lessons – The Listening Ladybug

Holly Jolly Teacher Stratagies

Posted on December 5, 2022December 5, 2022 by listeningladybug

Any of the Turkey books are loved. The worksheets are in my Teacher Pay Teachers store.

While Christmas is in the air, elves are causing shenanigans and everything gets a hint of peppermint my students slowly start to loose focus. December can be one of the most fun months to plan for, but also the most frustrating. I call this the Madness of Christmas.

These cards are lowercase letter s and initial sounds. They can be found in my tpt store.

I started to unearth all of my holiday titles and activities the last days of November. I love to be ready and being in multiple buildings I have to get things sorted and distributed. Teaching K-11 this year is fantastic, but keeping the holiday train on the tracks is a challenge. This being said here are three things I do to keep myself merry and bright while I am channeling my inner gingerbread girl.

This was a huge hit last year. Went perfectly with holidays around the world.

Acceptance

I love a plan. I love to be organized. However, the first thing I have to make a daily mantra….”ride the wave of cocoa and candy canes”. I know there will be sessions derailed by teachers, assemblies, and of course my students. I would love to think they have visions of goals, speechreading and language dancing in there heads, but reality and experience tell me it is Santa, elves and Christmas vacation filling their daydreams. This understanding and acceptance, that my fun and functional plans may get put to the back burner or slowly accomplished, is helpful for me to take each day as it comes.

Directed drawings. Perfect for listening and vocabulary development.

Time Management

Next, I plan activities that can be sweet and condensed or stretched out over multiple sessions (with no recall issues) that have a bit of holiday whimsy. Time is always the issue, regardless of the holidays. My session minutes are precious, so I look for activities that fit the holiday vibes and tackle goals. Selecting shorter books and familiar games is very helpful. The kids love it and games that we have played or activities they have done before help manage time. We don’t spend alot of time on directions and rules. We love holiday matching games played the traditional way or using the game pieces for listening and sequencing. They are essentially picture prompts, so they can be used for categories, sentences, building a story or charades. Any holiday matching or memory game will do.

Quality Connections

Last, I try to connect to my classrooms. I love supporting classroom content. Working with organized and pre-planned teachers helps navigate the month. This could be said all year, but during December this is essential. Knowing that vocabulary and language goals can work together makes everyone jolly.

I love to plan activities that expand off of classroom ELA strategies and connect then to IEP goals. Depending on the skill and grade level of a student I try to select activities that pull in listening, prior knowledge, vocabulary, writing and holiday fun. One of our favorite activies is Mad Libs. I love that I can use these silly pages with all of my students. I just modify as needed.

Throwback fun!!! Purchased a few years ago. Still a great activity.

Surviving the holidays as itinerant can be challenging. Finding the balance between festive fun and collecting data can be done. These strategies work for me. As the month progresses I am going to share some more fun and festive lessons.

Teaching Life

Literacy Skills: Spring Sequencing Activity

Posted on May 1, 2021May 1, 2021 by listeningladybug

My students love Splat the Cat stories. I find them easy to read aloud and think the illustrations are cute. Each story typically has enough content and pages to keep my young listeners engaged.

How I Use When Reading Aloud

Read
Stop and ask questions
Predicting
Vocabulary
Text to self connections
Text to text connections

Depending on the student I probably use 2-3 of these ideas when reading the story. I find that reading a fun and simple story can pepper in and layer in many goals or needs a student might have. Story books are one of my favorite tools when working on goals.

I decided with this story I wanted to develop a resource that could be used with various levels of learners. I created different options to sequence the growing process Splat goes through. Creating worksheets that go with the story, but can also be used with other stories is also a goal of mine. I have a student that does not enjoy Splat as much as others, so I know I can use this resource with a few other Spring/planting books I have in my collection.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sequence-Retell-Splat-the-Cat-Oopsie-Daisy-6825500

This resource can be printed and copied in color or black line. I typically love color, but if you have a student who loves to color or needs fine motor practice, then printing the black line version would be awesome. Anytime I can support another therapist or teachers goals is a total win!

The language used in the various options supports different learners. Some of my students are using transition words, while others need just a simple number to support sequencing the pictures.

The prep for this is very easy. Decide what page option suits your students best and print.

How To Use

Small group
Centers
Morning work
Whole group
One to one

These can be printed on card stock or laminated for durability. Students can sequence and retell after the story. Another option is to have them listen and sequence at the same time. I would do this with a second read through. When my students used the cards the love to self check, so after the sequenced I find the first page, where Splat starts the growing process, and the listen and correct the card order.

