Therapy activities using basic household materials – Page 2

Follow Directions to Create a Leaf Turkey

17 Oct

October 17, 2019 Cindy 0

Take advantage of the Teachers Pay Teachers Sale

Creating turkeys from leaves was one of my all time favorite speech therapy activities. It was my type of project; easy to set up, materials were easily available and it appealed to multiple ages and abilities. I could address following directions and prepositional vocabulary such as below, above, center, before, and after. I could expand it for the older elementary by using science vocabulary and discussing why leaves change color, and drop.

A walk to look at Autumn colors and changes in the trees, is a good way to start this project. Children can’t resist picking up the different colors of leaves and wanting to do something with them. I found the colors and shapes of Maple leaves work the best for this project. Keep in mind that each student needs two leaves. Pick those that still have a long stem attached. It is always helpful to have extras for those that get broken before use.

I originally posted this activity 6 yrs ago, so it may look familiar. Many of you probably haven’t looked back that far to find it in my archives. I found it recently and decided with some updating it was worth reposting. The original was made with an app called Story Kit on my school iPad and was uploaded to the children’s library here. I have updated it to a pdf file to allow access on multiple types of devices. Click on the button for access.

I originally placed all the turkeys on a bulletin board with signs. This became an introduction to satire. I hope you have as much fun with this as I did.

Accessorize Your Speech Therapy Sessions

6 May

May 6, 2018 Cindy 0

Are you searching for an activity that can address a number of speech therapy objectives in a group. Clothing accessories are a good tool for this? Most of these items are readily available in your closets, at yard sales or thrift stores and cost very little if anything. It doesn’t matter if they seem silly or out of the norm. That just opens up possibilities for descriptive language, social conversation skills and clear conversational speech.

So should we see what I found in my drawers and closet? I found hats, scarves, beaded necklaces, sun glasses, knee pads, and gloves.

To address the social skills of conversational speech; complimenting, asking questions, and noticing the perspective of another person. Have a few students go out of the room and put some of the items on. Have them come back in and students take a few minutes to see what they are wearing. Have them go back out of the room and switch items. Then see if students are aware of the changes when they come back in.

Another skill to address is starting a conversation. Students ask relevant questions or make a compliment according to what someone is wearing. For example, “I love that red scarf. Where did you get it?” “Are you getting dressed for a special occasion?”

In another activity, students conduct a talk show. One student can put an item on and be interviewed by another according to the character they become with the items they are wearing. This activity is great for determining if students have conquered those articulation skills conversational speech.

I hope your students have fun with these open ended activities and they help you to get away from the grind of drills, provide an engaging activity and allow for speech and language samples for the beginning of the year.

The Virtues of a Grab Bag and Grab Bag Hack

1 Nov

November 1, 2017 Cindy 0

Have you ever wished for extra arms while conducting speech therapy? Who can forget those early days of SLP training and starting of clinical hours. At the time, it seemed impossible to manage everything. I wished for more hands to manage materials, data taking tools, and especially the young clients. If you turned your back, your clients had control of the materials and you became an octopus trying to get them back. This was not a good start to the session.

I got to thinking about the hacks I discovered along the way that made a difference. A grab bag was one of my real life savers. If you haven’t discovered the virtues of a grab bag you have really missed out.

There are lots of advantages to using a grab bag. A bag allows for control of the materials and prevents students from helping themselves to items before you are ready to use them. It allows for controlled turn taking. Only the person with the bag has access to the items. They take items one by one before handing it on to the next person.

It creates intrigue for some students who would not otherwise be interested. Who doesn’t like discovering what is hidden in the mystery bag? And finally, when you find yourself switching locations and working from room to room, you can keep better tabs of those small pieces if they are contained in a bag that is portable.

I used grab bags frequently with my early language learners, especially in small groups. It creates a natural context for communication boards when training core vocabulary such as “I have, I see, I want,” and that mportant question for vocabulary development, “What is it?”. I have used grab bags with a activities such as potato head, the car races, and windup toys. You can use a clear freezer for students who need to see the parts and request them.

