Children have to deal with problem situations all day long. Kids do better dealing with problem situations when they have good perspective-taking skills. It helps them realize that they need to think about how their actions affect others. Understanding that their actions have consequences can go a long way toward helping kids make appropriate choices.

Do your students get into problem situations that they can’t handle? Are their responses limited to “It’s NOT fair!” Or maybe they keep explaining why they were right over and over again? Maybe they don’t understand your perspective of what is wrong. You can help them learn to make better choices in problem situations and gain the language skills to talk about it!

Use Perspective-Taking Skills to Handle Problem Situations

Young children between 8 to 12 years are still developing perspective-taking skills, according to Robert Selman. Students need to be exposed to perspective-taking culturally, socially, or educationally. So let’s help them at school! Read this interesting, article about developing perspective-taking here. Also, be sure to check out how to develop perspective-taking skills while improving literacy.


Just like other language skills, our language-impaired students likely need more direct teaching and practice to attain perspective-taking skills to solve problems. But don’t address the issue when emotions are high. Students make more progress in the classroom when the SLP

• keeps in close contact with the teacher.
• uses real-life situations.
• works on improving communication skills when students are calm.

You can download this freebie if your students need help!

Download the free Getting Work Done mini unit!

The Getting Work Done unit from the Perspective Taking and Problem-Solving series encourages students to discuss the common problem of being organized. What happens when you don’t get your homework turned in? They also get practice thinking about why their actions can upset teachers or peers. You can provide them with the language they need to talk about it. Discuss the pictures and complete the problem-solving worksheets, from different perspectives. Try it out! It is FREE when you sign up for the LLL newsletter.

Be sure to check out the complete Problem Solving and Perspective Taking series since you will save money with the bundle! Just look at all of the common problem situations you will be able to address with your students as you build language skills!

• Making choices when angry
• Putting forth effort
• Invading personal space
• Being able to concentrate
• Getting your work done
• Working together
• Destroying others’ property
• Hurting others
• Inappropriate language

What Can SLPs Do to Help?

Students with learning difficulties often have great difficulty dealing with problem situations. And none of us do well at it while experiencing strong emotions! So the best way to learn is to discuss problem situations while students are calm. But they can learn the language needed to be able to talk about the problem with their classmates and teachers. Practice thinking ahead to figure out why others are upset and varied alternatives for solving the problem.

Then, when your students are in a problem situation, they will be better equipped to deal with it!

Enjoy the free download!

Why should you use visuals in speech therapy? Because they do help our students! If you don’t already use visuals in your speech-language therapy sessions, these reasons to use visuals will convince you.  If you already use them, you’ll still love the great links for resources!

Visuals Aren’t Just for Autism!

Memory

Visualizing is a well-known memory aid, but it isn’t an automatic skill! Practice with remembering images is one way to start.  Remember those ‘What’s Missing?’ activities where kids need to remember the details of the original picture? It is a fun way to build memory skills! Or try using ‘What’s Wrong with this Picture?’ activities to work on visualizing, sentence structure, and describing skills.

Auditory Processing

Visuals help with auditory processing skills. It is easier to understand an oral message when a student has a picture.  But, make sure that picture is directly related to the words you are saying.  Adapted books are a great way to incorporate this tactic. Pictures help connect the words to the concepts so your students can retain the main idea in working memory.

Expressive Language

Use visuals to build expressive language skills. When students use pictured words to formulate sentences, they can begin to see the pattern of the sentence structure. Repetitive practice and color coding help to build and maintain these skills. Picture flip books for building sentences are another fun way to build sentence skills.

Sentence Structure

Older students benefit from visual cues for expanding sentences. They often need help with identifying the types of relationships between the ideas in sentences so that they can produce compound and complex sentences. Using a visual cue with the different options helps with the retrieval of the information. If they can see the choices, they are better able to concentrate on figuring out the relationship and transition word that is needed. Expanding sentences doesn’t have to be a difficult skill!

Articulation

You can even use visuals with articulation skills. Picture or symbol sentences decrease the linguistic demands for sentence formulation. Then students can put all their efforts into the motor aspect of sound production in connected speech and be more successful. This is especially useful when working with preschool students who have some motor planning issues. Once you get to working on speech sounds in word combinations, it is so helpful for our little ones to see the phrases while they concentrate on producing the sounds. It is a win-win for working with kids who have both speech and language difficulties.

Pacing

Use visuals to help with pacing. Some students find it hard to slow down their pace even at the syllable and word levels so they can coordinate the new movement. Use simple visuals like alphabet letters with spaces between the target sound and the rest of the sounds to help them see that they need to slow down. Start with the target sound a little distance away at first. Then move it closer to the rest of the word as the child achieves correct productions.

Behavior

How about using visuals to aid with behavior? Place a visual reminder of the target behavior to help students stay on task without interrupting the others in the group. Or, use a token board to give more immediate feedback on the desired behavior. A huge variety of token boards can be found in the exclusive section of the LLL Resource Library.

