24: Free Activities You Can Try This Week

 

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transcript episode 24: Free Activities You Can Try This Week

Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support Itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other Deaf Education professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking about some of my favorite go-to activities that are free. I have a list here of about 15ish activities and I'm just going to go through each one, tell you what it is and how I use it.

The first one is really simple. It's just using index cards or post its and a ball or something like that. Whenever a student has an activity that I need to support vocabulary from the classroom, sometimes it's just nice to write the different words on different index cards or post-it notes and then we can also jot down other important information like the part of speech or a synonym or an antonym or use it in a sentence kind of whatever the student needs to cement that word in their head. And then I can put the post-it notes or the index cards on the floor or around the room depending on the space I'm working in and we can practice them and they can basically throw the ball or use the big pointer to hit each one as we practice it. Sometimes practicing it means like repeating a sentence with that word in it to work on their auditory memory or it maybe it's naming an opposite or naming something else in that category or naming a more specific version of that thing. Really whatever it is I'm just trying to create conversation that allows them to use that word in context repetitively. But it's nice because post-its, I mean they're not free, but you probably have them around [laughs] um and you can use this with really any vocabulary that you're trying to support in the classroom. So this is something I find myself doing pretty frequently especially because the process of writing them on the post-its is like one exposure and then doing the thing with the ball or the pointer is another exposure and then cleaning them up as a third exposure. So it gives me that repetition that they really need.

The second thing is the whiteboard app on an iPad. So again I know an iPad is not free, but if you have an iPad [laughs] um, there is a free whiteboard app or you can also just use the notes to app that comes on your phone, there's like a markup tool and you could basically use it like a whiteboard which is what I do and I have a little stylus, you can use your finger. And it's really easy to practice similar to the index cards any language target because you can write right on there and the kids think it's so fun to write on the iPad that they're much more likely to engage with the activity. So a lot of times I'll do this for like drawing activities. We'll have them like draw a picture to work on comprehension or I'll have them write a sentence with their finger and then we'll underline the different words. If we're doing like phonemic awareness or something I'll have them write the word after they say it a couple times and underline the different syllables that we're working on. It's just really flexible and versatile that you can use with a lot of different things and this is probably the one I use the most on this list is the whiteboard app on my iPad.

Alright, the next one is Google images. Obviously you've got to make sure your safe search is on um and you might want to preview it before you turn the computer around but being able just to Google what things look like is so underrated. I feel like so many times I say something and the student gives me a funny look because they don't know what that word means like I'm trying to think of an example of something that happened recently where they didn't know what the word was... Oh! It was the word vest like that you wear on your body. They didn't know what a vest was and as opposed to trying to explain that, I just Googled pictures of vests and then we talked about what's the difference between a vest and a jacket. What a vest and a jacket and a shirt all have in common. I think this came up in the context of a what doesn't belong categorizing activity. And the word that didn't belong with pants because although it is an item of clothing, it's not something worn on your torso. So just being able to pull up Google images to talk about different things and expand on vocabulary that way. I think that's a really underrated resource to be able to have especially since our phones are on us and if you want to just show them a picture real quick. It's a really easy way and you could even do whole lessons where you're just using pictures to have conversations about different words or multiple meaning words or context clues whatever it is where maybe every time you answer a question you look up the picture of that word so that you can talk about it deeper. I think it's a really good way to extend an activity that you're already working on like if you're doing a worksheet or something that you took from the classroom to support. Every time they answer a question you Google image one of the words in that question to expand upon it and make it more meaningful to them and more interesting.

Alright, the next thing I do that's free is borrowing books from the public library and/or the teachers at the schools. The public library is great obviously if your town has a library because you can borrow them for free. Um, and then you can switch them out so it's really good if you're doing themes or if you just want to like keep students interested in different read alouds and then sometimes I'll just like go and buy the ones that I really really liked but that way I'm not committed to buying every single book that I want to use and then if I don't have time to go to the public library I can use books from the teachers classrooms a lot of times they're okay with that if you return them like when you return the student but that's nice because if they're going to use that read aloud later in the week then you're supporting that vocabulary by previewing it and even if they're not it's just a material that is accessible to you if you want to use books and you don't have a lot of your own books.

