How to Conversational Recast with Grammar Therapy

How to Conversational Recast with Grammar Therapy

by | Apr 12, 2021 | Grammar, Language, Play-Based Therapy

We all want our therapy time with students to be as productive and effective as possible. Our therapy sessions fly by, and when you have mixed groups, you wonder if you even made a dent in helping a child make progress on their goals. That’s not the best feeling.

That’s why I want to share a conversational recast strategy for grammar therapy to help you make the most of your sessions. Plus, I have a FREE  100 unique verbs checklist to keep track of verbs you recast during an activity.

What is a Conversational Recast?

Basically, a conversational recast is a fancy word for emphasizing what the child said with the correct grammar morpheme. For example, if the child said, “He eat,” the clinician could say, “Yes, he eatsssss cookies.” You probably already do this evidence-based practice naturally in your sessions. Still, when you are sitting at IEP meetings, you can confidently tell the IEP team that you are using EBP with grammar intervention.

 

How I Was Implementing Grammar Therapy

In the past, I would pick 3-6 verbs I wanted to target in therapy. Then, I would conversational recast those 3-6 verbs throughout the session. Whether I was doing a worksheet, using task cards, or play-based therapy, I used a handful of verbs as my targets. I thought by targeting a small set of verbs over and over again would help my students learn the grammatical morphemes easier.

For example, if we were playing with a farmhouse and working on present progressive verb tense, you would hear me using conversational recasts such as “The cow is eating. The horse is eating. The pig is eating. Now, the cow is sleeping. The horse is jumping. The pig is rolling in the mud. The cow is rolling in the grass.”

With my grammar intervention, I would also explicitly teach the grammar rules and then cueing the student to try and use the morpheme.

The way I was doing therapy was NOT wrong or ineffective; however, when reading about the positive outcomes from the research study, “Variability in the language input to children enhances learning in a treatment context,” it gave me permission to start adding in harder verb targets into my therapy sessions.

Using conversational recasts to support grammar intervention

Using 24 Unique Verb Conversational Recast in a Session

Easy to use conversational recast cheat sheet to make grammar therapy easier to implement!
Click here to grab your free cheat sheet guide

This research study looked to see if 18 preschoolers with language impairments made better progress with learning grammatical morphemes when either conversational recasts of 12 verbs two times in a session or 24 unique verbs were conversational recast in a session. The study found that when the clinicians used 24 unique verbs in a session, progress was better. 

I know what you might be thinking….how in the heck am I supposed to think of 24 unique verbs in a mixed group? With off-task behaviors? With limited time to prepare materials?

If you did not think these thoughts, I did! I  tried implementing this conversational recast approach with activities I had planned. It was hard to think of verbs on the spot and keep students engaged. 

So, I created a cheat sheet with 100 unique verbs that I could checkoff while doing any therapy activity. That way, you could put it in a page protector sleeve and check off verbs that you conversationally recast during activities.

 

Even if you weren’t able to hit 24 unique verbs in a therapy session, this reminds us all that switching up the variety of verbs is beneficial for our student’s learning the grammatical morphemes. You can now provide more unique verbs in therapy and feel confident that you aren’t making grammar intervention more confusing for students!

Plante,E., Ogilvie, T., Vance, R., Aguilar, J.M., Dailey, N.S., Meyers, C., … Burton, R. (2014). Variability in the language input to children enhances learning in a treatment context. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 23, 530–545.

Need More Cheat Sheets to Help Save Lesson Planning Time?

Play-based therapy can be an effective way to approach grammar intervention for a variety of reasons. For starters, it is easy to grab a toy off the shelf and start using it in therapy. Another thing to note is that students are more engaged when they feel like they are “playing,” so using toys gets excellent buy-in from students. Having to think of 24 unique verbs on the spot while using a toy is a little daunting for the busy SLP, right? I know I need to conserve my brain energy to write that after school and conducting therapy all day can drain my brain. 

That’s why I created toy companion cheat sheets to use any toy and have the grammar targets already selected. Having cheat sheets helps me follow the child’s lead for what toy they want to play with while allowing me the freedom to enjoy therapy. It’s a great feeling knowing that I don’t have to think of verbs on the spot in therapy! Plus, you can also give these toy companions to teachers and parents and provide them with some ideas for working on grammar outside of your sessions. 