The LLL freebie, Visual Guide for Autism and Speech Therapy, includes a speech session schedule that helps you review attending behaviors at the beginning of every session. So useful when working with little ones!

• Our hands and feet are still,
• Quiet mouth,
• Eyes are looking,
• Ears are listening,
• So our brains can think.

Visuals help everyone to function! What would you do without your phone’s calendar and planner?

Read More about how to Use Visuals!

If you want to find out more about ways to use visuals in your speech/language therapy sessions, be sure to check out all of the posts below!

Collette from The Speech Meadow

Visual Supports for Children with ASD

Using Visuals to Support Communication from National Council for Special Education

FREE Resource Links!

It is so time-consuming to create visuals for all of your work with students! We never seem to have enough visuals for our speech/language therapy sessions, even if our students are verbal.

To start, be sure to sign up for the LooksLikeLanguage emails. You will get the free Visual Guide for Autism and Speech Therapy right away. Then be sure to open the quarterly emails for the really helpful tips and resources from the free section of the blog.

Then, check these out! There’s a variety available, from those designed for non-speaking students with autism to those designed to help your students in academic placements.

Visual Supports and Autism Toolkit from Autism Speaks

Printable Templates, Diagrams, Forms & Charts! from Education World

Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies from Edutopia

Graphic Organizers from Freeology

Visuals for Expressive Communication

So much of SLP efforts are put toward increasing comprehension skills since that is needed to succeed in the classroom. As SLPs and special educators, though, we need to also give our students a voice! Whether they can use pictures, words, or a combination of both, helping kids to be able to express their needs, wants, and ideas is a core skill.

If you love file folder activities but also want to improve your students’ sentence skills, check out file folder language and literacy activities!

Read more about how helpful these file folder activities are. And learn how to make your own for free!

Enjoy!

Planning. Is that stressful for you? Many SLPs and SPED teachers think that is one of the biggest job problems, right after all of the paperwork. In fact, most of them say they’d like to leave the school system as soon as they reach full retirement age and then work somewhere else. They don’t know what specific kind of job they want, but they all agree that it has to be one that does not require planning!

Of course, we can all plan for the week, but what can be done to make the process quicker? My time spent planning has gotten easier over the years, so here are my tips in case they are helpful to you. If you are just starting out, you might as well face the fact that planning will take considerable time. However, you can use these tips now to make it quicker for next year!

Organize Your Caseload

First, start with a master list of your students and goal areas to help determine groups at the beginning of the year. Click here if you want to see how I use it. While I do this on paper to keep a copy at home, a photo of it will work as well.

Organize Materials

I keep my thematic materials in page protectors in a binder. Label the binders by theme or skill with this editable freebie! Organizing by theme is a great way to go when working with preschoolers or lower elementary. By middle school age, you are more likely to be searching for materials by the goals they address.

If you work with students of all ages, keep your materials organized both ways. It is unlikely that you would be using the same pages for all of your students anyway. And the time you save not searching for loose pages over the years adds up to way more time than you will spend organizing from the start.

Get your freebie (and many more!) by signing up here:

Plan for the Month

When I need to plan for the month ahead, I look in the binder as the first step, pulling out any materials I have already made that can be adapted for the current year’s students and goals. I also pull out a few open-ended materials that are just plain fun. 

Try hanging up fun thematic activities on a bulletin board so your students can see them, too! Often I will switch my planned activity around when a student requests one of these activities, as long as I can still accomplish the goal since students learn better when they are invested.

Of course, your daily and weekly plans will be more detailed. But having a monthly idea can help you out when you need a backup plan or have a make-up group that doesn’t jive. For younger students, that can be as easy as changing out printable game boards. The free section of the blog makes that super easy!

With middle school and older students, you could consider ‘fun’ printables that build social interaction skills. The ones I’ve used included

• contests.
• pages for thinking outside the box.
• conversation starter activities.
• would you rather? lists.
• deductive reasoning puzzles.

Keep Notes

One of the tips that really helps me is to jot down notes if I have figured out an especially creative or fun way to adapt materials to meet two wildly different goals. Do you have some groups that are like that? I have some groups where the kids actually have no goals in common! They just are available at the same time and can be at the same table without fighting.

These kinds of groups make for some creative planning. Meeting 4-6 different goals in one hour a week with no overlaps gets you thinking about different ways to use the materials. Try keeping the original page in a page protector inside your binder. Put a quick sticky note on the page so that you remember next year how you adapted it for your crazy group. This builds your skills in adapting materials for mixed groups.

Search TpT the Quick Way!

Once I’ve pulled out the materials that I think will work for my current caseload and goals, I’m off to TpT to check out what freebies or paid products are available to fill in my other needs. Having this wonderful resource is amazing! Before TpT, I had to spend so many more hours planning and making materials. I didn’t have the money to buy commercially available materials, and they just needed to be modified tremendously, anyway.  

It is very easy to refine your search on TpT, making it quick and easy! First, enter your skill or theme, in this case, Thanksgiving. Then choose your subject. If you click ‘specialty,’ you have the choice of speech therapy.  Then enter your price range.

