Mandy Longo, M.S. CCC-SLP

I had so much fun making this felt “Pete the Cat” for my speech and language activity this week! Students will be following directions, counting, labeling, practicing bilabial sounds, turn-taking, sequencing, and more! It’s going to be a great week!

This week students had fun making their “Plan Hand” to help them remember the “planning words” they can use to make their own plan or retell a story. Check out to learn more!

Hey SLPs: If you use Story Grammar Marker from MindWing Concepts, Inc. like I do, here’s an activity I created that my students love:

Story Detectives Game

Students are told that they are story detectives, and their job is to find all of the clues in the story related to one specific narrative element. I then pass out one of the SGM icons (character, setting, etc) to each student. If I am pushing into a classroom and co-teaching, I will put the students into several small groups - each group has one element they are the detectives for.

As the story is read aloud, students are listening and looking for any clues related to their assigned element. Once they find a clue they raise their icon up in the air and I stop reading to ask them what they have found. When the student shares, I write the details on the white board next to their icon.

At the end, depending on where they are at in learning SGM, I might do one of several things:

1. Have a student volunteer to use the information collected from all the detectives to do a story re-tell
2. Have students use the information gathered to then do a Critical Thinking Triangle activity
3. Introduce a new icon that they haven’t learned yet
4. Dive deeper into the Resolution icon and talk about a lesson learned from the story
5. Or countless other ideas!

Try it out with your students and leave a comment letting me know how it went!

My October bulletin board is up!

Happy National SLP Day to all you wonderful SLPs out there!

When a new student with differing hearing levels arrived at my school, I started working with the entire Kindergarten class to teach them about communication differences and some basic sign language. It has been such a joy to work with them. With their end-of-year performance on the way, I decided to teach them the Star Spangled Banner in ASL as a special addition to the show. On Friday they had their performance and their parents came in to watch. They did an amazing job! The parents of the new child were overwhelmed with joy as they watched their child perform, full of self-confidence. It’s moments like these that make me so happy that I decided to become a speech-language pathologist.

Ansbach Elementary Kindergarten students sing the Star-Spangled Banner in American Sign Language Kindergarten students at Ansbach Elementary school sing the Star-Spangled Banner in American Sign Language for their end-of-year program.

Did you know Oklahoma School for the Deaf offers online ASL classes?

https://courses.osd.k12.ok.us/?fbclid=IwAR1y7JPLs0_yOihEgPdUqR2GSja4FyLTEnfPqdqbRYLLhWq9H1fOs6Xll34&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Oklahoma School for the Deaf American Sign Language Classes Welcome to the OSD ASL Community Class Website. These are classes taught by OSD’s ASL Specialist. These are non credit level courses and do not count towards professional development hours or continuing education units. They are simply basic courses in conversational...

Here’s to all my fellow SLPs! Have a wonderful SLP day!

My little Better Hearing & Speech Month video made it all the way to ASHA! So fun!

The ABCs of SLPs To celebrate Better Hearing and Speech Month 2023, Speech-Language Pathologists who serve military-connected students in schools around the world would like ...

May is Better Hearing & Speech Month! This is a month when we celebrate language & communication! I work for the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), where I serve military-connected students on a military base in Germany. There are 250 SLPs in these types of schools around the world. Learn more about them and what they do for DoDEA in this video, the ABC’s of DoDEA SLPS.

The ABCs of DoDEA SLPs The Speech-Language Pathologists of the DoDEA (Department of Defense Education Agency) serve military-connected students in schools around the world. To cele...