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How to Increase Parent Engagement Using Seesaw

I am thrilled with what Seesaw adds to my practice as a speech-language pathologist! If you are new to Seesaw, it is a FREE app that allows you to create a digital portfolio of your students’ work that you can access through an iPad, android tablet or computer. I have been using Seesaw consistently for about 2 years now.  Let me share with you a few ways that I have used it and the benefits that I have seen. Did I mention that it is free?!?! 

{Note: Seesaw also has a paid version but all of the benefits contained within this post can be accessed through the free version}.

How does Seesaw increase parent involvement?

To give you a little background history, I work in a school that is comprised of students from a low socioeconomic background. About a third of our students are also English Language Learners. Historically, this can be difficult for parent communication with both the language barrier and families who are working really hard to get their daily needs met. Seesaw has been a game changer for me. 

A few years back, I attended a session on Cultural Poverty by Celeste Roseberry (Side note: If you ever have the opportunity to hear her speak, run. Don’t walk. It’s worth it).  In the session, one of the take away points for me was the power of video with families living in poverty. 

In cultural poverty, families live for the moment, not what tomorrow may bring. So, though others may judge a cell phone or smartphone as frivolous spending, families are really trying to make the best of the current moment. 

The parents of the families that I work with often change their phone number as their minutes run out or their plans change so other applications like Remind weren’t a viable option for me. With Seesaw however, they can access their child’s account regardless of their phone number or from the library because it is web based.

How does Seesaw increase communication in the home?

Parents that do not speak English are able to watch a video of their child in speech therapy and gain an understanding on what they do while in school. Yes, there still is the language barrier but it gives our students a frame of reference or visual support to explain to their parent what they did that day at school. That is powerful. 

Parents love to know that their child is loved, learning and enjoying their time in speech. To see the smile on a parent’s face on conference night after watching their child in action is PRICELESS.

Seesaw also offers parents insight to topics that they may want to discuss or explore further with their child. For example, I used Seesaw in sessions with a student targeting social language goals by showing task cards and having the student record their response. One such task card involved receiving a text from an unknown person asking for the student’s location. Initially, the student was quick to reveal their location. The parent was able to hear us walk through why this is not a safe approach and what the student should do. The student was highly motivated by the “likes” that their parent would give their posts and it opened up a conversation at home that may not have happened otherwise.

How do you get parents involved?

Seesaw provides an individual QRCode that the parent can scan to access their student’s account and “follow” their student. They also offer an email option. I sent home the letter that Seesaw generates explaining Seesaw and the student’s QRCode in the beginning of the year. 

I’ll be honest, just sending home a QR Code didn’t yield a ton of parent participation in my experience but what did was having students excited about their learning as we added more and more to their account. Seesaw offers an option that generates a QRCode to a particular post. If a student was excited about something that they had posted that day, we would simply print out that post with a QRCode that they would take home to share with their parent. BINGO! This worked like a charm!! Not to mention that it opened up the dialogue between parent and child about their day beyond “what did you do at school today”.

How does Seesaw increase student accountability?

Realistically, we know that not every parent is going to check their child’s Seesaw account. In fact, chances are a large majority may not but do not let that stop you! 

Why, you ask? 

It’s simple. Our students are growing up in a generation intrigued by YouTube sensations and selfies galore. Putting their work out there (even if you wind up being the only one who sees it) adds accountability and motivation. Say you have a student working on descriptive language. The student can describe a topic/picture by either photographing the object/picture and adding an audio description or can video themselves describing it. Watch the student shine and proudly show off all of those awesome language skills they are growing in speech-language!

Baseline anyone? 

Students love to revisit their old posts on their Seesaw timeline. Let students witness their growth and watch them beam with pride. Show their skills off to their teacher for added reinforcement outside your therapy room.

Data, Data, & More Data!

