Taming the Paper Clutter-and update and linky party!!!

Thanks to the AMAZING Jenna Rayburn from Speech Room News for setting up another linky party one of my favorite subjects:  Organization.  

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Okay, I'm hoping that we are all in the trust tree here.  I'm going to tell you a little secret.

I have little piles of papers in the kitchen, the office, the dining room table and downstairs on the ironing board.  I have about 4 different piles of stuff at my work.  Sometimes I spend my whole day just going through my piles, rearranging them into new piles.  

The problem is that I'm spending more time rearranging and coming up with new piles then I am actually doing something with my paperwork.  A few weeks ago, my coworkers and I attended a GTD (getting things done) webinar.

While definitely geared to corporate America, I found many of the suggestions made sense to me as a Speech language Pathologist (sometimes I am drowning in paperwork) as a mom (how many drawings can one little 4 year old do) and as a manager (how can I remember to follow up with my employees...)

My challenge for this week was to start getting my paperwork in order.  I've tried various systems in the past-my last failed system consisted of four folders:

DO NOW!!! For stuff that needed to be completed within the week
DO LATER!!! For stuff that needed to be done later.
PENDING: For stuff that I was waiting for information from someone on or items like Amazon orders.
TO BE LAMINATED:  I've had Jenna Rayburn's Candytown Phonology in there for awhile.  It's time to get that sucker laminated.  That was an semi-intentional pun.

I made those up, put stuff in them, and then left them there to die.  You might notice that my Do NOW items includes Leap frog incentive stickers.  This system wasn't working for me.  Plus it's hard to pay bills when you have to check 5 different rooms and a 31 bag where you threw some paperwork in when your mom came over.

One of the suggestions from the Webinar was to start a Tickler file.  It's basically files you can set up for everyday of the month where you put information (like Birthday cards, reminders about IEPs, follow up paperwork.)

This week I set up systems at home and at work.  I modified the home one as I didn't think I would need a file for each day of the week.  I bought a document box where I can put all of the Biscuit's artwork.  I also added an inbox where I put all incoming paperwork to be "processed." 

Okay it's a work in progress.  Paint with Water is probably does not need to be processed.  (but totally needs to be done!  I loved paint with water as a child)   

This is how I set up my file system at home.  I color coordinated it based on file type.  This is where I store all of the paperwork that I need to act on later.  I set up a similar system at work based on days.  I'm hopeful this system will work for me.  Check back in a month to see if I've maintained it.  Do you have any great ways to tame the paper clutter?  I'd love to hear them! 
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UPDATE:  I've got these systems at both work and home.  Here is what I LOVE.  Almost no more desktop paper clutter.  When I get new papers, I sort them into my file system by when I need to get them done.  So for example, I will put my bills in the week before I need to pay them.  At work, I have folders for meetings I am doing and just move the folders to the date when the meeting is happening.

BUT, I need to get better at checking my daily folders at work or switch to a weekly system.  I generally forget until the end of the week-instead of pulling them out at the beginning of the day and figuring out what I need to do with them.

Are you ready to link up with your amazing organizational tips?  Head over to Speech Room News to read about how you can link up.

Organization: TPT materials in index cards!

I'm still entertaining my mother-in-law.  Luckily for me, Carly from Happily SLP was kind enough to offer to do a guest post for me.  She has written a fantastic post about how you can organize your TPT or Teacher's Notebook products using index card holders!  Thanks Carly!
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I am so honored to write a guest post for Kelly from Speech 2 U. My name is Carly and I am a second year speech –language pathologist working in Nebraska. You can follow me on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/HappilySLP  and visit my tpt store at: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Carly-Fowler

I absolutely love teacher pay teacher materials. Since last year I was beginning my career as a Speech Language Pathologist and work in an area where there were not a lot of resources available I quickly found that the SLP community online was the way to supplement materials. Now I have so many wonderful packets that need to be organized.

Here is how I keep some of my many materials organized in my speech room.