If you want to look at freebies first, go under the member-sponsored ads and click on ‘sort by’ to get ‘most recently.’  This will let you start your search with the most recently posted freebies and work your way back in time, saving you from seeing sets that you may have already downloaded. Quick and easy!

Do your friends share TPT freebies with you? Of course! That is what friends are for! You can be a friend to the TPT SLP who spent time making that freebie. Go to the store to download your own copy and give some kind feedback.

The benefits for you are that you

• have a place to redownload easily.
• say thank you to the person who made the freebie.
• get notified if the freebie is updated.
• may find some other materials you’ve been searching for.
• are doing it the right way!

Be sure to visit the Looks Like Language TPT store to see if there are more helpful materials you need.

Sign up for the LLL monthly newsletter to get access to the FREE page on the blog. It’s easy to do!

Speech therapists in schools get offered some of the worst rooms ever! If a great therapy space is one of your priorities, private practice is probably the way to go, since school space is often crowded and administrators seem to prioritize by how often you are in the building and the number of students you work with. With our small groups and multiple schools, it seems that SLPs are often the last to get a space to work in a school (and often the worst!).

The WORST Speech Therapy ROOM EVER!

The Cage

“My Worst Room Ever was what we dubbed “the Cage.”  It was in the basement of the building and was literally “cage” material that cut it off from the rest of the area.  I shared it with the band/instrument instructor and was constantly having to move all the music stands out of the way on the two days I was there.  There wasn’t anywhere to hang pictures or make it more comfortable and a friendly atmosphere for my students.  Luckily I was only there for a semester when another room opened up for my use.”  Stefanie

The Smell or The Noise?

“When I was student teaching, once/week we saw students in the custodian’s closet, complete with the mop in the rolling bucket or water….and the SMELL!!  At another school, while I was student teaching, we saw students on the stage with the curtains closed but in the rest of the room, the BAND was practicing!!!”  Beth

The Crowd or The Hall?

“More recently, I worked in an Early Learning Center.  I could see students in a room with 8 SLP’s desks.  Multiple therapy sessions went on at the same time, teachers came in and out of the room to talk with the SLPs, parents came in, administrators, etc. Or my other choice was to see students at a table in the hallway outside the bathroom and a classroom for early childhood autistic students.”  Beth

The Bathroom

 “I went to a new school where the principal hated speech paths. He took me to a boy’s bathroom that was IN USE! Really? When I said no thanks, he then led me to a dentist’s office where there was a dental chair and room to walk around it. Needless to say, I found my own space that year, which was on the floor of a stairway landing.”  Linda

The Stage

“Worst room experience – when I had to work on the stage at the elementary school while PE was happening in the gym  – the only thing separating us was the stage curtain.  I had a very hard time trying to tell if my students were saying their sounds correctly :(“  Kim

A Tornado Proof Room!

“Worst room for me was a previous janitors closet at a middle school. Still had water fixtures exposed, no windows, barely fit 3 students. However, if there would have been a tornado, I would have been set!” Ashley

The Roach Motel

“I’ve been pretty lucky with rooms, but my first speech room consistently had roaches and roach poop in it :/” Annie

Just a Desk

“Worst room was an electrical closet that could only fit my desk and a file cabinet. I had to search the school to find an empty space for the actual therapy session.”  Tatiana

Beer, Anyone?

“When working early intervention, I had two different families own liquor stores and had to do all my visits on top of crates of beer! Seriously!” Renee

SLPs have been offered some pretty terrible spaces to work in!  What is your WORST SPEECH ROOM EVER story?

Please add your story in the comments- then we will feel like we are in good company!

Make a speech therapy schedule without stress? Are you kidding me? It definitely is a true pain, but there are ways to make it easier. I’ve tried many ways to schedule over the years and this color-coded system has worked best. Give it a try to make speech scheduling (and rescheduling) faster and less error-prone throughout the year.

The benefit of a paper schedule is that you can work on it while sitting through the endless beginning of the year meetings. But if you have the luxury of doing your first schedule on the computer, make colored background cells in the table for color-coding. Type separate color-coded text boxes with students’ names instead of sticky notes. Just be sure to line them up in a visible area so you don’t lose track of any of them.

Make a Master Schedule

You’ll need small colored sticky notes and a page protector, but it will work with just a blank FREE schedule, a pencil, and any size sticky notes that you are willing to cut to size. Do you make your first schedule online? see the hints above!

Here’s how to do it.

