A Mid-November Update

Well, I had the best intentions to keep up at least a quarterly post but this first quarter flew by and we are almost three weeks into the second quarter.  By now, we are well underway in the speech room learning to produce new sounds, increasing vocabulary, learning to communicate more effectively through many different modalities, learning active listening strategies, increasing grammatical structures and improving social skills to name a few.

The kiddos are in a good rhythm and are making strides in meeting their individual goals and objectives.  Some of the skills the kids are learning are
1) Picture writing to aid in story retell
2) Using context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words
3) Using graphic organizers such as Expanding Expression Tool to help with describing skills
3) Using literature at all levels to work on improving oral expression and listening comprehension
4) Using picture cues to aid in comprehension
5) Listening and looking for clues and pairing it with prior knowledge to make inferences

Our Social Skills group has been learning
1) Identifying polite vs. rude comments
3) Accepting differences
2) Social problem solving
2) Idiomatic expressions
4) Conversational turn-taking

Just ten short days until Thanksgiving, which brings the following books into the speech room
- The Plump and Perky Turkey
- Fall Leaves Fall
- Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving
- There was and Old Lady who Swallowed a Pie
- Five Little Turkeys (adapted book)
- Leaves (adapted book)
-10 Little Turkeys (adapted book)
- What Happens in the Fall (adapted book)
- Granny Swallowed a ? (adapted book)

We have been using these books as a springboard to address many of our speech/language goals.  It's certainly making us hungry for Thanksgiving dinner!

Mrs. Hodgson