All you need is a few basic supplies that you can combine with materials that you already own to come up with new activities for meeting students’ IEP goals. Even in mixed groups! Plus, when students are having fun using learned skills in activities, they really consolidate those skills in a functional way. Don’t you think so, too?

Fun Ways to Respond in Vocabulary Activities:

(Or why SLPs love the Dollar Store and the Target Dollar Spot.)

Keep a variety of these around to change out how students can respond.

• colored dice.
• different colored tokens for covering responses.
• foam cubes with sounds/pictures/words to roll.
• dry erase pockets and markers to write answers.
• miniature themed erasers to toss or place on the answer.
• fly swatters to swat the answer.
• mini basketball hoop or a seasonal container to throw pompoms in.
• static clings for windows (if you are lucky enough to have one in your room)
• miniature magnifying glasses to place on the answers.
• answer buzzer buttons.
• small erasable boards.

The Activities

Try using vocabulary like multiple-meaning words, synonyms, and antonyms because these build associations between concepts. Younger students usually start with opposites and move on to synonyms. Older students benefit from learning multiple meanings, as this is the beginning of learning nonliteral language.

If your students can’t read, use your picture supported vocabulary game cards. Older students who can read can make their own index cards of the vocabulary that they need to review. If you have enough ‘stuff’ you can even use objects for preschool fun.

Some of these are great movement break activities that also keep students learning. If you have young students, or students with attention problems, try keeping a container handy with everything you need. That way you can grab it quickly when their eyes start to glaze over or they get a bit too wiggly in their seats.

It is important to set ground rules for movement activities, though. Tell students exactly what behaviors you expect to see. Lay out consequences for inappropriate behaviors, such as bumping into others or going off task. These could include earning no points in this activity or having to sit out the next movement activity.

You will be amazed at how well a few minutes of active learning can help students get through the session.

Find It! Vocabulary Activity

Supplies: matching sets of vocabulary words, with some extra pairs, and empty windowsills or table tops.

Give each student one of the vocabulary cards and place the remaining cards on surfaces around the room. Set a timer for 2 minutes. They walk around the room to find a card that is associated with their word. When they find it, they pick it up and return to their seats. Then they have to explain how the 2 words go together.

Give a variety of points to make everyone feel successful:

• completing the activity with the expected behaviors.
• being the first student to find an acceptable match.
• providing a cohesive explanation for the match.
• finding the most unique word association.
• beating their previous time to find a match.
• instead of points, give a pompom to throw

To make this activity more challenging, lay out all of the cards on surfaces. This way students have to think even more as they find a match.

Keep a running point score for the month if you work with older students. They love to see their name displayed for positive achievements!

Show it! Vocabulary Activity

Make an array of cards face up in front of the students.

For mixed groups, put a separate array in front of each student. This way you can use different types of vocabulary and articulation cards in the same activity. For special education teachers, you can mix and match math fact cards, spelling words, and Fry reading words.

Give a clue for students to find the answer card. These can include:

• a definition.
• a fill-in-the-blank sentence.
• a riddle.
• an inferential statement relating to the word.
• an opposite or synonym.
• a question.
• a phonemic clue.
• For special ed: the math answer for the problem, the beginning, middle, or end sound, a spelling rule, or any of the above that work.

Students love choices, so let them pick which of the basic supplies they want to use to show their answer. When everyone has indicated their responses, each student says or explains their answer out loud. They get to keep the card if their answer is correct and the student with the most cards wins.

Coded Worksheets & Dice

Any work becomes more fun when there are dice to be rolled.  

Try putting a worksheet in a page protector to pass around. Students take turns rolling a die/dice and then answering that number question out loud. When they roll a number that has already been answered or is not on the page, they get to choose one of the remaining items.

Do any of your worksheets have grids? They are great to use with colored dice! Try color-coding each square with a number, using colored pencils that match the dice colors you have. Then put the worksheet in a dry erase pocket and you are ready to go.

This is shown in the picture with a page from one of my multiple meanings sets. In this example, students took a die out of a bag (without peeking) and rolled it to find their square. They read the matching definition, told the word, used it in a sentence, and explained what they meant by the sentence. Then they got to initial that definition. The first student who got initials on all 4 colors was the winner!

