Book Review: "Interrupting Chicken" by David Ezra Stein & activity

"Interrupting Chicken" cover - available here.

One of my favorite events during the school year is our book fair -- I always find some good books to use in therapy. This year I got really lucky again - I discovered the book "Interrupting Chicken" by David Ezra Stein. I was immediately drawn in by the title and cover image, since it features talk bubbles. I had just introduced thinking and talking bubbles with my social skills group and we had also been working on not blurting out and interrupting. This book is relevant for both of these skill areas, and may be for you!

Sample pages.

The story deals with a young chicken who begs his father for a bed time story. Papa Chicken warns him not to interrupt the story, and the little red chicken promises. Of course it doesn't take long for the little red chicken to break his promise, and he blurts out a possible ending for the story. The author lovingly illustrated this  by adding in talking bubbles that look a little bit chaotic. Papa Chicken attempts to read three stories, but gets interrupted each time, at which point he has had enough and tells the little red chicken to create his own story. Little red chicken does so, only to get interrupted by Papa Chicken's snoring. My students (1st through 4th grade)  thought this story was hilarious and got a few good laughs in every time the little red chicken interrupted the story with his goofy antics. We discussed how little chicken's interrupting affected the story and how it made Papa Chicken feel. We also talked about how to interrupt appropriately (something we had been working on throughout the year). 

Interrupting activity set-up.

Next, I introduced a game to work on not interrupting others' turn to talk. I gave each student three glass gems (these can be found in the home decor aisle at Walmart or Michael's) and placed a container with the rest of the gems in the middle of our circle. Students took turns talking about a topic of their choice (e.g., what they had done on the weekend, their favorite movie or video game, etc.). Other students had to sit and listen. If they interrupted the student whose turn it was to talk, they had to place one of their gems back into the container. They were able to "earn" gems by using appropriate interrupting strategies. At the end we compared who had the most gems. Since our students tend to be really competitive in nature, they really enjoyed this lesson. Once you have introduced this activity, you can continue using it for future social skills sessions to keep practicing this skill.

~Viola

The End of the School Year!

The end of the school year has finally arrived! Although I only have a week of break between now and the beginning of our Extended School Year program, I feel content in how much I have accomplished this year. Between opening up my TPT store and starting this blog (I am hoping to provide more consistent updates again now that the end-of-the-schoolyear-stress is complete), I saw amazing growth in some of my students and have formed new and lasting professional relationships with some of the teachers at my site. This year I really started to feel like part of the team! As much as I complained the last few months, I guess it was a good year in the end.

And, while I have never been excited to return to work after the summer, this year I am! I will be moving from a broom-closet sized speech room into a larger room with storage space, a white board, and a document camera!!! My mind is already churning as to how the space can be used. But first, summer :).

~Viola

DIY: Articulation Connect Four

One of my favorite games growing up was Connect 4. To this day, I enjoy playing this game. And did you know that this game can be adapted into a cheap, awesome, and fun articulation activity? 

You will need the following items:


* Connect 4 game (check for used copies at Goodwill, I found several there for $1.99)
* round Avery labels (3/4" diameter) - check Walmart
* pen
* a list with target words


First, write your target words onto your labels. Then, stick the labels onto the game chips. There should be 21 tokens of each red and black in a complete Connect 4 set, so if you stick a label on both sides, you can have 28 labels for a sound in each initial, medial, and final position. In my example, I highlighted the target sound by making it a different color. 

Put a label on each side of the play tokens.

As soon as all of the labels are attached, you are ready to play!

Articulation Connect 4!

Tip#1: Make sure your label size doesn't exceed the 3/4" diameter, otherwise the chip's color will be covered up.
Tip#2: If you want to make multiple sets for different sounds, but only have one game: basic checkers chips are the same size, too.
Tip#3: You can re-create this activity for a checkers game.
Tip#4: This works for other educational targets, like sight words.

I hope you like this as much as I do!

~Viola

Game Review: Bunny Hop

Available here.

I recently stumbled across a really fun game that my students have enjoyed immensely: Bunny Hop by Educational Insights. I got lucky and found a copy of this game at Goodwill, complete save the instructions (which where downloadable online). Fortunately this game is pretty affordable on amazon, as well.

What I like about this game is that the turns are quick and that there is an educational component as well, as students have to memorize information and strategize their next move. 

The premise is simple: the farmers' carrot field has been invaded by rabbits. The rabbits come in four colors: red, yellow, green, and blue. Some of the rabbits have the capability to hop, others do not. On their turn, players roll the multi-colored die, choose a matching rabbit, and push down on it. Then they push on one of the farmers (doesn't matter which one). If the bunny jumps out, players get to keep that bunny. Whoever gets a rabbit of each color first, is the winner. 

           The game board.         The yellow rabbit was a jumper!

The die also has some special moves: the rainbow side lets you pick a bunny of any color (you can just take it, regardless of whether it is a jumper), and the arrow side makes you trade one of your bunnies with another player. This requires that players use some critical thinking and strategizing. A fun little addition to any speech room, especially around Easter!

