Easyspeak Magazine

On Wednesday, April 25, 2012, Shareka Bentham, an SLP from Barbados, launched the first ever e-magazine for Speech Language Pathologists as a person, with features on style, life stories, and product reviews. Of course, being an SLP, it was almost mandatory that she include activity pages, and a free worksheet.  I mean what SLP doesn't like that?

http://easyspeakmag.com

This inaugural issue features a personal interview with Dr. Rhea Paul, who makes a pretty spectacular cover girl, as well.  Shareka's interview with Dr. Paul reveals how she came to be who she is today. You will enjoy reading the personal conversation that took place between them.

This new online magazine (I think they refer to this format as an e-zine) has many great features that I would like to point out.  Possibly the best feature is that it is free, but that is just one of many things you will love about Easyspeak magazine.  The content is, in a single word, fabulous! Here are the departments you will find in this issue:

Technology which features Pinterest and how to use it to start pinning your favorite finds, from sources like Pediastaff.  A blog worthy segment featuring Tanya Coyle, the author of The Lexical Linguist. An App review of INJINI, and finally this section is rounded out with a fantastic article on switch accessibility and the iPad by Jane Farrall and Alex Dunn.

Style & Fashion section geared just for the SLP.  You will be delighted to see photos of what real SLPs around the world are wearing as they head off to work each day! As well as, what the new Spring must haves are!

Lifestyle department, which is my personal favorite.  Here you will read about a Day In the Life of a SLP.  I loved being able to cyber shadow Tiffani Wallace who works in an acute hospital setting for a day. I must say that after being a public school therapist for 30+ years, I am not sure I could handle those long hours.  With so many different settings in which we can practice, seeing what another SLP's day is really like can be refreshing. Perhaps you have been toying with the idea of working somewhere else.  This certainly would help you determine if you would like to be in that position or not.  You will also read an article from Patient Perspective and she even throws in a bit of humor by sharing Embarrassing Moments stories.  (I do not want admit it, but one of those stories is mine.)

Lastly, she wraps up the magazine with featured Products and some top product picks for the SLP and OT!  Oh, I almost forgot there are the Activities of a dysphagia crossword puzzle for us and an activity targeting final /f/ to use in therapy.

Thank you Shareka for creating such a fabulous e-zine! Our best wishes for much success as we look forward to the fall issue.

Leah and Dean


Leah J Musgrave, M.S. CCC-Sp
Dean Trout, retired SLP
http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/

LessonPix

Today we are sharing the website LessonPix. http://lessonpix.com/   This is a fabulous online resource for those of us who love to create our own therapy materials. If you have more time than money you will love this site.  This is a very affordable subscription service from which you can create customized individual therapy materials to fit your needs.

The subscription service is only $24 per year and you have access to 8000 original and scalable pictures. From the picture library you can have a choice of how you wish to have the image: color, outline, or stencil.  With those pictures you can create items such as these:

 PECS cards

 Stick Puppets

 Dominoes

• Bingo Cards
• Coloring Pages
• Picture Cards
• Pattern Strips
• Spinners & Game Boards
• Lacing Cards
• Sorting Mats
• Playing Cards
• and more 

One feature that is great for the SLP when making articulation materials is their Sound Finder tab which allows you to search for pictures with a particular sound.  You can even narrow your search by the sound position within the words: initial, medial, final or anywhere.  You can also search for pictures by pattern such as VC and only those pictures fitting that parameter will appear.  You can search specifically by letter, too. I would call it a bonus that they even give you the ability to search by rhyme. 

There is much more to this site than I am telling you about so please go explore it. They offer a "try it now for free" program which will indeed let you try it out.  You can create your own item and print it immediately.  I highly recommend you try it out for yourself.   They also offer video tutorials for those who have never created anything online like this and may be unfamiliar with how to do it.  

As we often state, Leah and I are not paid (or given products) to tell you about these sites which we share.  We simply share things we find that we think you would also like to know about.

Have a fun week with your kids!