 Many of my tpt materials now reside in index card holders! I can fit many of them in a basket and with a quick look I am able to find what I am looking for.

You will need:

- Packing Tape

-Printer

-Laminator

-Index Card Holders (I got mine on clearance at a big box store for 44₵)

-Duck Tape or Labels (I have found that the labels peel off easily)

-Permanent Marker

I have found that by printing my materials multiple pages per sheet I can save on space, ink and lamination. For more information about how to print multiple pages per sheet Jenna at Speech Room News has shared a tutorial on her blog.

Once all my materials are prepped (cut and laminated) I place them in the index card holder.

As for the instructions and content pages I either use packing tape to stick them on to the outside or back of the index card holder or place them inside along with the stimulus cards.

 To make the index card holders a bit nicer I have place the covers of the tpt packets on the front.

I label all the edges using a permanent marker and piece of duck tape so I know what I have in each holder.

As for the game boards that just won’t fit with this organization system, they are filed away for easy access. Not all your materials will work with this system, but this helps me store many of them in a smaller space. I hope you enjoy this organizational tip!

S.....peechy Monthly Feedback Party (Linky)

Nicole over at AllisonSpeechpeeps.blogspot.com has started a monthly linky party where we give you feedback on your feedback on Teachers Pay Teachers or Teacher's Notebook.

Anyhow, this post is going to be super quick and I've got two guest posts lined up until she leaves so I don't get anymore feedback from her.  

Here is some feedback i got from my newest product: Question Reversals Interactive Flashcards.  I really liked getting the feedback that this made teaching a new skill easier as that is what I was hoping to accomplish.    

So AAD1961, email me with your choice of product from my TPT store.  

You can join the Linky party too by heading over her blog or clicking on the picture below.  Thanks Nicole for setting this up again!  

Teaching the Social Skill of Eye Contact to Children: Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy Guest Post

I'm 6 days into the mother in law's visit.  The dog has only escaped twice.  I couldn't start the grill and my son has been a little precocious with his rhyming abilities.  The weather has been fantastic.  I'm  enjoying time with her and my family.  In the meantime, Manda, from Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy, has offered to guest post today.  She has some fantastic ideas for teaching eye contact to children.  She even has a great freebie for Speech2u readers.  Thank you Manda!!!

If you like what you read, you can find more of Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy here:  

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Hello, this is Manda Riebel, M.A.-CCC-SLP, from Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy.  Today I am happy to say that I have been granted the chance to guest post at SPEECH2U! I plan to share some information with you all about teaching the social skill of eye contact to children. I will discuss the benefits of teaching better eye contact and provide some disclaimers associated with teaching the skill to some student populations. I will then follow that discussion with the therapy tips that I have gathered and used over the years on how to help increase eye contact in a therapy session. Last but not least, I will be sharing a FREEBIE document in order for you to work on increasing eye contact with your own students!

I hope that you find this document featuring the answering of “WHAT”, “WHERE” and “WHO” questions both purposeful and fun for working with your own children or students on the targeted pragmatic communication skill area of eye contact.

What are some of the rules of the social skills area of conversation?

There are several areas to address when teaching the social skills area of how to correctly participate in a conversation with others.  To start, students must know about the need to take turns in conversations, the need to introduce topics of conversation, the need to stay on topic, the need to sometimes rephrase their words when misunderstood, the need to sometimes use verbal and nonverbal signals, the need to stand close to someone when speaking, and finally, the need to use facial expressions and eye contact during the conversation.  So, you see, there’s a lot of “rules” that must be followed in order to have a successful conversation exchange and eye contact is just one area to address when teaching the social skill area of conversation exchanges. 

What are some benefits of teaching eye contact?

The child will appear to be listening better to the person who is talking to them.

The child will appear to care more about what is being said to them.

The child will demonstrate active listening skills that may increase their attention to the task. Increased attention to task has been shown to increase a student’s ability to hear and to take in new information.  As a result, they may learn new things quicker and will be able to follow directions in a more timely manner.

