CYBER SALE! ➔
On my son’s 4th birthday, I decided to throw him an insect party, and I pulled out all the stops. I wanted it to be Pinterest-worthy! You know what I mean when I say Pinterest-worthy, right?
Everything had to align with the party’s theme. From games to decorations, it had to be all insects!
To pull off a successful Pinterest party, you must thoughtfully weave in vocabulary and concepts from the theme into the snacks, cake, party favors, games, and decorations.
At my son’s party, we had worm punch, caterpillar grapes, ants on a log, and butterfly chicken salad sandwiches. During the group games, all the kids had to act like bugs, and every activity related to the life of insects. My themed party provided a context for the children to process the event and attach meaning to their lives from it.
That’s what a theme-based approach provides for students: a context, a lens through which to view a theme and apply the vocabulary words and concepts to their personal lives.
In theme-based therapy, it is important for students to make personal connections with the theme and its context. So as you implement this approach, find opportunities for students to connect those concepts to their daily lives.
If you are interested in having fully prepared themed therapy materials for your Prek-5th grade students, check out the Themed Therapy SLP Membership. These materials come with selected targets and activities designed around different themes. I created this membership to take lesson planning off your plate and, quite possibly, allow you to leave work on time knowing you served your students well!
This may ruffle some feathers, but reading an example of what themed therapy is not will help you understand which materials to use.
When you use a worksheet or activity that has cute, themed graphics but has random speech or language targets on the clipart, this is a skill-based therapy approach. The targets are not necessarily connected to each other, so the student isn’t going to be able to relate the stimulus items to a common category or theme.
However, if the snowballs on the worksheet contained pictures of “sled, slip, slushie, snow, sneeze, skate, scarf, storm, and sweater,etc.” this would be consistent with themed therapy.
I just want to make clear the difference between themed therapy and skill-based therapy.
Oftentimes, we may be able to use themed games as reinforcers with our students with speech sound disorders. Some students need specific targets for the approach you are implementing, and using themed sound targets may not work best.
That doesn’t mean you can’t infuse themes to make therapy fresh and motivating!
When considering a therapy approach, it’s helpful to examine the pros and cons. Here are some of the benefits to using a theme-based approach:
Do you love the idea of planning themes but are a little stuck with which theme to choose? Click below to grab your FREE themed therapy idea guide. It includes over 100 seasonal and nonseasonal themes plus an editable speech therapy planning template to streamline your planning process. You can also see a list of my 30 FAVORITE themes to plan HERE.
