Four ways I use index cards in my speech classroom!

Today I am talking about how I use index cards in my speech room! I love index cards for so many reason and I am sure I use them in more than four ways, but I will only talk about four today.

1. The first way I use index cards is for stimuli. They are such an easy way to create stimulus cards specific for a student in ten minutes or less. For example, if I have a student working on subject verb agreement and I know we aren't going to have a lot of time, I will quickly jot down some verbs and some nouns on note cards. Then during the session, the student will choose a card from each pile and create a sentence using proper grammar structures. See! Quick!

2. The second way I use them is on the administrative side. Whenever I get a new referral or information about a student, I create a note card on the student. I use this as my "tracking system" for what I have completed during the process. If there is any important information on the student that I have received verbally, I write it down on my personal note card as well. I attach the note card to the file folder with all of the important paperwork I receive and I constantly have a running reminder of where I am in the referral process. So for example, I might have received only a goal sheet from the IEP holder for a move in student. I pull out a note card and put his name on it and put the paperwork in the attached folder. The teacher also states his grandma just died and so he is living with his uncle. I write that down on the note card so I remember this very important emotional situation for the student. This student "happens" to need new testing, so when I am done getting consent and done testing the student. I write on the note card: received consent, testing completed:qualified or did not qualify. When all of my referral process is completed (using many more steps than what I just vaguely listed) then all I do is shred the note card! 

3. I work with secondary students, so I have them write a lot of their answers down instead of say them verbally. I like this aspect because I can have the whole group create a sentence independently and then we review their sentences when everyone is finished or I can have them easily switch note cards and have the students critique each other's answers. I like this method of integrating written language into my session and it uses significantly less paper because we can fit 5-6 sentences per note card. 

4. The final way I use note cards in my session are to communicate to my speech students during a group. For example, if my fake student Jimmy is not paying attention and my other student is thinking about an answer to a question, I will quickly jot down on a note card "Jimmy, you need to pay attention to her answer please". This does 2 things. 1) it lets the student know I am observing a behavior that I don't necessarily like in my speech room. 2) It allows me to tell the student without disrupting the entire group. 

I hope you have learned some new techniques to using note cards in your speech room! I buy them in bulk at Staples at the beginning on the school year during their big teacher sale!

Thanks for listening! I am going to link up to Speech Time Fun's linky- so be sure to head over to her blog to learn how other's use index cards in their speech room!