Literature-Based Speech Therapy

My favorite way to do Speech Therapy is to to make it literature-based. Why? It just makes sense to me! I've complied my reasons to consider doing Speech/Language Therapy based on books:

1. End goal of accessing curriculum: My students are eligible for services because their Communication interferes with their education. So my job is to improve communication with education as the ultimate goal. There are two great ways to do this: work directly with the curriculum being taught in the classroom, or work on skills similar (but often easier) than those taught in the classroom. Since many teachers are slow to respond to my requests for new vocabulary and concepts, I usually have to abandon that plan. Similar skills almost always relate to reading (my district enforces 90+ minutes of reading instruction daily). Since most of my students are poor readers, I can help with reading comprehension by doing literacy units.

2. It makes life easier for me: There are so many layers to a good book, so it can be broken down and taught to many different levels. I can use one book for almost all of my speech therapy groups. For K-2nd grades, I use more basic vocabulary in the book, basic concepts and prepositions, describing characters or pictures, and easy grammatical forms of regular plurals and irregular past tense. For 3rd-5th grades, I can step up the vocabulary, add in irregular grammar, idioms (if in the book), and perspective taking. For ALL students, we can work on story retelling and sequencing. Do you have groups with both language and articulation students mixed? I do. As long at the artic students are at the word level, just use words from the book and you can all work on the same concepts. No separate activities for each student to keep track of (I hate that!).

3. It is so flexible: Not only can I use the same book for many different levels and ages of students, but I can extend one book for an entire month.  And then sometimes I can re-use the exact same book the next year, with the same students, and they still enjoy it and learn something new! A sample lesson plan for a 2nd grade student with grammar and vocabulary goals could be:

• Session 1: Read half of the story. Discuss the illustrations. Predict what will happen in the next part of the story. Learn 5+ new vocabulary words.
• Session 2: Review previous vocabulary words. Quickly retell the first half of the story. Finish reading the story. Learn 3+ new vocabulary words.
• Session 3: Review all new vocabulary words. Learn more words if needed. Fill out the vocabulary sheet with several of the important vocabulary words. 
• Session 4: Work on grammar goals within the context of the story (e.g. regular/irregular past). Play a matching game with either vocabulary cards or grammar cards.
• Session 5: Review grammar cards and replay matching game. Do grammar worksheet together orally. Send grammar worksheet home for extra practice.
• Session 6: Do character describing activity by brainstorming and then writing down adjectives for main characters. Begin story comprehension questions.
• Session 7: Continue story comprehension questions. Play a board game and flip over a question before each turn. Answer the questions together as a group of individually.
• Session 8: Sequence the story with pictures. Create the story map together as a group. Practice retelling together as a group.
• Session 9: Individual story retells for data collection and progress monitoring.

4. I love great picture books and I want my students to as well: Sometimes the best way to instill a love of reading to a child is to do it over and over and over. Even if those students are not strong readers themselves, they can learn to love books read to them and learn to comprehend the books through activities and picture explanations. And what is the best way to improve vocabulary? Reading of course!

Because I love doing Literacy-based speech therapy I have been posting about it for years. In the last few months, I have started putting considerable time (read: hours and hours and hours) into making high quality literacy-based speech therapy units that you can easily use with students 1st-5th (and sometimes K) and selling them on Teachers Pay Teachers. Why sell them? Well, I know that I can throw something together and make a lesson out of it, but I've realized that others (including my assistants) need more specific lessons to help guide them. It has been a lot easier to justify to my kids why I am glued to my computer if I tell them I'm hoping to earn enough to buy a family Christmas gift.

This Thanksgiving long weekend, I have worked very hard on creating two new units based on The Mitten and The Hat (both by Jan Brett). Like a picture walk through a great illustrated book, I'm going to do a picture walk through my new units. Please consider supporting my efforts and buying.  If you are not ready to buy, that's okay. Click on "Download Preview" and you will get a freebie that you can use right away from the unit.

