The Guardian Eyewitness - FREE app

Here is an app you may find useful. I use it to target inferencing skills and also, it's a great way to get your students talking. You may use it to target pragmatic skills and pretty much anything. Best of all, it's FREE!!!!.

Download it from the app store.

Description

The Guardian Eyewitness app for iPad showcases the world’s most striking and beautiful photographs, providing a daily, visual reflection of global events.

The OFF-THE-WALL, BIZARRE, ABSURD, CRITICAL THINKING game

I found myself working a lot on critical thinking, especially with the upper elementary grades. I came a across some good probing questions from a variety of sources, but my challenge was making critical thinking tasks FUN!

In this game, players choose a "Red Riding Hood" card and answer questions about a story.

Upon answering a question, players choose a "Wolf" card and carry out a wacky command. You will need tokens for this game.

 
The question cards can be applied to any book that you're reading with your students. The "Wolf" cards can be used for a variety of other activities. Here are the rules...

Download your copy at my TPT store. I always appreciate your comments, so go ahead and leave me one!

Pragmatic Skills

I guess I have a bit of a type A personality, which is why I need everything to be super organized. I have started to organize all areas of language development into a hierarchy. This helps me track progress better and also helps my students with achieving their goals.

In this download, you will find 8-steps to helping students achieve pragmatic appropriateness. You also get sample activities for each pragmatic skill targeted, as well as conversation starter strips and fun facts for kids.

Visit my TPT store for this and other activities.

Thanks to innovativeconnections.blogspot.com for her bright borders and the clipart is from http://teachersclipart.blogspot.com

My bulletin board!

There are 4 bulletin boards in my speech room and one outside my room. I had to think of something that I could keep up for more than a few months. So... I had my students create their "t-errific" shirts with their goals and I don't plan on redecorating any time soon.

I downloaded the blank shirts from superduper a while back. E-mail if you want a copy.

Homework that is "short-n-sweet"

My students BEG for me to give them homework because they earn prizes for completing 10 assignments and exhibiting good behavior. Since I don't always have time to plan ahead, I often find myself having to come up with a homework task on the spot. And so I created "short-n-sweet" questions which target almost all aspects of speech and language development. All you have to do is make copies, cut, and distribute. I was inspired by various pinterest posts and used clip art from cindy park at TPT.

I hope you find this download helpful. You can find the download at my TPT store. As always, your comments and reviews are appreciated.

Writing Intervention

The majority of my students struggle with writing and whenever they are asked to provide a written sample, they cringe, they cry, and they throw tantrums.

I have developed a 13-step writing intervention program. I use these steps to improve my students' writing and I have found that it really makes a big difference. Some of the steps are from "Prevention and Intervention of Writing Difficulties for Students with Learning Disabilities," a research article by Steve Graham, Karen R. Harris, and Lynn Larsen. Some of the steps are originals, which I felt were important enough to include. Students are motivated throughout the process because the intervention is broken down into 13 simple and MANAGEABLE steps. I really think your students will benefit from this as much as mine have.

You can download the FREE image at my TPT store. And as always, I appreciate your comments!

The frame in this print-out is from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Dina-Migadaki

Following complex directions

Many of my students' goals this year are to improve comprehension for following complex directions. I decided to make my own activity. I hope you find it useful too.

In this activity you will find multi-step directions which include prepositions, temporal concepts, quantitative concepts, and conditional "if."

You can download your FREE copy at my TPT store. I would like to know what you think, your comments and reviews are greatly appreciated.

Clip art is by  Chuck E.