Click here to grab your free cheat sheet guide
Using toy companion cheat sheets to conversationally recast verbs in grammar intervention
Using toy companion cheat sheets to conversationally recast verbs in grammar intervention
Using toy companion cheat sheets to conversationally recast verbs in grammar intervention

More Ideas for Implementing Conversational Recast in Speech Therapy

If you are needing more ideas on how to implement this conversation recasting strategy, I have a replay of an Instagram LIVE I did talking about some therapy ideas. You can also check out this paper plate craft that is easy to use for grammar HERE. When you don’t have time to prep and plan activities, you can head to my store to find grammar activities that include a variety of verbs and align with EBP.

Conversational recast using this paper plate activity in grammar therapy
Best Winter Videos to Use in Teletherapy

Best Winter Videos to Use in Teletherapy

by | Dec 9, 2020 | Featured #6, Language, Therapy Materials

If you are planning some winter-themed therapy for the winter season, I have found some great videos that you can use in teletherapy.

When discussing winter you can find reading passages about winter, hibernation, snowflakes, ice, and blizzards to work on the main idea, comprehension questions, tier II vocabulary, summarizing, and explaining details with grammatically correct sentences. Plus, if you find passages with your student’s speech sounds, it becomes a great mixed group lesson.

I love using www.readworks.org or www.getepic.com to find books or passages. You can now use winter videos to supplement those passages or use the videos in place of a reading passage in teletherapy.

Whether you are in-person or doing teletherapy, you can use winter videos to help organize your therapy sessions with engaging content. In this blog post, I will be sharing some of my favorite winter videos you can use in teletherapy.

Winter Videos for Teletherapy to Target Language

You can work on main idea and details about winter using this video from Scishowkids. The videos aren’t too long in length, so you can use them in a 20-30 minute session. Plus, you can also work tier II vocabulary with this video. With this video, it has 5 different winter videos that you can break up across the entire month to work on language.

This FREE School video is great for discussing how snow is made!

Have engaging winter videos for teletherapy that you can use to cover language skills.

Use Kami Chrome Extension to Write on Worksheets While Using Winter Videos

You can use Simon’s Cat winter videos while filling out this FREE sentence frame graphic organizer. If you need a graphic organizer to fill out about the turkey fact details for teletherapy, you can use the Kami Chrome Extension to add text boxes. Here is a YouTube video tutorial on how to add text boxes in Kami. You can put the graphic organizer on one side of the screen and the YouTube browser on the other side. Then, just screen share your entire screen. If you need a sentence frame graphic organizer to build more complex sentences, grab this one HERE.

If you want to see how you can use Simon’s Cat videos to target a variety of goals, check out this BLOG POST. 

 

Use the winter Simon's Cat videos in teletherapy with this free sentence frame graphic organizer
Click Here to Download the Winter YouTube Google Slides

Winter Videos Using YouTube Book Read Aloud Videos

I usually prefer to read the actual book out loud to my students over a YouTube book read aloud, when doing teletherapy sessions, it can sometimes be hard for all the students to see my book over the screen. So, I will use YouTube read aloud in my sessions, so the kids can see the pages while I read the story.

All you need to do is have the YouTube video on mute so that you can read the pages. I try to find a book read aloud that shows the pages clearly so that I can read the lines from the story. These book read alouds allow we to see all the words on the page.

Other ways to use books are by screen sharing while projecting a book from Kindle Unlimited, Vooks, or using Epic. There are a ton of great short winter-themed books on Epic that I use with my students with limited language and shortened attention spans in therapy.

Click Here to Download the Winter YouTube Google Slides

Have Movement Break Videos with a Winter Theme!

Turkey Videos for speech therapy to use with movement breaks

If you work with younger students that need movement breaks in a session, you can use these fun winter-themed songs. When I do whole class lessons on the SMARTboard in a classroom, I would often pull up one of these videos when kids were struggling to pay attention.

You are also providing another new opportunity to learn language through song because many of the songs have verb actions or use winter vocabulary.

You can also work on verb actions, initiating requesting for the song, and discussing if they liked the song.

Some songs you can even work on left or right and other basic concepts.