Speech/Language Activities for The Mitten

20 pairs of Level 2 vocabulary words (approx grades 1st-3rd grades). Use these for any kind of matching game. Or use just the red mittens to do a pre/post test of vocabulary.
14 pairs of Level 3 vocabulary (approx grades 3rd-5th). Again, use these for matching games and pre/post data.

A vocabulary worksheet to hone in on the words you feel are most important.

Regular past tense verb card pairs (12 pairs). Irregular past tense verb card pairs (12 pairs). Use for matching games.

Regular and irregular past tense worksheets. You can get these free in the "Download Preview".

Compound/Complex sentence pairs. Match the bear and badger together than make sense to form a complex sentence about the story. Or use the bears and make up your own ending that makes sense.

Explaining phrases. These aren't exactly idioms, but they are phrases that we use in English a lot that don't always make sense inherently. Talk about what they mean and draw pictures or write sentence about them.

Each of the characters in the book does not really say that they are thinking. Write (or say) what each character is thinking during the story.

Story retelling with pictures. Cut the pictures apart and use them to retell the story with correct sequencing and good sentences.

 

The Mitten Gameboard. Use a dice or spinner to play. You can play an number of ways, but I suggest describing each character that is landed on with 2+ adjectives. You can also use this gameboard with any of the cards in the unit.

Write into the Story Map with student help. You can allow students to use the story map for their final assessment if you choose.

Use the Story Retelling Rubric to actually assign a score to the student's retelling skills. Use the rubric to measure progress over time.

30 /r/, and 39 /s, z/ articulation cards from the story. With this book I decided to put in pictures that match the word for kids that are not able to read the words.

This entire unit can be purchased here, or you do can click on "Download Preview" at the same place to get the 2 past tense verb worksheets.

Speech/Language Activities for The Hat

 19 Vocabulary Pairs from the story. Use these as a matching game (Memory, Go Fish, etc.). Or use the Hat cards alone for quizzing vocabulary.

 

A vocabulary sheet to practice new words and draw pictures/describe.  This sheet is also great for home/school connection.

 8 Regular plural pair cards. You can download these free by clicking on "Download Preview".

and...

 Regular plurals worksheet to do together or at home.
 Is/Are + Ing Verbs worksheet to do together or at home.

 Conjunctions (cats) to use with clauses from the story (hens) in order to work on complex sentence creation. Choose one cat and one hen and create a sentence.

Three idioms/expressions from the story that are non-literal. Brainstorm what these mean and then draw pictures or write sentences about their meanings.

Consider the perspectives of the characters from the story. What are they thinking throughout the story? 4 pages to complete in writing or orally.

Character describing worksheet includes 2 of the characters (feel free to describe more characters). I have included a variety of illustrated adjectives that might be helpful for descriptions, however, you should feel free to come up with your own!

One page of pictures that can be cut out and used for story sequencing. I created these by retelling the story myself and included pictures that I would have liked to use (this explains why there are 2 of several pictures) to jog my memory.

 A story comprehension questions die. Cut it out and glue the blue tabs together. Roll the dice and answer the questions. One way to make this activity motivating is to write numbers 1-6 on each side of the die. Students can gain points for each roll. The "winner" is the one with the most points at the end of the session.

 A story map to complete in writing or orally. This is a great activity for children who can read/write because they need to carryover this skill into their classroom writing assignments.

 Story retelling rubric for taking data on story-retell and measuring progress.

 38 /r/ words directly from the story.

 29 /s, z/ cards directly from the story.

16 /l/ cards directly from the story.

This entire unit can be purchased here, or you do can click on Download Preview at the same place to get the 8 regular verb pair cards.

Phew!!! That was a long post! I hope that is was helpful not only for seeing the units that I've been putting together, but also for explaining why I put them together the way that I do and how you can use them with your own students/children!

Check out other Speech/Language holiday-themed activities that I have created (click on the pictures to go the blog posts):