Interactive Vocabulary Organizers

Organizers are a great visual way to help students build word association skills for new vocabulary. But, like anything else, they aren’t automatic. Students need to learn how to complete organizers, including gaining an understanding of the ways in which words can be associated. SO, why not teach this in a fun activity?

Pop one of these easy organizers in a page protector and adapt a set of foam cubes, or use colored dice. Each student uses one of their target words during the activity. They roll the cube and give the corresponding information that is in the box. If their answer is right, they write their initials in that box. If not, model the correct response and their turn is over.

When time is up, the student with the most words on the organizer is the winner. There are 2 free versions of this organizer. The 12 response boxes are for older students. They have two spaces to fill in for each number on the dice. Then, for homework or during the next session, they can fill out the organizer for the word that was practiced.

For younger students, use the organizer with 6 boxes to fill in. Let each student have their own organizer. On the first day, do the activity and give oral responses. On the next day, students fill in their responses about the same word. When all of the answers are written, they supply a description of the word and get a sticker or star in the last box.

If you’d like your own copy of this fun activity, it is easy! Just sign up for my email list here and get the free download sent to your inbox!

Did you love these easy to do, engaging activities? Then read this blog post for more great vocabulary ideas!

Multiple Meaning Vocabulary Words Build Language Skills

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Yes, there are some surprising skills that you can teach along with vocabulary! You just have to choose your words carefully. Have you thought about using multiple-meaning words in your speech therapy sessions?

Don’t spend waste your time trying to keep up with a weekly vocabulary list used in the classroom when you only have about an hour a week with a student. Instead, build some learning skills while you are teaching new vocabulary.

Research shows that building deeper word knowledge helps students retain and use new vocabulary words. Incorporating language skills and word associations into your vocabulary work will help with this. And if you only have a few sessions weekly, you are drilling classroom vocabulary, not teaching strategies or deep knowledge.

Choose Vocabulary Carefully

Do you have students who can parrot a list of meanings but don’t understand the vocabulary in context? This is exactly what got me started developing multiple-meaning sets that incorporate multiple skills. Using the same vocabulary in different contexts, with varied language skills, did the trick for my SPED students who couldn’t retain word meanings. Try the FREE Multiple Meanings mini unit to see for yourself when you sign up for the LLL emails below.

Try out the BOOM Card free previews and take a look at all of the skills in the printable task cards and worksheet sets.

Get some fun activity ideas for your speech therapy sessions. Then check out this post for more free digital teaching ideas!

Thanksgiving is a great time to try out these quick, inexpensive tips for teaching the concepts old and new! Felt is fun for students and you since it is inexpensive, quick to prepare, and can be used from year to year. Best of all, it lets you reinforce short-lived classroom vocabulary while teaching concepts that can be used over and over again. Check out these 3 inexpensive quick tips for teaching old and new!

1. Get your felt board ready.

Felt boards are one of my favorite kinds of activities for young students since they learn best when manipulating objects and moving around. And it is inexpensive and quick to set up! You don’t even need to buy an expensive felt board to use felt activities. Just go to your local fabric store and buy a large piece of felt in your favorite color.

• If you have a corkboard on your wall, tack it there.
• If you don’t, get a dowel or yardstick at any craft or hardware store. Roll the edge of the felt piece over it and glue the ends together. Make sure that the ends of the dowel stick out far enough past the edges of the felt that you can tie the ends of a cord on each side. Yarn and string will also work.
• Attach it to your wall with a nail, to a magnetic board using a strong magnetic clip that can grip the cord, to the hooks that are above the old fashioned blackboards, over a doorknob, or wherever you can!

Here is a photo of a fun wall hanging that my daughter-in-law gave to me. See that the dowel goes through the seam and has a cord tied on? Presto! Instant wall hanging!

2. Make your felt sets for old and new items.

While felt sets for sale are adorable, don’t despair if you can’t afford them! And you don’t have to painstakingly cut out pieces of felt, either.

Just take any unlaminated pictures you want to use and glue them to pieces of felt with regular school glue. Spread it thin, let it dry and you have an instant felt set!

