It is officially Fall and I must say, this is my absolute favorite time of the year!  I really enjoy the milder temperatures and all the beautiful décor.  Living in Florida, the low 80s without humidity are a very welcome sight (I know, all my northern friends are probably like, low 80s are sweltering but compared to the high 90s, I would take the 80s any day of the week).  We get to spend more time outdoors and my boys thoroughly enjoy being outside.  This week’s Therapy Tip Tuesday is going to focus on fun and engaging activities that I like to incorporate into my therapy/teletherapy room during this season. 

If you have been following me for awhile you know how much I love literacy.  I hold an endorsement in Reading and oftentimes I will say, “literacy is my jam!”  There are so many goals that can be addressed, both related to language and articulation, by incorporating a book, reading a passage, or article while still providing our students with the much-needed reinforcement to help improve their literacy and comprehension skills.  Here are just a few of my favs.

1. The Biggest Pumpkin Ever

This book is a definite go-to for me during the Fall.  My students thoroughly enjoy this series by Steven Kroll and I personally love the progress that I see in their abilities to identify story elements and retell a story.  I have created a Book Companion for this book and several of the others in this series.  The companion follows the progression of the story and begins with several pre-reading activities. The first is describing a pumpkin using this cute graphic organizer. 

When I worked in the brick and mortar setting, I would bring in several pumpkins for my students to decorate after we worked together to utilize our five senses to describe them.  This was always a huge hit.  I really enjoyed the wealth of language opportunities this presented because when students are excited, they tend to speak more and it’s a great time to assess spontaneous speech and expressive language.

2. Sequencing and Story Retell Fall Edition

This Boom Card activity is a part of my most popular and most requested series.  In the Fall edition, there are four original short stories followed by comprehension questions and a four-step action sequence for students to drag and drop as they retell the stories.  The short stories are geared towards younger students (PK-2) and present a wide variety of vocabulary terms with a fall theme.  This a great time to either model clear, fluent reading to your students or give them the opportunity to read aloud to you.

If you’re working with a mixed group, take the time to identify the words that contain your student’s target sounds and have them repeat the words, use them in sentences, and add them to their word journals.  If you don’t have your students creating and using word journals throughout the year, you really should try it.  They are a very effective tool and serve as additional reinforcement and homework (younger kids can draw pictures to correspond to the words in their journals). I like to start them in the beginning of the school year using a composition notebook and encourage them to be creative and have fun with them.

3. Where is the Pumpkin

This is another Boom Card activity for Fall and is great to address basic concepts. It includes both preposition practice as well as a following directions component.  As students progress through this lesson they identify where the pumpkin, spider, and ghost are in relation to a variety of objects.  This serves as both preposition practice, vocabulary review, use of complete sentences (as they respond to “where” questions), and so much more!  The following directions component is fully interactive and allows students to drag and drop items on the screen. 

My students always enjoy being able to manipulate objects on the screen and this works great on Smartboards, iPads, tablets, computers, and of course teletherapy platforms.

4. Answering Yes/No Questions Fall Edition

This is also a Boom Card option and includes real high definition images with a Fall theme.  There are so many ways to utilize this resource with your students.  Real images are an extremely effective way to elicit language and can be used for vocabulary review, describing, formulating sentences, answering questions, tapping into prior knowledge, associations, and so much more! 

Regardless of the level your students are on, this can be a fun activity to get them talking.  Have them formulate a sentence about the target word, name the category, identify 3-5 things associated with the picture, tell you about a time that they saw/ate/played with the vocabulary words.  Be creative because the possibilities are endless.

5. Halloween Game Boards

This one is a FREEBIE and can be used for articulation, language, mixed groups, and more.  It includes an open-ended game board that you can use in any way that you see fit.  It also includes a board with images embedded (emphasis on /r/ words) and a game board with “wh” questions embedded.  My students really love this lesson and it works great on teletherapy platforms using the whiteboard tools to create game pieces and random.org for a free pair of dice.  If you work face to face, the game boards are great for whole groups displayed on the Smartboard.  You can use magnets as game pieces and an actual pair of dice or a spinner. If you want to use them on your iPads or tablets, you can do that too.  Use a free annotation app and the shape tools to draw your game pieces. 

Just a little reminder, I’m very sensitive to the cultural beliefs of my students and only incorporate these game boards when I know my students celebrate Halloween.  If they don’t celebrate, I make sure our resources have a Fall theme as opposed to a Halloween theme.

These are just a few of my favorites for the Fall. As always, don’t hesitate to comment below with your questions.  If you prefer to send me an email, please do so at belinda@bvgslp.com.  I’m happy to help!