Virtual Speech and Language Folders
With all the back to school craziness and uncertainty, I found myself getting frustrated with the lack of continuity between sessions. While working with my students pre-COVID, each student had their own folder for speech. Students used this folder to take their own attendance, track their own progress, monitor their own goals, and organize all of their speech and language strategies. Furthermore, I would go through this folder with parents at IEP meetings to show them all the hard work their child has been putting into each session. It was amazing, but then entered COVID…and my system fell apart.
Fast forward to August, when I quickly realized that I needed a new system. How was I going to help my students stay organized and responsible? How was I going to maintain some continuity between sessions? How can I return to having my students take their own data? How can they easily access their strategies while working on assignments for other classes?
And then it hit me…I didn’t have to change the system, I just had to change the medium.
I am so excited to share with you - VIRTUAL INTERACTIVE FOLDERS for Speech and Language Therapy, created on Jamboard and compatible with Google Classroom! However, even if you don’t use Google classroom, that’s okay - all students need is a link in order to access and edit the folders!
This resource currently includes four folders that are full of pre-made activities, visuals, graphic organizers, and strategies! However, it is growing, so more folders and activities will be added throughout the 2020-2021 school year. Currently, the folders included in the resource are as follows:
Virtual Speech and Language INTRO Folder - includes back to school and get to know you activities, including Two Truths and a Lie, Would You Rather, some fun questionnaires, the student’s favorite meme and joke, as well as pages for tracking attendance, data, and strategies
Virtual Reading Comprehension Folder - includes visuals, strategies, and activities for reading comprehension, summarizing, and vocabulary
Virtual Syntax Folder - includes receptive and expressive language activities for various parts of speech, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions
Virtual Articulation Folder - includes one vocalic /r/ and one /s/ specific activity; all other visuals and activities - from word level to structured conversation - are open-ended for any sound
Coming soon are folders on listening comprehension, social skills, and problem solving, as well as a mixed groups folder that will be stocked with activities that target multiple goals. Grab it now before the price goes up in order to snag all these new folders for free!
So…What Are Virtual Folders?
While similar to physical folders, virtual folders are an interactive tool for sharing speech and language activities, strategies, and data. The virtual folders by The Speech Express were created on Jamboard, which is a Google Chrome extension. Each folder contains a different topic or goal area. They are pre-loaded with interactive activities, data pages, and visuals for strategies. You can add, remove, and edit all activities.
These folders can be shared with students, parents, and other educators to keep track of assignments, sessions, and schedules.
Why Use Virtual Folders?
There are SO many advantages to using virtual folders in speech and language! They provide an excellent solution for keeping student speech and language information organized and accessible. They are also easy to maintain when transitioning from distance learning to a hybrid model, and even from hybrid to in person instruction as well.
Easy to share and collaborate
Easy to Access. Because the virtual folders were created on Jamboard, which is a Google Chrome extension, all students need to access their folder is a link! With that link, folders can be added to their Google classroom! To share folders, click the ‘Share’ button in the upper right-hand corner, and either copy the link or add emails! If you want students to be able to edit the folder, make sure that ‘Anyone with this link can edit’ is selected.
Share with Educators. Share important visuals with the rest of the team and help students generalize their skills across multiple settings.
Share with Families. SLPs can also share the folders with parents. They can function as a parent communication log and/or as a strategy toolbox. Use the folders to easily share ideas, communication strategies, or core words of the week and discuss how they were practiced.
Assign Homework or Extra Practice. The pre-made activities in each folder can be completed during speech sessions and easily duplicated for homework using the same template - just fill in different questions or prompts. This way, students can view the examples from their session while completing their homework at the same time. Additionally, if students have any questions about the homework, they can be typed onto a post-it and the SLP can check in and respond prior to the session.
Use as a Reward System
FREE STICKER CHART. Use this free sticker chart as a reward system for students. After completing a session, have students choose clip art to post on a sticker sheet! Before your session, find some “stickers.” Use emojis or search under ‘vectors’ on pixabay.com to find clip art - like penguins, flowers, insects, or even memes for older students! Save them as a .JPEG and allow students to choose one as a sticker. Upload the sticker by clicking the image icon on the toolbar to the left of the Jamboard and resize it to the sticker block. (PS - you can delete the sticky note with the directions!)
