313: Winter Screen Time That Works: Using Videos for Speech Goals

Show Notes:

In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie is warming up the speech room with one of her favorite low-prep tools: winter-themed YouTube videos. If you’re looking for ways to engage older students with activities that are motivating, free, and take the reading piece out of the equation, this one’s for you. She’s sharing five specific video recommendations, from the science of shivering to a heartwarming fiction story, that make targeting main idea, inferencing, and vocabulary feel like a breeze. Hallie also shares how to maximize one video across your entire caseload with five practical tips for managing mixed groups, because who has time to prep a million different things? It’s all about working smarter, not harder, and building a speech room culture where students feel successful and safe taking risks.

Here's what we learned:

  • Engagement beats boredom: Themed activities keep students motivated and excited to participate.
  • One video can do it all: Differentiate on the fly to meet the needs of every student in a mixed group.
  • Strategic pausing is key: Don't be afraid to stop or rewatch to check for understanding.
  • Peer learning is valuable: Students benefit from hearing each other work on different skills.
  • Efficiency prevents burnout: Relying on free, short videos lets you focus on your students instead of endless prep.

RESOURCES

📘✨ Grab your copy of The Secondary SLP Roadmap here! https://www.speechtimefunpd.com/stf-book 

Learn more about Hallie Sherman  and SLP Elevate: 

JOKE OF THE WEEK:

Q: Why do snowmen never argue?

A: Because they always keep their cool.

Where We Can Connect: 

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Hallie: Hey there, SLP friends. It is Hallie here, popping in with the best news ever. My new book, Secondary SLP Roadmap, is officially available. If you've ever wished for a clear, practical guide for working with middle and high school students, this is it. It is packed with real stories, ready-to-use strategies and tools you can use right away. Grab your copy now, check the link in the show notes or search Secondary SLP Roadmap on Amazon, and then of course, please do me a favor. When you are reading it, snap a picture and tag me on Instagram @speechtimefun. I love seeing where you're diving in. The speech room, the couch, waiting in a doctor's waiting room, all the places. All right, ready? Go grab your copy and let's make secondary speech feel doable and fun.

00:00:58 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech language pathologists who work with older students, grades four through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate Membership. And I'm thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you're tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even during a well-deserved relaxation time. I am here for you each and every week. Let's do this SLPs.

00:01:39 Hallie: Hey, hey. And welcome to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast for school SLPs doing big work, especially with those middle and high school students. I am your host, Hallie Sherman here, and today we're gonna be warming up with screens. Yes, videos, but the good kind, the kind that builds language, thinking, communication skills, not just passive watching.

00:02:04 Hallie: If you've been following me on Instagram or been part of my world for some time, you know that I love using YouTube videos in my speech room. It allows me to not prep, not pay for anything, and it's totally motivating. And it allows me to work on a variety of goals while taking the reading piece out. If we're always just doing the same things over and over again, our students are gonna be bored and they're not gonna be motivated to work with us. So when my students come into my speech room, they don't know what they're gonna do, but they know they're gonna have fun and they know they're gonna be successful because that is the culture that I've developed in my speech room.

00:02:39 Hallie: So because it is winter, it is cold out, maybe you're in Florida or Hawaii and you're super lucky, but you might be still using a winter theme. So why not incorporate it into our speech room? Love a good theme, love a good way of motivating students, especially if they're talking about snow days. You know, if you can't beat them, join them. So lucky for us, there are so many short, engaging videos out there, fiction and nonfiction, that can help us target a variety of goals, from main idea to social skills or well-being seasonally fun.

00:03:11 Hallie: So I'm gonna share with you five videos that I love to use and share how you can use it for working on a variety of goals and of course, how you can tackle it with mixed groups evenly. Okay, when you can differentiate one activity to target a variety of goals, it makes mixed groups meaningful, magical and honestly, not so scary. Okay, I'm gonna have all the links to all these videos in the show notes, so not to worry. Just sit back, I don't need you feeling like you have to scramble, but honestly, you can always just like Google YouTube with the videos that I'm mentioning and you can easily find them.

00:03:43 Hallie: Okay, so video number one is Mystery Science: Why Does It Get Cold in the Winter? Now, Mystery [inaudible] has a bunch of videos out there with the winter theme, but I thought this one was a good one to introduce the concept of cold in winter and why not? Okay. And it's great for working on informational language skills, especially if your students struggle with that nonfiction texts. You can find these videos on YouTube. You don't even need to have a mystery science login, but you can get one for free, so not to worry. But this video explains why winter is cold and answers some real questions students might ask.