1. Take a look at your students’ goals and figure out your groups. Here’s how to manage mixed groups.
2. Once you have your groups in mind, get your colored sticky notes ready! Either buy long, thin ones or cut them down to the size of your schedule slots.
3. Write the names of your students on the colored sticky notes that match their classroom schedules. Usually, you will find that there are a group of classes having the same lunch times, for example.
4. Make a color-coded sticky for every student session you need to schedule. This ensures that you don’t accidentally skip a session while scheduling. It is also very useful when making schedule changes.
5. Make a master schedule of time slots where the students are NOT available. The colored slots on the schedule indicate this.
6. Putting in information about where the students are during those periods can be helpful for finding the students who are out of the room or scheduling a makeup session.
7. Also, fill in periods you are allowed to take students, but it isn’t worth the hassle unless necessary. Typically, read gym class!
8. If you do any block scheduling or push-in times that have little flexibility, fill these in on your schedule now, too.

Make Your Speech Schedule

Take the sticky notes and place them on your schedule, following these rules: 

• Never match the color of the sticky to the color of the speech slot.
• First, fill in all the colored spots. Leave the white spots (with more flexibility) open until the end.
• Next, do group sessions. Start with the groups that have the most limited availability. This will typically be the groups with students who have different classroom schedules (multiple schedule colors,) the largest groups, and students with the most academic level classes.
• Next, do your students who have the most individual sessions, so you can spread them out over the week.
• Then schedule your students with the most sessions so you can spread them out over the week.
• Finally, fill in your remaining student sessions.
• Keep putting your sticky notes on until your schedule is filled.

Scheduling Problems

Inevitably, there is a spot left where someone doesn’t fit. 

Take a photo or screenshot now! (Or print a copy.)

Sometimes, a simple sequence of changes works, and your problem is solved.

Other times, you start making changes and it just gets worse, so you will need the photo to go back to where you were close to being done.

• First, see if you can move someone into the trouble spot that you found. Check out the slots where your unplaced student(s) will fit. Often this solves the problem.
• In the worst-case scenario, pull off the stickies in your easier to fill slots and stick them back on the sides of the schedule.
• Switch around your harder-to-schedule kids, seeing if you can fill the speech slot that became a problem.
• Then go back to placing your easier-to-schedule kids.
• When all else fails, see if you can push in during that impossible-to-fill slot. Or make it your prep time.

One of the best aspects of scheduling using sticky notes is that you won’t end up losing track of any sessions while figuring out the scheduling snafu!

Now that your schedule works, put it in a page protector so that none of the sticky notes can accidentally fall off. If you had to move the sticky notes around a lot, use tape to make sure that they stay put. Then go make a photocopy to work from and keep your sticky original intact. It will come in handy when the teachers’ or your students’ schedules get changed!

Last, but very important, go home and de-stress at the end of the day. For me, a glass of wine with dinner works wonders! And hopefully, you will be celebrating the easiest speech schedule that you ever made!

Then check out Planning Made Easier for more tips to help you have an easier beginning to the school year!

Grab your FREE download for making speech/language therapy scheduling easier by signing up here! Then tell your friends to come visit the blog!

How do you get the iPad away? If all your autistic student wants to do is play on the iPad, it can lead to lost sessions when you abruptly take it away. Autistic students learn a lot from visual teaching methods. But are we doing them any favors in the long term by teaching this way? Students with autism need our help to attain social skills and learn how to interact with others. One step that makes this possible is to get the iPad away.

It is all about change.

It comes down to this basic problem: how to get students with autism to vary the kinds of work they will do and work through change. With big stakes when it includes an iPad!  Students with autism prefer the familiar, just like many of us. They are also visual learners. This makes screen time very enticing, but also limiting. Token boards can be a link to help students with autism to learn to vary their activities and work through change. We’d love to spend all of our time doing our favorite things, but that wouldn’t make us productive adults. And our students need to learn this, too!

Change Is From Your Student’s Perspective

Students with autism need to learn to cope with change. But it is best to make the changes small. It is also helpful to intermix new work with learned skills. And when the iPad is involved, it helps to make a connection between the content on the screen and the activity you want them to do.

This serves a few purposes:

• Previously learned skills are better maintained.
• Reduces the pressure off of constantly dealing with the unfamiliar.
• Expands the learned content in different activities, which aids generalization.
• Gives students the chance to develop social skills.

What Are Small Changes?

You have to watch your student’s behavior to find out what types of changes trigger anxiety. And be sure to talk to teachers. They will get to know your students faster than you can.

Visual changes can be difficult for some students. It can even be something so simple that we don’t notice it! For example, a worksheet can seem new if pictures to be matched are in squares where there used to be circles. It can take some detective work to figure out what made an activity overwhelming to your student. Especially if they have multiple learning challenges.

One small change at a time leads to success. So, if the new worksheet has squares instead of circles, don’t vary the pictures that are inside the shapes. Or you could adapt the worksheet so that most of the pictures are in circles. This helps your student see that it is the same work they know how to do.

Maybe your goal is to expand the number of answers on a worksheet. Then don’t change the format. Work on varying the shape used afterwards. Does this give you an idea of how to approach making small changes?

To summarize, make changes in the type of work small (from the perspective of the student) and keeps lots of familiar review work in every session.

How do token boards help?

Token boards help student with autism see how much work they are expected to do. They know when a difficult task will be done. And they see what they will get to do when the work is finished. We are used to doing this verbally, but our students with autism need to see it.

