Tuesday's Treasure Box: Educreations for Speech and Language

Educreations is an app that I put on my iPad last year, but deleted it after thinking that it looked too much like math J. A few weeks ago a fabulous special education teacher showed me all that she did with the app and I had the need to take a second look.  

A Google search for Educreations provided me with links to math and chemistry tutorials, but searches for Educreations plus kindergarten and Educreations plus speech therapy gave me links to many activity ideas for speech and language therapy. Educreations is a screen-casting tool. It records everything that happens on the screen along with the audio. 

One IMPORTANT thing to know about Educreations is that it is very easy to share a screen-cast with parents through email. 

Tara, the SpeechyKeen SLP uses this app to wrap-up a session with upper-elementary and middle school students. Educreations is a motivating way for her students to give a review of the lesson, demonstrate what they've learned, and share with parents. Visit her post to learn more!

Describe pumpkins or anything else. Visit my description of the pumpkin that I drew here OR even better, listen to a kindergarten student describe his "army ant" at EdTech in Action - Exploring Educreations in Kindergarten.

At Word Work with Educreations by Natalie Keenen, one teacher tells how her students take pictures of themselves or an object in the room and put describing words all over their photo while recording themselves saying the words. 

Adventures in Speech Pathology

You can do so much with this app when working on speech sounds. I save articulation activities from sites such as Ms. Lane's SLP Materials and Adventures in Speech Pathology in my iBooks. Simply open the activity and take a screenshot so that you can add it to Educreations. Students can practice the activity and you can email the samples of work to parents. See my two examples* (wait for the second page) by clicking here. Take photos of your articulation pictures or activities and add them to Educreations. 

ICT with Mrs. C has several good ideas that could be adapted to be used with many speech and language objectives. 

Scroll down the page at Lone Mountain Elementary School to hear students retell the story Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberly. 

I like Storytelling: Minus the Writing at mattBgomez, Kindergarten Teacher.

Educreations can be used as a writing or drawing tool during barrier games. Check out Eggs-actly Descriptive Game Cards at In Spontaneous Speech. 

Read how the SLP at peachy speech used Educreations to teach monthly themes in the areas of social skills and language.

Here is a link to a 10 minute tutorial made with Educreations that tells about all of the features of Educreations. 

I hope that you enjoyed my Tuesday's Treasure Box! If you have used Educreations and have more ideas, please share by leaving a comment. 

Diana

*Examples:

"2 Syllable Words: Loaded Scenes." Adventures in Speech Pathology. N.p., 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 1013.<http://adventuresinspeechpathology.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2-syllable-animal-scene-1.pdf>

"Ms. Lane's SLP Materials: Articulation: Sp Blends Sentence Flash Cards." Ms. Lane's SLP Materials. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.   <http://slpmaterials.blogspot.com/2013/06/articulation-sp-blends-sentence-flash.html>




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Describing Pumpkins

My most popular pin on Pinterest this month has been Pumpkin Observations, describing a pumpkin using your five senses, found at 2 Teaching Mommies. It didn't surprise me to find even more ways to describe pumpkins when I searched the web. (NOTE - This link no longer works, but all links below lead to wonderful describing activities.)

Find Pumpkin Anchor Charts and other ways to describe a pumpkin at My First Grade Backpack.

Create a Wordle with your describing words at Wordle.net. 

The First Grade Parade has several great describing ideas. I love that her students describe the pumpkins using similes.  

Make the pumpkin patch describing activity found at Carrie's Speech Corner.

Describe as you Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents Magazine with this cool app!

Conduct a Pumpkin Investigation at A to Z Teacher Stuff.

Many pumpkin activities, including adjectives to describe the inside and outside of a pumpkin, can be found at Simply Second Grade. 

Making Grammar Fun! -- Adjective Pumpkins! at A Day in First Grade. 

At TpT, there are over 200 describing activities involving pumpkins. Below are three of the more than 25 FREE activities. 
     Pumpkin Description 
     Describing Pumpkins 
     My Pumpkin Adjectives

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: i Teach with Technology

I stumbled upon i Teach with Technology when looking for good ideas for app related activities.  I found GREAT activities at Karen Ogen's blog Her language-rich activities are collaborative, hands-on, and use content-creation apps such as Popplet, Puppet Pals, and PicCollage. Karen doesn't have a huge number of posts, but what she lacks in quantity is certainly made up by quality. 

Students used Photo Cards for reflection following a field trip, retold a story using Face Talker, used Puppet Pals for a persuasive writing activity, and sorted solids, liquids, and gases using PicCollage.  

The blog isn't limited to app activities. Karen also shares teacher tools and websites. Pass on her Interactive Learning Sites for Education to parents and teachers. 

Enjoy!

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: TEACHERS pay TEACHERS

TEACHERS pay TEACHERS is my Tuesday Treasure as I have recently talked to several SLPs that did not know about TpT and a few others who did not venture to TpT as they thought that they would have to "pay" for all items. 

TEACHERS pay TEACHERS is a wonderful resource for materials. Not only can you find materials made by SLPs (who understand what we do), you can also find many curriculum based activities that show us what our students/clients are doing in their classrooms. Many materials are FREE and most others are very inexpensive. 

