Game Time in Speech Therapy: "Guess What I Am"

Who likes to have fun?! We do! We do!

When working with children with various types of abilities such as in speech/language therapy and in special education, we are constantly trying to keep it motivating. "Game Time" is a great way to work on MANY speech, language, and social communicaiton/interaction skills. We are NO STRANGER to Game Time!

I came accross this game "Guess What I Am" a few years ago while I was observing a speech therapy session of an SLP that I supervised. It's made by Techno Source and I found my copy at Toys R Us for about $12 (pretty sure I had a sale or coupon deal!) I have also seen it on Amazon.com.

The game comes with cardboard characters with a large whole cut out for a face. All of the characters in this game are either animals or people. The game also comes with tokens and a die. The die is "non-traditional" and has multiple sides with the options "Ask", "Guess", "Lose a Turn", "Reverse", and "Wild".



The game itself is pretty simple. Students choose a cardboard character (without peeking) and place it in front of their face (this makes EVERYONE laugh at how silly everyone looks). Then the student has to ask a variety of quesitons in order to guess what they are. If you choose to follow the game format in the instructions, the die dictates whether you get to "ask" or "guess". The best part about this game is the variety of ways I have found to play it (aside from the way the instructions are written). Afterall, I really like to get the best "bang for my buck" when I'm choosing materials for speech sessions! Here are some ways we play and the goals we target:

Semi-Traditional #1: The traditional way of playing is great for basic asking questions and describing. I change it slightly and only have one student as the "character" at a time, and the others are the "clue givers" (in this version, I omit the use of the die). Many of the students are working on asking questions. Some are working on formulating questions with correct grammar, while some are working on figuring out what to ask so they can gain more information. I also require them to direct their question to a particular student by saying each person's name. This also allows for embedding social skills such as making eye contact, responding to your name, turn taking, showing attentive listening, and responding to questions. I also have the "character" recall and re-tell all of their clues after each question, and I usually require that they ask at least 2 questions before making a guess. Having the students recall each clue really helps their reasoning skills in this game. I found that when students do this, it helps improve their reasoning skills, because otherwise, they continued making guesses with little regard to the information they were given. For some students, it's also helpful to write down their clues or pair them with simple pictures to help their memory. Describing skills are also important and the "clue givers" are expected to use good descriptive vocabulary to provide "clues" to their friends. Since some of my students have a harder time with this than others, I created this tool to help them formulate questions and ideas: Guess What I Am--Visual Tool.

Semi_Traditional #2: In this format of the game, often with older students (2nd grade or higher), we use the die to keep it interesting and add a competetive edge. I also like to require this age group to limit their quesitons to "yes" or "no" type questions. This type of questioning really makes the game more challenging as they have to filter through "possible" descriptors of their characters. With this age group, we talk about how to "funnel" through questions by starting with broad categorizations and then narrowing down the options based on the responses of the "clue givers".

Additional social skills that we target using this game include: following rules and "cheating", identifying thoughts/feelings of peers when rules "are" or "are not" followed, whole body listening, and topic maintenance.

Overall, this is a great game to have on your shelf, and I definitely recommend it! What other ways do you think you would use this game? I'd love to hear your ideas!

~Orlanda

Toys to Talk About--The "Hoberman Expanding Sphere" Toy

Hello all! I'm still here! (And, quite frankly, my brain has REALLY been enjoying summer vacation!) I don't know about all of you, but when I shut down my computer after the last day of school, I think I literally switched "work mode" to "sleep mode". I have really been enjoying my time off from school, and my six year old son recently declared, "it's unfair for summer vacation to be shorter than the school year." (I didn't really have a good argument for that one.) So, aside from perusing Pinterest for new and fresh ideas to incorporate into speech therapy, I have made time for another favorite hobby. . . . .THRIFT SHOPPING!

I have always found that shopping "on a dime" has helped me find some great deals on "Toys to Talk About". Now, this has become an interesting topic at home with my kids (who happen to also serve as my own personal guinea pigs). I have lots of fun engaging with them to see just how many words and phrases ONE toy can elicit, it's like a game to them and me!