3. Try these fun felt activities with movement built in!

1. Have the students label the pictures they want to place on the felt board. Use additional pictures, like the old and new houses in the photo, and you have a sorting task for old and new.
2. Put all of the felt pictures on the board. Ask a question and let a student go find the answer.
3. Give some clues about one of the pictures and see if the student can find which one you are talking about- an instant activity for building inference skills!
4. Glue the pictures onto square pieces of felt, make duplicates, and you have a movement memory game.
5. Turn one set of pictures over so that the photo doesn’t show. Let your students take turns throwing a beanbag at the felt wall so that a picture falls down. If they use their target skill correctly, they get to keep the picture. When all of the pictures have fallen, the student with the most collected is the winner.
6. Bring the same old and new pictures back in the winter to review. Use a soft fabric snowball for the same activity and you have indoor snowball play!
7. Make your life even easier and check out these great Thanksgiving activities at varying levels!

Did you have so much fun that you want to do it again? Then check out the Halloween and Christmas ideas for using felt!

Happy Thanksgiving!

When a member of the family has sensory processing problems and sensitivity to noises, outings like fireworks can be tough. While commonly found in children with autism spectrum disorders, other kids may have this problem, too. Here are some helpful tips to deal with sensory problems such as fireworks. They can also be adapted for noisy family outings, too!

If your child covers their ears when a fire alarm goes off, or a loud vehicle drives by, going to see fireworks or joining a noisy family outing may not be the happy event you were hoping for.

Free Download

Here’s a free social rules story, quick to print, staple and read, that I’ve made to help you out. Just click here.  While the topic is going to see fireworks, the ideas and tips are useful for any noisy gathering.


This is no guarantee that this will make your fireworks event problem-free.  However, knowing what to expect, having a coping method, and discussing any issues is a great start to dealing with sensory problems.

5 tips for sensory problems on family outings

Having back up plans as parents can be helpful, too. Some ideas that could be helpful include:

Watch

• watching your child with sensory problems for the beginning signs of sensory overload. Intervening early is often more successful than waiting for full-blown overload.

Signal

• having a signal your child can give you to tell you that they have had enough.

Seating

• getting seating that is toward the back of the crowd. This may not only somewhat decrease the noise level from the fireworks, but can also reduce the overcrowdedness that can also be a problem for some children.

Boundaries

• having a larger blanket than you need so that your child has a place to sit with boundaries that keep crowds further away.

Additional vehicle

• coming with 2 cars so one parent can leave earlier if needed, or having a plan for one parent to remove the sensory child before overload occurs to the car. Have calming toys, blankets, headphones, or whatever works for your child to use during the wait.

If your child regularly has problems with sensory processing issues, get an appointment for an evaluation with an occupational therapist who is knowledgeable about the problem. That is where most of my knowledge comes from!

Book Suggestion

I also found this book to be extremely helpful when I read it many years ago. It is written in a way that is helpful to parents and educators.

I hope that some of these ideas help to make your 4th of July and noisy family outings fun and calm!

Did you know that students who don’t keep expanding their vocabulary over the summer come back to school in the fall lagging behind their peers who continued learning? Here are 5 no-cost tips to help stop summer time lag.

Parents, what you do with your children at home is so important! You CAN help your kids to be better prepared for school each and every year. These ideas are NO COST, but they do take a bit of time. And you don’t even need to leave your home for most of these!

5 tips to help stop that summertime lag! 

1. Vocabulary

Choose a word of the week and give a thumbs up for every time one of your kids uses that word in a sentence. The winner earns an easy prize:

• Stay up 15 minutes later (or in bed later in the morning)
• Choose the next cereal to be bought
• 1 chore to be shared by the other kids one time
• A star next to their name on a piece of paper on the fridge

   

2. Play word games

Take turns:

• naming something in a category that starts or ends with a letter
• describing something until someone guesses it
• going through the alphabet to name an item you would find in a place

Reading is the most important thing you can do! If your kids totally resist trips to the library, try these ideas:

• Try a manga (comic strip pictures) book.
• Read the comics together if you get a paper or have computer access.
• Make something your family loves to eat and have your kids read the recipe to you.
• Have your kids read the labels at the store to find out how much sugar or salt are in the food.
• Find a show or movie with subtitles that you have free access to and take turns reading the script.

For school practice, the stories have to have a beginning, middle, and end that are connected by a main idea.