The child will learn a skill that will be needed all throughout their lives as appropriate conversational exchanges will be needed on a daily basis (e.g., at work, at school, with family and friends).

What are some things to know before teaching eye contact?      

Eye contact can increase anxiety in certain individuals because it is a personal communication exchange.

Some children with autism or social communication disorders such as selective mutism may not be ready to work on direct eye contact.  These children may find that the treatment goal of needing to look into someone else’s eyes as being too intense or uncomfortable.  In fact, one child that I saw in therapy with Autism told me that looking at other people’s eyes is too overwhelming and uncomfortable for him to do.  He thought that the requirement made him “burn inside”.   As a result, I definitely knew he was not ready for a direct eye contact goal, so we worked on just looking in the general direction of the therapist and not my face.

It may be much easier to work on eye contact initially with small children by getting down on their level.  That means that we should play on the floor with the child while they are playing with their toys.  When they are playing with a toy that they enjoy they will be more comfortable and ready to start a new therapy goal.

What are your eye contact teaching tips?

1)    Direct the child to your face by raising a toy that the child likes up to the side of your face, or right below or on top of your eyes.

2)    Reward eye contact with praise as soon as you see it happen.  E.g., “Great job looking my way!”  Also, the therapist could reward the child with something that they like.  E.g., use small stickers, or one piece of candy like M & M’s. Positive interactions help with carryover of learned behaviors.

3)    If the child is too uncomfortable to work on direct eye contact, change your goal to have the child look in your general direction instead of the floor or wall by them, or at a less message giving intense area of your body such as your forehead, right or left ear, or mouth.

4)    Use fun animal and people puppets.  Hold the puppets up near your eyes and practice conversational exchanges with the child using the puppets.  This is fun!

5)    Wear something interesting to attract the child’s attention your way.  E.g., silly looking eye glasses, a funny tie around your neck, or even put a funny sticker or temporary tattoo on your nose or cheek!

6)    Watch social videos together.  Any video where people are making a conversational exchange would be good.  YouTube is always a nice place to find free videos to be used for social skills sessions.  Just make sure to review the video prior to using it in therapy as the videos on YouTube are not always free of inappropriate behavior or words. Point out the positive things that you see in the video.  E.g., how the people are looking at each other, how they are answering each other’s questions, how they are enjoying each other’s comments etc.

7)    Let the child know that you are actually working on the goal of eye contact and that you are encouraging them to do the activity at least 10 times during your session. When a child “owns” their goal, they are usually more likely to try to complete it.

8)    Be a good role model for the child.  When you first see the child, make sure to look into their eyes to say, “Hello” and to look at them when saying “Good bye” at the end of the session.  Also, model good conversational exchanges when greeting their parents or teachers.

9)    Talk about the positive things that come out of having good eye contact skills.  E.g., how they will look more interested in what other’s are saying, how they may be able to hear things better the first time and as a result be able to follow directions and learn things quicker, and lastly, how the skill will be a wonderful one for them to have all throughout their lives to help them make friends.

10) Practice eye contact using dolls and animal toys.  Put two toys next to each other and practice conversations with the animals or people and say things like, “Look how they are facing each other”, “Wow, they are watching each other’s eyes”.

11) Introduce the skill of looking into eyes by downloading the iPad app by Goetella called, “Eye Contact Trainer“.  It is a wonderful app that shows 23 random faces for 2 to 9 seconds at a time.  The child is asked to glance at the face shown to identify a shape that appears in the eyes of the people. I also like the, “Eye Contact Toy box” and the “Eye Contact- Zoo”; both are by Fizz brain LLC and can be found in your app store.

   

12) Mark up magazines by having the child circle the eyes of people in pictures.

13) Practice eye contact outside of the therapy room when they are ready.  First start with simple greeting exchanges with familiar people and then move onto conversational exchanges that you have practiced in the therapy room.  The child could practice these with their awesome eye contact skills first with a close friend, or relative and then later with a teacher or other student.