Speaking of books one thing I like to do is photocopy the pictures of the books to make sequencing cards and little book companions. So if you just like take the book and put it in the photocopier and like color copy it, you can make like nice images that are the same as the book because they're copied. And then you can use them for like retelling or sequencing or answering comprehension questions and it's really nice because they matched the book exactly. I never liked when I got book companions and the images were different which I understand they have to be because of like copyright and things like that, but if you're just using it for your own personal use there's nothing wrong with just making a copy of the pictures in the book. This is probably my favorite thing to do for sequencing goals. Another book one is to use their independent reading book for material for listening comprehension which I've probably mentioned this 10 times on this podcast already. So I'm really sorry if you're a repeat listener and you've heard me talk about this before but almost every elementary school child has an independent reading book and you can just have them bring that book to your session and read a chapter of it aloud together. And you can hit so many listening and language goals probably like all of them honestly because what I like to do is to read it to them without them looking at the words, and then it's listening comprehension. Or we can read it together and turn it more into a language activity where we look at the different words on the page and talk about their meaning in the context of the sentence. It's so so good and usually what I really try to do is demonstrate my love for reading while doing this like I get really excited about the characters I make predictions I I get really into it and I show them that reading can be like really fun. Almost like we're going to read an episode quote unquote like this time we can't wait to see what happens the next time and they might even read a little bit in the week that you see them and then they can retell you what happened if you didn't catch all of it because they read it independently but they were excited to read it independently because you hyped it up. And I do think, well I know, that children who read a lot have better vocabulary. So if you can infuse a love for reading in them, that's one of the best things we can do for them. So I'm a big proponent of using independent reading books as material for listening and language goals.

Alright the next one I kind of mentioned with the iPad the whiteboard on the iPad, but is drawing activities. I love drawing activities because kids love to draw not everyone obviously but a lot of them. So I'll have them do like following directions or auditory memory where I describe a picture and they draw it. I also use it for listening comprehension for a visualization strategy for listening comprehension. I'll also use it if like we're doing a worksheet every time we answer a question we can like draw a little doodle that represents that question that way we can go back and talk about it and like I said a lot of it is just to get repetition because that's what really helps them learn.

If you have a photo release to take pictures of your student and use them for like educational purposes, I really like doing pictures of the students to make little social stories about them. So this works great if you have trouble with them like keeping their hearing devices on or remembering to take care of their HAT equipment or something like that you can take pictures of all of the steps that are needed to do that self-advocacy goal and I think social stories that have pictures of the student themselves are much more like valuable and engaging than a pre-made one because one you can target specifically what they need to work on and two, it's more meaningful to the student because it's them in the pictures. But even beyond social stories like you can even do it of different self advocacy strategies like different types of communication repair. Like maybe the two of you can act it out and you could take pictures and make like a little comic strip out of it. You just like drag the pictures into a powerpoint and put little text boxes on top of it. You can get really creative once you have some pictures. Target a whole bunch of different goals and it's very engaging and fun for the student because you can make it kind of silly and it's personalized to them.

Alright, the next one has to do with all the hearing device companies. They all have like free resources that you can download from their website and I feel like it's overwhelming sometimes because there's so many things on their websites. They can be hard to find. So I'm just going to tell you a few of my favorites. Cochlear has Sound Foundations for Babies and Sound Foundations for Toddlers which are basically auditory training curriculums for new implants. But they're just like chock full of good listening activities. Especially if you have preschoolers or new implants. They can be aged up but they give you so many good ideas. Totally worth flipping through and if you Google it, it pops up. I'll link as much as I can down below but I'm probably going to be link it a lot of stuff for this episode. So if you Google it that's even faster. The next one is The Listening Room from Phonak and AB. That one has a lot of good downloadable activities also for the younger ages but also some for older kids too and you do have to make an account but it is free. So that's really helpful. That's The Listening Room.

