Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Dr. Seuss and Texas Standards in Speech

This month is of course Dr Seuss' birthday. I got this idea and used my smart board to blow up and trace this free download from Fairy Tales and Fiction.

We read two books today, starting with The Cat in the Hat, I Love the Nightlife!
This book takes the Cat and his friends on a journey through the dark forest where they meet nocturnal (new vocabulary word) animals: Owl, Opossum, and Bat. We talked about their senses and compared them to our own. WH questions abound throughout the book including tons of WHOs, WHATs, and some WHY and What do you think will happen next?

Click here to download my FREE visuals to promote verbal language and discourage pointing during story time. 

After we read the Nightlife book, we began talking about our "Cat" on the board. I asked the kids to 'read' my cards, identifying the first letter and giving the sound of that letter. With "eye" and "ear" of course some visual cues were necessary (basically I just pointed to my own hoping they could catch it!). I gave them clues: It's a body part, or It's clothing, etc.

Here is how I applied the Texas PreK Standards throughout this activity:

Onset and Rime can be directly tied into articulation practice.
We also talked about Category Labels: Body Parts and Clothing.
We worked on pre-reading skills by having the students match the word to the part of the "Cat".
When the students placed the word on the "Cat", they were asked to think of a rhyming word to go with that label. For example: Nose-hose, rose.
They LOVE rhyming and I love hearing the silly non-words they come up with!
This age also LOVES thinking of words that begin with the same sound as the word we have in front of us. You can strategically use this with articulation practice as well.

These are ALL examples of how you can apply your therapy sessions to the standards outlined by your state. We are ALL in this together and are ALL a part of helping the kids succeed educationally.

After we labeled the "Cat", I read The Foot Book. While reading this one aloud, I paused after giving them the first letter of a word for MANY of the phrases in the book. This allowed them to predict the text and "read" it out loud, making them feel very successful as they left our session today.
I Love The Foot Book because it has some great pictures to teach opposites. 

I hope you enjoyed the Dr. Seuss activities and can use them in your own classroom this week!



You can find the printable download to label The Cat HERE
and
You can purchase ALL 10 Domains of the Texas PreK Standards from my TpT store HERE