Welcome Back

 
A very belated welcome back to the 2014/2015 school year! I am off and running. The students are scheduled, IEPs have been held, and homework sent home. Plus, therapy is underway! I wanted to share photos of my speech room. Students are loving it, and so are the staff and parents. 

For my classroom decorations for this year I have decided that rather than having a theme for the whole room (like Super Heroes last year) that I would keep the same decorations up, but change my bulletin boards monthly. This is an ambitions goal, but I like the idea of planning therapy and projects around new and fresh bulletin boards. I have already begun my second round of bulletin boards. More on those in a future post. 

My goal this year was to make my room bright, cozy, and welcoming. I think I have done just that. See for your self!

When students enter my room, this is what they see. I know, a lot of pink. Sure, I like pink. But, I even have to admit this is a lot, but I am working with it. I found the chair at a thrift store and used it as a jumping off point for the rest of my classroom. Kids can come in if they need a break and look at a book or play on the ipad. It is also a good waiting spot if they show up to speech early. I got the sparkly SPEECH letters at Walmart. The Big Bird lamp was another amazing thrift store find.

I was inspired by All Ya'll Need  to make my own speech themed Subway Art. Her version is free on TPT.

The sticker chart, homework sticker chart, and prize box round out this corner of the room. I am trying something new  with my reward system, that is why I have two charts. More on that at a later date!

Around the sticker chart is a banner made collaboratively with all the speech kids. They each made a pennant with fun information about themselves. This, along with the other bulletin board below, was the activity for our first day back to speech. 

 

The Speech Time Line is something that we will use all year. I am trying to take as many pictures as possible during therapy sessions that I will post on the time line. That way, my students working on sequencing and concepts can talk about what happened in our class over the course of the year. 

Around the room I have posted "I can" statements for the CCSS. I purchased them from Natalie Snyders, a fellow SLP, on TPT. You can buy them for yourself here.

I wanted something colorful to add to the wall by my assistant's desk, so I thought this would be a good place to hang Wow Work. I already have a drawing from a student!

 

You will Bloom this Year is my welcome back message to the students. We all made a colorful hand-print to create a giant flower. I was inspired by a pin on Pinterest (I can't find the link, just a photo. My apologies.) I think it turned out great. I also have a letter to my students on my converted painting easel (it is now a chalkboard). I want them to always know that they are loved and appreciated!

For my articulation students, I am trying something new to keep them motivated to graduate from speech. I found these great posters from The Speech Ladies on TPT. I modified them to work with the decor in my room. I am really into black and white accents right now. Those colors look so bold and awesome with pink. 

Anyway. Moving on.

Each student has a circle with their name and the sound they are working on. Some students have a few circles because they are working on mulitple phonemes. As they reach each level of accuracy, they move up the wall. When they reach the top, at Generalization, they are done with that sound and may be ready to graduate! The levels are Isolation, Syllables, Words, Sentences, Reading, Conversation, ad Generalization. I got the frames from the Dollar Tree and spray painted them pink. Yes, more pink.

I have our speech rules and a place to let the kids know the plan for the session on by the therapy table. More "I Can" statements are on the board. I used a tension curtain rod and suction cup hooks to hang them for ease to flip between session. I found the idea here.  I idea that we will say our "I Can" statements before we get started with speech each time. My accuracy level on this goal is at about 20%. I need to get better at this!

I organize my therapy materials for the week in this basket. They way I do therapy is that all the kids play the same game all week. For example, everyone will play BINGO, but I will target their speech goals during their session. So, fluency, language, pragmatic, and articulation kids will all play BINGO, but with different stimulus items. Playing one game has really helped me to keep things fun, and focus on planning just the stimulus for a particular goal.

Here are some of my favorite kids having fun and working hard in the new room. We are off to a great start this year!

I hope you have enjoyed your tour! I am hoping to be back soon with more to share. Keep checking back. Also, you can peruse some of my therapy creations at my TPT store here.