Nothing makes a speech therapy session drag on more than a group of unmotivated students. It’s the worst! You feel like a professional negotiator trying to get your students to practice their speech sounds.
And every week that your students moan and complain is just another unproductive session, and that kills you!
Let’s chat about some articulation sentence-level activities that your students think are FUN. You can secretly get in those high trials during a session without your students knowing they are working hard. Best feeling ever!!
Turn Your Articulation Sentence Practice Into a Challenge
Whenever you can turn an activity into a “challenge,” you aren’t the one telling them what they have to do. You are inviting your students to partake in a contest. And, I don’t know about you, but when someone presents something as a competition, I am more fired up to try it!
It would help if you had some sound-loaded sentences, a timer, and a clicker to track trials. These digital clickers on Amazon are the best (Amazon affiliate link included.) You can create sentences with your students before the challenge or use some already done for you, like these Articulation Sentence Challenge Sheets. They also come with half-sized homework sheets, so it’s easier for you to create a home practice program.
Set the timer and have students see how many sentences they can get in a minute. Explain that you want them to go slow enough to get the correct production because going fast while saying the words with an incorrect sound isn’t the point!
After the minute is up, calculate their score. Then, try to beat it by doing another minute. You can continue doing this for up to 5 minutes. As you show your students their trial scores, you can also discuss how it doesn’t take that long to practice every day.
Get Silly With Your Articulation Sentences by Using Real Images
Whether conducting a mixed group or a teletherapy session, you can use actual photos to work on sentences. Using pictures can be a great mixed group activity because your language students can answer wh-questions, describe by attributes or work on grammar concepts.
Have your students brainstorm words that have their sounds and then they can make a collage of real photos on a Google Slide or PowerPoint.
After creating a collage, you can create silly sentences, create a funny story or describe them by attributes at the sentence level. If you need a Google Slide template for a brainstorming activity, all the digital speech folder resources have sentence-level activities including the brainstorming template!
Use Mini Trinkets to Create Sentences
For those of you new to hearing about mini trinkets or on the fence if you should get them, let me encourage you to jump on the mini trinket train! My younger and older students like them. And, when I pull out the “I Spy” sensory bin, it can become a station activity while I work with another student in the mixed group.
Students can search for mini items that have their target sound. Then, we use those items to create structured sentences or create a story sentence by sentence. To read more about mini trinkets, check out this blog post.
Find Sound Loaded GIFS to Create Sentences
What is so great about using GIFS in therapy is that you can create these in Google Slides and then re-use them repeatedly!
GIFS are more engaging than real photos because they move on the screen. So, you can use a list of your student’s target speech sounds and search for GIFS (just be careful to search for GIFS with your students because there can be inappropriate images that pop up.)
Students can answer wh-questions or create sentences with the target word. Need help with adding a GIF to a Google Slide? Check out this tutorial on my YouTube channel and watch this video at around the 8-minute mark.
Need Some More High Trial Speech Therapy Ideas?
If you need some more articulation therapy ideas that get you high trials and are kid-approved, check out these blog posts below:
Articulation Ideas That Will Get High Trials
Articulation Carryover Activities
What articulation sentence activities do your students love to use? If you have a fun game or therapy idea, share it in the comments below or tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie