Using STEM in Speech: Ladybug Life Cycles

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The last STEM unit we did during the school year was centered around ladybug life cycles. Because this involved living animals, my students really enjoyed it. There are so many ladybug themed crafts on Pinterest that you won't have any difficulty finding companion activities.

I was fortunate in that a parent donated this Ladybug Life Cycle kit from Insectlore. This tool allowed us to observe the growth progression of a ladybug from the larval to adult stage. I had my students describe the  appearance of the bugs when they came to Speech each week (it took about 2-3 weeks for the ladybugs to complete their life cycle).

With my younger students, I used these life-like replicas to work on sequencing, comparing and contrasting, and describing. A Venn diagram was great for this!

For my older language students I created an interactive lapbook that contained ladybug facts, life cycle sequencing activities, anatomy, information about habitats, and taxonomy.

This was a  great way to wrap up the school year!

Using STEM in Speech: Fossils

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Due to some craziness in my personal life, I had to take a break from blogging for a while. I did have most of this post sitting there in draft form, and really want to finally get it posted here, since my students had such a great time with this unit!

Since we had just covered Rocks and Minerals in Speech, it made sense to tackle fossils next! A lot of my students are really interested in dinosaurs, so of course this unit was a big hit with many of them. To my surprise, a lot of my kiddos were able to name all kinds of dinosaurs, but didn't exactly know what a fossil was. Most of them thought a fossil was just a leftover dinosaur bone, rather than a rock. Below are some of the various activities I did with my groups (of course tailored to their various skill levels and type of goal they were working on):

1. Learning about the different types of fossils
Before any of the activities, I did briefly explain the different types of fossils to my older students.  Here's the run-down (don't worry, I had to google it, too!):

• mold fossils (a fossilized impression made in the substrate - a negative image of the organism)
• cast fossils (formed when a mold is filled in)
• trace fossils = ichnofossils (fossilized nests, gastroliths, burrows, footprints, etc.)
• true form fossils (fossils of the actual animal or animal part).

2. Exploring and matching cast fossils
For this, we used this Fossil Sorting Activity Kit by Dancing Bear (the same company the mineral kit was from). We used this kit to work on describing, comparing and contrasting, matching the fossils to the cards, and to practice articulation targets by saying the name of the fossil / reading the description from the cards out loud. The kit comes with a couple of magnifying glasses that students could use to get a better look. I used a jewelry organizer to store the fossils, but the kit also comes with small plastic bags for this purpose. This was definitely a hit, kids still ask me if we can "do the fossils again" (even though we did this back in January).

3. Matching "bones" to their mold fossils 
For this activity, I purchased the Safari Toob with the Prehistoric mammal skulls as well as some of the Crayola Air Dry Clay (I initially tried Playdoh... DON'T! It got stuck to my skulls and created a giant headache). I used the clay to make some spheres that I patted flat and then used a skull to make an imprint of the mammal. After letting the clay dry, we had the perfect matching activity!

4. Making mold fossils
This was a nice activity for kids to take home! All you need are some toy dinosaur bones and Playdoh (or the clay from the previous activity). Have students make a sphere and pat it flat to get an oval shape (just make sure it's not too flat, or they might make holes if pressing to hard). Then have them press down their dinosaur to make a mold fossil. Let it dry and then let students take it home. This was a quick and easy activity for my younger students.

5. Making a True Form Fossil
I reserved this activity for my 5th graders.If you've seen "Jurassic Park", then you'll be familiar with bugs encased in Amber. I had my students re-create this true form fossil by having them trace the shape of a clear glass gem (like these vase fillers) onto a piece of construction paper, draw a bug in the middle of the circle, and color the background yellow-orange-ish. After cutting out the circle we used Mod-Podge to glue the gem to the paper. It made a pretty craft that could easily be turned into a fridge magnet.

 
All in all, my students really enjoyed the fossils unit and got exposed to lots of new vocabulary and concepts. Since they're still asking about it, I'll definitely be bringing some of the activities back this year!



 

Using STEM in Speech: Rocks and Minerals

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For the months of November and December, our STEM unit focused on Geology! A lot of my students surprised me with how into rocks they were and many of them already had some basic knowledge about different rocks and minerals.