What movement breaks do you like using? Share in the comments!

If  you want all these winter songs in one place as well as more of my faves, grab this free winter YouTube Google Slides by clicking the pink button.

 

Click Here to Download the Winter YouTube Google Slides

Use Google Slides to Organize Your Winter Videos

winter videos for teletherapy that will help you work on language!

One way you can keep all your favorite videos organized is by adding them to a Google Slide or PowerPoint. I find that adding them to Google Slides are easier for sharing with educators or families. Once you add in all the video links, you can easily navigate to the ones you need for the lesson.

Once you have it organized, you can use it year after year with your groups. If you need all of these videos in an organized Google Slides presentation, grab my winter-themed language lesson plan guides that have a Google Slides™ presentation included. It comes with everything ready to go.

Click Here to Download the Winter YouTube Google Slides

You can see how you can organize your videos and activities in the video below.

Click Here to Join the VIP List for my 12 Days of Giving!!

Shared Book Reading Strategies to Build Language

Shared Book Reading Strategies to Build Language

by | Oct 13, 2020 | Language

When it comes to planning language therapy, school-based SLPs do not have a lot of time to prep and make materials.

Using shared book reading strategies in speech therapy can be an effective way to plan lessons quickly and implement language intervention techniques that work.

Plus, you can also implement a parent or staff coaching model by showing support staff how to implement shared book reading strategies during classroom instruction. This can help with further generalization of language skills. If you need more information about different collaborative services, check out this BLOG POST.

What Are Shared Book Reading Strategies?

Shared book reading strategies are a set of techniques that adults can use while reading a story to increase a child’s engagement with the story. The goal of using structured interactive book reading techniques is to help enhance the child’s language and literacy skills.

Instead of just reading the book aloud to the child, the adult is uses shared book reading strategies to help the child learn new vocabulary, answer questions about the story, and draw connections with the characters and events.

Using interactive book reading strategies helps struggling readers have support to participate in enjoying the story and it allows children to access books that they may not be able to read on their own.

As speech pathologists, we see students with language impairments on our caseloads. The research shows that when our students oral language improves, their reading comprehension will improve as well!

In fact, there is research that found when language interventions focus on a broad set of oral language skills such as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, narrative skills, and inferencing are linked to showing effective outcomes for student’s reading comprehension.

We can work on all those broad oral language skills using books.

 

shared book reading strategies in speech therapy to build language skills and increase engagement.

Benefits of Shared Book Reading Strategies in Speech Therapy

shared book reading strategies speech therapy ideas to increase language skills

First off, I will just say that if you do not have a ton of time to plan therapy, using books to guide instruction is the way to go! It will save you time planning therapy without losing the effectiveness of the intervention.

Secondly, when you use shared book reading strategies you organically increase student engagement. They are more actively participating during the story, they begin to predict the events in the story, learn that the pictures can provide clues about the story and characters, and it reduces the cognitive demands for processing language.

Using books can be an easy way to incorporate opportunities to work on lots of different skills such as categories, tier II vocabulary, wh-questions, grammar concepts, perspective-taking, and story retell.

And, our students have to use literature in the classroom every day, so if we can enhance their language and ability to follow the events of a story, they will generalize those skills into the classroom setting better.

There is research that shows that when using shared book reading strategies, students learn 1.22 more words on average than when interactive book strategies aren’t used.

shared book reading strategies speech therapy ideas to increase language skills

Types of Shared Book Reading Strategies to Use in Speech Therapy

Before reading the book, you can discuss the title. Have students make predictions about why you chose the book or what they think the story will be about based on the title and picture of the book.

You can also discuss key vocabulary before reading the book to help expose them to concepts or vocabulary they may not have heard before to help with comprehension.

Another easy strategy is to point to the vocabulary in the pictures of the story and provide clear, child-friendly definitions.

Then, during extension activities, you can have the child act out those words and make connections with those target vocabulary words.

Another strategy to build vocabulary is to label pictures in the book, describing the characters while pointing to the pictures or text, and asking questions related to the story.

After reading the book, you can discuss the book with your students. This is when you can ask them to make personal connections with a story. For example, with the book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day, you can ask your students to reflect on a day that wasn’t great. This can be an opportunity to compare/contrast their horrible day to Alexander’s.