When using another app in speech therapy that collects data, I can easily screenshot each student’s results page and upload it to their Seesaw account. This helps me streamline their data and reduces the amount of writing that I need to do in my daily session notes. I don’t know about you, but chances are you are back-to-back with groups like me and can’t realistically write extended therapy notes for each student every day. This allows for an accurate detailed account of data. At the end of the year, I simply print out each student’s Seesaw profile and attach it to the back of my Session Log sheet for the student.

Assign Student Practice

When planning ahead of time for therapy, I was able to screenshot a target sheet from a pdf file and save it to specific students. The student could then open the image and edit it using the text/drawing feature or record audio to capture their thinking.

With my preschoolers, I find that having them watch a snippet of therapy starring him/herself elicits more language than the activity itself did. Man, those littles sure do love to watch themselves! Capitalize on that and use it to your advantage!

Summer Carryover

I have mixed emotions about summer homework. I will usually send home a simple packet or calendar of sorts but many likely sit in unopened backpacks or find their way into the recycling bin. Remember when I said earlier that I print out the student profiles at the end of the year to attach to my session logs? I simply made an additional copy to send home with the students. 

In theory, the parents can access this through the app or online but remember, not every parent will do so regardless of how many times you do cartwheels and stand on your head. The students then had a yearbook of sorts of what they did in speech-language this year. Each post prints out a lovely photograph. When students recall what they worked on and all of the fun that they had, the learning extends far beyond your therapy walls!

 Okay, now what?

Download Seesaw here. If you need help setting it up, check out this blogpost on Seesaw I did a couple years back with picture tutorials. Also do not forget, I am just an email away. Reach out anytime!

Do you want to reference this post later? Pin the image below so you'll know where to find it!

App Review: Leaping Leo

Leaping Leo by Outloud is available for free in iTunes.  Leaping Leo is a voice activated application that uses the child's voice to control the avatar/photo to collect coins, navigate through a maze, jump over obstacles or avoid fire. The first 4 levels are offered for free with an in App purchase option for $3.99 to unlock the remaining levels. At the time of this review, there are 18 levels in all.

Before you play, you will need to calibrate the voice threshold. I chose 40 dB to reflect the noise level in a quite room. You can reference various noise levels on ASHA's website here. 

You can select which Profile picture will be hopping around through the scenes by choosing an animal, avatar or student photo.

Next, you will take your character through an adventure, controlling the character with your voice. The character may collect coins, look for treasure or navigate through a map.

Implications for speech therapy include encouraging students to use an appropriate volume of speech, reinforcing practice of targeted speech/language goals such as articulation targets or formulating sentences with targeted words. You can pair the app with targeted stimuli presented on Articulation Sticks or task cards. I found it to be a fun, motivating way to incorporate technology into the therapy session in a meaningful, rewarding way while targeting speech-language goals. You can find it here in the iTunes store.

Would you like to see Leaping Leo in action? You can check out my demonstration on Facebook Live here.

* A copy of Leaping Leo was provided to SLPTalk by Outloud. No other compensation was received. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Okay, You Can Push My Buttons

Do you love SLP? Check Press yes or no. While out holiday shopping, I came across these gems at Kohls. I initially purchased them to try out as a single switch option with a student but have found them helpful for so much more. After all, isn't everything just more fun when you can push a button? I believe that it is listed in the Kid Fun Handbook somewhere. Here a few ways that we used them in therapy that fall outside of the typical AAC realm...

Research shows that Phonological Awareness is a greater predictor of reading success than IQ. I like to incorporate phonological awareness into my articulation therapy whenever possible to help students take ownership of their goals and in turn enhance carryover. The yes/no buttons assisted in bringing In a group of three, Student A will say 3 words, in which at least 1 has to contain the target sound. Student B determines if the word that Student A says has their target sound in it or not.  If the answer is a resounding "yes", student B then produces the word at their assigned level (word, phrase, sentence) 5 times. Student B will then come up with 3 words for student C, then Student C will come up with words for Student A. 

Students determine if scenarios are what others would expect. Similar to the phonological awareness aspect of articulation therapy, this format would allow students to generate their own scenarios. The language opportunities are an added bonus as your students formulate sentences, sequence events and describe the scenario.

