Saturday, March 28, 2015

Another Oldie But Goodie

Sorry about the pic! The overhead
lights in my room are so
bright and the glare is terrible!
As many of you know I've been doing this speech gig for quite some time. You also may know that I have a hard time disposing of some of my older materials (and trash). Why discard something awesome? One such material is The WORD Kit and The WORD Book. These products were authored by Linda Zachman, Rosemary Huisingh, Jane Orman, Carolyn Balgden, and Mark Barrett and published by LinguiSystems. When LinguiSystems was LinguiSystems it was very SLP centered. LinguiSystems offered wonderful free CEU opportunities, free shipping, and product previews. I hostessed several product previews whereby I selected products to preview at school. LinguiSystems shipped the products via UPS, participants previewed the products and signed an attendance sheet. Following the preview I boxed them up, UPS picked them up at school and I could keep one product for hostessing the event. It was a great way to determine whether a product was worth purchasing, connecting with colleagues, and having some fun. Unfortunately, those days are gone, but I still have my materials and the WORD Kit was one I was given through a preview event!

The game is played by placing one of six same colored pawns at the end of each spoke. The spokes
each target a different semantic skill area. Students answer questions correlating to each spoke moving spaces when correct. The player who gets all his/her pawns in the center hub is the winner. This product has been my touchstone to the early years and a stalwart therapy friend! While the kit and book themselves target expressive vocabulary and semantic skills I have found it easy to modify for any therapy goal. I have amassed an amazing collection of spoke overlays targeting comprehension, vocabulary, expressive reasoning, categorization, articulation, etc. My recent adaptation was to create overlays that correspond to the Expanding Expression Tool by Sara L. Smith, M.S., CCC-SLP. Sometimes you just need to shake things up and modifying games is a fun way to do that without having to start from scratch. Some of my students refer to these adaptations as "Doylified!"
These are only a few of my overlays targeting
vocabulary, social language, categorization, and comprehension.
I would love to know what "antique" materials you can't part with and how you have modified materials to meet multiple targets!







4 comments:

  1. Oh, my! I haven't seen one of those in YEARS! I may have one on my bookshelf; I'm just not sure!!!
    oldschoolspeech.blogspot.com

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    1. Oh look for it, Mary! It's still fun! Did you ever do a LinguiSystems product preview?

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  2. So glad I stumbled upon your blog. I'm in my early SLP years and am inventorying my new office and came across the Word Kit and decided to google it to get more info. I'll definitely hold onto it. Would you be willing to share ( or sell) your additions to the game? I love the idea of using it for multiple language areas.

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    1. I would be happy to share my additions. I usually just cut out colored parallelograms to match the shapes on the board. I can share the topics for the overlays. send me your email. It probably won't be until sometime next week though.

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