This increases the opportunity for students to hear and use the targeted vocabulary from the story.

 

Often times in therapy we may use a book 1-2 times, but with shared book reading, they encourage repeatedly reading stories because it allows students to ask more questions and can talk more about the content as they become more familiar with the story elements.

One way you can increase opportunities for story retell, practicing vocabulary or using verbs from the story is to plan extension activities using toys, sensory bins, visual story maps, etc. I love using my Penguin senosry bin with the book, Tacky the Penguin.

Materials to Help You Implement Shared Book Reading

For all of my whole class and small group therapy sessions, I always use a book to plan my therapy.

I use the shared book reading strategies while I read the book to the group. Then, we discuss the book or review the vocabulary as a group. To keep students engaged, we will break up into group stations in which I have extension activities that align with the book. This allows we to review the vocabulary and verbs from the story.

In all of my push-in unit, I include a Google Slide, a parent newsletter with book suggestions and activities that cover the theme. 

There are also 3-5 activities included for small group. This allows me to use a theme such as the farm, and pick different farm books to use with the students. I can interchange the books in the theme and always have extension activities that align with the vocabulary.

If you need activities to implement shared book reading, I have LOTS of themes. Here is bundle 1 and bundle 2. Check out some of the units and how I use books to facilitate the extension lessons.

Free Story Element Visual Supports

While you read the book, you can work on identifying the story elements with these free story elements visuals. You can put them on popsicle sticks and give each student in the group a couple of story elements to listen for in the book. If you need more ideas with popsicles, head to this BLOG POST. Just click the pink button below to grab your free visuals.

Book Recommendations to Use in Speech Therapy

If you need help with finding books to use in your speech therapy sessions, check out these blog posts:

–Diverse Children Books

–Summer Books for Speech Therapy

–January Read Aloud Books

–Top Ten Books for Speech Therapy

–Wordless Picture Books for Speech Therapy

–Books You Need in Your Speech Library

–Beyond the Book- Maya’s Book Nook provides questions, vocabulary to target, and a post-activity to do!

–Diverse Books for Speech Therapy by Sweet Southern Speech

Shared Book Reading speech therapy strategies to help increase engagement and build language skills.

Research:

Lervåg, A. , Hulme, C. and Melby‐Lervåg, M. (2017). Unpicking the developmental relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It’s simple, but complex. Child Development. Advance online publication. doi:10.1111/cdev.12861

Flack, Z. M., Field, A. P, & Horst, J. (2017). The effects of shared storybook reading on word learning: a meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/dev0000512.

Dickinson, D. K., Nesbitt, K. T., Collins, M. F., Hadley, E. B., Newman, K., Riveria, B. L., …Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Teaching for breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge: Learning from explicit and implicit instruction and the storybook texts. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.07.012

Mystery Word Game Your Kids Will Love

Mystery Word Game Your Kids Will Love

by | Oct 4, 2020 | Freebies, Language

This week we played a REALLY fun word game that targeted LOTS of describing skills.  I even found a way to adapt it for some of my articulation students.  Word games for kids are the best way to get engagement with vocabulary building.  When you say “game”, the kids feel like they are having fun and not realizing how much thinking they are doing!  This word game also incorporates inferencing and critical thinking skills.

Word Games For Kids- Mystery Word

 

speech therapy language games for mixed groups

I used picture cards from my HedBanz Game (amazon affiliate link) to help my younger students think of a noun for the mystery word.  There are also these really cool Learning Resources Basic Vocabulary Photo Cards (amazon affiliate link included for your convenience) that would be awesome to use as well!  For my older students, we just brainstormed without pictures.

I made a detective game board to keep track of each player’s points.  You can assign one of the students to be the “points keeper”. These Reusable Dry Erase Pockets are amazing because I only have to print one game sheet to use over and over.

Click Here to Download the Mystery Word Game

How to play the game

To play this word game, the clinician and/or one of the students in the groups is in charge of choosing a mystery word. Pick a word and write it down where the students cannot see it.