~Viola

Easter Egg Inferencing Activity

One more week until Spring break, which means that it is almost time for Easter! Having the break so late this year is really difficult - I've been counting down the days. And if I am this burnt out, I can only imagine how my kiddos are feeling! In order to make the wait until the break a little bit less painful for my students, I created an Easter-themed inferencing activity. A number of my students have logic-building, inferencing type goals to improve on their critical thinking skills, and this is a great way to work on these goals.

This activity consists of 54 cards: the front contains an Easter egg with three clues about a mystery item, and the back of the cards (if you choose to print them double-sided) has a picture of the answer. This activity would be fun for preschool or Kindergarten classrooms or Speech groups. The difficulty level is fairly easy, so this is best for younger audiences. You can adapt this activity in several ways:

Easter egg inferencing - get it here!

• Simply read clues and have students guess what the item is.
• Place all the picture cards on the table, then read clues and have students find a picture.
• Give students points based on how many clues they needed (e.g., one clue = 3 points, two clues = 2 points, three clues = 1 point).
• Show students the picture card first, then have them come up with possible clues that might be on the card.

I also included 9 blank cards so you can add your own clues! If this sounds like something that fits your students' needs, please come visit my TPT store!

~Viola

No Plan Articulation Activity: Hot & Cold

I haven't updated in a while (completely swamped with triennial and initial evaluations!). If your life is any bit like mine, it is unlikely that there is much time for planning a therapy session (not that there is a lot of time for that anyway). I know that my articulation students are tired of mindless drill, so I thought I should give a brief update with a quick, cheap, easy, and functional therapy activity that my mentor showed me during my school-based internship. All you need for this game is a deck of Super Duper articulation cards (or any other deck that has the cards in pairs). First, separate the deck so that you end up with two identical decks. 

Make sure there is one of each card in each deck.

Next, take one of the decks and line up the cards in your therapy area, so that they are arranged in a rectangle. The order of the cards does not matter.

Set up the cards like this.

You are the "keeper" of the second card deck. To begin the game, shuffle the cards and look at the card on the top. Make sure your students can't see it! Only you know what the picture on the top card is. 

Only you get to know the secret picture.

On their turn, students have to guess the secret picture by figuring out its surrounding pictures. So they ask questions like, "Is the word around a ___?" I purposely used this carrier phrase for my /r/ group, but you can modify it to suit your needs. You will then say "hot" or cold" depending on whether the secret card is surrounding the card they guessed. So for example, if the target word is "four" and students ask, "Is the word around a bear?", you would say "Hot". Students then keep asking until they have enough clues to guess what the word is.

The Four is surrounding the Bear.

This activity takes no prep -- the hardest part is separating the card decks and spreading them out. And kids think they're playing a game. Does it get any easier?

~Viola

ThinkFun Review #3: Zingo! Time-Telling

Get Zingo! Time-Telling here.

The last of the games that I received from ThinkFun for review is Zingo! Time-Telling. This game is a fun way to teach kids how to interpret clocks and time. I think being able to tell time is very empowering to a lot of special needs students, since it will allow them to better be aware of how much time will have to pass until the next transition or their next break. Knowing how to read a clock will also help kids who have poor time management skills to better plan ahead and know how much time is left to complete a job. This is definitely a very functional skill that is vital to daily life.



Two difficulty levels.

Since I work with a lot of students who do not yet have this skill, we took a few sessions to expose them to the concept and practice using Zingo! Time-Telling. This game is similar to other versions of Zingo! in that it contains game boards, a Zing-zinger, and tiles. As with other versions, this game comes in two difficulty levels: one side of the board contains both analog clocks as well as the digital numbers underneath, whereas on the flipside only the analog clocks are shown. I used this game with groups of second and third-graders. Common Core State Standards require instruction for this concept beginning in first grade and culminating in third grade (1.MD.B.3, 2.MD.C.7, 3.MD.A.1), so I figured those were good groups to practice with.

My 2nd grader is matching up the tiles.

Prior to introducing this game, I did a quick pre-teaching lesson with a real clock just to warm students up to the idea. With my 2nd graders I used the easier difficulty and with my third-graders the more challenging one. This worked out perfectly, as it was right around the difficulty level they could handle. What I really liked about this game is that the hands are color coded to match up to the colors of the tiles. This makes it very visual for students and helps them determine which number corresponds to the hour and which number corresponds to the minute. We talked about the different clock icons and compared the clock's hands to the digital numbers. My older students had fun, too! We tried to figure out the tiles we needed to fill in our board before moving the Zing-zinger. I noted some marked improvement towards the end of the session: students needed fewer prompts, especially for the minute part. After they had filled up one board, they asked to play again. I love it when students are learning while playing!

My 3rd grader is trying to find a match.

This game might also be a great tool for older students to work on time application skills or sequential skills. You could use it to teach the concepts "before/after" or teach scheduling and time-management. Or, if you are a parent or teacher, you can simply use this game to drill those math common core standards. 

Once again, we have a ThinkFun winner! Please make sure to also check out my reviews of Rush Hour Jr. and Zingo! Word-Builder. I will be definitely on the lookout for more great games by this company.

~Viola