Since I have groups functioning at different skill levels, I had to make sure to come up with activities that would fit my students' level of functioning. Here are some of the activities we did to learn about rocks and minerals:








1. Geology Lap Book
My older language students got to make an interactive rock and mineral lapbook. I bought the template for this product on TPT. It is a  great tool for teaching about the layers of the earth, the rock cycle, different types of rocks, the difference between rocks and minerals, features of minerals, and key vocabulary words. It was a great activity, but I should note that this activity would work best with students you see twice a week - even though I pre-cut many of the items, it still took us 3-4 sessions to create the whole thing. My students liked being able to take something home after it was finished. You will need a file folder for each student.

2. Explore Rock Types
This activity allows you to teach students about the three different types of rock and works for a variety of groups. I purchased three different sets of Rock Specimen by Educational Insights: (1) Igneous Rock Collection, (2) Sedimentary Rock Collection, and (3) Metamorphic Rock Collection. We talked about how the different types of rocks are formed and described each rock by its appearance. We then used the included reference sheet to find out the name of the rock. This activity worked well for older language and articulation students. It was challenging to match some of the rocks to the correct picture due to lighting differences in the photography, but we still had fun!

3. Mineral Sort

This activity was probably my students' favorite and was one that I could use with all of my groups, even my younger SDC caseload! Using Dancing Bear's Rock & Mineral Collection Activity Kit, we described the appearance and texture of the different minerals and then used the reference sheet to find the name of the mineral. You can target different skills with this activity, as well, including expressive language, articulation, fluency, and even social skills (sharing the minerals and not fighting over who gets to describe and match a specific mineral). This was definitely a favorite!


4. Making Pet Rocks

This activity was perfect for my younger students and SDC students! Prior to this lesson, I collected some rocks in the park behind our school and washed them. It would have been fun to let my students do this, but we just didn't have enough time. Then I let my students decorate their rocks with googly eyes, pompoms, beads, buttons, sequins, ... whatever! You can use this opportunity to work on appropriate requesting ("I want a blue pompom, please") with lower functioning kiddos. We used a Pet Rock worksheet that is included in this TPT packet by Reagan Tunstall to give our rocks some personality. This was a fun activity and all of our rocks turned out super cute!

Hopefully this gives you some inspiration for your own rock and mineral STEM lesson in Speech! What is another activity you can think of? Feel free to leave a comment!

A ROCKing Speech Activity

Our monthly STEM theme is Rocks and Minerals. While a more detailed post on all of our various STEM activities will follow, I wanted to showcase one product that we've been getting a ton of mileage out of during our sessions as it can be adapted to different disorders and ability levels: Dancing Bear's Rock and Mineral Kit.

This kit contains over 150 random pieces of rocks and minerals, including two geodes, arrowheads, and shark teeth. There is also a reference sheet that you can use to identify the minerals. Prior to using the kit in therapy I sorted the pieces into their respective categories and placed them in a jewelry organizer (although this might have been a fun activity for students in and of itself!). Here are some different therapy activities that I have done with my kiddos so far:

1. Describing: This is a great activity no matter whether a student is working on language, articulation, or fluency. We talked about the shape, size, color, and texture. A lot of my younger students didn't know what "rough" versus "smooth" meant, so we were able to hit those concepts pretty hard. You can also sneak in words like "opaque" and "translucent".

2. Matching: This was a favorite activity! After describing each mineral I had students find them on the reference sheet. This is a great activity to promote team work / social skills.

3. Guessing game: Another fun activity we did was "Mystery Mineral". I had students pick a mineral and provide clues based on the mineral's attributes. Once again, this activity could be adapted for different goal areas.

4. Compare and Contrast: We also used this minerals for a basic compare and contrast activity. You can use a Venn diagram to talk about the differences.

I love the hands on nature of these activities! My students enjoyed looking at the different minerals and learning their names. This kit had such a nice variety of stones and really allowed me to blend Speech targets with science concepts. I'll be using this kit for years to come!

What other activities do you think could be done with this kit? Feel free to comment!

Using STEM in Speech: Skeletal System

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Given all of the spooky skeletons everywhere in the month of October, our monthly STEM unit revolved all around bones and the skeletal system. Just as with the unit on Density, you can incorporate tons of language concepts and adapt the activities for articulation/fluency/social skills. Below are some ideas to get started.

I introduced my groups to the concept of bones by reading the book Bones (Science Readers: A Closer Look). With my younger/SDC kiddos we read Skeleton Hiccups. Of course, you could read any Halloween themed book about skeletons to get into the mood.