Two nights ago, I put "speech therapy" into the search box at TpT and found 8694 items. Of those, 2070 were FREE and 5583 were under $5.00.  

You can search by grade level, price and subject.  You will find white board activities, all kinds of forms for data and lesson plans, and any kind of speech / language activity imaginable.

Learn how to navigate TpT by visiting SLPs on TPT Resource List, a November 2012 post at Speech Room News. In addition to navigation tips, you will find a list of 83 SLP TPT Stores.  

Enjoy!

Diana

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Speech and Language with the Big Green Monster

Ed Emberley's Go Away, Big Green Monster! can be used for a variety of themes and speech and language objectives. Great for initial /g/ and multi-syllabic word practice. Vocabulary can include facial parts, colors, and descriptive words. 

Use this book when teaching body parts or in the fall for as part of a Halloween lesson. I used it during St. Patrick's Day when teachers' theme of choice was green. 

Suggestions for speech and language therapy activities at Carrie's Speech Corner and Simply Speech.

Find story props at Kizclub.com and sequence cards at Make Learning Fun.com. 

At Ed Emberly.com, look under Activities to see coloring pages and masks. Click here to read his book. 

Phonics, sequencing skills, and other literacy lessons are included in suggested activities at ReadWriteThink. 

Enjoy!

Diana

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Tuesday's Treasure Box: Make Learning Fun.com

If you haven't seen this website, you are in for a treat!! Make Learning Fun.com is one of the best early childhood resources on the web and all of it's wonderful ideas and activities are FREE. 

I love the literacy activities! The Emergent Readers are also great for emergent talkers. Every time that I visit the site, I find something new! 

Today I found

• Many Pete the Cat activities
• Very cute button sorting cards that should have been in my last post (20+ Resources for Classification and Categorization)
• An entire section dedicated to Eric Carle books 
• Story Sticks for Popular Books
• Sign Language Readers and other sign language resources
• Suggestions for adaptations for children with physical disabilities. 

Those activities are just a very small portion of what's available on the site. There are activities for every theme imaginable and for most of the popular young children's literature selections. 

AND, the most amazing fact is that this website is a one woman show! Jo Kramer calls this website her hobby. Thank you, Jo!!

Diana

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20+ Resources for Classification and Categorization

One of my favorite sorting activities was to classify and categorize buttons.
We sorted by size, shape, the number of holes, and texture.
However, the favorite category was buttons that spin. 

The terms classify and categorize are often used interchangeably. The Merriam Webster Dictionary identifies classify and categorize as synonyms and the definitions were very similar. I found several other definitions of these terms showing definite differences, but the best explanation, below, comes from a Roanoke County Schools web page. 

• When you classify, you group together several things that have something in common.
• When you tell how the parts of the group are alike, you categorize them

When we teach children to group or sort objects, both classification and categorization are usually intertwined into our activities. 

Here are some FREE or very inexpensive activities to use when teaching classifying and categorizing. 

• Play Sort It Out with Clifford's friends Zo and Flo at Scholastic.com. 

• I found this free Button Classification Unit at Teachers pay Teachers where you will find over 200 FREE activities to teach classification and/or categorization. 

• Also, FREE at TpT, Fall Categories and Turkey Categories. These would be great file folder activities and could be used for home practice. 

• Pictures to use for sorting activities can be found at Carl's Corner Sort City page. You will find pictures for all speech sounds as well as pictures for word families, seasonal activities, colors, shapes, food groups, and more. 

• Try Nature Hunt or Step and Jump found at Kindergarten Sort and Classify Activities. 

• A great free download at Adventures in Tutoring and Special Education.

• Categories Ladder is one of many classification / categorization activities found at Quia.com.

• Find Category Word Wheels at Figuratively Speeching SLP.

• Dollar Tree Categorization Activity at Constantly Speaking.

• Find Cut and Glue Categories at Let's Talk Speech-Language Pathology.

• At last count, Speaking of Speech had 16 categorization activities.

• At Kizclub.com, click on Topics to find more than 10 printable sorting activities. 

• The FREE app, Kidspiration Maps Lite, has sorting activities for reading and writing, science, and social studies. If you have access to Kidspiration on your computer, you have an unlimited amount of sorting activities. 

• I like Ms. Lane's Category Flash Cards. Students name the category, name items in the categories and name one item not in the category. 

• Recommend the sorting activities at Education.com to parents of preschool students. 

• Download the interactive PowerPoint, Practicing Categories Game, at Speechtx.com. 

• This mom, at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers, kept her child engaged with this transportation themed category sort. 

• A great source for parents can be found at Reading Rockets. This page also includes a short list of classification/categorization themed books for children age 4 to 12. 

• More than twenty of these science themed sorting activities are free at TeAchnology. 

• Two fun and easy to implement classification games are found at Kindergarten-lessons.com.

• Play What's Different? at Do2Learn to use when teaching negation or category exclusion. 

If you have, or know of, other free or inexpensive categorization /classification activities please comment and share the link!

Diana

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CLASSIFY AND CATEGORIZE. (n.d.).Roanoke County Public Schools . Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://www.rcs.k12.va.us/pfes/third%20grade/reading%20sem%201%20theme%202/turtle%20bay/classify%20and%20categorize%201.htm

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. (n.d.). Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved September 22, 2013, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/