Then, give clue #1 to the group.  So if we picked “donut”. Clue #1 would be “dessert group”.  Each student can take a guess of the mystery word item.  Praise the students who make a “smart guess” for guessing a word that is in the correct category.  Quiz the students if a guess such as “pizza” would be a smart guess and why it would or would not be a smart guess. Give clue #2 such as “You eat it.  You can deep fry it.  You can put frosting on it.”  Allow for students to make a guess.  If a student’s smart guess is correct, then they would earn 4 points.  Continue giving clues until someone in the group guesses correctly.

The person with the most points at the end of the session wins!  Have the student describe the noun in complete sentences after the mystery word has been revealed! 

I adapted this game for my students working on /s/ by having them say the carrier phrase “I guess the item is……….” to work on final /s/.  With my /r/ students, I only picked words that contained /r/! How could you adapt this game to make it funcitonal for your mixed groups? Share in the comments.

Click Here to Download the Mystery Word Game
speech therapy language games for mixed groups

Use this Speech Therapy Language Game in Teletherapy

speech therapy language games

You can also use this game digitally in your teletherapy sessions using the Google Slides™ presentation included in the free download (click the pink button above to grab.)

You can use the Mystery Word Game as your weekly warmup lesson. Pick a word of the week and students can what the word is based on the clues. Or, you can create many mystery words and have it last as a digital game for weeks!

The Google Slides have linked buttons, so it is easier to navigate the Clue slides during the game. If you are wanting techy tips on how to use Google Slides, check out this YouTube tutorial with all the tips!

Watch the YouTube video below to see how to add images to the Google Slide presentation.

I would love to see your games in action! Make sure to tag me on Instagram @thedabblingspeechie

This game should increase that engagement in your sessions and you don’t have to feel guilty that you are playing a game because it is working on their goals!

Looking for more Google Slide Game Templates? My digital speech and language Google Slide templates include as a Memory, Tic Tac Toe, and 4-in-a-row templates so that you can customize for your caseload. Check it out in my TPT store (there are also templates included to help you plan therapy, organize your materials digitally, and make digital speech and language folders for your students. 

10 Ways to Use Play Food in Speech Therapy

10 Ways to Use Play Food in Speech Therapy

by | Feb 28, 2020 | Language, Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

What’s more fun to young kids than playing with toy food items? They love using play food to engage in activities like playing house. Harness that interest for your speech therapy sessions! This is why toy food sets can be so engaging for our speech students! These play food items allow students to interact with you and do pretend play, all the while allowing you to work on a variety of different speech and language skills with them. I’m sharing 10 skills you can focus on with toy foods below, so keep reading to get all of my suggestions!

Play food is SUCH a big hit with young children. Why not give them space to play with toy food items while also working on essential speech and language skills? Play food sets make for a fantastic addition to your speech therapy materials. Kids love playing with toy food, and you can work on targets like sequencing, CORE vocabulary, AAC, grammar concepts, and more. Click through to read this post to learn 10 ways that play food can be used in speech therapy! #speechtherapy #SLPs #speechskills

Where Can I Buy Play Food for My Speech Room?

There are a few different play food options available online. One of them is even from Melissa and Doug, so you don’t have to worry about the quality of those items! All of the ones I’m suggesting below can be found on Amazon, but you might be able to find them at stores like Target, too. The links below are Amazon affiliate links for your convenience.

Melissa & Doug Food Groups

Pantry in a Bucket by Play Circle Battat (This is a good deal!)

New Sprouts Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner by Learning Resources

 

Play food is SUCH a big hit with young children. Why not give them space to play with toy food items while also working on essential speech and language skills? Play food sets make for a fantastic addition to your speech therapy materials. Kids love playing with toy food, and you can work on targets like sequencing, CORE vocabulary, AAC, grammar concepts, and more. Click through to read this post to learn 10 ways that play food can be used in speech therapy! #speechtherapy #SLPs #speechskills

Build Vocabulary While Using Play Food in Speech Therapy

You can use play food to compare and contrast items by attribute features. While you are playing with the food, you can discuss the different category groups for food items, function, size, shape, color, where you buy/store it, what meals you use the food for, parts and textures. I love using my visual sentence frames to help my students explain similarities and differences between foods. 

For your students not ready to work expressively with comparing and contrasting, have your students “sort” food into different groups. For example, you can sort chewy vs. crunchy foods, hot vs. cold, sweet vs. sour foods.