Try these ideas:

• At a shared meal, tell something about your day.
• Share a story about something that you will always remember.
• Talk about the worst time you ever had at (place.)
• Tell about a time you got in trouble when you were little.
• Talk about the last episode of their favorite tv show. Does it make sense even if you haven’t seen the show?
• Share a wish/hope story, like:
  • If I could travel anywhere…
  • If I won a shopping spree at my favorite store…
  • If I invented a _____…
  • If I had a personal robot…

5. Talk!

Remember, your kids are NEVER too little to talk to. That is how they learn!

Whatever you do, just keep on talking!

Have a great summer!

Therapy doesn’t always have to be expensive if you creatively recycle and reuse materials you already own or have around the house! It also helps if you have garage sales in your neighborhood. And if you know people that have kids, don’t be afraid to ask them to let you go through their kids’ toys and books before they get rid of them! Here are 9 great tips for recycling, reusing, adapting, and organizing materials you already own!

Adapting items you already own does take a little time. But building up a supply of activities around a theme makes working with mixed-level groups so much easier! Being able to mix and match the materials for different groups’ needs also keeps you from having to do the exact same activity all day long.

These examples have a pet theme. So fun to do at any time of the year!

Tip 1: ORGANIZE So You Can Find It

Buy some inexpensive boxes to keep the toys and books you’ve found for each theme all in one place. Add to the theme as you find more inexpensive items. You will need a box once you start recycling household items.

Tip 2: Adapt Some PUZZLES!

If you have students with low-level skills or minimal language, puzzles that have separate pieces are worth spending some money on.

Take photos of each puzzle piece. Make symbols from them for your nonverbal students to request with, or use them on an adapted communication pointing board for expanding language skills.

Students can:

• Request the pet they want to place. (labeling)
• Find the pet that makes the sound. (auditory skills)
• Find the pet who swims, flies, etc.  (action vocabulary)
• Find the pet who eats carrots, wears a collar, etc. (word association skills)
• Request a black pet, a flying pet, etc. (describing)
• Use the adapted communication pointing board to model and expand language skills.

Tip 3: Many BOOKS To Read and Adapt

Find varied books on that theme with different levels and great pictures. This will let you build literacy skills while choosing the book that is easiest to elicit the specific language each group is working on.

Tip 4: Add Symbols for ADAPTED BOOKS

Taping symbols over the book text to adapt it to be a simple repetitive book is simple to do. Just adapt the size of the symbols so that the original text is covered and use a wide roll of clear tape that extends past the paper to hold it firmly in place. The book in the photo is still in good shape after 20+ years. Don’t use school tape, though, as it will yellow and peel.

Tip 5: Add RECYCLED MATERIALS to BOOKS To Build SYMBOLIC PLAY!

The book in the photo has repetitive text for what the pets eat. So that becomes the theme for interactive play using supplies you probably already own.  The problem was how to keep preschoolers from mouthing the pet foods yet still make play realistic?

Use craft glue to put small pieces of the foods at the bottom of empty, clean plastic fruit cups. It dries clear, keeping the pieces from falling out and kids from trying to eat them.

After each page, students put the toy animal in the matching food cup to ‘feed’ them. It makes reading fun and brings the language to life!

Tip 6: Combine Books, Recycled Materials, Adapted Worksheets, and Toys.

Having many items in the same theme to mix and match is so useful!

• Therapy stays interesting.
• There are lots of opportunities to label and use or expand language skills.
• Combining items in different ways aids generalization.
• Building skills with different play combinations helps students to develop symbolic play.

Tip 7: REUSE YOUR SHOEBOXES

(Honestly, I am not a shoe shopaholic but little kids grow into new sizes quickly!)

Admittedly, it can be a pain to cut through shoeboxes, but they offer such inexpensive ways to incorporate hands-on fun with lots of language!

After warming up by labeling the pets with the puzzle, you can have some pretend play!

“The animals are inside, but they are hungry. Let’s take them out.”

 “Who wants to eat first?”

“I think I hear “meow.” What is it?

Let’s open the door!”

You can emphasize concepts, sentence structure, question words, auditory skills, you name it!

Students who are minimally verbal can respond using the pet symbols you made by taking photos of the puzzle pieces, or the puzzle pieces themselves. A communication board will let you visually model the language being used and expand your students’ expressive skills.

Tip 8: TURN WORKSHEETS INTO PLAY!

Worksheets with pictures are great to turn into hands-on activities.