Words go very quickly in time, sometimes too fast to process. Pictures last in time. They stay there to look at for reassurance when work seems overwhelming. It’s a visual “I can do this!”

Start small. Make small changes. Expect it to take a while, but it can be done.

First, is your student familiar with token boards? If so, you can skip down some steps to start where you are SURE this will be a success. Next, remember that this is a detailed possible sequence of steps. Adjust it to your situation and your student. And always start a new session at the last completely successful step. Don’t expect to start where you ended the last time. Just figure your students will regain the steps more quickly each time.

How to use a Token Board to Get the iPad Away

1. Set up the token board for just one response. That means that only one token will be in the work area on the bottom.
2. Work toward the goal of the student being able to hand the iPad to you. Make sure they understand the direction ‘give me’ with a visual. Put the iPad off to the side with the token board on top of it. Tell the student to give you a neutral object they don’t want (say a pencil.) Quickly move the token up and hand them the iPad. Set a timer for them to play for a minimal amount of time.
3. Get the one token ready again when the student is playing. Place the token board and the pencil on top of the iPad when the timer goes off. Give the direction, ‘give me.’ Move the token up, take it off the iPad, and give the student access again. Practice these movements so you can do them quickly!
4. Do these steps as long as you need to until the student is no longer agitated when iPad time stops briefly. Be sure to start at the beginning next session if it took the whole session to achieve this. Note how long it takes this time to show progress.
5. Now your student has to learn to give you the iPad instead of the pencil.
6. Next, start decreasing the amount of time the student spends playing in between work time.
7. Always watch for when the student can do a step without showing signs of anxiety.
8. Then use quick activities to extend the number of responses/tokens, building one at a time. The activities should be simple, rote, and familiar. Maybe simple directions like ‘clap hands’, placing puzzle pieces, or file folder matching. The student stays in charge of the iPad game while learning to set it aside for gradually longer periods of time.
9. Add in some easy work related to your IEP goals. For example, intermix the basic commands with a labeling task until 5 or 10 tokens are done. (Remember you control the amount of work to be done by how many tokens are in the work area.)
10. Keep working on the progression until your student can do a complete activity before gaining access to the iPad. It also helps to have the activity be similar to whatever they enjoy most on the iPad. Is it a TV character? A visual matching game? Figure out what it is, use screenshots from that activity to use in your speech work.

Make a Personal Connection

Use this time to get to know your student’s stress reactions. And be sure to have some fun!

Build basic social interactions, such as laughing over something or looking briefly as you give it. Interact in a happy, natural way. Use simple turn-taking games. Make that personal connection so that time spent with you is also rewarding to the student.

Most students probably won’t need such discrete steps. Hopefully, this gives you an idea of how you can break down new tasks into small growth steps when you need to do this. It can seem like you aren’t getting much speech work done initially, but think long-term. How much more will you be able to accomplish over the year if you can use socially interactive work after this?

Why use themed token boards?

It is just like taking screenshots of the iPad games they like to make speech/language activities. You are making connections between a familiar and preferred activity to the new activities you expect them to do. If they have to put the iPad down, looking at the token of their favorite TV character can help them change the activity and learn something new.

I can’t use licensed characters in what I make. And I obviously have no idea about your student’s preferences. But you can download this FREE editable token board set for 5 or 10 tokens and make your own!

Download this FREE editable token board template so that you can personalize it! It is in Google slides, but you can download it as a PowerPoint file.

Did you know that you can improve social perspective-taking skills using pranks your students will love? We may not like to be on the receiving end of pranks, but they sure are fun to watch! This sets up a perfect opportunity to discuss how people’s perspectives of pranks can be different. One kid might find it hysterical to walk into a hanging spider, while another child with a fear of spiders might be terrified. 

Another social skill that can be reinforced using pranks is judging the impact your actions have on others, or thinking before you act. So, let’s get started!

You can have a lot of fun talking about April Fool’s Day pranks since this is the perfect time for it. But nothing stops you from using this theme any time of year. If you are lucky, a trip to Target or the Dollar store in April will provide you with some toy pranks to try out, too. Look for things like:

• chattering teeth
• a moustache disguise
• a toy wind-up mouse
• a whoopie cushion
• an exploding can
• a watering flower
• fake dog poop
• a toy spider

Introduce the Pranks

If you don’t want to use actual prank items, use pictures of them instead. Start with showing your students one of the pranks and have them think about who in the group (or class) might like this trick. Dry erase boards are an engaging way to have students do this. Then, at the bottom, they write ‘how they would feel about it. Simple ways to show the perspectives include thumbs up/down, happy/sad emojis, or yes/no.

When the students show each other their answers, it provides opportunities to see who made an accurate prediction of someone’s reaction. Let them explain how they figured that out. Then, compare/contrast the different perspectives in the group.

Foster a discussion of whether a joke is funny or harmful using these questions about the actual items or your pictures of pranks.