I also purchased some Halloween decor at Walmart: An (anatomically correct - this is important!) Skeleton, as well as a "Bag of Bones". We used these props to talk about the different bones in the body and learned some of the scientific names. There are some great bones containing /r/ and /s/ - femur, humerus, skull, pelvis, ribs, spine, etc. that you can have your artic students practice. The bag of bones was great for guessing which bone was which by comparing them to the bones in the skeleton model. Bonus: I can reuse these guys as Halloween decorations!

Students loved exploring the animal x-rays!

Next, we got to the fun part!! I discovered two different sets of X-Rays on amazon - Animal X-Rays and Human X-Rays. We used the animal x-rays to compare the skeletal structure of different animals to that in a human body. I also had students try to guess what animal might be depicted by the x-ray. You can also have students compare and contrast the skeletal structure of two different animals.

Putting together human x-rays

I used the set of human x-rays to solidify students' knowledge of the names of bones and our general skeletal structure by having them assemble the skeleton on white butcher paper. This was actually harder for many of my kiddos than they anticipated! They were allowed to use a diagram of a human skeleton, as a reference. When they were stumped, I gave them hints such as, "This is an x-ray of a tibia." They then had to reference the diagram to figure out where the bone would go.

As an extension activity, we made the Q-tip skeleton that is plastered all over Pinterest. Students had to "earn" each bone by either saying their speech sound 5x or completing a language task. Tip: Make sure to cut all of the Q-tips prior to the activity, as it will save time in the long run.

What I loved about this unit was that I was able to incorporate STEM in a Halloween-themed unit, while teaching students about important concepts AND working on their speech goals at the same time. Win-win!!

Using STEM in Speech: Density

One of my professional goals this year is to incorporate more STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) Activities in my therapy setting. STEM concepts and activities are rich in language and the hands-on nature of many of the activities lends itself wonderfully to our population. I am planning to have a monthly theme to support  this objective, so this blog series is a summary of my progress.

Our September theme was Density (Sink/Float). Not only is this super easy to implement in the therapy room, but you can target tons of language and articulation concepts with this lesson. Most of my groups got to do this and they seemed to have a blast (many kids asked if we could do this activity again during their next Speech session).

Before we started we had a brief discussion of molecules and density (i.e. how much something weights compared to how much space it takes up). We also defined the terms "sinking" versus "floating". Visuals are super helpful for this. 

All you need for the hands-on/experimentation portion of this lesson is a tub of water (perhaps with food coloring in it for effect) and various items collected from around your house or classroom. Make sure the items are small enough to fit into the tub. Some easy finds are: pencils, coins, dice, pompoms, leaves, twigs, rocks, keys, paperclips, erasers, markers, etc. 

Allow students to make a prediction (make sure to define this term!) about what they think will happen to the item before actually placing it in the water to watch the result.

I created a number of worksheets of varying difficulty levels that would allow students to record their predictions as well as the resulting observations. A lot of my younger students had a hard time navigating where to record each observation (they would often try to color in the wrong row), so this provided an excellent teaching opportunity.

Worksheet for my younger kiddos with pre-entered items.

Worksheet for my older kiddos - a little more complex.

 

We placed visuals on the board (with Magnet Tape) to keep track of whether the "Sinkers" or "Floaters" would win. You can also use the visual cards to let students randomly select one to see which item would be the next "experiment". My students had a lot of fun with this. I also "challenged" them to solve certain Sink/Float predicaments (e.g., how do you make a rock float using only a balloon) to stimulate problem solving and critical thinking skills. 

Additionally, I used this activity in my social skills group to work on turn-taking, interrupting, problem-solving, and dealing with making the wrong predictions. 

You can also adapt this lesson and turn it into a push-in classroom unit. I pushed into our younger SDC class and as a group we made predictions about the various items. To make the concepts more visually concrete, I drew a tub of water on the whiteboard and had students place the items onto the drawing based on whether they thought the items would sink or float.

With my articulation groups, we tested items that contained the target sound of students - you can see in the picture of one of the worksheets above that all of the items contain the /r/ sound. And the words "sink" and "float" are great for /s/, /k/, and /l/ kiddos!! I absolutely loved the versatility of this lesson!

If you want to try this with your own students and like the visuals/worksheets that I have used - they are available on TPT here. The unit also includes challenges and material lists with items containing specific phonemes.

This was a pretty successful lesson - I can't wait for our next monthly STEM unit!