Thursday Therapy: Leveled Vocabulary Intervention (review)

Disclosure statement: I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a sample for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.

I am always looking for new materials and was excited to be given a copy of Allison’s Speech Peep’s Leveled Vocabulary product to review.  I’ve been using it with several of my clients for the last month or so.

This product contains over 130 worksheets that increase in difficulty for the following vocabulary tasks: antonyms, synonyms, homophones, prefixes, suffixes, and context clues.  There are A LOT of activities included.

This product takes some preparation to put together.  It took me about 25 minutes to assemble the whole binder which I did while binge watching some TV episodes of the new show Gotham.  I kind of think Gotham is a great show for prepping TPT materials-you don’t have to completely pay attention. Do you have any good work prep shows?  

Printing was a little more time consuming as some pages were printed double sided and some pages needed to be printed one sided.  Nicole includes clear directions for which pages should be printed double sided and which pages should be one sided.  I liked that I was able to save paper and not end up with a gigantic binder that I needed to carry around.

Each vocabulary category contains teaching sheets, and then three sets of leveled activities.

My favorite part in each section is the TEACH section followed by the PRACTICE section.  It includes a brief lesson on the targeted concepts with examples.  There is also a definition of each target which is perfect for the students that always seem confused when you say you are going to work on synonyms.

Hint: There is a half sheet of paper that goes over the answer so that you can practice it within the binder.  I could read the answer when I printed it on regular paper.  But if I printed those pages on colored paper-I didn’t get any bleed through-plus it stands out as I am working through the binder.  You could also use 32 pound paper to decrease the bleed.  

Each page is labeled in the the top right hand corner making it very easy to figure out which level of activity you are working on.  I really liked the option to change the difficulty to match the student’s ability level.  Plus each activity contains “I can” statements so that your students know exactly what they are working on.

How I used it:  I used the binder individually with students.  They enjoyed the activity-especially being able to use the dry erase marker for their answers.  It worked best with my students who were readers but you could also read the answer choices to the students who were non-readers.  I was able to use this product successfully with both readers and non-readers.  It is also marketed as a stand alone binder that you could use within the classroom to have students work independently on.  I think it would work well within a speech group if you separated out each category into smaller binders.  You could also set up category stations that the students needed to work through.  As they were working on the binders, you could take some time individually with each student to target specific skills.  I love products that take you through a progression of skills and I thought this product does it in a very clear manner.   The writing on each page is clear and the whole product is extremely well designed!

What I would change:  Not very much.  If there was a way to group the pages together to print one batch of double sided pages and one batch of single sided pages that would save some time.  Also I recommend printing the double sided pages on 32 pound paper to avoid bleed through of text if that is a concern for you.  

This is a really high quality product that you could use year after year in your speech room.  You can pick up a copy of of her product by heading over to her store on her blog or by visiting her Teacher’s Pay Teachers store.