This year's theme is "Early Intervention Counts" - highlighting the fact that early diagnosis and treatment of communication issues is critical and encouraging SLPs, parents and teachers to take action early for best results.
To help celebrate #BHSM, we are showcasing one outstanding communication material from our sharing center every day and making them available for free to everyone (not just LessonPix.com members) for the month of May!
This is a great opportunity to give our users some well-deserved attention for the great materials they've created as well as sharing some great ideas for use in the classroom, therapy and even home settings - regardless of what tools you use to make your materials!
Help us choose the best of the best! Got a material you use all the time in your practice that you'd love to show off? Have you found something in the Sharing Center that you'd love to try out? Here's how you can get involved:
- Visit the LessonPix.com Sharing Center and find the material you'd like to see shared. Make sure it's got a great write-up so we can all understand how it's used.
- Post a link to your material in any of these places:
- Tweet #BHSM (please include @LessonPix and #BHSM)
- Share your link on our Facebook Page or in the LessonPix User's Facebook Group
- Or tell us about the material in the comments below
- Check out the great ideas below and use them (for Free) in your practice - and tell us how they work!
Today's Free Material
For the last few days we thought we'd share some of our favorite "Booth Demos" - ideas that we use to show how LessonPix can be used in the classroom in a therapy setting or even in the home.
May 29: Fire Drill Social Narrative by Andy. Our good friend Andy Renner may be the last person you'd expect to be making demos for us - after all, he's a fire fighter not an educator or SLP (however, he is the husband of one of our favorite OTs!). But when he was helping us setup and man the booth at ATIA 2014 and we were explaining how to use stories and narratives to help with transitions, we put him to work! And it turned out great! It's one of our most popular materials and we love sharing it!
May 30: S/SH Minimal Pairs Toss-Across by Bill. Speaking of under-qualified material-makers, here's one that Bill (a professional computer-geek) made before a training session in Hillsborough County. It takes advantage of the Minimal Pairs tool and created an activity that could be played from across the room!
May 31: Voice Level Scale by Lori. And finally, to bring our #BHSM to a close (and in honor of her Birthday this Sunday) our final material is a Voice Level Scale by our founder, Lori Binko. Scales, Rating and Rankings are huge right now - whether used as part of a self-assessment system (like Marzano) or a social skills tool like the Incredible 5-Point Scale or even just as a way to visualize things in order. When we added "Scales and Ratings" earlier this year, this was one of our favorite demos and we're glad to share it for Better Hearing and Speech Month.
(See All Materials After the Calendar)
All Free #BHSM Materials
May 1: /SH/ Game Board by Katie (@SLP_Echo). Our first great material is shared by Katie Millican, and she explains how she uses this great game in her classroom on the material page.
May 2: Initial /S/ Treasure Hunt Cards, Compatible with Cariboo™ by Mary Huston (@mtmarySLP). Got a Cariboo™ gamee? Here's a great set of replacement cards to work on Initial /S/! No Cariboo™? Don't fret - we've got a blog (and video) for that!
May 3: Fluency Modification Strategy Dice by Kirsten (@kirsten_lana). Here's a set of Dice that help folks with fluency and stuttering issues. Read how Kirsten uses them in the description
May 4: Fry/Dolch Early Sight Word Bingo by Tanya (@SLPTanya). Tanya's made these great Bingo games using the words in our Dolch Words category (which has a large overlap w/Fry word lists). Check them out!
May 5: Position Pete Picture Cards by Mona(@MonaChiles). Mona's use our Position Pete™ images to make a great game! Thanks for the detailed write-up!
May 6: A "2-Fer" for Mother's Day from Tali & Renee. Today's freebie shows how you can adjust a material to fit your needs! Renee Ingram shared her companion material for the book We're Making Breakfast for Mother and then Tali Kellerstein (@SpeakBoutique) adjusted it to be a Medial F/V practice game! How cool! We decided to make them both free :-)
May 7: Twenty Questions Semantic Map by Tara. Tara Roehl (@SpeechyKeenSLP) has shared dozens of materials on the Sharing Center. When I asked her what her favorites were, she pointed to these great Semantic Maps. So I made this great one today's Freebie!
May 8: Climb the Calm Down Tree by Amy. Amy Leahy posts a great use of our "Monkey Climbing Tree" Visual Schedule. This is a hidden gem you'll find under "Picture Schedules"
May 9: Calm Down Strategies by Christina. Christina Richards shares a great "Large and Small Pictures" material with physical exercises kids can use to calm themselves. This would be a great material to "remix" into other formats like Dice or Spinners!
May 10: Calm Down Time by Claudia. If all else fails and your kiddo needs to take some "calm down time", Claudia Coron gives us a great visual schedule for things to do to help chill out.
May 11: GoTalk™ Go Fish by Bill. This one's a favorite at our booth. It shows how to take a basic Go Fish game (which we've also made free) and adapt it for use with a child who is (at least temporarily) non-verbal using a GoTalk™ 9+ from Attainment.
May 12: There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Frog Treasure Cards by Mary Cooper. Here's a great set of cards that fit in the Cranium Cariboo® game by Hasbro®. Mary uses these to follow up after reading Lucille Collandro's popular book!