Have students incorporate curricular or Tier 2 vocabulary to formulate yes/no questions to ask the other members of their group. The questions will engage all members of the group as they answer the questions with an enthusiastic push of the button. Students can then justify or explain why they chose yes or no.

You can also purchase recordable buttons that your students/clients can use to record themselves. I love to use them during storybook activities. I have the student record a correct production of their targeted sound. They then press their individualized button when they hear their target sound in the story. I find that it helps not only to increase awareness of their targeted sound in their environment but also benefits them to hear their own voice say the target sound correctly before producing the target word independently. I like to place a visual cue from my Phonological Awareness Packet on the physical button as an additional cue.

Update: As of 12/29/16, the Yes/No buttons are on clearance at Kohl's. You can also find them on Amazon. The affiliate link is provided below as a resource.

           

If you are anything like me, I love to see something in action. For a video tutorial on how I use the buttons, below is a link to the video tutorial I presented on SLP Blogger Live.

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience.  Any purchases made through one of these links earns  a small commission, at no extra cost to you, which helps to support the blog so I can continue sharing content like this with you.  All views and opinions expressed are purely my own.

Using the Seesaw App in Speech Therapy

What is Seesaw you ask? Seesaw is a free app that gives parents a peek into their child's therapy session and involves them in the process. I use Seesaw to communicate with parents as well as to archive student present levels of performance. It allows me to capture a photo or video of the student in action or add a pdf or link. I am honestly just scratching the surface with all that this app has to offer. Students are eager to show off what they know. Of course, proceed with caution: remain sensitive to student privacy and permission to be photographed/filmed. In my speech therapy sessions, I am careful to film only the student that the video/photo will be filed under. For example, if I have three students in a group, I will allow each student a moment during the session to film their individual segment.

What do I love about it?

• It gives parents immediate access to their child's learning. Parents can comment on their child's photo/video if they would like (and you permit it in the settings). This past week, my students were eager to participate in Bottle Flipping for Articulation and Language. I was able to film a segment of our session which showed the parents how the students were targeting their speech/language goals and the students were then more than eager to take home their completed bottle and target page to practice at home. The video modeled prompts or cues that parents could use at home to help their child carryover what they had learned to the home environment in a fun, motivating way.
• It archives student progress and allows for a great reference point to analyze growth. Video a student practicing articulation in the beginning of the year and then compare the end of the year. You may be amazed at the progress that you see.
• Teachers can have access to their student learning as well! Teachers can see what their students are working on in speech and encourage carryover to the classroom setting.
• You can add photo, video, drawings, links, etc. from your device or students can use shared devices to scan your class QRCode and upload it to their account.

How do I set it up?

• First, you will need to download the Seesaw Class app and create an account. Parents will download the Seesaw parent app.   Seesaw is available on iOS, Android devices, Kindle Fire and Chromebooks.
• Next, you will create a class. I recommend creating one class to represent your caseload or one class per building that you serve. I initially created 2 classes K-3 and 4-6 but have found that is not really necessary and a bit of an inconvenience to toggle between the two.
• Under Manage Class, you will want to change the default setting so that students can only see their own work. Classroom teachers may allow students to view each other's work to comments, etc. but we need to remain sensitive to confidentiality with the nature of the service that we provide our students.
• While in the class settings, you may also want to change the setting to allow parents to view their child's work. 
• Add your students to your class. You can paste your caseload list directly into the app to avoid manually entering each one.
• Invite parents to join. You can do this in 2 different ways. You can email the parents directly or print off individualized QRCode pages that the app generates for each student. I send home the QRCode pages so I could simply make a copy of them to have as a reference if someone needed another copy. 

What can I add?

• Photos/Videos taken within the Seesaw app
• Photos/Videos from your camera roll
• Drawings 
• pdf
• links
• notes

If you would like more information or tutorials, you can find more information here. The Seesaw site illustrates many more ways that the app can be utilized, such as in formative assessment, a recordable whiteboard, student blogging and more. If you use Seesaw and have any ideas that you would like to share, I would love to hear them!