I hope that you may find some of these tips helpful.  Please let me know if you have any comments or questions. I can be contacted at: shandagaunt@gmail.com.  Also, my sister and I welcome a visit from you to our Twin Sisters Speech & Language Therapy blog or face book page.  Thank you for reading this post and a big thank you to Kelly for the opportunity to post at her wonderful blog!

P.S. Don’t forget to download the FREEBIE document featuring Mr. Eye Contact Owl.  Click here to download.

Sincerely,

Manda Riebel, M.A.-CCC-SLP 

TPT Back to School Sale: A cart full of awesomeness.

I'm all caught up on my laminating and ready for some new materials.  Teachers Pay Teacher's is having their back to school sale today and tomorrow.  With the code BTS13, you can get 28% off of all of my products-including the bundles.  

I make it a point to support a variety of my favorite TPT sellers and bloggers by purchasing materials throughout the year-but I love to stock up on materials during the quarterly sales.  

Usually I wait until the last minute to make my purchases-but I had so many items in my cart that I went ahead and just purchased all of them.  With my discounts and feedback-I was able to get 10 products for 21.00!  Here is what I got:  

I love the Old Lady book series and ended up getting this book companion from my friend Jess at Figuratively Speeching:  

This activity looks so cute!  I'm going to use it in September to work with some of my clients on their "people files"

 These Inference Cards have been on my list for awhile.

This is a thorough shopping activity set from Rose at Speech Snacks!

I liked how this activity from Speechy Musings was laid out-so creative and different from other products out there.

I liked that this activity from Miss Speechie involves sorting for some of my kiddoes who are struggling with generating ideas using the Expanding Expression Tool.  I thought her language baseline data forms was a great idea and added that too!

I was intrigued by the idea of printing on post it notes-and picked up this one from GoldCountrySLP to try it out!

The clip art on these is so cute!  This is a great product from Speech with Sharon!  

The Buckeye Speech Path has a great product with language dice.  This has been on my wishlist for awhile.

That's what I got!   How about you?  What are you planning to purchase?  

Third Thursday Three-for-All {linky party}

Welcome to the first 3rd Thursday 3 for all!  It's my first attempt at a linky party-they are way more fun than the old Home Interior's parties.  Does anyone remember those?  They sold not-my-style decorations for the home.  Think a giant framed painted picture of a girl and her dog-with a coordinating shelf and then a girl and a doll figurine.  Maybe with some matching wall candles to complete the tableau.  

It's pretty easy for me to fall into a routine where I use the same material in the same way every single therapy session.  Originally this was going to be Five new ideas for Friday but I'm feeling a little less motivated here at the end of the summer.  Three seemed like a more manageable number.   

One thing I absolutely love about speech language pathologists is that we often have access to the same or similar materials-BUT everyone uses it in a slightly different way.  Wouldn't it be great to have a variety of resources and ideas for using therapy materials in the same place?  That's where the "for all" part comes in.  It's a linky party.  If you have an old post you've done on popsicle sticks/tongue depressors or a new one, you are welcome to link up!  If you don't have a blog-that's okay-You can comment and write your suggestions below!  

You are welcome to use the graphic above on your blog-please link the picture back to Speech2u.blogspot.com.  Also please add a link at the end of your blog back to this post so that people know how to link up.  Links can be added for the next two weeks.  

This Month: I'm sharing different activities I've done using popsicle sticks or tongue depressors.  I use these for a lot of different games.  Last year, there were so many great blogs talking about different ways to use popsicle sticks.  Here's three ways, I've used them.

Emotion Sorting Sticks:
1.  I had some left over colors after making Jenna from Speech Room New's French Fry Articulation.  I'm terrible at getting things for free.  The first time I went to McDonalds, I felt bad so I bought three meals for the family and then asked if I could get some extra fry containers that I could use in Speech therapy.  "No." said the counter server.  So then I asked if I could buy some fries but just hold the fries and give me the container.  "Sorry" he said.  I ended up sending our receptionist over to get some containers.  She got them right away.  I wrote different feelings, thanks to my thesaurus, on the leftover craft sticks and put them in an empty peanut butter jar container.  I can work on sorting emotions or my kids can pick a stick from the jar and tell a story about when they or someone else felt that way.