Then there's also from Med El the rehabilitation packets that they have that are awesome. They have so many different themes and it's a packet with a lesson plan and then the materials to go along with it. And they have it from like one critical element auditory memory up to I think three they might even have more than that now. But it's nice because you can differentiate it really easily and then you can print out all the pictures that go with that packet. Specifically I like the pets one, I like the house one, I've used those a bunch. And it's nice that you can print out the pictures and then look at the lesson plan for ideas on how to use it. There's definitely more things from the device companies but those are probably the three that I reference the most.

The next idea is to use children's podcasts for listening comprehension. There are tons of children's podcasts now. One that I've used it's called Wow in the World from NPR to Science Podcast for Kids. And I like it because it's a challenging listening activity. They use like different voices and sound effects and it's it's not easy. It's good for kids who could really use a challenge and you can pause it and talk about it together. Also if you like go to Wow in the World for example on Spotify or Apple and you click more like this it shows you a bunch of other children's podcasts that you might prefer. They have some that are fiction some that are nonfiction like Wow in the World. But I find that podcasts can be a really good way to keep them engaged and get some really high level listening practice in and they're free so they're amazing.

My next idea is what I call like a self-advocacy journal that I make on Google slides with a lot of my students. It's not really a journal. It's just like a like a slides presentation but it's not meant to be presented. It's just meant to be like a record. But it's basically anytime we learn about something related to self-advocacy we make a slide about it and we can put like I mentioned earlier any pictures we take, any key vocabulary we learn and I do take a lot of pictures of things even like I'll take a picture of their devices or if we do a worksheet I'll take a picture and put it and their slides. That way it's just like a record of a lot of the things we've talked about and then every time we add something we review everything that's there so far so we like read through it remember when we talked about this. Oh do you remember what this means and then we get to the new slide and we add the new thing. So it shows them everything they've worked on this year regarding self-advocacy but just the repetition of it helps them actually remember it. This is great because it's free I've mentioned before I actually like I was thinking about how I can make this into something I could put on TPT but to be honest, it is so individualized to the student that I couldn't think of a way to do it. It would just be like a blank slides presentation with a title slide which is not that interesting and I really prefer to keep it blank because then the students can personalize it. They like to do all these like funky gradients in the background, pick their fonts, pick their colors like really make it their own. And like I said it's not meant to be presented. It's just meant to be kind of like a journal like an ongoing record of all the things that we learned about self-advocacy that year and it's one of my favorite things to do because I've noticed that the kids I do it with actually remember all the things that I've taught them because it's repetition is built right in.

Alright next I just wanted to go over a bunch of free websites that I like. Um if you don't have internet at your school then maybe this won't be helpful but you could pull them up on your phone some of them but I like ABCya preschool skills section because it's all those games like make your own cookie, make your own pizza, design your old your own house, like even older kids like that type of game and you can target following directions, auditory memory, all that kind of stuff. So I like that section in particular of that website. I also like Toy Theater which is online manipulatives like dice, timer, spinners, and a bunch of other stuff too. So if you have like a worksheet that you need to complete like from class and you want to make it a little more fun you can use dice to figure out which question to answer or they have like literacy tools for visuals for supporting reading and stuff like that.

I'm realizing now I only wrote down those two websites but truthfully those are the ones I use most. There are tons of other free websites out there obviously but those are the ones that I tend to go to more often. And then last, obviously I at Listening Fun have a bunch of freebies that I'll link some of the ones below. I have like some self-advocacy ones some language ones for context clues that sort of thing. And if you're on my email list I will often send freebies out periodically as I make them. You can join it at listeningfun.com/emails but I'll link some of them below. So that way you'll have some to get you going if you're looking for some free resources. So that's a bunch of my ideas for free activities that you can do with your students. I hope maybe one or two of them were new to you and helpful. I will try to link as much as I can below along with the transcript so that'll be below and at listentotodpod.com and that's everything for today. I'll see you next week! Bye!

session ideasDeanna