Here is an example of a communication board I used with mechanical toys and a grab bag. The board is made from Picto-Selector graph which is a free download. It can be found at https://www.pictoselector.eu/

A bag can also be used with older students seated around a large table. The bag can be passed so items can always be reached. You have one less thing in your hands which really helps when taking data. You can even have different bags and different cards in each so students can work on different objectives by pulling from their bag. I have a lot less trouble with a stack of cards being scattered across the table and floor.

I imagine you are saying, “I want one of those. Give me the directions for that grab bag already.” Well here they are:

Find an old sweater or sweatshirt that has long sleeves and cuffs. Simply cut the sleeve off, turn it inside out and sew across the flat bottom. You can glue the bottom opening closed with a glue gun if you can’t sew or don’t have a sewing machine. Turn it back to the right side and you should have a bag with a cuff opening for the top. Now tell me that isn’t simple.

Speech Therapy in the Classroom for Older Students

3 Jul

July 3, 2017 Cindy 0

Are you assigned to work with upper grades next school year and wondering how you could work in the classrooms? Many of us are a bit intimidated to actually do this. For older students with language processing difficulties, working in the classroom may seem to be the best option. There can be many benefits. It is often a struggle to make therapy relevant for older students and they may resist being removed from class. It may be a hassle to schedule everyone around academic instruction and you have a lot of students in one particular class. Working in the classroom allows you to see how the students are functioning in class and you can see how instruction is being presented to the students. You can consult better with classroom teachers to meet the needs of your students.

However, there are some downsides to the push-in model. You may not have control over your teaching environment and it may be less than ideal in large classes with limited space. There are the distractions of other students and you may feel like you are intruding on the classroom teachers space and time. If you don’t get the lesson plans ahead, you may not come adequately prepared for the lesson being presented by the classroom teacher. It is also difficult to work with more than one student in a class without being your own little group in the back of the classroom. If you have a high caseload, scheduling can become a nightmare with inflexible time blocks taken up by single students.

I have experienced mainly two scenarios with the push-in model. In one, the Speech Language Pathologist, (SLP) works with a few students in the back of the room and scaffolds what is being presented by the classroom teacher using visuals or breaking it down in segments. This can be useful for a few students if done discretely. It can also be quite distracting to other students who want to see what is going on and not follow what the classroom teacher is presenting.

In scenario two, the SLP takes over part of the classroom instruction and co-teaches. This can be quite effective, especially when the teachers can play off their strengths. It does require some advance planning and meeting time between teachers. For the SLP, it may be harder to meet the individual needs of the students you are targeting because you are working with an entire class. I find that taking data is really difficult because your attention is drawn in so many directions. Often It is hard to sustain this as our caseloads increase through the school year. Sometimes you may start with a handful of speech students in a class and then find the students you were targeting moved and you are left with one student in the time slot.

The following are a few methods and activities you may want to try. These work best when information is being given in a lecture format such as with social sciences or history.

You can work in the classroom with a small chosen group of students to write notes as information is presented and formulate questions on note or index cards. This activity can be expanded as a total class activity with some students receiving help and others being independent. It is important to include a question and answer on the card. The questions and answers can then be gathered and used later in a review activity with the whole class participating. This process helps students who need a rehearsal of information or information segmented. It gives students a reason to be engaged and helps those who have difficulty taking notes on relevant information.

I have found game show type activities work well for reviewing at the end of a unit. Once you have it set up it can be used multiple times with little preparation. Now you can bring out the note cards the students have already prepared and swap them out at the end of each unit you review.

I showcased a Jeopardy activity on a previous post. You can reuse this game by placing letters under the dollar amount cards. You may or may not have categories depending on the topic. Pile the question cards into draw piles corresponding to the letters and categories if you have them. You may want to have teams write answers on white boards to avoid blurt outs. If the question is answered correctly the person or team receives the dollar amount. Don’t forget to put bonus cards in to increase the suspense. For some reason handing out fake money is a real incentive. I hope you have kept it from the previous post.