Articulation practice

I use the tongue depressors for these-if you get the pediatric or infant tongue depressors they are smaller shaped like a popsicle stick.  I think one of these might be my idea-but the rest are ideas I've picked up over the years-if it's your idea, please let me know so I can credit you!  

1.  Tongue tip elevation for /t/, /d/, /n/ and /l/.  Have the client bite on the stick with their back molars.  While looking in the mirror have them practice elevating their tongue to say their alveolar sounds.  This helps to stabilize the jaw and I will use this with my clients who are producing their sounds interdentally or blading.  

2.  Graded jaw openings:  Turn the popsicle stick sideways (vs. flat) and talk about how we don't need to make all of our speech sounds with a mouth much wider than that.  You can over-exaggerate how our speech sounds if we make really big mouth movements.  Kids love this.

3.  Inhibiting movement:  I had a client who was producing /n/ for /i/.   Yikes.  Where's the research article that helps me fix that?  I've been trying to use the popsicle stick to inhibit elevation while providing parameter prompts to facilitate an /i/.  

Make Puppets: 

I bought these super hero number counting sets through Teacher's Notebook before I started making products.  I laminated them with 7mm laminating film so they are sturdy and cut around the artwork.  Then I used heavy duty glue dots to attach them to the popsicle sticks:

I use them for motivation, to work on pronouns and practice conversational skills with my clients.

What are your favorite ways to use Popsicle Sticks?  Link up below!

Mama-on-days: Taming the laundry room clutter....and something weird my husband put up on the wall.

This probably would've been a pretty awesome blog post-if I'd remembered to take some before pictures.  I thought I did-but iPhoto is telling me that I didn't.

A great thing about company is that it forces you to get your house in order.  Cleaning is one of those things that comes last on my priority list.  I have friends who post status updates about how often they clean or how great it feels to do laundry.  Do they not know how great it feels to sit on the porch with a glass of wine or pop a bag of popcorn and sit down to watch a great movie?  

My mother in law is coming to visit.  I like her and we generally get along well.  Her last visit was 2 years ago.  I was in the middle of changing jobs after working at the same job for 13 years.  I was stressed out and working 12 hour days trying to get everything accomplished.  I thought I would just let her take care of the meals and the cleaning (since she seemed to like those things).  Bad decision. So for this trip-I am making sure that the house is cleaned and organized, that I have a few meals up my sleeves and a plan for our weekends.

My challenge for this week was to straighten up the laundry/junk room.  We have plastic boxes filled with my husbands junk and my precious belongings.  I have 4 bins filled with hand-me-downs for when the Biscuit is older and 8 bins filled with his old clothes in case we are lucky enough to have another.  I have a plastic bin filled with my old undergraduate and graduate text books and notebooks filled with notes and old blue books (test examination books.)  I graduated in 98.  It's time to let them go.  But it's progress, since last year, they were still in my file cabinets and on my bookshelf.  I also labeled a box called cassettes.  My husband has three plastic containers filled with old cables.  If there is apocaplyse and we go back to dot matrix printers. Come to my house for your connections!  Do you have all of your old textbooks and class notes?  When did you get rid of them?

I made three piles

• For Sale: (Craigslist and childrens consignment) 
• Donate: (Goodwill-with resulting speech therapy game purchases.)
• Trash:  (lots and lots of it.)  

I ended up with 2 car loads carted out plus several garbage bags full of stuff.  I made about 150.00 between Craigslist and the consignment store.

My laundry room is 10x better than it was-but it is still a gross Laundry room.

Only in my universe is this the REVEAL photo.  

You know you're a speechie when you label your own boxes.

 I'm going to take the next two Mondays off since my mother in law is in town-but I have to show you our guest bedroom.  My husband said he would clean it up for her.  Here's what it was like tonight:

Happy Back to School everyone!!!