The first toy I found this summer was on my "wish list" and was inspired by one of the SLPs that I supervised this year during her Clinical Fellowship Year, Katie Ruffin. I observed Katie as she provided therapy to students in middle school and high school. We spent a lot of time brainstorming and developing ideas for many students who had minimal verbal skills and we spent a lot of time focusing on developing "Core Vocabulary" (future post on this important topic is yet to come). It was during an observation of her working with a student that I came across her using the Hoberman Expanding Sphere Toy and I knew that I immediately needed to get my hands on one myself! (I have to admit, I didn't know the exact name of this toy until I researched it for this post, but now I can give credit where it is due!) Here are a few pictures of the toy that I am talking about:

Retracted Sphere



Expanded sphere and Retracted Sphere

Now, I knew where I could go and buy one of these toys online or in stores, but I got lucky when I found mine for only 25 CENTS at a Yard Sale! So, not only was I excited to get my hands on this new toy, but the price made it SUPER EXCITING!

So, let's talk about how this toy became a "Toy to Talk About". Some of the words and phrases that I observed it used for in a speech therapy session included:

• BALL (of course)
• OPEN
• CLOSE
• IN
• OUT
• MY TURN
• YOUR TURN
• THROW
• I THROW
• YOU THROW
• CATCH
• I CATCH
• YOU CATCH
• I WANT
• MINE
• YOURS
• ON
• UNDER

In order to facilitate communication with this toy, a communication board was also used with the student. This board could be used with or without voice output depending on the needs of your students. Also, I observed this in an individual therapy session, but it can certainly be just as engaging and useful for language in a small group therapy session! Here is an example of a communication board that might be used in a session with this toy. Go to this link to grab this board from the Boardmaker Share Website: Core Vocabulary--Go-Talk-20. For a younger student, I would likely cover the unnecessary pictures or cut them out and use them as picture exchange versus pointing.

Here are some photographs of how this ball was used in a therapy session that I observed:


"The bird is IN" the ball."
"Put the bird IN."




"The bird is OUT of the ball."
"Take the bird OUT."

In addition to playing with the ball in the ways pictured here, the SLP and the student also played a game of "catch" and also incorporated other objects to throw the ball into and to take in/out of the ball. While I was researching this toy online, I also came across an image of a much larger version that looked like this:


Boy, wouldn't this be fun!?! The language opportunities would be endless! I envision using it to teach and learn positional words and many other vocabulary words, and this would be great fun for turn taking and building social communication skills too! Guess I'll have to add the "kid size" version to my wish list now!

I hope you find this toy will create "something to talk about" in your classroom! I'd love to hear how you might use this toy with your students! How many more words and phrases can you think of to teach to your students using this toy?

Looking forward to Saturday morning Yard Sales!
~Orlanda

Welcome to our blog!

We are excited to collaborate on yet another adventure together! Let us start by introducing ourselves a little and let you (our readers) know why we have put together this blog. We have known each other professionally for the last four years, and in August 2010, our paths crossed again and we were given the opportunity to work side by side. As a special education teacher and a speech/language pathologist, we found ourselves working closely together on many student cases, so we took this chance to increase our Brain Power by treating our students using a collaborative teaching method. This was the beginning of our adventures together as "The Dynamic Duo"!

During our last year and half together we have had many planning sessions and conversations about ideas we have used.  Suddenly, the number of tools in our toolbox doubled and has continued to grow with the help of many other innovative individuals. We also have found that from this, we have had to "tweak" some ideas or have developed some of our own new tools and methods, and now, we want to give something back. So, this blog was born!

Our goal is to offer our readers some ideas and tools for working with a variety of students with various special needs, and we also hope go continue gathering ideas from you to share as well. With the growing needs of our students, we have embraced the idea of being life long learners so that we can continue to offer our students the best outcomes.

Join us on our adventure of discovering new strategies, tools, and techniques that are effective with these fascinating young people we work with daily. We look forward to sharing what we are learning in our own practice and learning from your ideas as well.

~Kelley & Orlanda