Last, I love to connect their expressive writing skills. My students love to share their favorite aspects of most everything, so I take advantage of this joy of sharing and have them write. The illustrations are typically the easiest part of this sheet. Again finding ways to connect to the whole child. Working on fine motor and creativity. Writing and remembering the text is a fantastic auditory memory skill. If they need prompts or gentle reminders I definitely help them out. The “tell me why” piece is typically the hardest component. Wh questions are always a goal and those why questions typically challenge my students. This is a fun, simple and basic way to attack that skill with a personal connection.

Skills Addressed

Creativity
Fine motor
Expressive language
Wh questions
Auditory recall
Personal expression
Phonics/spelling
Writing

Spring has definitely sprung in my planbook. I am looking forward to reading all of my favorite Spring storybooks. I am sure I will share texts and activities in the upcoming weeks, but for now I hope you found this inspirational and useful. You can find the resource in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Happy Spring planning!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-Listening-Ladybug

Teaching Life

St. Patrick’s Language Activities

Posted on March 7, 2021March 7, 2021 by listeningladybug

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sayrades-St-Patricks-Day-Descriptive-Language-Game-6479598

I have created a handful of these Sayrades and some of my students love them. They ask for them. This of course makes my heart happy, because I love doing new activities and especially these days we need to spice it up.

These are perfect for vocabulary, syllables and descriptions. The goal is to say the least about of descriptions to your partner to guess. Better description is the key. We clip the number on the side. Dry earse markers also work.

Descriptive Skills

These are easy print and do task cards. I laminate, but you don’t have too. I also printed them on a black and white printer…in a pinch and still effective. I use the clue boards for a guide, but these work just as well with a student. We selected 1 of 12 pictures and then played the same way. When the picture was used, my student covered with a tiny post it note.

Expressive Language

I have a sentence worksheet attached to this resource. These words can be used to generate sentences or be story starters. This is the part two of why I made this resource. My kiddos always need practice writing longer and more detailed sentences and stories.

Listening

The Clue Boards are perfect to use for a listening activity. Once the student has reviewed all of the images they can be used for listening. I like that I can scale the listening. Students can listen for 1, 2 or 3 pictures. These can be tied into sequencing. I like to have the students listen to a sentence with a picture clue…then have the student pull the word out and cover the picture with a mini eraser or tiny piece of paper.

I’m excited to use this for the next two weeks. Keeping things fun, easy and multi purpose this year has been a top priority and these future right in. I will also use these for a vocabulary tie in to the St. Patrick’s Day books we will be reading. I will share books in a future post.

If you like this resource definitely check out my store. I have other themes just like this.

Teaching Life

2021 Valentine’s Day Lessons and Read Alouds

Posted on February 9, 2021February 9, 2021 by listeningladybug

This is my new haul of books. I have a solid collection of Valentine’s Day books, but of course I needed new titles.

The title alone brings the kids in. We had fun reading.

I have other stories with Desmond and Clayton. The kids seem to like these two little mice, so of course I needed the Valentine’s Day version.

This one is beyond adorable. We loved the pictures and the familiarity of the story. We read The Littlest Reindeer and The Littlest Elf over the Christmas holiday. Emma Valentine’s story delivered just as much….if not more smiles. The puppy storyline was a huge hit!

The Littlest and Biggest….fun to explore the language.

This is one of my favorite stories. I think it is the illustrations, no matter, I read it every year to atleast one student. This year I decided to make some worksheets and activities to go with it. I found the clip art on Teachers Pay Teachers.

I am having a great time with my students this week. I also read last week Nate the Great and the Mushy Valentine. I forgot to snap a pic before I shared it with one of my teams. Love my teacher tribe….not sure how they are using it, but we used the detective story for opportunities to practice predicting.

I am taking advantage of anything cute and fun this year. We are all teaching in a new situation and making the most of it has been my daily mantra. I have a post from last year if you want to see some more Valentine’s Day lesson ideas.

Happy Teaching!

Teaching Life

Winter Read:The Wish Tree

Posted on January 18, 2021 by listeningladybug

Winter Read:The Wish Tree

Teaching Life

Boom Learning: Winter Jokes

Posted on January 11, 2021 by listeningladybug

Boom Learning: Winter Jokes

Teaching Life

Winter Themed Books & Worksheets

Posted on January 10, 2021January 10, 2021 by listeningladybug

I am back in person with my students and I really wanted to make our first week back fun. I purchased new snow themed books for the month off January. I looked them all over and decided I needed to make resources to pair up to the stories and also have fun tackling goals.

Every student seemed to love How to Catch a Snowman. I loved seeing and hearing what sort of trap they would build. I used this page and book with students K-2. I varied my expectations per student. My kindergartner was only expected to listen, recall and draw a trap. Where as, my 2nd graders were expected to listen, recall/sequence, pick out new vocabulary, design a trap and write/explain the trap.

