by Belinda Givens reprinted from BVGSLP Blog
I stumbled upon Boom Learning a few weeks ago while searching Pinterest for digital resources. A quick visit to their website and I was very intrigued. Boom Learning is a site that allows teachers and educators to create interactive resources, very similar to task cards, for use in their classrooms.
The interactive digital cards are so cool! They are very easy to make and once created, you have a fun engaging way to address targets while students feel like they are playing a game. The Boom Cards provide immediate auditory and visual feedback to students and best of all, they are self-grading!! Yes, that’s right, once students have completed a Boom Card activity their scores are presented as a percent accuracy to easily assess overall comprehension of the target skill. This saves so much time because those scores can be recorded in your grade books for effortless progress monitoring.
Setting up an account with Boom Learning is very simple and FREE! If you are not the creative type and would rather search and find Boom Cards that have already been created, there is a long list of teacher created resources already on the site to purchase.
I love to create so I decided to give it a try and started my first Boom Card activity. For me, it’s easiest to work in PowerPoint so I created my Answering Yes/No Questions activity in PowerPoint first and converted it over to my Boom Learning account (there is a great tutorial video on their website that will walk you through this process).
Once converted, I added my interactive elements to allow my students to easily click the Yes/No buttons in response to the questions on each card. I opted to provide immediate feedback and viola, my first Boom Card lesson was complete.
For classroom teachers, this particular lesson is not only an awesome way to work on vocabulary with your youngest scholars, it also is a great differentiated activity for your ELL/EFL students and for your students who need a little extra support. For all my SLPs, this lesson is perfect for pediatric clients however, it can also be incorporated into your sessions with adults to address Aphasia, following a CVA or TBI.
I have created several additional Boom Card decks and plan a complete series, so please stay tuned for more fun engaging ways to motivate your students and adult clients. To learn more about Boom Learning or to register for your free account click here.
Belinda has been an ASHA Certified Speech Language Pathologist for 11 years. She is licensed in FL, CA, WA, and VT and is a member of ASHA’s Special Interest Group 18 for Telepractice. She currently works as a teletherapist serving PK – 12th grade students. She holds her B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Education from Florida State University and her M.A. in Communicative Sciences and Disorders from the University of Central Florida. She also earned an endorsement in Reading from UCF.
She is the co-owner of Infinity Rehabilitation, LLC with her husband who is an Occupational Therapist. She is also the creator and owner of BVG SLP, which specializes in creating No- Prep, No-Print digital therapy materials that are great for use within teletherapy platforms or face to face therapy. She is passionate about literacy and has written a children’s book (The Adventures of DemDem the Garbage Truck: Watch Out for the Bumps). Her Boom Cards can be purchased directly from her Boom Cards store. Her other products are available at her Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Belinda is the mother to three amazing young boys and enjoys taking road trips, reading, crafting, and exploring. She has been married for 16 years and resides with her family in Central Florida.
Belinda Vickers Givens, MA, CCC-SLP
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