Leah J Musgrave, M.S. CCC-Sp
Dean Trout, retired SLP

 

PRINTABLE ONLINE RESOURCE Part 2

Their slogan says Virginia is for lovers. I say Virginia is for some quick and easy printable sound sorting pictures! Yes today’s shared tip comes from the beautiful Commonwealth of Virginia and the Rockingham School District. Thank you for sharing this delightful resource with us.

Who has not found themselves starting a day of therapy only to realize what you need is at your other school, or at home, or in your car? (And yes, we have all left something in the car at one time or another and can’t run out to get it.) Hey, we are only human! Nevertheless, therapy must go on. Well, this little site just might save the day for you in that instance. Just quickly click and print a few sound sorting pictures and you are good to go for articulation/phonology therapy.

This link http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/sound_sorting/sound_sorting_menu.htm will take you straight to the menu. It is very well organized alphabetically and by category. The pictures which are done as jpegs can be easily copied and pasted into a document. The pictures are mostly black line drawings. I find black line drawing to be more useful than colored pictures at times because that allows you to create your own personal coloring sheets/books for homework. Also, black line drawings are less distracting when working with some children. (i.e. some cerebral palsy, ADHD, etc)

Here is a list of the sound categories:
Final Consonants
Initial Blends
Initial Consonants
Initial Diagraphs
Long Vowels
Short Vowels
Word Families

While playing around with it I discovered these things:

1. The pictures did indeed copy and paste well into a Word document on my PC
2. The pictures also copy and paste well into pages (iworks) on my Mac
3. You can copy and paste the image as a thumbnail if you desire a smaller size
4. You can click on the image to enlarge it and copy and paste it at its original size
5. Although the jpegs are resizable as you’ll see if you click on it once you’ve enlarged it, if you go much larger than the original, they become very grainy. I would not recommend trying to resize them larger.

Here’s a tip: If you choose to make your own sound sorting cards, why not do your layout in an Avery business card template and print them on business cards? You can make cards very quickly this way!

Enjoy your therapy this week!
Leah and Dean
www.2galspeechproducts.com

Printable Online Resources

It is Monday and time for a little shared information from these 2 Gals. We love sharing and we love our profession!

Today we kick off a two-part series on printable resources with the spotlight on the fine people at LakeShore Learning. They have a Free Resources tab on their website that is definitely worth mentioning. Here is the link http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/awardMaker.jsp

I want to specifically target a few areas that we find useful. First is their Award Maker. They share with us 24 different awards that are not only cute, but can be personalized. We love that feature because regular academic awards usually do not fit the bill for speech-language praise. We also love that these awards are designed to print on letter-size paper. These are two great features in our opinion.

Second, you will find a Flash Card Maker template that has limitless possibilities. When I look at that blank template my mind whirls with creative ideas! Here are just a few possibilities: make your own minimal pairs specific to the child that needs additional help with a particular phonological pattern or sound combination within that pattern. How about making your own personalized language cards that are, again, child specific. For example vocabulary: write synonyms or antonyms on them; definition on one side-then the word on the other; or attributes on one side and object on the other.

The third area we like for SLPs is the Word Search section. I know we've all seen this used for speech words but how about incorporating that week's vocabulary words? Either way it makes a fun homework activity for the student.

The next area we like is the Crafts & Activities section. This section changes monthly, so check back often. It has crafts & activities for specific content areas (language arts, math, science, etc.) and also seasonal/special days. For example, one of the activities available for March is The Lion and the Lamb for making paper plate puppets to encourage learning about March weather. It could also be used for those students working on vocabulary skills (i.e., weather, windy, cold, front, back, red, orange, yellow brown, lion, lamb, etc.) and also following directions as they construct their puppets! Other special March activities address Dr. Seuss, Spring, St. Patrick’s Day, Earth Day and more!

And lastly, check out the Clip art, Calendar, and Template section. You can print pre-designed monthly calendars, or print some very useful black line template patterns. They give us a very nice stock of clip art, too. All their printable materials are offered for Windows and Mac.

We hope you take the time to look at this site because it is a nice little bonus to have at your finger tips.

Until next week, find joy in your work with the wee little ones!

Leah and Dean
www.2galsspeechproducts.com