Sequencing is something that I have been working on since September. We started with peanut butter and jelly activities, A s’mores game and activities, and now snowmen. This little matchbook activity hits alot of goals at one time.

Cutting
Sequencing
Oral language
Retelling
Writing extension
Descriptive language

Playing games has been difficult this year. Keeping everything clean and safe is a top priority. We played this successfully because we each had a spinner. I took the spinner on the directions sheet and the student used the large spinner. Having printed and laminated resources has been essential. I can print many copies or if laminated I can wipe down between students.

I varied the game play based on each students goal. I enjoy materials that I can manipulate to meet multiple needs or goals. This makes planning and traveling so much easier.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Winter-Rhyming-Pairs-Worksheets-and-Games-5446711

Rhyming seems to be a difficult skill force few of my students. We will be using thematic rhyming for the rest of the school year. Snowball Moon is a new title for me. Hoping the kids like it too.

Froggy books are not my personal favorite, but my students like them, sonwhen I saw this one I knew I had to grab it. I also knew it would fit into my snow theme for January. My students will assemble a snowman after we read and discuss the story. I intend to have them cut and sort the pieces, then listen for what pieces they can select for gluing. I always try to squeeze in listening somewhere!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sayrades-Winter-Descriptive-Language-Game-6339269

These sheets can be cut up into cards or leave as is. I made these to be in color, laminated and cut apart. A printer selection mistake at school…totally my fault, left me with a set in black and white. Instead of recycling, I decided to toss them in my bag for atleast one student to use. So happy. It worked out and was totally fun playing this Winter “Say”rades game. I made a “Say”rades game for each season. I wasn’t sure how the kids would react to playing, but so far this one is a hit!

We seem to need alot of opportunities to use descriptive language skills. Writing can be a challenge, so playing a game and just using verbal skills to describe was fun and time effective.

Winter can feel very long when you live in a cold climate, so making the most out of it is essential for me. I am going to continue to look for fun titles and make activities that engage my students. If you liked this post check back. I have other winter themed lesson ideas coming.

Teaching Life

Creating Language Activities for My Littles

Posted on December 12, 2020December 12, 2020 by listeningladybug

I find that I am in the constant pursuit of creating new ways to help my students use language to the fullest. Being a Teacher of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is something I love and my own passion for language has been a helpful quality in supporting my students and the language gaps and barriers they have, but the ideas I think of are not strictly for the population of students I serve. We all use language for expression and reception, so my hope is that these activities can me modified for any student acquiring or expanding their language skills.

Descriptive Language

This is a new resource I created for the holiday season. It is easy to use and can be modified for students needs and goals.

My students love games and activities that allow them to use clothes pins-which they love. I have various types for the individual lessons I plan. I try to use basic items whenever I can. They very much like the mini clothespins.

If these pages are laminated, wipe off markers can also be used to mark points earned. Also, laminated pages will save you prepping and planning in the future.

Expressive Language

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Write-A-Story-Holiday-Animals-5072651

My students often struggle with writing. I am always looking for ways to get more from them. I started making these writing promt pages. Our time is limited and I don’t want to waste time on an illustration, so I give them one. Language is my mission, not art. Don’t get me wrong, there are times and opportunities for creativity, but I want the majority of our time to focus on words.

These were a hit last year. Something I love about these is I can print as many pages as I want per student and for multiple grade levels. I always love having resources that I can use in so many different ways. It keeps my bag lighter and mentally I am juggling less.

I encourage the students to use the picture as a spark to start their story on fire. The pictures are there to support and guide the writing process. I love watching and reading their work when it gives life something I’ve made. So many times their little, creative minds take a page in a direction I never thought about when creating a resource. I have other write a story resources in my store.

Receptive Language

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Listening-and-Speechreading-Holiday-Animals-5072469

These are so much fun. I typically use with k-2nd grade students. The pictures are cute and fun, the flexibility is great and another resource that can be adjusted to meet IEP goals. Flexibility is essential to me as an itinerant teachers.a

I love exploring and expanding on a resource. I use these mats and cards to work on listening skills, speechreading skills, vocabulary skills and writing skills. I recommend laminating the cards and mats for durability and longevity. If you are using with multiple students laminated pages also easily wipe off, between students.

Having Fun with Language

Whatever language you use to communicate, being able to express yourself to the fullest is essential. Developing new tools to help my students do just that is always going to be my jam. I love language and I love teaching language skills.

If any of these ideas seem like something you could incorporate into your lessons you can visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I also have a Boom Cards store under the same name. Also, you can always follow this blog, I am always adding new content!

Have a holly jolly December teaching!