00:04:19 Hallie: So what can you work on with this? You can work on main idea and summarizing. After students watch, you can ask the students what was the main idea of the video or in one sentence explain why winter gets cold. So, and I always love to teach with fiction. It's who is it about and what did they do? Nonfiction, what's the topic and what did we learn? And there can be note taking and listening for what's the theme of the entire thing. And you can also teach them how using the title or text features can help them with that.

00:04:45 Hallie: And you can work on W-H questions. Who, who is talking? What, what was the season? Why, why does it get cold? How, how does the earth tilt affect winter? You can work vocabulary words such as sunlight, warm, melt, winter, compare. These are great tier two vocabulary words that you can, honestly tier three words too, to work on context clues and getting the gist of what the whole thing is about and using what they hear and words around it to figure out what these words mean. Okay?

00:05:12 Hallie: But you can also work on social skills. Have a conversation of like, would they like to live in a place that gets cold or not gets cold? Do they like the winter? Do they not like the winter? You can work on articulation and read a key of some of those words that they're talking about in the video or even just winter related words that have their articulation sound and they can retell and do some of these language tasks, utilizing their target sound.

00:05:39 Hallie: Remember, you know, whether [inaudible] students working on articulation while answering questions, your language students can be your articulation models. You can do so much with one video and work on a variety of goals at once. I'm gonna go over tips more on how to utilize these videos with mixed groups at the end, so not to worry.

00:05:59 Hallie: Video number two. So this one is Colossal Questions and it's Why Do We Shiver? Of course, if you have your R students, you got the shivering, you're gonna be saying it a lot, but you can also get this is a nonfiction and you're gonna be working on a lot of nonfiction vocabulary summarizing. You can also work on inferencing questions, note taking, you can do all the things, you can work on predicting what it's gonna be all about. And like even what happens, why do you think people shiver before you even read it? And then afterwards, you can work on predicting, you can work on sequencing, cause and effect, first you get cold, then you shiver. There's so many things you can do with this video.

00:06:36 Hallie: Okay, video number three, oh my God, my favorite one. This is my fiction one for you, Lily and the Snowman. Get your tissues out. It is a video about a girl and her snowman that comes to life and they have this whole beautiful friendship. Seriously, you're gonna cry. But this story is perfect for narrative language. You can work on story grammar, character setting, problem solution, character traits, social language. You can make predictions, perspective taking. How does Lily feel when the snowman melts?

00:07:05 Hallie: WH questions, who is Lily? Where does the story take place? What does Lily want? You can make inferences. Why do you think Lily puts a snowman in the fridge? So many things on that one. Okay. And of course, your articulation students, have them retell the scenes with their target sounds, have them act out the snowman part while practicing their sounds. There's so many things you can work on with this video. Oh my God, you're going to love that one. If you have not watched that one yet and done it with your students, OMG. Okay.

00:07:36 Hallie: Video number four is a TED-Ed video, The Science of Snowflakes. And it talks about why snowflakes are unique, six-sided and fascinating. And it's great for complex language. It's great for your students that are into science, into the weather, into obsessed with snow, all those things. You can work on vocabulary such as crystal, unique, vapor, structure, compare. You can work on inferencing. Why are no two snowflakes the same? You can work on summarizing. Why students… you can have them summarize what they learned about snowflakes and how no two snowflakes are the same.

00:08:10 Hallie: Again, with the articulation students, if they're working on snowflake, compare, all the different things, okay? Vapor, there's tons of R words in there. Have them do those language skills with bombarding of the articulation, okay? You can make paper snowflakes and have them compare and contrast their snowflakes that they make if you're working on social skills. There's so many things that you can do.

00:08:33 Hallie: Okay, so my last one is Does Being Cold Make You Sick. Since it is, you know, in wintertime, diseases, sicknesses, it's a big topic of conversation and it's something good for your students to learn about and hygiene and washing hands and benefits of opening up the windows and all that fun stuff. But you can work on, of course, this is another non-fiction one, so you can work on, you know, a comparing and contrasting, wintertime versus summertime. You can work on predicting, you can work on making inferences, summarizing, vocabulary. There's so many things you can work on. And of course, it's all about thinking differently about using one activity with as many groups and goals as possible.