Idioms of Fortune is another game I have made up. It can be used as a review game also. As a bonus it reviews idiom vocabulary at the same time. You may want to form teams again as in the previous game and use white boards.

I print out a large illustrated version of an idiom. You may want to have a few of these on hand because sometimes it is figured out sooner than you think. I set the printer so it prints out the illustration on multiple pages and then tape the pages together to form one large picture. You can Google idioms and find quite a few. I used raining cats and dogs from openclipart.org because it did not have restrictions.

This styro-foam poster board I found at the dollar store is turning out to be quite useful. I stuck my idiom picture on it and then tacked index cards on top so that the picture wasn’t visible. The smaller the cards the more questions that will be needed. It should look something like this. Then mark the cards in some fashion. I put the alphabet on mine. .

Someone draws a question card and reads it. This could be an assigned student or the teacher. A student or team agrees on an answer to present. You may want to use white boards and have the teams write answers. Again this really helps with the blurt outs. If they are right they can choose a card, look at the picture and then take a guess on what idiom is being illustrated. The first team to guess is the winner.

This is what it may look like after a few cards are drawn.

You may or may not plan a reward for the winning team. Some students find the competition is enough and don’t care about rewards. You may want to do the opposite type of reward and have the losing team do something silly like sing a nursery rhyme for the other team. Middle school students seem to like permission to be silly. Agree on the terms before starting.

I hope you find these activities useful. If you have information to add to this topic, please comment.

Free Game Show Activity to Elicit Asking Questions

15 Apr

April 15, 2017 Cindy 0

I will take “Places” for $20 please.

Quite a long time ago, when Jeopardy was a familiar TV game show, I used the idea to create a game for eliciting questions and naming items of a category. It was a good game because it really made students think about categories and how to describe words. It also emphasized using the correct forms for who, what, where, and does/do questions. I liked using it with groups because it worked on so many goals at once with multiple opportunities for practice. The students were always enthused about playing it mainly because they liked the play money. Sometimes they would request keeping the money as a reward.

The directions for making this game can be found under the Expressive Activities category heading, or click the star below for a pdf.

click on star for directions

Previously the game was not as complete. You were left to find the category pictures on your own. Well you are in luck. I left my materials for this game at my old school so I had to reconstruct it. I decided since I had to make a new one, I would update it on the blog as well. Now you should be able to print all the materials out without searching for the category vocabulary. I used the picture program Picto Selector which I am liking more and more. It is free to try so you may want to take a look. I made the category cards from it.

To prepare materials for this game, you need to print and cut out the cards. I had a pocket calendar I used previously which made an easy place to insert the cards. I no longer have it. As a substitution, I bought a foam board used for project presentations at the dollar store. It makes a cheap alternative. I can hang cards on it with push pins. I really prefer the pockets but this works. Star stickers are optional. I stick stars on the back of some of the money cards to indicate a double pay out. You need play money. You may be able to find some at the dollar store. If not,there is some you can print for free on www.KidsMoneyFarm.com.

In order to set the game up, I placed the category cards along the top row. I then placed the object cards in a row below the categories they belong to.

I then took the money amount cards and pinned them on top of the object cards. It should look like this.

I do pre-instruction about what kinds of questions to ask for the type of answer you want to get. For example I emphasize who questions are for people answers and work best for the category of occupations and where questions are best for the places. This may be confusing for some students who just want to describe the picture. There are free charts that illustrate who, what, where, why and how questions on TPT or Pinterest.. I usually have one of these posted in my room for reference.

The students play by choosing a category and a the dollar amount. The student is given the card with the pictured object or action and is given the task of asking a question so that the other students will reply by giving the answer on the card. For example: If a student asks for places for $20 he would get a picture of a road. He would then ask the students the question, “Where do people drive cars?” Hopefully the other students will provide the answer, road The student who asked the question gets the dollar amount in play money.

Depending on the abilities of my students I vary what I expect before they earn the money. Generally, if the student produces a grammatically and semantically correct question that elicits the correct answer he gets the dollar amount of the card. If there is a star on the back he gets double.