This week I wanted to share about some resources that will help you with doing teletherapy with your middle school students. It has been a few years since I have worked with those ladies and gents, but I remember it like it was yesterday. For many years, I worked at a middle school and to get these friends excited about seeing me was a daily challenge sometimes.
Distance Learning Resources for Middle School
News-O-Matic is an app for your iPad that is offering free subscriptions until June 30th for families and teachers. I love that there are daily articles and students can choose what they want to read about. There are different levels, and it can be translated into Spanish. You can read more about the app HERE.
Jeopardy Labs or Jeopardy PowerPoint were two digital materials I used to create custom Jeopardy games for my students. If you get the PowerPoint version, just make sure to “save as” and re-title the version. You can make a fluency one, articulation, vocabulary, and social language to then use in teletherapy or assign in Google Classroom. Jeopardy Labs is a cool tool because you can use games already created by other users. So, you could share the workload with your other fellow middle school SLPs and each creates a game and then share.
Use YouTube to use for wordless shorts, Simon’s Cat videos, America’s Funniest Videos or your other favorite channels to engage learning. If you need a social pragmatic Google Slide with all the videos, make a copy of mine HERE. I LOVE wordless short videos too. You can target so many skills with those, so mixed groups are easier with these types of videos.
Some of my favorite wordless videos to use are Simon’s Cat videos. They are so versatile because they are mini video comics, short in length, and always entertaining. You can read more about these videos HERE.
Using EdPuzzle with your Middle School Students
EdPuzzle is a website that you can take a video and add in questions for your student to answer while watching the video. This allows you to track their comprehension. It will pause the video when you embed a question. Plus, you can search for other lessons already created and assign them to students on Google Classroom. You can see a tutorial about how to create your own EdPuzzle video on my YouTube channel. Speech Time Fun also has some EdPuzzle videos already prepped for you that can be used in teletherapy sessions.
Check out this YouTube video to see how you can use your favorite videos to create lessons for your middle school teletherapy sessions.
Free Websites to Use for Your Middle School Teletherapy
If you haven’t used NewsELA or ReadWorks, you seriously need to go check them out. You can find FREE articles that are at your student’s age level and interest to use in therapy.
Use the website Word Sift to help with reviewing the text and key vocabulary from the passage. This tool makes it a little easier to plan. I learned about this website from Speech Time Fun. Check out her Instagram Stories for more details!
I also love using the website vocab grabber to find tier II vocabulary words to work on with students. Plus, these free articles are great for articulation carryover.
Articulation Carryover Materials for Middle School Teletherapy
Use my articulation carryover resources to assign work in SeeSaw and Google Classroom. You can check out this tutorial on how to use the Kami Chrome extension to use worksheets you already own!
Social Pragmatic Middle School Teletherapy Resources
Need social pragmatic resources that you can use now and when you get back to real life therapy? You can use this No Prep Social Skills Activities to work on lots of skills including conversation (see how I use the conversation visuals in my IG highlights.) This question and answer conversation activity was something I loved using with my middle school life skills students.
Pick a topic that your student’s want to discuss. On one side of the screen put the visual support for asking questions or making comments. On the other side, adjust your website tab and upload the resource using your Kami Chrome extension. This extension allows you to annotate on the PDF. Share your entire screen. While the students are discussing the topic you can give visual feedback about their body language, questions/comments, talking too much or too little. This gives them the visual feedback they need to self monitor their social pragmatics in a conversational setting.
You can use Flipgrid to have your students respond with a facial expression, practice answering a question while staying on topic, or work on answering and asking questions with you as a distance learning activity. Watch the tutorial above to see how you can get started with this tool.
What Digital Materials Do You Use for Middle School Teletherapy Lessons?
What digital tools do you use with your middle school students?
Do you have any favorite Chrome extensions that help you in your teletherapy sessions?
I would love to know of any digital programs, YouTube videos or games that you have found to be engaging for your students. Share in the comments!