1. Is the prank hurting anyone? (physically or emotionally)
2. Did the person who was playing the joke have any way to know ahead of time how the other person would react?
3. If it ended up being hurtful by accident, what should they do?
4. Who should have the biggest part of the decision in the end whether a joke is funny- the person playing the prank or the person being pranked?

Conclude by having your kids discuss which pranks could be okay to try out in the group, applying their perspective-taking skills from the discussions. Let them explain why some of the gags that they think are funny would not be appropriate to use with these particular friends.

Social Perspective-Taking Skills FREEBIE

Have you ever wondered what is inside the blog free page? Exclusive freebies, of course! They change from month to month, but my sign-up freebies are always available there. Sign up now to get this free mini set to try out perspective taking skills with pranks.

Using Books About Pranks

Books are a great way to build social perspective-taking skills. Or any skill, for that matter! This post gives tips about how to incorporate books and literacy skills in speech/language therapy.

Consider using read-aloud stories on YouTube. It can save you some shopping time and money. And it has the added benefit of providing a change of pace as well. The books below are found on YouTube.

“April Foolishness” by Teresa Bateman is a very cute story for younger kids. The plot involves grandma and the grandkids playing an April Fool’s trick on Grandpa at the farm.

“April Fool!” by Harriet Ziefert is a quick easy reader. In it, a boy named Will plays a trick on his friends by telling a story about seeing an elephant on the way to school.

“April Fool” is read aloud by Evelyn Winters, the author, complete with a British accent. It is an animated story about a boy named Caiden who loves to prank his family. But his family members don’t think it is as funny as Caiden does.

So, have a little fun and try out some harmless pranks to build social perspective taking skills!

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!

Do you work on friendship skills during your speech therapy sessions? Is that even a speech/language area to work on? Like many of you, I had that question about areas of social skills at one time. But after doing my research, my answer is a resounding yes! Find out why and download some really helpful freebies.

Finding out about your students’ families and likes/dislikes are a typical part of building a connection with your students. It helps SLPs to know how to bring meaning and enjoyment into the work we do with each student. But do you ask about friends as well as family members?

You should! Once I started asking my students with autism what they liked to do with their friends, I started getting these responses: “I don’t have any friends.” “I play with my brother.” “I don’t need a friend.”

So, I started reading up on friendship skills and soon realized that this was a guarded way of letting me know that they lacked the social language skills to develop and maintain friendships. Was this a speech/language therapy problem? I think so.

Like all special education needs, it takes a village to help students. But, take a look at this summary of 4 skills needed for friendship in this basic article that is easily understood by parents. Which of those skills do not have a language base? Zero.

SLPs Need to Develop the Language of Friendship!

Once your students have basic language skills for content, form, and use, we usually help to support academic growth. But, don’t forget to include work on your students’ social language too! If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that the social interactions of students are a much treasured and needed component of attending school.

It helps us as SLPs to understand the phases of friendship (Robert Selman, 1980) so we can help our students develop the language needed for each phase.

Preschool: Momentary Playmates – Stage 0- ages 3-7

Preschoolers’ friendship needs are basic and in the moment. Playmates are people who are around. Kids this age just want to have fun playing with someone who wants to do the same thing they want to do.

The communication skills we work on include:

• nonvocal social skills, such as joint attention and
• expanding play skills.
• turn-taking skills.
• increasing vocabulary.
• developing varied sentence structures.

Early Elementary: One Way Support – Stage 1- ages 4-9

In early elementary school, children view friends as people who are nice to them and do what they like to do. Friendships are about more than just getting along for the moment, but there isn’t much thought given to what they can do for their friend. Play skills are fully developed for pretend play and group play is becoming organized.

Children have well-developed grammar skills at this point and are developing more complex language skills. While they really want to have friends, you may hear them saying things like, “I won’t be your friend if…” to get their way.

The social communication skills we work on include:

• participating in conversations on varied topics.
• telling a personal narrative.
• using a variety of pragmatic functions to interact with others.
• beginning to think about the needs of others.
• ensuring that they have basic vocabulary for emotions.
• producing varying sentence structures to express themselves.
• developing the language for social problem solving.

Elementary School: Two Way Fair Weather Cooperation – Stage 2- ages 6-12

During elementary school years, students develop the basics of perspective-taking skills and are interested in fairness in social interactions. While they can understand their friend’s perspective, they can’t do it in the ‘heat of the moment’ while they are in their own point of view. They know that friendships are based on a give and take, but lack the language skills to work out conflicts.

The social communication skills we work on include:

• expanding sentence structure to express more complex ideas.
• improving narratives to enable students to discuss problems and life events.
• conversation skills for initiating, maintaining, staying on topic, and closing.
• developing reasoning skills for predicting, cause/effect, problem-solving, and making inferences.
• increasing perspective-taking skills.
• comprehending/using emotions, character trait vocabulary, and nonverbal language to interact with others.
• teaching that language can have more than one meaning.