UPDATE: See what other benefits I have witnessed after using Seesaw for two years!

Investing in Your Students

I am a huge advocate for investing in authentic interactions with your students that are individualized to their personal traits and characteristics. Even as an adult, do you find that you work harder for those who are personally vested in your success? I know I sure do. Even as I enter Professional Development, I find that I learn best from presenters who I feel are truly vested and are there for "the right reasons" (Sorry, I couldn't resist. Any Bachelor/Bachelorette fans out there?). Their authenticity in imparting their knowledge to grow me as a therapist energizes me (and yes, they have the evidence to back their practice).

The same goes for our own students/clients/kids. Taking time to invest in my students is always time well spent.  Does it break my heart to learn of some of the trials or experiences that they have encountered? Absolutely. The path may be far from easy at times; however, the payout is likely what brought us into this field in the first place...to make a difference. Learning about who my student is as a whole person makes me a more effective speech-language pathologist.  It often helps me determine possible functions of behavior and earns that buy in from students by making real world connections.

One of my favorite activities to do with my students each year is to create "I Am" poems.  Google it and you will come up with a plethora of templates. Through the years, I have adapted the questions that I ask and enter the student answers during our session in a template that I made using Word.

This is one of my all time favorite activities of the year!

When I have a group, I simply open up the template in numerous windows, saving it as the student's name.  I can then toggle between the student documents as they take turn answering the questions. The template is also printable which is convenient later in the year when the students may use them in an interview format to interview a peer for responses. Wow, that sure does cover an array of communication skills, does it not? Let's see... articulation in context, descriptive language, answering questions, asking questions, expressive vocabulary, identifying emotions, code switching, syntax, categorization, fluency, the list could go on for days. For some of our students with a severe phonological impairment or apraxia, we may be some of the only people that understand what they are saying, aside from their caregiver.  Imagine how wonderful it feels for them for someone to get to know the inner core of who they are as well as how much their teacher will appreciate the insight when they read the poem. It is life changing for some students, truly it is.

This is the template that I use.

Once the poem is completed, I take a close up photo of the student using my iPad, then email it to myself to insert into the word document. (Note: Photos that are taken on a white or neutral background work best). To insert the photo, you can either copy and paste it from your email or insert it my selecting Insert, then Photo, then the Saved Photo File that you Created.

You can resize your photo by dragging the corners of the photo.  Next, Right Click on the photo and select the Picture tab.  Under the Picture tab, select Washout under the Color option. I then adjust the Brightness to 65% and Contrast to 35% but that is not necessary if you would like your picture to be very light in the background.  Next, select the Layout tab (from the same menu option when you right clicked on the photo).  Under Layout, select Behind Text as your wrapping style and Center under the alignment and click Okay. Your student's photo should now appear lightly behind the text of their poem. You can adjust the size as you would like. I like the student photo to fill the page.

Now, all you have to do is print the poem! The poems create a beautiful display. They are make a nice gift or resource to give to parents at the student's IEP meeting. Parents often love them so much that they request extra copies.  No problem!  Simply save the Word document that you created when the student completed the poem as a pdf and email it to the parents! Voila!

Do you have a favorite activity that helps you get to know your students better? I would love to hear about it, after all we are better when we work together, right?  Drop it in the comments below!

Thank you for stopping by!

Using Osmo in Speech Therapy

The Donors Choose acquisition of an iPad and Osmo system have had a profound impact on my students in speech-language therapy.  Having these valuable resources has opened doors for my students to access learning in a fun, relevant manner that excites them while targeting their speech-language goals.  Here are just a few of the countless ways that the Donors Choose donation has come to life in our classroom.

First of all, the addition of another iPad to our classroom has been ever so valuable.  I was fortunate to have one original iPad that my district had provided; however, we had outgrown its minimal storage capacity.  Having a second iPad facilitates learning that is differentiated, allowing the students to break into smaller groups which lowered the student to iPad ratio.  This allows for 1 to 2 students to be assigned to each iPad and also allowed me to expand the applications that I could utilize to meet more student needs.  My students are now able to use the iPad to its full potential and engage in multiple repetitions of their targeted goals.

