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Surviving the Speech Therapy Holiday Season: How to use No-Print Activities
Are you super busy during the holidays and have no time to prep for your speech therapy sessions?
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
The holiday season always seems to be a giant time crunch for me …and that means precious little time for prepping great activities to use in speech therapy.
Right now I have 15 ARDS (That’s what we call IEP meetings in Texas) and 6 assessments due within the month. I know many of you probably have even more. With no time to prep, a great solution is using No-Print activities on your ipad, tablet, computer or whiteboard. They are ready to go, and require no printing, laminating or cutting. If you like using apps, I bet you will love No-Print activities too.
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What are No-Print activities?
No-Print activities are usually PDF files that can be opened on your tablet or your computer, and used with a mouse. Some are PowerPoint files, but today we will be mainly talking about PDF files.
There are many No-Print Activities available on Teacher’s pay Teachers. You can see Speech Sprouts No-Print activities HERE.
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| The Mitten Book Companion |
Touch or click the correct answer.
We all use cards in speech therapy to adress a multitude of goals. The advantage of a No-Print activity is that it is all stored digitally!
Better yet, No-Print activities are interactive. When the correct answer is touched or clicked, the picture advances to another slide. Sometimes it’s the next question, or it might be feedback or a motivational game as in Christmas Following Directions. Fun!
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
The No-Print format saves you ink and requires no prep other than downloading and opening the file. Win-win when time is at a premium, and it makes for an activity that is really portable too. This is great if you are a traveling therapist or do in-class therapy.
Using a No-Print Activity on Your Computer
First, if your file is a zipped file, you need to unzip it before using it. You will see a folder with a zipper on it. On my Windows computer I just right click and choose EXTRACT ALL.
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| Wheels on The Bus No-Print Interactive Story |
If you are using a No-Print activity on your computer, you will need to be sure you have a program to open that file type. For activities that are in PowerPoint format, you will need PowerPoint on your computer.
For PDF files, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is a free download from Adobe.
To use a PDF, open it then click:
VIEW
PAGE DISPLAY
SINGLE PAGE VIEW.
If you don’t do this step, the file may skip two pages at a time when you use it.
My favorite way to use No-Print activities is with a touchscreen- my iPad or whiteboard.
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
If you are lucky enough to have an interactive whiteboard like I do, simply open the No-Print file on your computer, and project to your whiteboard. You now have a jumbo-sized interactive activity that is sure to engage your students.
Using a No-Print Activity on Your iPad
A PDF activity can be used on any tablet and it’s a super-portable, easy way to use the activity. I’m going to show you how to set up your activity on the iPad, since that is what I use.
We are going to save it to iBooks for best results. You can also open it in the Adobe Reader App on your tablet, but Adobe Reader scrolls top to bottom. iBooks will scroll left to right like a book.
The first thing to do is to email the file to yourself, or you can put it in Dropbox or Google Drive. Open the file on your iPad.
From there, you will click the box with the arrow. Click: Open In… then choose iBooks.
Now you will have the file stored on your iPad and ready to go in iBooks. Oops! Looks like I have saved them to my iPad more than once!
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No-Print Packs at Speech Sprouts
This week we have been using No-Print Christmas Following Directions. You can see this activity in action on my Facebook Page Video HERE.
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
You’ll target following directions with 1-3 details: color, size and object. It is a great auditory comprehension activity and is perfect for Christmas vocabulary too.
Pre-checks are provided for vocabulary, color and size.
You can work on 1-step directions with these pages. Identify colors, small, medium and large and name the Christmas vocabulary.
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
Next, click the box you choose on the menu page- it will advance to that activity.
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| No-Print Christmas Following Directions |
Children will touch the answer to advance each slide.
See that tiny Christmas tree under the gingerbread man? Shhh, don’t tell your students, but that is your clue that they are about to be “transported” to decorate the Christmas tree shown above. What did you just add to the tree? My kids get excited to see what is next on the tree. It’s just for fun, but is a good visual memory activity too.
Here’s a peek at my other No-Print Packs at Speech Sprouts:
The Mitten Book Companion provides both No-Print and Printable cards- choose your format.
Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Where Can You Be? is a No-Print Activity with additional printable activities in the pack.
No-Print Wheels On The Bus Interactive Story is available as a stand-alone activity, or in my:
Wheels on the Bus Interactive Speech and Language Activities. which also includes a busload of fun printables for speech and language.
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| NO-Print Wheels on The Bus |
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More No-Print activities
Check out these great packs from a few of my SLP buddies over at Teachers pay Teachers!
No-Prep Categories by Susan Berkowitz
Artic Pop! No Print by Panda Speech
Snowball Fight Game- No-Print by Speech Therapy Fun with Jennifer Bradley
Associations: An Interactive No-Print Activity by Figuratively Speeching
How I Became a Pirate by TLC Talk Shop
What Do You Think?
Do you like the idea of No-Print, or prefer the tried and true printable activities? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Until next time, enjoy the season!
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