Middle School: Intimate Mutually Shared Relationship – Stage 3- ages 11-15

Friendships are based on more than a simple give and take at this stage. Students have trust in their friends, help them when needed, and share their thoughts and secrets. They work out problems, but can feel jealous when their friend acquires a new friend. So friendships are often in pairs. This happens mostly with girls, who tend to have more intimate friendships at this stage than boys do.

The social communication skills we work on include:

• using social cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and tone of voie.
• taking others’ perspectives.
• making inferences based on people’s statements.
• explaining your reasoning, which requires the use of complex and compound sentences.
• using language to resolve conflicts.
• understanding and using nonverbal communication (facial expressions and body language.)
• improving knowledge of figurative language, including idioms, proverbs, and sayings.

High School: Mature Friendship – Stage 4- ages 12-adulthood

Students are now able to maintain friendships over time and through separations. They appreciate differences between themselves and their friends and are no longer jealous of their friends having other friends. They’ve learned to hang out in groups. Most language skills should be developed at this point, but students continue to accrue vocabulary, expand existing social language skills, and increase their nonliteral language skills.

The social communication skills we work on include:

• remediating skills from earlier ages that have not developed.
• increasing nonliteral language usage, including idioms and proverbs, metaphors, inferential language, double meanings, sarcasm, and irony.
• improving language for social skills such as point of view, making social inferences, perspective taking, and problem solving.
• clarification, persuasion, negotiation, and conflict resolution.
• code switching, or changing how you communicate to fit the current environment.

As you can see, the ages vary quite a bit in each stage, but children generally develop these skills in order. Our students with language disorders, especially those with autism or social-emotional disorders, often lag behind their typical peers. When you look at the language skills needed, it makes sense, doesn’t it? And since we have all attended school, we know how tough it can be for those kids who just don’t seem to fit in.

Teaching the Language of Friendship

You can easily teach the language of friendship while working on your current social skills and language goals. The trick is to first teach the skill using your typical methods, whether it is producing complex sentences, making inferences, or any of the other language-based skills needed. Then, instead of moving on to a new goal, apply the newly learned skill to a friendship scenario.

Vocabulary Skills

Most language impaired students have weak vocabularies. Instead of working on specific words that will only be used for a week in the classroom, why not spend your time on social skills vocabulary that can be practiced all year long? Developing your students’ ability to describe personal qualities helps them with comprehending story plots as well as being able to discuss social situations.

Behavioral Themes

Everyone is familiar with using seasonal and holiday themes to build skills for preschool and early elementary students. But if your older students have social skills deficits, have you considered using different aspects of your school’s behavior or social-emotional learning programs as your therapy themes? Obviously, this idea is not meant for students who just need some academic support.

Social-Emotional Learning Websites

First, think about your students’ social skills needs after doing informal assessments. Then, check out the character qualities from these school social-emotional learning programs if your school doesn’t have a program.

• This Essential Learning Skills List from CASEL, or The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, has many social skills listed to format your theme around.
• The Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports Program, or PBIS, includes social skills areas to use as learning themes for students.
• The PBIS World website also has some great information, including links for social stories and ideas for behavioral interventions for students who lack social skills.
• The Six Pillars of Character from Character Counts are:  trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, citizenship, and decision making.

Organization Tips

It can take some reorganization at first, both mentally and in terms of sorting your materials and filling in gaps. But if you work in a special school, or in a school that uses a specific program, doing this can make your language therapy work more meaningful to your students.

Don’t expect to do this all at once. After you have assessed your students’ priority social skills needs, choose a format or social skills vocabulary word that best meets your caseload needs, resonates with you, and is an area that you already have materials for. The change doesn’t have to be dramatic or last for more than a month when you first get started. In fact, you may already be doing this!

For example, kindness and friendship skills are easily used as a February theme, and you probably own social skills materials that can be adapted to that theme! For your older students, just expand the skill with themes like compassion, respectfulness, or cooperation. Check out my Pinterest posts this month as I search for books, activities, and freebies to help you develop this theme. And here are some freebies to get you started!

FREEBIES

• I Can Be a Friend Posters
• Is It Kind? A Speech Therapy Social Skills Activity
• Social Skills | FREE Activities | Friendly or Not? Game
• Peanut Butter & Cupcake A Friendship Building Activity
• Conversation Starters about Kindness and Friendship
• The Power of First Impressions & Navigating Friendships

Resource Links:

• 3 Communication Skills for Making Friends
• Stages of Friendship
• Teenage Social Skills
• Social Language Skills Norms

Adapting for mixed groups is easier than you think! And when home life gets really busy, it is important that you know how to give yourself a work break. Download this fun Thanksgiving freebie and read on to get some tips to make Thanksgiving speech/language therapy fun and on target!

And a freebie!

The easiest way to catch yourself a break around any holiday is to find a really useful free activity. By useful, I mean that it is adaptable to let you address many IEP goals. This way you can use it with all of your groups.

Steps for Adapting a Freebie:

1. Choose a themed story or picture book to use with each group to match their comprehension level.
2. Brainstorm different ways to use each story (text or pictures) to elicit your students’ current goals.
3. Change how you introduce and carry out the activity for each session.
4. Make the followup incorporate something that stretches the skills you just worked on.

