Quick and Easy Activity to Teach Inference Skills

Do you need a quick hook to grab the attention of your students? Are you introducing a new theme, topic, or skill? Mystery Bags are a fun way to elicit student engagement. Mystery Bags are a common use in elementary classrooms as a form of show-and-tell. This activity is so versatile and can be used to address many different goals. So whether your students are in elementary or middle school, this activity will address their goals. 

In this post, I want to share with you some new ways to use Mystery Bags in your speech therapy lessons.

5 Great Thanksgiving Read Alouds for Speech Therapy

It's about time to put away the jack-o-lanterns and bats and pull out your turkey books and Thanksgiving therapy materials. There are several different themes you can incorporate in your lessons, including: gratitude, family, the first Thanksgiving, save the turkey, and MORE! In this post, I want to share with you my favorite read alouds for speech therapy. These great books are perfect for mixed groups (articulation, language, fluency, social skills) as well as for connecting the curriculum to your students' communication goals.

Why do SLPs Focus on Categorizing Skills?

Have you written a goal like this: "Given the name of a familiar category, student will name at least 3 items in the category (ex: vegetables, fruits, pets, etc.) on 7/10 trials." or "Given 3 related items, student will identify the category (ex: cow, horse, pig) on 7/10 trials." As a speech-language pathologist, I know that students with weak vocabulary skills may exhibit difficulty categorizing pictures, objects, words and concepts. So when a child demonstrates difficulty grouping like items together, further assessment and intervention may be warranted. So why do speech-language pathologists need to focus on categorizing skills? At an early age, young children begin to recognize shapes, colors, and familiar people. The ability to sort, add order and create working systems is key to developing a rich language foundation. In this post, I want to explain 3 reasons why speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers should strategically focus on categorizing skills as part of their instruction and intervention.

3 New Vocabulary Games using Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples is a FUN word game of matching adjective cards (green cards) to noun cards (red cards). The winner is the player with the most matches.  Speech-language pathologists are known for being creative with materials and adapting what we have to meet our students' needs. Apples to Apples can be adapted to address target goals in articulation, language, fluency and social skills. 
For months, this game sat in my closet untouched. My students were not successful playing this game as it was originally designed and I knew it needed to be adapted. I especially wanted to add visual support to target semantic features and language flexibility in a way my students would be successful. 

In this post, I am going to teach you how to play 3 of my favorite fast and fun games using Apples to Apples to target academic and functional vocabulary skills.