I won’t bore you
with my personal new year’s resolutions because there really isn’t anything groundbreaking
to share. The typical, eat better,
exercise more, keep my space cleaner, be present, and unplug pretty much sums up
my personal resolutions. As a new speech
and language pathologist I’ve been doing my best to keep my head above water
during my first year in the public schools.
Knock on wood, nothing has gone too horribly amuck this far, but there
is definitely room for improvement! I’ve
chosen 4 New Year’s Speech-olutions for the year 2014. Does putting them down
on “paper” make it more likely that they are achieved? I can report back on
that in the beginning of 2015-hope the suspense isn’t too much to handle!
1. Be more organized. This
one spills over into every area of my life. Have any friends who live in a
constant state of chaos? Their house looks like a mess, but they swear it’s an
organized mess? All of my friends would have to answer yes because that person
is me! I use traveling as an excuse for my need to bring 2-3 big therapy bags
with me wherever I go, but I think if I just took the time to organize
everything I could get down to one big bag! And as for my data collection
system, you don’t even want to know how many sticky notes I go through in a
week. Also, what good ways have you found to organize your TPT materials? I am still struggling here…
2. Use more technology
during therapy. I don’t have access to a
smartboard (super jealous of all you smartboard endowed speechies) or a school
laptop or Ipad. However, I do have my
own personal Ipad, with lots of speech apps that I have purchased and NEVER
used! This is sad, and in 2014 I am going to change this!
3. Use all of my TPT
materials. I LOVE LOVE LOVE downloading
everyone’s freebies and purchasing TPT materials that I know my students will
benefit from. I do NOT love the
printing, laminating, and cutting part of using TPT materials. However, this
year I AM going to use A LOT of the materials I have downloaded from TPT
because I know that my students will benefit from them!
4. Use more books during therapy.
Literacy skills are so important and many students who receive speech and language
struggle with pre-reading or reading. I already try to incorporate books
whenever possible, but I am going to try to do even more of this. Books are so versatile and can be used to
target any goal. My “office” (I use this
word loosely) is located about 1 step from the library in 2 out of my 3 schools…I
have no good excuse for not using more books during therapy. What are your
favorite books to use during therapy?
In
honor of New Year’s Speech-oloution number one (be more organized) I created a
product with a pre/post test page to help you keep your data! I found this adorable, video game character
inspired, clipart on Etsy. I just couldn’t
resist it. Thinking about which students
would be more interested by my new clipart find I created a figurative language/idioms
activity out of it. Check it out HERE in
my TPT store. It’s on sale for 50% off,
but only for the first 24 hours so check it out sooner than later!
Here's what the "cards" pages look like...
LOL- whenever I get down to one "therapy" bag I find I left something at home. And, I when I try to use one bag for each school so I only take in "one" bag, I find what I need is still in my car, in another bag. I am still trying various ways to organize my TPT products... baggies to envelopes to canvas storage bins that fit on shelves organized by theme/goals/using today/ to "need to organize"!
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