00:09:14 Hallie: Okay. Tips for using these videos with mixed groups. Okay, I know that mixed groups can feel like we're juggling hot cocoa without spilling. Here's how you can maximize one video with as many groups and goals as humanly possible. Okay, one thing is you can pre-watch with purpose. Give students a watching task depending on their goal. So before you do the activity and watch the video, remind students what each of them are there to work on. Maybe having your students that are working on articulation, remind them they're gonna be listening for certain sounds. Your language students might be listening for vocabulary, you'll be giving them a graphic organizer to note take. Maybe if you're social skills students, remind them that they're gonna be looking for body language and things like that.

00:09:58 Hallie: Tip number two, pause and prompt. Don't be afraid to pause the video. Don't be afraid to rewatch the video and talk about what did we learn? What do you think happened here? Tell me in your own words, asking different students different questions to prompt them to complete their graphic organizers, to talk about the skill they are individually working on.

00:10:19 Hallie: Tip number three is having different response options. It's okay if they're all doing a different task while using the same video. So maybe a student is using a sentence starter. Maybe another student is using a graphic organizer. Maybe another student has a visual aid reminding them of nonverbal, broad language, whatever it is, that's okay if they all have something different in front of them.

00:10:40 Hallie: Tip number four, be okay with students taking turns. That doesn't mean you're working individually with the students in the group. That just means they're all participating and being called on. It's just like the classroom. A classroom teacher isn't working one-on-one if they're calling on the students. Being okay with students listening to their peers because they all could benefit one, from hearing that everyone's working on something differently. But two, that they can all benefit from the skills that each of them are working on. So it is okay if they're… they should not be doing something else while you are working with a student. They should all be listening, participating, and being engaged while you're asking a fellow peer a question.

00:11:21 Hallie: That said, tip number five is to make sure you have that culture and routine in your room that students feel safe to make mistakes and to take risks that they're not gonna be embarrassed from their peers. That is why we have a comfort contract inside of SLP Elevate because I want you to be able to have that conversation with the students about what is the culture of the speech room and how they should act when you're working with another student in the group and how they might feel in those situations, okay?

00:11:49 Hallie: So those are just some tips on how to work on various goals at once. I am all about planning, working smarter, not harder. Not planning a million different activities for the million different groups and goals that you have. That is how you burn out. Okay, so I hope you check out these videos. Like I said, I have links in the show notes, but you can also Google, search for all these free on YouTube. And a lot of these videos are like three to five minutes long, play it more than once, you can easily work on several different goals and skills. And it's just about eliciting that conversation and working on those comprehension skills without reading, takes the reading piece out.

00:12:28 Hallie: And friendly reminder, if you are struggling with working with mixed groups and want more ideas like this, don't forget that inside of SLP Elevate membership, you get access to graphic organizers, visual aids, articles that make working with mixed groups so much easier. And if you love using videos inside SLP Elevate, every month you get three to four video cheat sheets, plus you get access, I have on TPT my cheat sheets for short films and things like that. I have so many resources for using videos, because I really do love it so much. But it's all about more than anything, it's about how to work with mixed groups. That's more important than anything, okay?

00:13:06 Hallie: So I'm all about saving you time and letting you be that SLP who can just show up and be the best SLP you can and not feel so… if you're feeling overwhelmed and frazzled, it's gonna be really hard to focus on the students in front of you, okay? So hopefully you can try these activities out. Let me know what you think. I am here for you. And as always, I have my joke of the week, okay? Why do snowmen never argue? Because they always keep their cool. All right, that's it for this episode of SLP Coffee Talk. Stay cozy, stay inspired, and of course, stay out of trouble.

00:13:46 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you're tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, speechtimefun.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun guys!

00:14:27 Hallie: Hey there, SLP friends. It is Hallie here, popping in with the best news ever. My new book, Secondary SLP Roadmap is officially available. If you've ever wished for a clear, practical guide for working with middle and high school students, this is it. It is packed with real stories, ready to use strategies and tools you can use right away. Grab your copy now, check the link in the show notes or search Secondary SLP Roadmap on Amazon. And then of course, please do me a favor. When you are reading it, snap a picture and tag me on Instagram @speechtimefun. I love seeing where you're diving in. The speech room, the couch, waiting in a doctor's waiting room, all the places. All right, ready? Go grab your copy and let's make secondary speech feel doable and fun.

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