A quick "Mining" of Smart Exchange for Useful Materials

Piggybacking on yesterday's post, I just wanted to demonstrate a brisk look at Smart Exchange. We need not focus only on ELA categories in any material but can be looking also at content areas and consider a) would this activity be Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and Speechie/Specific, i.e. you can identify specific objectives you can target with it and b) what can you do AROUND the activity?

For example, look at Fairy Tales and STEM- my plan for a social group today is to use a book about engineering and failure, then use Google Slides to have them design one of the options and share.

Here are 10 more I found on just a quick search:

Spring Calendar- Time concepts and building the macro of time for executive function!

Verb or Noun

Adjective Noun Riddles - These two follow along recent research for later language development especially that metalinguistics is important. Not only are parts of speech a curriculum area but our understanding of them helps us unpack complex language for comprehension.

Dressing for the Season 

What is Weather? - These two are similar. Weather is always one of my favorite educationally relevant language areas-- it's so tied up in categories, description, time, causals, conditionals, functional decision making. Think about pairing with the MarcoPolo Weather app.

Animal Classification

Five Food Groups- These two are based in categories, essential to semantics and description, as well as science.

What a Plant Needs to Grow

Animal Homes- As in this pair, science topics can also be contexts for sequencing and sentence formulation.

Park Map Skills- Maps are wrapped up in our understanding spatial concepts and executive function mind-maps of space and its layout. Pair with the free app Beep beep Alfie Atkins for map-making.

Remember from yesterday's post, Smart Exchange requires a free account to sign in, you'll need Smart Notebook Basic (also free) and you can edit files as you see fit.

Make a Top 10 List!

I've said it before and I will say it again, visual supports are key for scaffolding understanding, supporting thinking and even eliciting language. I'm amazed that one format, creating Google Slides presentations with students, is as enthralling as it is. Apple TV (you can use an interactive whiteboard or just a projector in a classroom) helps for sure, but you'll be surprised how much students attend and generate language as you type into a slide and create something interactively.

A student of mine (entering 5th) has shown a lot of interest in comedy and SNL. It occurred to me that introducing the group to David Letterman's Top 10 Lists might be of interest, as well as a way to frame a review of a key idea we worked on all semester. You'll have to use your judgment and look around YouTube, but I found one that was not too risqué (#1 can be explained in different ways) regarding the lackluster accommodations at the Sochi Olympics, which gave us:
-narrative opportunities: what was the story here?
-many attempts to "get" figurative language, multiple meaning and humor



Following this activity we scaffolded our own Top Ten list around concepts and skills we had been focusing on for a few months: moderating talk time. This came pretty organically from items the kids suggested as well as some models of "what's going unexpectedly in what we are playing out right now" (e.g. I launched into a complete plot retelling of "E.T."). In this I was thrilled that the boys remembered a created acronym of mine ("LLLL=Long Lists Lose Listeners®," JK on the ®) and the 5 Point Scale of Talk Time we worked with as a group (view below). When complete, they asked me to review the whole thing David-Letterman-Style! Essentially the activity created a social narrative and was great to share with parents afterward.

Link to presentation (please do not request permission for me to share it with your account, but if you like you can go to the File Menu and Make a Copy, which will save to your account).

Considering your professional development schedule next year? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

What to do with that SmartBoard?

As you start your new school year, you may find yourself having access to an interactive whiteboard (IWB), either a SMART or Promethean board, or perhaps even another brand such as an ENO. Maybe you have one in your treatment room, or are working in classrooms where these boards are available. "Available" may seem like a complicated word to use, because you may not know what to do with the board, and are prohibited from writing on it with whiteboard markers, leaving you with perhaps a lot less visual space with which you can support your students.  Well, there are a couple of simple ways you can reclaim that space and take your therapy activities to a new level if you have an interactive whiteboard available.

I always like making things visual, and of late have found a lot of nice uses for the app Paper by FiftyThree. Paper is basically a sketch-journal app, but the aspect it really like about it is that it makes it look like you can draw even if, like myself, you can't draw. So I made these sketches with Paper:

1. Use the IWB as a way to, well, interact with interactive websites.

The IWB-equipped classroom you are working in likely has a computer available, or else there isn't much point to having an IWB. The simplest thing you can do to take advantage of the IWB is to use available (free of course) interactive websites onscreen. When you or students touch the board, you will be able to complete the activities at sites such as PBS Kids or BBC Schools. Tools such as the Smart Pens can be used to highlight and annotate the screen, so even if you choose something non-interactive, like just displaying a giant picture you find on Google Images, you can interact with it, label it, and break it down in language-based ways. If you would like to do this on your own computer brought into the classroom, you'll just need to ask your IT specialist to install the free software that allows you to interact with the board.

Laptop connected to interactive whiteboard with interactive website Kerpoof.  You can use any interactive website or Web 2.0 creation site such as Kerpoof in language activities with a group or class. Note that the IWB connects to the laptop with 2 cords, VGA (blue) to show the display, and USB (black) to make the connection so that it is possible to interact with the website by touching the board.

2. Use the IWB to run activities designed for the IWB.

Each type of interactive whiteboard comes with software designed to make interactive presentations and lessons for use with the board (e.g. SMART Notebook, ActivInspire). These have a bit of a learning curve but there are tons of videos available on YouTube that will teach you to make activities targeting categorization, sequencing, concepts or other skills.  If you are going to be working in a room with an IWB, it would be a good idea to start getting familiar with these tools (again, free if you have the board), because you can make CUSTOM activities for your group.  Also, rather than reinvent the wheel, each kind of software has activity exchange sites you can use to download files that you can use with a class; Scholastic also has a nice set of activities available, particularly those targeting storytelling and narrative.

Laptop connected to interactive whiteboard running "Notebook" activity. Again, note the necessary USB and VGA connections.

3. Display your iPad on the IWB.

Note that I wrote "display."  You can display any app on an IWB after connecting it to the board's VGA (visual) cable using the necessary adapter.  However, to interact with the app, you will need to touch the iPad screen- NOT the board.  This is because your iPad does not have a USB port that is necessary to convey the touch connection from the board. Still, displaying iPad on an IWB can be really fun and useful with a class.  You just might want to make sure there is some way (iPads available to class, etc) to give the kids access to the app later, because they pretty much ALL will want it.

iPad displayed on IWB with the app Felt Board. Note that the USB cable has no place to go and dangles there sadly. You'd need to touch the iPad to make your scene.

There are a few other places I'd like to direct you for more information, if you are interested in using an IWB this school year:

Our Essential Tech for SLPs website has a great list of resources created by my pal Laura Goehner, an SLP with an IWB.

Alex Dunn's SMART Inclusion site has tons of resources about using SMART boards in Special Education.

My video on sharing your iPad screen with a group includes a piece on IWBs.

SMART now has an iPad app- I haven't even checked it out, but will soon.