Early

This post comes just a little in advance of a timely “holiday!” May the Fourth (Be With You) is a great day to celebrate students’ widespread interest in all things Star Wars. One of my favorite resources over the years has been Jeffrey Brown’s series, which started with Darth Vader and Son. This and other books by Brown require a stretch of the imagination: what if Luke (and other characters) actually grew up with Vader as a father figure?...

I almost dislike writing about gratitude at Thanksgiving time, as it is a practice that is self-regulating all year round. It is well documented that regularly steering our thinking toward gratitude helps override our brain’s negativity bias and train ourselves to notice positive elements of life, with influence on our mood, and therefore our executive functioning. Recent discourse around gratitude has created the term “glimmers,” serving as the opposite of “triggers.” Glimmers are small observations that help calm our nervous systems....

Downloadable Lesson Material

I have often thought that although assessment materials—including SLAM (School Aged Language Assessment) cards offered by the Leaders Project—offer great baseline or progress monitoring tools, it would be great to have something similar for treatment. I have been continually impressed by the materials the graduate students I work with at Boston University create with Slides Go, so I wanted to tell you about this great resource! Slides Go is designed to provide Google Slides or PowerPoint templates, generally to adults making presentations. Sounds boring, right? HOWEVER, the templates include adorable cartoon-like sets that are very appealing to young students...

Lately, I’ve been coming back to an oldie-but-goodie resource, SCRIBBLENAUTS (“Remix” version available for iPad or iPhone for $.99 with tons of content, other options explored below). Scribblenauts is a puzzle game where players can type in upwards of 20,000 nouns, even with adjective modifiers, to bring in objects that help solve stated problems within the scene. As such, it provides an open-ended “sandbox” with a range of stories solvable with actions and elaborated noun phrases. I like to think of Scribblenauts as a series of mini-lessons, one of those 5-10 min “rewards” for students that are actually language therapy activities...

Wicked has become an almost-too-inescapable cultural juggernaut thanks to tie-ins with everything from Xfinity to the OPI nail polish (Ozitively Elphaba) that my ugly toenails will soon be sporting. However, I’ve been a huge fan of the musical since its arrival in 2003 and have been happy to capitalize on my knowledge of it with some of my students. In any case, students’ interests, including current movies, can provide great context for story analysis (macro), as well as many micro targets from vocabulary to social cognition...

From twinkling lights and festive decor to excited students counting down the days, there's an undeniable energy that fills the classroom this time of year. As teachers, SLPs, specialists, and parents, though, the holidays often come with “double dip” feelings of—joy and stress, combined with the hustle of balancing lessons, holiday events, and end-of-year tasks. Amidst it all, it’s easy to feel like you’re racing against the clock. But what if you could slow things down just enough to create meaningful holiday-themed learning experiences?