Switching to telepractice due to Coronavirus has been a challenge for SLPs in many settings. Particularly in the pediatric setting, in can be challenging to find materials that engage learners while still targeting their speech and language objectives for effective sessions. This post includes several practical suggestions for lessons at the Elementary and Middle School level.
Elementary Ideas
Use the Toy Theater Snakes and Ladders game as an open-ended board game for practicing targets, if your platform allows you to screen share.
Read books - yes, physical books. If you want to try out some online options, the Epic App is free for teachers, and your library may give you Hoopla access so you can check out kid’s books from the library as well.
YouTube videos can be a great way to have a topic to discuss. You can watch a child’s favorite (school appropriate) video and earn points for a few minutes at the end for demonstrating listening behaviors and giving points for this (eyes on teacher, mouth taking turns, ears listening, brain thinking and doing its best). I particularly like to find a video in a child’s interest area and turn off the sound, so the child practices story retell and answering comprehension questions about what is happening in the video.
Middle School Ideas
Toy Theater Four Colors game (a lot like UNO) as an open-ended reinforcer activity or to practice the /R/ sound.
Reading passages (free with a teacher account) from Readworks
While reading a passage, use annotation tools on your PDF reader or on your telepractice platform for students to self-identify vocabulary words they don’t understand and need to learn.
After reading the passage, open up a Google Doc to practice defining words, answering questions about the passage, and identifying the main idea and details. Screen share and write in the Google Doc so you can both see what you are working on.
Overall, these are low prep ideas for both elementary and middle school articulation and language sessions that don’t require too much extras and are (mostly) free to teach. If you’d like more ideas like this, we hope to continue to post lesson ideas in this space.
Sponsor
This blog post was sponsored by the SLP Happy Hour Teacher’s Pay Teachers store, specifically the R Taco Truck Boom Cards Deck. This resource allows students to have fun building tacos and visiting a taco truck and practicing /R/ in words, phrases and sentences. This material is great for grades three and up.