In the photo, you can see examples of:

• Sticker activities that are laminated and turned into a pet shop game. One set is an enlarged version so that the students had to specify the big/little pet.
• Shape matching pages turned into a game.
• Hidden picture pages put into a page protector to make a matching activity using pet symbols. The pictures of the hidden animal were colored in this set for a student who was just beginning to visually discriminate.
• A trading card plastic page that was adapted with symbols for students to match the associated pet and say the sentence.

Tip 9: USE SUPPLIES YOUR SCHOOL OFFERS!

My school had Ellison cutters and construction paper available. Adding pet photos on the back before laminating made a simple game. Students requested the color cat or dog and then turned it over.

The visual support helped the minimally verbal students form a sentence while the more verbal students used correct grammar in their productions.

As always, TpT can save you so much time with high-quality materials!

Check out my pet themed activity bundle and add your own toys for some interactive fun!

Enjoy!

How do you make ‘work’ more fun for your older students? It can be quite the challenge! Colored dice to the speech-language therapy rescue!

My middle school students function at an elementary school level in many areas, but as they’ve gotten older, they aren’t as interested in board games as they once were.  Using dice has come to my rescue on more than one occasion when dealing with disinterested middle schoolers!

Of course, elementary school students will love these games, too!

Quick and Easy All-Purpose Dice Activity

This fun activity can be used for almost any goal. It is so easy to make and keep around.  Pull it out when students are refusing to work or when you have a crazy make-up session!

All you have to do is divide a sheet of paper into 6 sections and number each box. Place one picture card, target vocabulary word, or almost any flashcard in each section. Students take turns rolling the die to see which card to take. They practice their response while rolling is happening.

When every student has a card, they give their answers. If they are correct, they keep the card. When a mistake is made, the card goes back on the board. Just keep filling up the sections each round until you have enough responses from each student. Then the person with the most cards is the winner.

Tips:

• The students can even do this themselves. Let them choose their color paper and decide which of their targets will go in each box.
• Letting students make their own choices can make them more willing to participate.  
• This game can be played in mixed groups, too! Each student gives a different type of response when you stack the cards up and let them find which work is theirs.
• For more articulation practice, have the student say the word the number of times that is rolled!
• In the photo above, the student on the left is practicing /r/ in the final position.  The student on the right is using pronouns to tell about the pictures. 

Stop & Go 100 Productions Game

How about using dice to get 100 productions of a target sound? This game makes it easier! Cover a die with red and green pieces of paper for stop and go. Then use tape to hold it together. Students roll the die and keep producing their target for each space moved. When they roll a red stop, their turn ends.

For mixed groups, give the language students a stack of picture cards that can be used with their target goal. When they get to the end of the deck, they can shuffle them before reusing. Or switch to a new goal with the same pictures.

While students are waiting, they can place checks in the boxes, color them, or dot them.  The first student to get 100 correct productions wins!

FREE Download!

Get your copy of the 100 productions sheet here. Keep it around since it is a quick and easy activity!

Dice Bingo

Did you ever play Bingo with dice?  If you use two different colors to number the boxes, students can roll to see which box to answer about and cover. It is also a sneaky way to get practice with grids for math!

This is a sneaky way to build math skills for co-ordinates and quadrants. Your students won’t even realize it! All you have to do is number your bingo boards with two different colors to match the colored dice. If they roll a six, you can let them roll again or pick any box they choose.

Vocabulary Dice Connect 3

Connect 3 is a fun game that can easily be played with dice and a page with boxes! Outline the boxes in colors to match your dice. Then place the dice in a bag. Let the students shake the bag and take one die out to roll.

If answers are correct, students cover or initial the box. Leave the box as is when mistakes are made. The first student to connect 3 is the winner.

This game is great for mixed groups, too! Give each student their own sheet to work on goals the are specific to them. Or use the same vocabulary words, but have each student give a response at their level, from telling the meaning. to providing synonyms and antonyms, to using in a sentence.

Dice Narratives

Narratives are such an important skill that so many of my students lack. Have you ever used soft foam math from the Dollar Store?  Put stickers from a Story Grammar Marker set and cover them with tape. Then you are ready to go!

Use any picture cards that contain story elements to get your students started. They roll the dice and tell the information they want to add to the story.  When all of the story parts have been told, they have to take turns telling the story and deciding if it makes sense. 

For younger students or those with sequencing goals, all you need are some action cards to tell a sequential story.

