Organizing Articulation Worksheets

Working on articulation skills is my primary job as a public school speech therapist.  Over the years I have accumulated many books containing articulation worksheets.  Most of these books contain worksheets targeting a variety of  phonemes.  I used to take a stack of these books to the copy machine to create homework packets for my students.

 After lugging these books around for several years, I finally realized that I could make my life much easier by creating one central location for each individual phoneme.  I placed my original copy in a sheet protector, then made several copies of that original worksheet and placed those behind the corresponding sheet protector.  Now, when I have a student who needs a homework sheet, I have everything in my inventory (for that particular sound) in one place.

Hope this idea works for you!!

File Folder Games

At the end of my first year of teaching, I discovered that the last day of school is a great time to "dumpster dive".  Since many teachers are cleaning their rooms, and I love to re-purpose...this works out really well for me.  My great find that particular year was the old record storage rack you see below:

  I wasn't sure what I would use it for at first, but eventually found that my folder games worked great on this little jewel!

Most of my games are created with the following format:  The students in the group each receive an cut-out picture (A barn in this example), and then roll a die for the 6 items that belong with that cut-out.  The student who collects all 6 items first is the winner of the game.  This type of game works really well as a quick incentive to focus attention.

I typically use a mailing envelope or old CD covers as the storage space for the big object in the games, and then standard library pockets for the smaller objects.

An Attempt to Learn Something New

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem.  That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.  ~Thomas Szasz

This blog is an example of my willingness to suffer injury to my self-esteem.  I am brand new to blogging and fear that my lack of knowledge will reveal just how old I really am : )

Since I work as a public school Speech/Language Pathologist, many teachers (and parents) ask me questions about speech/language development when neither of us really have time to devote to the conversation.  I would like this blog to assist in answering some of their questions. I would also like to use this space to share materials that parents, other SLPs, teachers, and paraprofessionals might find beneficial when working with children.   
I hope you find the information helpful.  Please send me any questions you may have.