Choose a story you can use to elicit a variety of goals.

This can sound like a lot of work, but it gets easier with practice! First, you don’t have to buy all of the books. School or public libraries are a great place to start. Or read this blog post for free online ideas for stories. Then, be sure to check out the growing blog collection of stories that can be used for social skills goals.

Finally, if you love a book enough to purchase it, sign up for the Scholastic book club to get great selections. I’m not affiliated at all. I just found that it is a great way to help with comprehension of books that your students may already be reading, or books that preschool teachers may be planning on using. And, you get to accumulate your own points.

Some great stories for a turkey theme include:

• Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland
• Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey
• A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting
• 5 Silly Turkeys by Salina Yoon
• Turkey Trouble by Wendy Silvano
• Run, Turkey, Run by Diane Mahr

Why to brainstorm for mixed groups.

It is worth your time to to do some planning for how you can use an activity across your caseload.

• It is useful for improving your skills for how to vary an activity, as well.
• It helps you become familiar with the book’s plot, helping you when you have an unexpected make-up group.
• Thinking about how to elicit varied goals ahead of time gives your sessions a specific goal for each student that session.
• It can expand your toolbox for how to incorporate literacy in your sessions.

Read about how to use post-its to help you out when you are just beginning. Or get additional ideas for how to use books in speech therapy!

Change how you introduce the activity for each group.

Changing how you introduce an activity can make a big impact on your students’ enthusiasm. Did you realize that you were going to have to be an actor when you became a speech therapist? I certainly didn’t, but I learned a lot along the way! If you set students up to enjoy themselves, by being excited and stressing the part of the session that they will enjoy the most, students are more likely to be engaged throughout the session.

Students with language problems, learning disabilities, and autism have a hard time drawing a connection between ideas. So they need your help. Try viewing a speech therapy session as having the same structure as a book that you have to narrate. Make those connections for them!

You have your introduction, which needs to draw them in and build enthusiasm for the climax. Which, of course, is the activity that they will love the most. Your story is the setting, which explains the theme while allowing you to elicit their targets. The free activity is the conclusion that lets them explain what they have learned.

Activities to generalize the skills in mixed groups.

And, of course, you need to have an enrichment activity, which is why I started making Boom card decks to reinforce the skills that have been worked on. If you are looking for free online ideas for activities to reinforce skills, check this out.

Craft activities are an SLP favorite. But, just like reading a book, it works better if you plan ahead. Kids (and SLPs) have fun doing both of these activities. However, successful learning occurs when you are focused on each of your students’ goals. So, choose that fun turkey craft! Then put in the planning that lets you go into each session with the ability to elicit different, specific target goals in each session.

But, what if I have mixed groups? The key to making the same fun, free download or activity work in mixed groups is to use your students’ strengths and weaknesses to get them interacting with each other. Students are placed in groups because they are capable of learning that way (least restrictive environment.) It is a great opportunity to get them interacting with each other, though!

Get the free download!

Brainstorm how to adapt for mixed groups

When you think about it, using the same activity all day is really the same as planning to use it in one very mixed group!

WH QUESTIONS:

First, write a question word in each feather. Then students answer the question to tell details about how their family celebrates Thanksgiving. If students need to ask questions, let them think of their own to ask. Even better, then have them ask a peer in the group!

SENTENCE STRUCTURE/SYNTAX:

When your students have answered the questions, they can retell all of the information in complete sentences. tSee if they can tell you what their grammar goals are before you give directions!

NARRATIVES:

After answering questions, the student tells a narrative in future tense to predict what will happen this Thanksgiving.

Or try this variation! The first student starts a Thanksgiving story with a sentence and then spins the spinner to see what to color. If they spin a part they already colored, they wait for their next turn. Continue until the story is complete. It is better to end a complete story and start a new one than it is to have a run-on nonsense discourse. An extra benefit is that you will find out who actually understands story structure!

COMPARE/CONTRAST:

After Thanksgiving, look at the sheet again. Let the students identify what was the same/different about this Thanksgiving compare to their predictions. Then they can re-tell the personal narrative using past tense verbs. This activity can be made even more fun by doing it in comic format!

WORD ASSOCIATIONS/RETRIEVAL:

Write a number in each feather. It is okay to use low numbers and repeat them, since students will have to name that number of associated items for the one you say. they get to color in the feather If they can state that many items. It is a good idea to time either how long they have to finish or how long the pause is because time is a crucial measurement for word retrieval growth.

SOCIAL SKILLS- PERSPECTIVE TAKING:

Use the questions from the last page of the download during the spinner activity, but change them all to “Do you?” question types to find out the preferences of your students with autism or social skills difficulties. Then have them fill out the worksheets to give the preferences of family members. Do they realize that other people have different likes and dislikes than they do?

See, adapting an activity for mixed groups (or for all of your groups) is easier than you think!