Today’s What’s Up Wednesday post is from The Buckeye Speech Path ( aka Ann Marie ). I saw her activity, Language Dice, and wanted to know more. After I stopped by her TpT store The Buckeye Speech Path, and took a look around had to have Language Dice! I asked Ann Marie if should would share about this great activity and she graciously agreed. So this is, What’s Up Wednesday 🙂
Hi! I’m Ann Marie, the Buckeye Speech Path. I would like to thank Maureen, the Speech Bubble, for inviting me to be a guest on her awesome blog. I’m truly honored. I don’t have a blog of my own, just a store on Teachers pay Teachers and a page on Facebook. I have always made my own speech materials. For me, the perfect job would be 50% direct therapy and 50% creating materials! TpT has been a wonderful outlet for my creativity. Most of my materials are reinventions of materials that I made long ago (before cute clip art). All of my materials are made with at least 1-2 specific students in mind.
I have been an SLP for 14 years, 12 of which have been in the school setting. I have worked with preschool through high school aged students. I have been in my current position for 7 years. I spend 1 morning each week at the high school, most of which is with my Life Skills students, and the rest of the week I’m with my K-5 students.
Maureen wanted to know more about my Language Dice activity. It began with my Artic Dice series. I made a version of Artic Dice several years ago and my students, of all ages, loved it. When I began TpT, in December 2012, Artic Dice was one of my first ideas. It took a while to put together, but I was proud of how it turned out and the feedback I received was wonderful. Everyone liked the simple, easy to use design and students were motivated by a simple game.
Recently, my graduate student needed a day off to go out of town, so I had to quickly get back into a whole day of therapy (horrible, isn’t it??!!). I realized my morning consisted of all language students and my afternoon kids were all artic students. I printed 1 page per student of the Artic Dice, based on the sound they were working on, and my whole afternoon was planned and ready to go. It took less than 5 minutes!! I wished I had something as easy for my morning kids. That’s how I came up with the idea for Language Dice. I looked through my students’ goals and that’s where I got the targets to include in the packet.
If you are like me (and please don’t tell me I’m the only one), I have days where planning just doesn’t happen. I can be walking down the hall with my student and be thinking to myself “What are we going to do today?” Has it happened to you? This is what I love about Language Dice, no planning or prep needed. Just simply print and play. There is something for each one of my language students in that one packet.
Here is how I play Language Dice: My student roll 2 dice, let’s say a 3 and a 4. I have them put the dice on the page. They can choose if the 3 will go on the top or on the side, then put the real die on the #3 die on the page. Same thing with #4. That way they can see where the row and the column intersect and that is the box they will be working on. They complete the target or the question in the box and put a bingo marker on it. You can use tokens; we use do-a-dots. It’s fun to watch them try to figure out how to make a pattern on the page. They all do it! If they roll a 6, which is wild, they can choose where they put the die. If they roll something that has already been completed, then they get a “free choice”. You can make it a competitive game; get 5 in a row to win, like bingo. You can also play non-competitively. You can play in a group or with an individual student. So many possibilities!!
Here is what I LOVE about Language Dice and Artic Dice: You can have a group of students all playing the same game, but the content in front of each student is specific to his/her goals and objectives. They can still be playing against each other, but working on their own paper. Whatever is not completed in the therapy session can be sent home for homework. If your students are working on the same goal, you could have 2 students share one page, but use different colored bingo markers. These activities are adaptable in so many ways. Oh, and the best part, its black and white!! I did that to make it easy to print and make copies, which is important to me for homework. Could not be more simple!
I’ve gotten so many great responses about my Artic Dice. People have left comments on how they are using it in ways that I have never thought about myself. I can’t wait to hear what people say about Language Dice!!
One Response
These are great! I am adding them to my wish list. Thanks for sharing 😀
Abby
Schoolhouse Talk!