✨ New September Bonuses Are Here!

September is all about settling into routines, figuring out what your students really need, and finding resources that meet them where they are. This month's bonuses give you even more ways to support functional communication, academic language, AAC, and students who benefit from more structured support, all while keeping activities age-respectful and relevant for older students.

🍂 AAC Autumn Chat Mats: Real-Life Fall Conversations
Bring fall into your AAC sessions with six high-school-friendly conversation mats focused on real-life topics like fall foods, clothing, school responsibilities, social events, weather, and personal favorites. With visual supports, core and fringe vocabulary, and guided prompts, students can practice requesting, commenting, describing, planning, expressing opinions, and participating in everyday conversations.

(Located in the AAC section of the Bonus page.)

🗣️ Self-Contained Classroom Resources
Support functional IEP goals with structured, ready-to-use activities designed specifically for students in self-contained classrooms. Target functional communication, executive functioning, daily routines, school and community navigation, self-advocacy, and concrete social skills with visual supports, choice-based activities, simple scripts, and AAC-friendly options that can be adapted for a variety of communication levels.

(Located in the Life Skills section of the Bonus page.)

🧠 Academic Language Lab: Morphology, Meaning & Sentence Structure
Take higher-level language skills beyond traditional therapy passages with short, age-appropriate articles that feel like something students might actually encounter in ELA, social studies, or a school magazine. Students can work on affixes and morphology, multiple-meaning words, context and language precision, and compound and complex sentences while building the academic language skills they need across the school day.

(Located in the Morphology section of the Bonus page.)

💡 Whether you're building functional communication, supporting AAC users, targeting academic language, or looking for more appropriate ways to meet the needs of students in self-contained classrooms, these September bonuses give you practical, age-respectful tools you can grab and use right away. 💜

From Hallie's Desk -

Hey Elevate Friends,

October is here, and there’s something about this time of year that makes a good mystery even more fun. 🔎

A strange sound.
A clue that doesn’t quite add up.
A story with more than one possible explanation.
A question nobody seems to have the answer to.

And suddenly... everyone has something to say. 😂

That’s exactly what inspired this month’s theme: Autumn: Fright or Fiction? 🔎✨

And no, this isn’t a Halloween unit.

Instead, we’re tapping into something our older students already love: mysteries, suspense, strange-but-true stories, unexplained events, and figuring out what really happened.

Think about all the language that happens when you're trying to solve a mystery.

What clues do we have?

What can we infer from them?

Which details actually matter?

What do you think happened next?

Which explanation makes the most sense?

Can you prove it?

Suddenly, we’re working on inferencing, predicting, summarizing, main idea, asking questions, perspective-taking, problem-solving, visualizing, and explaining our reasoning without it feeling like we’re drilling another skill.

And that's what I love most about this month's resources.

There isn't always one obvious answer.

Students have to slow down, notice the details, consider different possibilities, and explain why they think what they think.

That’s real communication.

Because outside of the speech room, our students aren't going to be handed a worksheet where every question has one clearly defined answer.

They're going to encounter confusing situations.

They're going to misunderstand things.

They're going to have incomplete information.

They're going to need to ask questions, look for clues, consider another person's perspective, and explain their thinking.

And sometimes, they might even change their minds when they get new information.

Those are the skills we’re really building.

So this October, don’t be afraid to leave a few questions unanswered.

Let your students wonder.

Let them come up with theories.

And most importantly, let them explain why.

Because sometimes the best therapy conversations start with three simple words:

“What do you think?” 💜

Here’s to less time searching for materials and more mysteries worth solving in your speech room. 🔎

Xoxo,
Hallie 💜