5 Tips for the Last Month of School [guest post]
Hello! I’m Linda from Looks-Like-Language and I am delighted to be guest posting for Teach Speech 365 this week. Nice to meet you! Feel free to come visit me at my blog: http://www.lookslikelanguage.com.
While some school districts are already finished (lucky you!) I am in the final, very long month of school. How can we, as SLPs, manage these last weeks of therapy? Kids are so done and we are ready for vacation, too, yet there is still so much to be done: therapy and notes, end of the year paperwork, progress reports, summer homework and packing. It makes me tired just reading the list!
To help you out, I’m sharing five of my go-to ideas that help me to get through the last weeks of therapy. Be as creative as you can be to apply the skills you have been working on all year.
1.Get outside if at all possible. Take walks and do a scavenger hunt to find the described items, or give students 5 minutes to find something to bring back in with them to use in a carryover activity.
2.Games! Keep all of those games out until the last minute. Let students choose their favorites or search for some new additions. Teachers pay Teachers and Classroom Freebies Too are great places to start. There are also many free PowerPoint game templates that you can personalize to address the vocabulary and language you worked on during the year.
3.Use the speech and language skills in role play activities, short plays, charades or similar activities that don’t require much planning. Let your students know what you are expecting them to produce correctly and then let them carry it out.
4.Re-use some of the activities that your students enjoyed this year- with a twist! Let the students take turns being the SLP! If it is a familiar activity, they probably will be able to repeat it pretty easily. This frees you to finish some paper work while multi-tasking and monitoring their productions. A word of caution- be prepared to be imitated accurately! It can be a little unnerving if you’ve never done this before.
5.Get a list of YouTube videos together. (This is a great emergency planning option for all times of the year.) There are many great short wordless clips that can be used for a variety of skills, including retelling the story, asking and answering questions about it, being a movie critic and reviewing it, and using correct sounds during any of these follow- ups.
Here are some links for ideas and free materials that I have found helpful for planning the end of the year:
http://people.uncw.edu/ertzbergerj/msgames.htm
http://www.classroomfreebiestoo.com/
http://www.education.com/activity/outdoor/
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/
http://www.charades-ideas.com/
http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2012/03/25-easy-pretend-play-ideas.html
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wordless+shorts
Whatever you do, have fun! When your students apply what they have learned in fun activities, I believe that skill carryover will be so much more likely to happen. Just keep reminding yourself, summer is right around the corner! Have a great one!