May 13: Association Puzzle Cards using Irish/UK Vocab by Karie. Karie Murray (@Scarie) is our unofficial ambassador to Ireland, and it was great meeting her at the IASLT Conference! Today's freebie shows how she re-worded our symbols to match the Irish/UK vocabulary she needed!
May 14: Flower Parts Sorting Mats by Lori. Our fabulous founder, Lori, points out that sometimes even simple visuals can make a project successful. Her "Flower Parts Sorting Mats" did that in her Pre-K Varying Exceptionalities class this year and Lori was good enough to write up their experience! We've made it our May 14th #BHSM Freebie!
May 15: Medial S Tally Cards by Barb. Barb Koch shares these great Medial /S/ Tally Cards for today's freebie. Tally cards are great for tracking sounds, behaviors, etc. and you can change how many check marks per card and still crank them out in seconds!
May 16: Literal Idiom Playing Cards by Kitsie. LessonPix has a great set of "Literal Idiom" symbols and Kitsie Kennard has made a huge set of playing cards that would be great for Go Fish, Memory or games with color/symbol matching games similar to like Uno®. These are also a big hit with ESL classes!
May 17: Idiom Game Board by Bridget. Continuing on our Idiom theme, Bridget De Yager created a board game using the idiom symbols and our penguin theme!
May 18: Idiom Story by Joanne. Finally, Lori found this cute original Idiom story that tells the take of two "peas in a pod" and their adventures! What a great way to use our Books and Stories template!
May 19: /P B M/ Vowel Screener Cards by Kim. Kim Bennett uses these picture cards "to look at context in which child can produce bilabial sounds.". With over 30 cards, this is a great freebie!
May 20: /S/ Blend Cards by Cynthia. Cynthia Bond used the SoundFinder to pull together a whole mess of "Initial S Blends" cards. In fact, there's 56 of them! Use these as they are for Memory, Go-Fish, etc. or load them into the wizard to re-mix them into Bingo, etc. with a membership!
May 21: Semantic Map for Questioning by Hanna. Hanna Bogen made this great Semantic Map to help kids learn how to ask questions and learn more about a subject: that's just awesome!
May 22: Memorial Day Story by LessonPix. We put together a Memorial Day book (and matching coloring sheets) to explain what we honor on Memorial Day. Read more here.
May 23: Memorial Day Coloring Sheets by LessonPix. Here's the Coloring Book to go with the Memorial Day story. Read more here.
May 24: SL3 Category Game by Jennifer. Today we're sharing a great Dominoes game by Jennifer Preschem from the Speech Language Literacy Lab in Linz, Austria! Their blog is part of a #BHSM Blog Hop today, so make sure you to take a look!
May 25: High Contrast Discussion Cards by Keresna. Keresna Lalmi shared this simple set of four cards that ask the question "What do you like"? It's a great conversation starter, and it shows how to set the backgrounds on our cards to be high-contrast: a great idea for low-vision populations.
May 26: CVCC Cards by Keresna. Keresna also created these CVCC Cards for phonological awareness activities. LessonPix now has two ways to get CVCC words: first is our original Pattern Finder which does basic CVC-style searches. The second is our new Syllable/CVC Filter which works on all of our language tools like the SoundFinder and Minimal Pairs tool. Just enter a pattern on the left to filter your results!.
May 27: A Summer Story by Jillian. Jillian Sopp just posted this great book that introduces summer vocabulary. It's simple and timely so we made it today's freebie!
May 28: Summer Bingo by Kaura. Bingo is always a favorite when we're at demos or conferences - it's so hard to do by hand since every child needs their own card! Kaura Grant made this set of (11!) Summer Bingo cards - I bet it took her just a few minutes, but they're a great end-of-year game that wouldn't be worth the effort without LessonPix! Enjoy them for free today!
For the last few days we thought we'd share some of our favorite "Booth Demos" - ideas that we use to show how LessonPix can be used in the classroom in a therapy setting or even in the home.
May 29: Fire Drill Social Narrative by Andy. Our good friend Andy Renner may be the last person you'd expect to be making demos for us - after all, he's a fire fighter not an educator or SLP (however, he is the husband of one of our favorite OTs!). But when he was helping us setup and man the booth at ATIA 2014 and we were explaining how to use stories and narratives to help with transitions, we put him to work! And it turned out great! It's one of our most popular materials and we love sharing it!
May 30: S/SH Minimal Pairs Toss-Across by Bill. Speaking of under-qualified material-makers, here's one that Bill (a professional computer-geek) made before a training session in Hillsborough County. It takes advantage of the Minimal Pairs tool and created an activity that could be played from across the room!
May 31: Voice Level Scale by Lori. And finally, to bring our #BHSM to a close (and in honor of her Birthday this Sunday) our final material is a Voice Level Scale by our founder, Lori Binko. Scales, Rating and Rankings are huge right now - whether used as part of a self-assessment system (like Marzano) or a social skills tool like the Incredible 5-Point Scale or even just as a way to visualize things in order. When we added "Scales and Ratings" earlier this year, this was one of our favorite demos and we're glad to share it for Better Hearing and Speech Month.
