Welcome to Mrs. Kristin's Speech Room!

Last week, Jenna over at Speech Room News asked us all to take pictures of our therapy rooms and share how we organize our space. I wanted to share with you how I set up my speech room. I actually share my room with another SLP. We have the room split in half, divided by a book shelf. Here are some shots of my side of the room :)

This photo is taken from the door. You can see my desk by the window and my therapy table in the middle. Check out my cute rug from Home Goods!

Here is a shot of my desk. I have a black bin with file folders of lessons, themed units, and materials on the left. The bin labeled notebooks holds compostion books I use with both my speech and language students. My laptop. On the right, is my handy dandy dish rack turned into folder organizer (thank you Pinterest!). Here I hold all my files with open re-evaluations or upcoming IEPs.

This picture is my students' view from the therapy table. I have my data binders divided by grade behind me, the behavior chart, and Braidy! Having a white board sure is handy! You can also see my giant mirror on the floor that is great for oral motor activities.

Speaking of oral motor, here is my mini oral motor kit. I have tongue depressors, cotton balls, straws, Marshallow Fluff, and bubbles!

This is the other end of my side of the room. You can see my bookshelf with both stories and resources for me, my oh so popular game shelf, and other resources stashed away in my limited space!

Let me know if you have any questions about anything you see here. I plan on doing a few posts going into detail on some specifics from my room. Have a great day!

Flocabulary!!

While browsing Pinterest today, I came across a pin for Flocabulary.com Hip Hop for the Classroom! If your students are anything like mine... music is the way to their hearts and brains. I have been at a Story Grammar Marker training for the past two days so when I came across this specific video, I could not help but share! It is a rap about the 5 elements of  story: "Plot, Character, Conflict, Theme, Setting... yes these are the 5 things!" I have to admit, it is pretty darn catchy. I may have this song stuck in my head all weekend....

Update on (not so) little ole me!

61 followers! How awesome is that?! A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who follows and shares ideas! First of all, I wanted to share some exciting news... [simply speech.] has made it to Facebook! It is brand new (as in created an hour ago), so make sure you check it out and 'like' it to get updates!

[simply speech.] facebook page

I wanted to take a break and do a not so speech related post about what has been going on in my life. I am currently 31 weeks pregnant and have never been so ready to meet this baby! We have been working hard to get her nursery finished... check out some pictures!

This is my most recent belly shot!

Before we got her crib set up... Check out our cute tree decal from etsy!

Kenzie's Crib!

The room with curtains and furniture!

Have a fabulous rest of your week! Make sure you check out my facebook page and become a fan!

Speech Therapy For a Big Kid... Part II

A few weeks ago I reached out to all of you regarding a new private client I was going to start working with. I wanted to give you all an update on how that was going and some things that have worked with him so far. Starting speech therapy with a 20 year old took me way out of my comfort zone! I have not worked with adult clients since graduate school. My usual day consists with 3-8 year olds! So you can imagine the hard time I was having keeping Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, and SpongeBob activities out of my head!

During our first session, I completed an evaluation on him to see what sounds we needed to work on during therapy. From our telephone conversations, I knew R was going to be a target. So I also brought along my Entire World of R screener to really get a good idea on what specific R sounds we needed to work on. From there, I did some stimulation activities to see how severe/ mild each target sound was. I also had a conversation with him about what his goals were for therapy. Being 20 years old, he can steer the ship as far as what to work on in therapy. I gave him a homework assignment to ask friends and family members to tell him what words they had a hard time understanding him say and make a list. Practicing words relevant to his life will be much more beneficial than just drilling random R words.

For our second session, I did some auditory discrimination tasks with him. This will help him train his ear to start listening for his own errors. My video recorder on my iPad has been my best friend for these therapy sessions. After we drill words or senences, I record him and let him watch himself back to self assess. This has been very helpful, although I think he is harder on himself than I am on him!

My next idea is to find an app that records your voice and puts it into text. Then he can record himself and see how well the computer understands his speech. Thank you to everyone that gave some input as far as therapy recommendations! Have a wonderful day!

Can You Feel the LOVE?

5 days until Valentine's Day!! I love Valetine's Day so much we have already started celebrating this week in speech! This is a picture of our (in progress) door decorations. Each student wrote down target words they have been practicing onto hearts.

I also wanted to share some ideas I came across on Pinterest that would work well for speech and language groups.

This is a color sorting/ counting activity I found from Teaching Tiny Tots

A Valentine Heart Math activity from lessonplans.craftgossip.com. I usually do this activity every year. The kids really enjoy it. It is good practice for reading graphs and estimating.

Love Bug writing activity from Mom to 2 Posh Divas blog

Stay tuned... more to come!!!

Speech Therapy For a Big Kid.....

Happy Friday!! I am going to make this post short and sweet. I have two reasons I am posting this morning. First,  I have had some requests for a link to my Pinterest Boards. You can check out my boards and follow me Here!

Second.... I start with a new private client next week. He is a 20 year old in need of some speech therapy. It is straight articulation, no language involved. Has anyone worked with a older client before and had any therapy activities/ techinques that worked well? My brain is really geared towards speech with elementary age kids and I don't want to use anything that may be too juvenile for him.

PS- Here is a cute Super Bowl prediction activity I found on Pinterest I thought I'd share from A Cupcake for the Teacher

Thanks so much, and have a fantastic weekend!!