions Guess What? Curriculum Bundle and English/Language Arts Common Core Vocabulary Bundle. 

Thanks for reading my Building Successful Lives blog today. Make sure that you subscribe by entering your email in the box in the right hand column of this page. Stay connected and remember that SLPs are building speech, language, academic, and social skills of kids everyday! Keep up the great work! :) I'm back to work full-time tomorrow. Summer break is officially over. 

Tamara Anderson

Tell Me About Summer Stories

I love hearing great stories! Lately it's been from friends over dinner or a juicy summer story with a friend on the phone! No gossip...just sharing some interesting life happenings. I have also been reading some great books. 

Well, in speech-language therapy, it is critical that children are taught how to retell fiction stories. They need to understand the sequence of events and key story elements such as character, character trait, setting, introduction, problem, solution, conclusion, etc. They need practice with verbally communicating narratives. It's a good thing that most speech-language pathologists and educators know how to read with expression to really grab the attention of children. This helps keep children engaged during literacy lessons.

Summer is a great time to read new stories to children and have them practice retelling the story in the correct sequence with key details. Here are some great summer stories for young kids:













Now for those of you working with private practice kiddos this summer you definitely need my best selling Oral Story Retelling Rubric. School-based SLPs this is a must have for you as well. Many of you will be back to your regular SLP awesome life in the schools very soon! :)

Here are what some buyers have said about this product:

"I am very happy about this rubric. It is a great resource for me to figure out what I need to focus on more with students. I like the grading system as well."


"The rubric addresses areas that I focus on in therapy. I do not have to generate my own, which saves me time in the planning process as well as when writing IEP goals."

"This is a great visual to use to show the students as well! Love it! Thanks!"

There are still a few weeks left of official summer. So keep reading summer stories and have speech-language kiddos tell you about them! What are some children's books that you think young kiddos love in the summer? I'd love to hear your favorites! :)

Tamara 

Summer Sale in my Curriculum Store!!

In case you missed the announcement on my Instagram page, I am having a 20 % off Summer Sale today and tomorrow in my TPT Curriculum Store. This is your chance to purchase informal assessment tools, speech-language therapy materials, and educational products to use with students and clients at discounted prices. 

I absolutely LOVE designing products for you!  I use them as well during my pediatric speech-language therapy sessions. I am committed to equipping speech-language pathologists and educators with tools of excellence to excel at their craft of igniting student's communication and learning. 

Make sure that you stay connected with Building Successful Lives blog aka BSL Speech & Language to receive all the latest scoop for working with children with special learning needs and learn about my latest products and complimentary resource guides. You can subscribe to the blog by entering your email in the box on the right hand column of this page. 

Until next time, 

Tamara Anderson

Communication Success Tips

Hey everyone! I hope you all are having a wonderful July so far! I am truly enjoying my summer. I try to do something productive and fun each day. That's why I have 2 new resources to tell you about in my Building Successful Lives curriculum store. 

I created Communication Success Tips (for children ages 12-36 month) so that speech-language pathologists, educators, and parents can use this guide to foster communication development in children's everyday routines. I thought of this idea last Sunday afternoon as I was reflecting about the fact that my sweet little niece would be 18 months the next day. I couldn't believe it! I am blessed that I am able to visit her regularly. It is such a joy to watch her as she grows and learns! As an SLP, I of course am all about those developmental milestones and thinking about all the things she can do now and what she needs to learn next. 

Here's a picture of her last Monday when she turned 18 months old! 

Isn't she adorable?! :) 

You can access this COMPLIMENTARY digital download here. 

My next resource guide in this series that I specially designed is Communication Success Tips for Colleagues. 

My idea behind creating this was to remind SLPs and educators including myself of tips needed to build and maintain healthy relationships at work. I believe that effective communication skills are the foundation for healthy relationships. Colleagues are more productive when communication is clear and they feel valued by others.  

I hope that you love this new resource guide as much as I do! You can access this COMPLIMENTARY digital download here. 

Have an excellent week! 

Tamara Anderson

Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

Hey everyone. Today is a start of another week. For those of you that follow me on social media, you most likely saw last week's motto: Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. One of my desires through this #buildingsuccessfullives blog and social media is to encourage others. I realize that EVERYONE can use some inspiration.  

I really do believe that if you deliberately change your perspective about life's circumstances your life will change too! Most of the time, your outlook WILL drastically improve your day. Although your circumstances may not automatically change, you control your response. 

One of my passions is definitely building successful lives of children with special needs that I work with during the school year and equipping speech-language pathologists and educators with the tools to do the same. However, it's much bigger than that. 

SAY WHAT? I desire for young adults to know that they too can build a successful, balanced, and fulfilled life for themselves. Yes, work is important. But what about your relationships with others, are they healthy? Do you think positively? Are you a glass half full person?

Stay tuned...more to come and remember. Change your mind, change your life! Use #inspireBSL and #inspireSLP to share your weekly inspirations on Instagram and Twitter. 

Make sure that you subscribe to this blog by entering your email on the right side of this page where it says "subscribe by email."  That way you won't miss an article! 

Thanks for reading! :)

Tamara Anderson