The Osmo is a learning tool that is so very powerful.  The impact that its addition is to my classroom is profound.  We utilize the Words, Tangram, Newton and Masterpiece applications with the Osmo to incorporate the classroom curriculum into our speech-language sessions in a tangible, interactive, and engaging way.  Each student creates their own profile within the Osmo apps which allows their learning to be designed to specifically meet their needs and tracks their use.

The Words app is certainly a favorite among the students.  Using the Osmo Words app paired with the letter tiles, the students can team up to work together or participate in a friendly competition against one another to determine pictured items, concepts or attributes.  We have also created our own libraries to use within the app by taking photos around the school of items that contain our targeted articulation sound or descriptive attributes.  In addition, we can program vocabulary or spelling words into a library to utilize within our therapy session by taking a photo or using clip art that represents the word's meaning.  Another library that we created helps us learn the meaning of Latin roots to assist students working on determining word meaning through context clues.  From preschoolers that use the app to match letters with sound production to sixth graders competing against one another to determine their targeted classroom vocabulary, all are excited at the prospect of using the Osmo and frequently request to use it.  To have fifth and sixth grade students ask to play Words at recess or bring a friend along to speech to show off what they can do is invigorating and extends their learning beyond our four walls.

The Tangram app is one where students manipulate the different shapes included with the Osmo to form objects.  The app increases in difficulty and is ever evolving to add new items for the students to duplicate.  This app helps incorporate math and geometry standards into our learning while providing a fantastic opportunity for students to work together as a team to solve the puzzles as they increase in difficulty, targeting turn-taking, problem solving, following directions and descriptive language skills. The Tangram app gives students that struggle with social skills, yet are incredibly skilled at visualizing how to create the objects the opportunity to be leaders who are turned to by their peers for help.  It fosters social skill development in a natural context.

The Masterpiece app is another app that excites the students.  Its simplicity allows us to use it to target just about any goal that a student is working on.  The app is designed for students to learn to draw different pictures by tracing what appears on the screen onto paper and video recording their progress.  At the end, it takes a snapshot of the final product and shows a speedy video clip of its creation.  I have utilized this app in several ways that extend beyond the "drawing" aspect.  My preschool students use it to learn how to write their name.  It provides a great record to view their progress! My third grade students have used it to take photographs of curriculum vocabulary lists and use each word in a sentence. The excitement that they show simply watching the video of their sentences being created is remarkable.  We can even email the video to their teacher!  Students that struggle behaviorally with task completion have used the Masterpiece app to record themselves completing their classwork in class.  They show pride in their completed work and are rewarded for their positive behavior as they watch themselves in action.

The Newton app incorporates physics (yes, physics!) into our speech-language sessions as students try to solve various puzzles by bouncing balls into the targets using real life objects or drawing on the surface below.  How does physics apply to speech? The students use articulation cards, photos of mouths producing sounds or items containing targeted sounds/concepts to guide the balls into their target.  Each time the ball hits their object/picture/line, the student must produce the targeted word.  This elicits numerous productions that are also paired with a motor activity to increase the difficulty of the task.  We do not produce speech in a vacuum while sitting still so it is essential that once my students start to master a sound, they are given the practice to do so while simultaneously performing another motor act.  It simulates real life outside of the four walls of our speech room yet provides students with the feedback of correct vs. incorrect productions.

My students and I are so very grateful for the contributions that our donors, Melanie, Kaci, Cards Against Humanity and Gymboree, made towards our project to give us this opportunity.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  The excitement and joy for learning that the Osmo and iPad provide warm my heart each and every day.

Would you like more information on the Osmo System? Access the Osmo site through this link and receive a $5 referral discount when you check out (we all love a discount don't we?).

Are you thinking that you would like to submit a proposal to Donors Choose?  Here is a link to my project Bringing Words into Our Communication Masterpiece that I described above.