Sticky Words Freebie

You know that feeling when you are giving the CELF to a student and you get to the formulating sentences subtest?  It’s a mixture of dread and curiosity for me.  That subtest is not my favorite because sometimes scoring can be subjective, plus it takes forever.  But I’m always curious at how my student will perform.  It gives a great picture of how well he/she grasps language and its complexity.  Part of the reason, I’m thinking, is the word choices.  Targeting transition words and conjunctions forces them to have to think about how words and phrases link or stick together to create a certain flow and meaning.

So I’m trying to incorporate a little of these skills into my daily therapy.  We call them sticky words.  They help link or glue our different thoughts together.  I want my students to be able to speak and write cohesively.  I’m hoping that utilizing these will be a step in that direction.  This is why I made a sticky words board.

When we are creating sentences, retelling stories, writing, reading, etc., we talk about these words on the board and use them!  I love it when my kids find one while we are reading.  I have them pull it off the board and we talk about it and create sentences with it.

To make them I printed the words on bright orange paper and laminated.  Then I cut squares of magnet from this tape and affixed it to the back of the word.

Want some sticky words of your own?  Download them HERE!!

I’ve been going a little magnet crazy, lol.  I did the same thing with testing and classroom vocabulary.  I added visuals to give them something concrete to see, since these can be very difficult words.  We made it into a game, where different words are worth different amounts of skittles/m&ms/stickers.  We try to talk about them and define them.

Unfortunately, I can’t share those with you because I don’t have the rights to a lot of the images.  I just wanted to give you an idea of something you can do in your speech rooms!