To work on short term memory skills, skip the picture cards and have students say their story sections out loud. They have to remember each student’s contribution to be able to write their narrative.

Dice Vocabulary Review

For a quick vocabulary review game, have each student write 6 of their target words on an index card. Next, they roll the die to see which word to define and use in a sentence correctly to earn a point. When you need it to be really quick, give them 7-10 rolls each and see which student got the most points.

Spinners & Dice

You can even combine spinners and dice! If your students need lots of practice formulating ideas into sentences, for example, have them spin to get one idea to use and roll to get the other idea.  Then they combine both in a concise, correct sentence. 

The photo shows this idea using action photos along with a question spinner. Students roll to get the picture to use. Then they spin the spinner for a question word to ask or answer in their response.

Do your students need thinking time before responding? If so, try doing one round where everyone rolls.  Follow with another round where they take turns giving their answers. It may take a little more time, but the added cooperation and willingness to do the activity for longer compensate for the extra time! 

Now, if you have a caseload of students who come to speech-language therapy ready to work, you may not need any of these tips. Lucky you! But give them a try if you want some more engagement from your students.

Enjoy!

It is good practice to explain any new words you encounter.  This ensures comprehension.  Still, it is important to also target specific, functional words. Then,  review them all year long in many different activities. Without this, special needs students are likely to forget the new words.  How can we manage to keep practicing enough?

Choosing the Words to Teach

When choosing the vocabulary to target for students each year, there are some factors to consider.

• Preschool students always need to learn new words in basic categories and for seasonal events.
• Life skill students need:
  • themes addressed by the special education teacher that year.
  • vocabulary related to specific job skills (if the students will have work programs.)
  • the vocabulary they need for daily life routines.
• Older students, who are struggling but still being tested academically, need vocabulary that can be :
  • addressed all year long.
  • applied to varied stories, activities, and academic work over time.
  • related to the other speech/language goals for the year.

For example, try teaching words that get used in text books all year long.  Examples are cause-effect, problem-solution, fact-opinion, analyze, define, and summarize. Choose the words that tie in best with your speech/language goals for the year.

To target specific words,  it is very helpful to find sites that let you customize your word lists.  Try out some of my favorite sites!

Using A Vocabulary Organizer

Research supports the development of deeper word knowledge using many word associations. One easy way is to use the LLL Multiple Meanings Vocabulary sets. Each set builds a variety of language skills using 10 homonyms. They are great for retaining vocabulary, making inferences, word play, and using context clues.

Another helpful way is to use a vocabulary organizer. Get yours for free! Then be sure to use the same vocabulary words in lots of fun activities!

Online Resource Links

These sites have easy to download pictures. If you are doing teletherapy, they can be displayed on your screen. Then try these activities:

• ask questions and have the student name the picture in answer.
• describe one of the pictures and see if your student can identify it. Then reverse roles.
• compare and contrast two of the pictures.
• use each word in a sentence with their syntax goal.
• use a carrier phrase with the speech sound they are working on with each picture.
• tell 4 things about each picture.
• be creative!

Free Picture Cards

Boggles World ESL Flashcards

ESL Kids Lab Flashcards

ESL Games Plus

ESL-Kids

Free Games and PowerPoints to Customize

Ed Games PowerPoint

Class Tools

Snappywords     (Thanks, Sohana!)

Educaplay

Free Worksheets to Customize

he Teachers Corner Worksheets

Tools for Educators

Discovery Education Puzzlemaker

 
Free General Games and Activities

Spelling City

K12 Reader Vocabulary

TV411 Vocabulary

Learning Games for Kids Vocabulary

PBS Kids Vocabulary Games

There are so many good vocabulary resources available online. Did I miss your favorite? Please share in the comments. 

Enjoy!

Need some easy tips for how to build perspective-taking skills with your students? And some fantastic books to use? It’s easy to find good books for language and literacy skills in speech therapy. But it’s much harder when you need a book for practicing social skills. 

Read on for my 3 favorite book suggestions for teaching perspective-taking skills to your students. And get some easy to implement tips for your speech therapy sessions! As I find more great books, I’ll add a quick Book Club post to help you out. And be sure to share your book favorites in the comments.

Learning social skills is a long process that is particularly hard for students with autism. Some students I worked with had limited interactions with their peers.  It was just too hard for them to figure out what was expected of them in social interactions.  Other students interact without ever realizing that everyone else does not have the same interests that they do. They both need help!