Track attendance and create reminders
Encourage responsibility. At the beginning of every session, I like to task my students with taking their own attendance. Each folder has a page for students to type down the date and length of their session. If a student does not log on or is late, that is also marked down. The SLP can then take a screen shot of the attendance page using the ‘Save frame as image’ option on Jamboard and save it to that student’s file. (Personally, I have chosen to take my attendance, data, and session notes electronically this school year for ease of possible transitions from virtual to hybrid learning. Using the ‘save frame’ option on Jamboard, I can replace the image each week to maintain an updated attendance log.)
Write post-it notes. On the front of each virtual folder are two post-it notes, one with a reminder for the next session and one with that week’s homework. During each session, make it part of your routine to have students update their next session date and time and make a note of their homework. Additionally, in the Intro folder, there is a to-do list page, which is great for helping students get organized and improve their executive functioning. All notes are editable, making it incredibly easy to access and update for students.
Review goals and monitor progress
Learn and understand goals. One of my favorite things about using a speech folder during our in-person sessions is that it helped my students learn their goals. At the beginning of the year, I’d always have my students complete a page on their goals - speech/language goals, academic goals, and personal goals. Together, we’d figure out some things they could do to achieve those goals and discuss their progress periodically throughout the year. It held them The virtual folders are no different - there is a template included to write down goals AND track data. It can be found in the intro folder. However, each additional folder also contains pages to write down a goal and track progress on it. Just as with the attendance pages, these can be saved and replaced each session using the ‘save frame’ button on Jamboard.
Track data. There are SO many advantages to tracking student progress in a virtual folder. First, due to the easy accessibility of the folder, both students and parents can have access to the data and see all the hard work that is being put in! Second, having this data in such a visible place can serve as major motivation for your students - they can see just how close they are to meeting their goals and being able to “graduate” from coming to see you!
Keep all strategies and visuals in one place
The perfect toolbox. Use the virtual folders to house a collection of strategies and visuals for the student. This provides a fantastic opportunity for carryover. Just think about it...if a student is working on an assignment for class and he or she knows how to easily access the tools, whether they be visuals, strategies, or graphic organizers, why not use them?
Editing, Adding, and Removing Pages
Personalize each folder. Jamboard makes it very simple to add or duplicate pages. Each folder can include up to twenty pages, but these pages can be saved as an image to the student’s files and replaced if you need more room in the folder. The pre-made folders contain many templates in which the post-it notes can be edited with new prompts or text. Depending on the needs of the student, folders can be personalized with a variety of strategies and visuals that will lay the foundations for success. The opportunities are endless!
Add your own activities. Do you have resources or activities that you want to include in the folder? Is there a tricky mixed group that needs a modified lesson to target multiple goals? Did you discover an awesome visual on TpT that you want to add? You can do it! All you have to do is…
Save the activity as a .jpeg or other image format (.png also works). You can do this by exporting that page as a .jpeg or by taking a screen shot of that page (ctrl + shift + 3 on a Mac, print screen on a Chomebook)
Switch over to Jamboard and click the photo icon on the left hand side. Choose your image and click upload. Resize the picture by clicking and dragging the edges of the image.
Add text by selecting either the text box or the post-it note icon, located just above the image icon on the toolbar on the left. If you want plain black text, make sure to choose the ‘no background’ color. If you prefer a colorful sticky note, you can choose pink, orange, yellow, green, or blue!
You can also add shapes, use a laser pointer, erase, write with pen, and highlight!
Overall, Jamboard is an incredible educational tool that is sure to simplify your virtual speech and language sessions.
Virtual and interactive folders can improve communication with families, help students increase motivation and responsibility, and serve as a virtual toolbox full of strategies to supplement academic work. In addition to using them on a computer, you can also download the Jamboard app to a tablet and continue to utilize the platform during in-person therapy.
Link to Virtual Interactive Speech and Language Folders by The Speech Express: https://www.thespeechexpress.com/shop/virtual-interactive-folders-for-speech-and-language-therapy