Practicing synonyms and antonyms is another very common activity in Miss Weyandt's room. It is important for students to understand how words are related and that more than one word can have the same meaning. Today the 3rd and 4th graders were working on the smartboard with identifying and producing pairs of synonyms and antonyms. They were also expected to use the words in grammatically correct and complete sentences.
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We often work on following directions with location words such as "above, below, behind, in front, beside, and between." Garrett has especially been working with improving his understanding of "between" and "below." Today we got out Mr. Potato Head. First, Miss Weyandt pulled out pieces and told Garrett directions of where to put them. For example, "put the glasses between the orange hat and the yellow hat." We did many many examples with the directional words and Garrett was doing a fantastic job!! The last few minutes of speech Garrett then took the pieces and built a very cute Mr. Potato Head!
Time to search for Treasure!! Gavyn and Tyler both worked on their language goals while collecting treasure cards, and ultimately treasure from the treasure chest. Gavyn worked on distinguishing and describing homophones. Upon listening to two sentences, Gavyn had to choose the same-sounding word and offer definitions for both words. His growth in this area is similar to the amount of cards he has accumulated; great job! The speech teacher read short stories to Tyler and asked him 'wh' questions. This task worked on his ability to attend to auditory stimuli, comprehend verbal information, and integrate the question being asked ("what is Frostie vs. where is Frostie). Tyler and the speech teacher also looked at pictures and discussed its group, what the item could do, and what it looked like. For 1st grade reading intervention we are reading books with all basic code! First the speech teacher reads and everyone whispers and follows along. Then it is time for each student to practice reading a paragraph on their own; everyone is doing wonderful! Games are included to stimulate and motivate each child. After reading the book at least three times, it is time to start writing full sentences. Katelyn and Charlie are working on reading short passages that teach continued phonation and a slower rate of speech. After extended practice reading sentences with stretched vowels and no breaks between words, the slow rate was carried over to conversation! They are both improving in their rate, their smoothness, AND their speech fluency :) Chris continues to work on his /r/ sound in both the initial part of words and at the end of words. He is taught to twist his fingers to represent the tense quality of the sound. A dinosaur boardgame was used to motivate Angel and Malikai as they practiced their sounds! Malikai was working on the 'ch' sound, and he was encouraged by the speech teacher to hold the sound, wait, and then let it out HARD to make a strong 'ch' instead of a 'sh' sound. Angel was working on /l/ blends in words like 'black'; the speech teacher used a dry-erase board to highlight any errors. Angel often says "bu-lack" instead of "black", and the dry erase board helped highlight this error. Angel has begun to self-check her responses do to this visual cue! Answering WH questions is a difficult skill for many of our speech and language kids. This refers to the student's ability to correctly identify answers to questions such as "who, what, when, where, and why." The kids often need to be specifically taught that who refers to a person, what refers to a thing, when can refer to a time, season, month, etc., where refers to a place, and why requires an explanation. I found a sheet online that helps differentiate between who, what, when, and where questions. Garrett has been using this sheet while answering questions about pictures that he sees. We pulled up action pictures on the iPad and Miss Weyandt gave Garrett a short story about the pictures. I then asked him specific WH questions about what I told him. He did a great job! Working on categories is an important skill for organizing vocabulary in the brain. In speech, we often talk about things that go together and why they go together. Dillon and Chabane have been working on the iPad with an app that lets them choose and explain items that go together. Nate was working with picture cards and identifying two things that go together and then explaining their specific relationship. When given 4 pictures, Kevin has been working on picking the two that go together best and then explaining why. In speech, we often work on making inferences in pictures, short paragraphs, and stories. Inferences refer to the ability to take information that is given to you and information that you already have from previous experiences and put them together to understand material and make predictions. This week, Tyler has been working on making inferences in pictures. He has to look at the clues in the pictures to infer answers to a variety of questions. This week, Miss Eskin brought a new dinosaur game that many of the students played when they were working hard. Tyler loves the game and it helps to keep him motivated while answering all of his difficult inference questions :)
Today, Mathias and Kasey were working on their goals while playing a favorite game, the Fish Game. Kasey is working on changing nouns from the singular form to plural for irregular plurals (ex: wolf to wolves). He is learning that every noun is not regular and you need to do more than just add 's,' like cat to cats. Mathias is working on his "k" sound. The boys love working together and playing the game when they are working hard. I attached a list of nouns that have irregular plurals that Kasey works on as well as a list of words Mathias uses to practice his "k."
Darius is working on identifying the main idea in a short story. The main idea is what the whole story is about. Darius and I read the story together then he chooses which answer he believes is the correct one. He can use his special light and the right answer turns red. |
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