Winter Verb Tenses

Marking appropriate verb tensing in both spoken English and in writing is probably one of the biggest challenges I see my Deaf and Hard of Hearing students struggle with.  This is most likely due to the fact that the morphological markers that indicate different verb tenses are hard to hear.  They are most often at the end of words and can be voiceless, high frequency sounds (s, t).  In addition, for my students that use sign language, verb tensing is shown in a completely different and obviously visual way.  

This activity pictured above is something I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It was created by Super Power Speech and is available in other seasonal versions as well for download.  The pictures are super cute and the winter vocabulary is perfect.  The activity comes with eight activity cards, girls and boys doing four different sports.  I do wish it included sledding and a few others, but it's just enough for a quick practice/drill.  I made two copies and laminated everything and added velcro.  I added a write-on/erase spinner, also shown above, that makes the activity a bit more interactive and fun.  I put all the action pictures into my velvet bag.  Children spin the spinner to see what verb tense they will be expected to use.  They then reach into the bag and pull out an action card.  The students then place both the subject he/she card and the action card next to the appropriate time (yesterday, today, tomorrow).  Last, they say the sentence they have just created.  I like to pair "today" with "right now" to make it clear that the expectation is use of present progressive -ing.  If a student makes a mistake or needs a prompt, I use sign language to show future/will, -ing, and past/all done/finished.  Some of my students also benefit from sentence frames written on my white board (ex. Yesterday, he/she _____-ed.  Today, he/she is ______-ing.  Tomorrow, he/she will ______.).  

While I haven't tried it yet, you could easily make this an auditory skill activity as well.  Simply make a sentence yourself, then speak it to the student using your acoustic hoop.  The student would listen and attempt to recreate your sentence on his/her sentence chart.  You could then compare sentence charts to see if they match.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzmjBQg0ArE

 

Winter Auditory Speechtracking - Fact or Opinion

Speechtracking is an auditory verbal therapy technique where the clinician presents a sentence through listening alone and the child is asked to repeat it verbatim.  It is a higher level activity typically used while working on auditory skill development with students that are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, particularly those with cochlear implants.  In addition to helping the clinician know what the student is and is not hearing, it provides nice insight into the students' grasp of English grammar, including word order, function words, and grammatical markers.  This type of task relies heavily on auditory memory.  Speechtracking can be a good way to develop and improve this memory, but it can also have a negative impact on the students' performance.  A student with a weak auditory memory may simply have difficulty recalling long strings of verbal information.  It is also important to keep a student's speech articulation error patterns in mind as well.  It wouldn't be appropriate to determine that a child doesn't hear, have, or understand plural -s if in fact their omission is due to an articulation error or phonological process, such as final consonant deletion or cluster reduction.  Typically when a student makes an error, such as leaving out a function word, changing word order, or omitting a morphological marker, the clinician repeats the sentence and uses acoustic highlighting (auditory emphasis) on the error to help the student notice and fix their mistake.  After 2-3 presentations, I, of course, will also add sign language to ensure comprehension.  

Now, this type of activity can be rather boring...simply repeating sentences.  It also doesn't require the students to truly understand what they are copying.  So, I like to use materials such as the ones pictured above.  It requires comprehension and gives them a reason for completing this type of task.  In this particular winter activity, students would repeat the sentences and then decide if that sentence is a fact or an opinion.  I have another activity that has the students repeating winter-themed sentences and then sorting them by verb tense (past, present, future).  

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NeIB3xt1Jw

       

 

Our Ears Are On the Side of Our Head!!!

So, I haven't done any research on this, but I'm just wondering...should we be putting children's cochlear implant receivers on the back of the head?  On top of the head? Together?

Natural hearing occurs bilaterally, on the sides of our head.  This allows for rapid transmission of information to the brain.  It also allows for sound localization, which is the ability to identify the direction and distance of a sound's origin.  So what happens when the two cochlear implant processors are together?  What happens when they are placed in an unnatural location?  

I DON'T KNOW!!!

So, should we be marketing cute little products that promote placing cochlear implant receivers in unnatural locations and together?  I obviously see the benefits of helping to keep them in place on young children, but other more appropriate options seem to be readily available.  

Fashion over function????

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2utDkVkIA

 

Winter Vocabulary - Two Critical Elements - Early Size Concepts

That's right...it's the mailbox again!!!  Just like the activity I shared in the fall, I have a similar set for winter.  Using simple pictures from the internet that I printed in three different sizes and laminated, I like to target auditory skill development, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and early basic size concepts.  In the winter we mail big, medium, and small pictures of snowman, snowflakes, penguin, and hot chocolate/cocoa.  By pairing the size with the object you are targeting listening for two critical elements.  I again make and use two full sets of the pictures so that the students also take a turn to tell what to mail.  This gives them the opportunity to practice the target vocabulary as well as combining two words/signs.  As always, I pair the utterances with ASL as needed to ensure success and comprehension. Don't forget to use synonyms like large and little to further develop the students' vocabulary and to add to the listening challenge.  Using snowflake vs. snowman is an extra listening challenge.  If you choose to say "cocoa" then all of the targets are two-syllable words, again adding to the challenge.  You can keep it simple by only saying, "Big snowman," or make it a more complex listening task by embedding it into a sentence, "Put the big snowman in the mailbox." 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deJaEUwYitg

Syllable Segmentation Game: Winter Vocabulary

 

 I recently found this free activity on Teachers Pay Teachers after a colleague asked me if I could work with some of our struggling readers on syllable segmentation.  While that is its intent, I like it because I have so many students that need to work on their speech articulation in multisyllabic words.  And of course, the winter vocabulary is a bonus.  You use these cards in the same manner that you play the card game "War".  You deal out all the cards into facedown piles.  Two or three students then flip over their top card from their individual piles at the same time.  Students take turns producing the pictured word and determining the number of syllables their word has.  Whichever student's word has the most syllables takes all the cards.  If two students have the same number of syllables then they go to battle.  They line up three more cards face down on the table and then flip over the fourth one.  They again say the pictured word and identify the number of syllables.  Whoever has the highest number of syllables takes all the cards involved.  I printed two sets so that I can use it in slightly larger groups and so that we can also use these same cards to play "Go Fish."  My rules...when you get a match in "Go Fish" you have to use the word in your own meaningful sentence.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEUI7pqf94g

Baby Loves Winter - Spoken English and ASL

 

Amazon Link - Baby Loves Winter

Baby Loves Winter - Spoken English and ASL

Dress the Snowman - Speech and Language Reinforcer/Activity

 

 

 

This simple "dress the snowman" activity is a great activity for preschool and elementary students of all ages.  I simply found a black and white free printable of a snowman and various clothing items.  I like this one because it includes more clothing items than most others.  I then made extra copies so I would have at four of each item in four different colors.  It's important to make sure there are at least two different items of the same color.  That ensures that you have the opportunity to work on expanding students' utterances.  They will need to say/sign both the color and the clothing item in order to successfully request what they want (ex. blue boots vs. blue hat).  I laminated all the pieces and added velcro to make it easily usable and repeatable.  For my students that are still developing their language, this activity is a motivating way to target winter clothing vocabulary, colors, and expanding their utterances.  For my older students I use it more as a reinforcer while doing drill-based practice of articulation or grammar.  

This activity can also become an auditory skill development activity by simply participating yourself.  When it's your turn you simply practice the targeted skill (ex. word initial /k/, past tense verbs, etc.) then use the acoustic hoop to request the clothing item you want the student to locate and give to you.  It allows you to target discrimination and comprehension for two critical elements, color and clothing, with a clear visual set of possible choices.