Still Working on Colors and Basic Concepts! Help!

In middle school and still working on basic concepts and vocabulary such as colors, body parts, or clothing? It can be difficult to find motivating and age appropriate tasks to incorporate these concepts; everything often looks childish. Here's an activity to integrate colors, body parts, clothing, and basic language formulation along with social pragmatics!

Also, if you have a mix of students in your group, one who needs to work on these basic concepts, and others who need to work on some slightly more advanced skills such as sentence formulation, this activity can allow all group members to work together but target their own goals successfully.

Get Started:
Use a drawing app that allows you to take pictures and use these as your background. There are plenty to choose from; here's an example called Draw Free.

 

To work on the targeted concepts, take a picture of a person (the student, a peer, teacher, etc.) and use this as your background within the app. You can also upload photos from your library (e.g. photos of family members, celebrities, TV characters, etc.) for your background, whatever is motivating for your student! 

You can provide structure and scaffolding by giving visuals / symbols for all the concepts and picking one from each pile, from a topic board, or using a communication device. For example, pick a color and a body part. "Green hair?! That's crazy! Give Ms. Heydt green hair!" The student can use the drawing features to select the color and draw over the correct body part. Pick a color and a piece of clothing. "Red shirt. Now Ms. Heydt needs a red shirt! .... And a yellow smile! .....Give her a pair of sunglasses!" (There are a few objects such as sunglasses you can insert.)

An example of a photo with some drawing over it. Don't I look great?

Go Further:

This has allowed you to integrate basic concepts, work on receptive language/vocabulary, and even target following directions. Now, here's your opportunity to target the expansion of expressive language and development of social interactions. Provide supports such as symbols, topic boards, and pages on communication devices, as needed for any of these skills:

• Before taking a person's picture, greet them and ask their permission. Examples: Hi! Picture please?; Hello, can I take your picture please? 
• Make a sentence or any kind of expressive utterance after each addition to the picture. Describe the picture and include the concepts being targeted. Examples: Green hair; Ms. Heydt has green hair; Hair is green; Ms. Heydt's hair is green.
• Make comments: She looks crazy!; Wow!; Her hair looks awesome!; I don't like green hair.; She looks like an alien.
• Target pronouns: Work on he, she, his, her, your, my, etc. by incorporating these into the student's descriptions and comments.
• Target verbs is/are: Her eyes are blue.; The shirt is red.
• Take turns giving the directions and give the student the opportunity to direct you or direct another student
• Share the end result with others: Hey look at this!; Check this out!; Wanna see something funny?

Students who are typically developing love using apps to distort and augment images of people. Morphing apps are popular; my friends and I have even enjoyed a few laughs while using the features available in Google Hangout (adding funny images and objects to the video as you chat). This activity lets our students get in on the fun and learn at the same time!

Socrative

I'm loving the student response system Socrative! Free and available via website or teacher app & student app. Students use their own devices and watch as their responses appear up on the board. There are plenty of features; I like the Short Answer the best!

This gives every student the opportunity to respond, which increases the number of trial opportunities for a target skill. Students who may feel uncomfortable responding orally may feel more comfortable typing, and still get the opportunity to develop their language skills.

Suggestions to integrate language skills within academics using this tool:
- Explaining and defining: students create definitions for content vocabulary; vote on the clearest most comprehensive definitions
-Analyzing text and supporting with evidence: activities such as determining a character trait or theme and supporting with a piece of evidence from the text
- Summarizing/Main idea: students formulate a one-sentence summary of a chapter, the concept of a lesson, a current event article, a scientific process, etc.
- Math: poll the students and use the responses to determine trends (e.g. percentages, decimals, fractions, ratios, mean, median, mode)
-Collaboration and social pragmatics: working together in groups to formulate one group response to post to the board

Students have also really loved the ability to lead the activities and generate questions that their classmates must answer!

Simplifying Definitions

Many of my students are challenged by the task of learning new vocabulary and their definitions. They are often even more confused by the vocabulary contained in the definitions. A vocab list of 10 new words very quickly becomes 30 new words! This often results in dependence upon adults to explain and simplify concepts. How can we build independence?

Previously, the only sources I could find looked babyish and childlike -- not appropriate for my middle schoolers! Earlier this year I found the online dictionary Wordsmyth, which provides leveled definitions at the Beginner, Children's, and Advanced levels. It also provides related information such as synonyms, antonyms, related words, pronunciations, example sentences, and some images. The best thing is that it is presented in a mature format! I suggest to my students that they use the Children's setting and explain that this level is appropriate throughout your teens and for people (even adults) who aren't advanced experts in vocabulary.

With this tool, these students are no longer dependent upon adults to simplify every definition for them (at school or at home). They are able to independently investigate word meaning and ask for guidance when they really need it. 

Just the Beginning...

** I am under construction! **

Hello, blogging world! 

I will begin posting resources and links to information (so many talented SLPs are already sharing so much!), as well as posting some of the strategies and ideas I have used with my own students. There is such a wealth of information already out there; I hope to add at least some new thoughts and ideas to the conversation!

 See you again soon!
-Meghan