Vocabulary for Emotions- The Basics

Start with vocabulary for emotions as the basic stepping stone to perspective taking skills. to learn that people have different perspectives, you need to start with understanding how you feel about things!

You might be surprised at how limited your students’ vocabulary is! And they need more than the 4 basic emotions to think about and express their feelings. Or to understand the emotional context of stories that they will need to read in school. So, make sure they can use more than the 4 basic emotions and that they express degrees of emotion!

Are your students having problems in their school interactions? If so, start working on emotions that are related to the specific problems they are involved in. But be sure to use a story where a character is facing a similar issue! A quick rule of thumb for helping kids with autism is to teach one new skill at a time.  Learning the vocabulary and applying it to problems may have to be taught sequentially.

Literacy – Apply the Vocabulary to Perspective Taking

Now your students can use their new words for emotions expressively and identify the basic emotion groups. It’s time for perpseptive taking with books! Using literacy activities is good practice, especially for a caseload of limited readers.  And good stories provide a context for understanding emotions and situations in a way that vocabulary drills won’t.

Applying the new emotion vocabulary in your discussion of the story plot helps students to understand that people have different perspectives. What made the story character feel angry may make your student feel sad. What one character thinks about the problem is not necessarily the same as what the other character thinks.

Check out Beyond the Story Map at Reading Rockets for a very thorough discussion of how to use books to develop perspective-taking skills. Their story organizer, Chart for Multiple Perspectives, is pictured below.

3 Favorite Books

No, David!

No, David, NO! by David Shannon is an all-time favorite for young children. David’s antics are always getting him into trouble while he is just trying to have fun.

The simple plot and pictures are great for eliciting sentences in a story retell.  Meanwhile, the situations lend themselves to discussing cause-effect situations and why mom does not see things the way that David does.

A Bad Case of Stripes

A Bad Case of Stripes, also by David Shannon, is another one of my go-to books.  On the surface, the plot is seemingly a straight forward story about a girl who has back-to-school nerves. The pictures in the books lend to a discussion about facial expressions as Camilla develops a bad case of stripes after deciding to avoid her favorite food, lima beans.

Understanding Camilla’s motivation in her decision making was difficult for my upper elementary and lower middle school students to understand. For example, why was Camilla taking so long to pick out an outfit for the first day of school? It’s a great opportunity to discuss that others are thinking about us. And it may not be what we think about ourselves!

It’s a great book to use with the CHAMP graphic organizer above to discuss how Camilla’s classmates reacted. Since you can see their faces, identify the feelings first. Then see if your students can provide statements about what they were thinking.

Compare that to what Camilla could have been thinking and feeling all along. See if your students can connect those thoughts to the decisions she made.

Dear Mrs. LaRue

Dear Mrs. LaRue, by Mark Teague, is another elementary level paperback that worked well for these grades. I have to admit that the first time I read it, I wasn’t sure that a letter style book could keep my students interested, but I was proven wrong!

The illustrations in black and white versus color were of great interest, helping my students to compare the perspectives of Ike the dog to his owner, Mrs. LaRue. The vocabulary used and the letter lengths were great for expanding students’ language and listening skills in mixed groups. Best of all, there are so many free activities to be found online!

More Books for Teaching Emotion Vocabulary and Building Perspective Taking Skills

You can get more ideas for books to use at these links:

• Vanderbilt Booklist
• Vanderbilt Strategies
• Reading Rockets Beyond the Story Map

One of my favorite purchased resources for stories that directly teach emotion vocabulary is Focus on Feelings from Attainment Company. The stories feature teens and young adults to focus on vocabulary for emotions. Teens can relate to the photos and real-life situations in the stories. The same vocabulary is reviewed in later stories to encourage skill maintenance. A real bonus is that they are short enough to maintain the attention of students with short attention spans!

Do you have a favorite that I missed?

Sometimes students don’t want to do as asked. But what about working with defiant students who never do? These practical tips will help you cope.

“Work? Who, me?”  If you have students who are, shall we say defiant, then you’d probably be happy to get that polite rejection. More typically, the defiant retort comes in 4 letter words.

If you work with mainstream students, switching to defiant students with social/emotional disorders needing occasional hospital visits can be quite a change. Especially when they are middle schoolers, a trying time in general!

Here are a few helpful tips that I learned for dealing with defiant kids. Especially from the year when I worked with a student who was the poster boy for Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The consulting psychiatrist for the school system said his description should be in the DSM-5! After 30 years of working with troubled children, this kid was the most defiant student he had ever consulted on.

Did you ever try doing speech therapy based on Nikki Manaj for a year? What we will do to keep students engaged!

Tips for Working with Defiant Kids

1. Give your defiant students some control over the content or the activities they are being asked to learn.

2. This opens the door for practicing language for negotiating and compromising, as well.

3. Take care of your students’ needs first. They probably have a lot going on in their heads that they have to work through, anyway. Maybe afterward they can begin to focus.

4. Make sure to start building a connection with every emotionally disturbed student that you can, even if they aren’t on your caseload. Next year, they might be!

5. Don’t bother trying to find just that right materials that will excite defiant kids into learning. But your relationship with them may help them be able to start the learning process. Although that one year, I had to throw in Nikki Manaj all year long!

Are you jumping hurdles to engage your defiant students?

Sometimes every session feels like your defiant students are making you jump hurdles. Then try incorporating their speech/language goals into activities that allow them to reflect on the issues that are filling up their thoughts. Problem-solving in real-life scenarios and language for compromises are two examples of needs that most defiant students will have.

If you have to incorporate the one interest that gets them to come to your room all year long, work on reducing the amount of time spent in therapy. By the end of the school year, Nikki was only in my room for 5 minutes of the last speech session of the week.

How about vocabulary for identifying and expressing the intensity of the emotion they are experiencing at that moment? This blog article has a great Emotions Wheel with tons of words to choose from!

Try hands-on activities for defiant students.

Your students might get more engaged with hands-on activities for learning vocabulary for emotions and conflict resolution.

• Make a personalized dictionary.
• Play games with photos of different facial expressions or situations.
• Find or draw images to make a picture dictionary.
• Look up synonyms using a great online student dictionary.
• Use their favorite TV shows or movies to discuss how the characters handled conflicts and how it could be done differently. Your students may even know where to find short clips to watch. (You will pre-screen them for their suitability, of course, until they have proven they deserve that privilege.)
• Use a comic-making site for the student to summarize the scenario, then come up with an alternative solution.

Social Problem Solving with Defiant Kids

‘How big is your problem?’

Students who explode over every small incident need lots of varied vocabulary for angry emotions to be able to think about the severity of the problem.

Defiant students also have difficulty with empathy skills*. My clinical experience suggests that the route to take involves discussing the problems of others. When you use real-life scenarios that the students can relate to, you are more likely to get your students involved. But make sure that you are discussing someone else’s problems!

When you try to build perspective-taking skills using something that happened in your student’s life, the response you may hear is, “I don’t care what they think/how they feel.”  Because, of course, they don’t. So, try using someone else’s problems!

That way, you can say,”I know that you don’t care, but this boy does. How do you think his friend felt when he did that?” Explaining their reasoning helps the defiant student internalize the language and problem-solving skills that they need. Fortunately, there are resources out there to help you get started!

Conflict Resolution Skills

Along with problems empathizing, kids with behavior disorders frequently get into fights and arguments with others. Do they have the language skills they need to be able to resolve conflicts? Often students with emotional disorders have higher-level language problems that have been masked by their behavioral issues.

Try out this set of FREE informal questionnaires for teachers, parents, and your defiant students to see if there could be language problems involved. Then check the resources section below for more free resources for working on language for conflict resolution.

Free resources for working with defiant kids.

Problem Solving with Teenagers

This website has a wealth of information on problem-solving, including problem-solving steps, a video of this in action (with a lovely Aussie accent), scenarios, and some downloads.

Social Skills Solving a Problem

This is an animated YouTube video about the steps to problem-solving. The voice is a bit mechanical, but students may like the animation.

30 Problem Solving Scenarios

Download this free resource from Home Speech Home.

Check out the Problem Solving or the Social Skills section of my store for more help!

*Skoulos, Vasilios, and Georgiana Shick Tryon. “Social Skills of Adolescents in Special Education Who Display Symptoms of Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” American Secondary Education, vol. 35, no. 2, 2007, pp. 103–115. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41406292. Accessed 30 May 2020.