Being able to see and touch the play food while doing this language activity makes it engaging for your students too!

Play food is SUCH a big hit with young children. Why not give them space to play with toy food items while also working on essential speech and language skills? Play food sets make for a fantastic addition to your speech therapy materials. Kids love playing with toy food, and you can work on targets like sequencing, CORE vocabulary, AAC, grammar concepts, and more. Click through to read this post to learn 10 ways that play food can be used in speech therapy! #speechtherapy #SLPs #speechskills

How to Use Play Food in Speech Therapy

A toy food set can be used to target so many speech and language skills! Listed below are some of my favorite ways to engage children in these skills:

  1. Have one student prepare a meal for another student. One student can practice his/her articulation, vocabulary, grammar while telling the student what to do to prepare the meal.
  2. Sequence the steps for setting a table, cleaning the kitchen, shopping at the grocery store, or making a meal. Sequence how to make a hamburger, sandwich, cake, etc.
  3. Following directions and basic concepts with the food and utensils.
  4. Sort food by sub-categories: desserts, fruit, vegetables, breakfast, dinner, meat, etc. Then, describe the food by attributes (size, shape, colors, parts, texture, etc.)
  5. Work on “who” and “where” questions. Give different food items to students and ask, “Who has a brownie?”
  6. Asking and answering wh-questions while playing with the food.
  7. Play pretend restaurant to work on social skills, articulation carryover, and language.
  8. Plan a dinner party or birthday party.
  9. Practice manners while eating.
  10. Work on inferencing by giving the kids clues about the food item and they have to guess the food.

Need a cheat sheet guide to help you with targeting wh- questions, Tier II vocabulary, articulation, basic concepts, adjectives, and helpful therapy ideas for toys you use during play-based therapy? Grab this Toy Companion Cheat Sheet Guide for Pre-K to 2nd grade and have stimulus targets mapped out for fourteen different toys.

Share How You Use Play Food Toy Set

Do you have a fun way to engage your students with play food in speech therapy? Share in the comments, tag me on Instagram @thedabblingspeechie, or email me at feliceclark@thedabblingspeechie.com.

Activities for The Mitten for Speech Therapy

Activities for The Mitten for Speech Therapy

by | Jan 6, 2020 | AAC Communication, Language, Therapy Materials

The Mitten book for Speech Therapy

During the winter months, I love using The Mitten in Speech Therapy. It is such a versatile book to target speech and language goals. One reason, “The Mitten” is a great book choice for your students with language impairments is because there is a little illustration on each page showing what will happen next. This gives our students a visual cue to help with comprehending the story.

Today, I wanted to share some ways you can use the book to target multiple goals as well as share about some resources you can use as extension activities. This book is such a classic that you can find it at the library, GoodWill or on Amazon (affiliate link).

If you love using The Mitten with your mixed groups, the Themed Therapy SLP membership has a winter unit with a book cheat sheet and a visual story map to help you adapt the story for different ages and groups. When you sign up for the annual membership, you can access over 24 themes to plan for your Prek-5th grade caseload. 

Speech Therapy Activities for The Mitten Book

There is research that shows when language therapy focuses on a broad range of skills such as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, narrative skills, and inferencing are linked to showing effective outcomes for student’s reading comprehension abilities. As oral language improves, so does reading comprehension, which is what we want to see in our students.

So, using stories to cover all those concepts is an effective way to plan therapy. You can teach your students tier II vocabulary from the story such as attracted, grumbled, commotion and swooped.

After you read the story, your students can act out the words, use them in a sentence within the context of the story, name antonyms/synonyms for the word and create picture friendly definitions.

Get Your Free Sentence Frame Graphic Organizer
the mitten speech therapy ideas to teach oral narration and language concepts. #booksforspeech #speechtherapy #oralnarration #cfyslp #speechies #schoolslp #slpeeps #pediatricslp #winterbooks #themitten
The Mitten Speech Therapy activities to build language #slpeeps #schoolslp #themitten #preschool #preschoolslp #speechtherapy #oralnarration #storyretell #vocabularyactivities #winteractivities #cfyslp #speechies #slp2b #sped #pediatricslp #schoolslp #schoolbasedslp #vocabularyactivities

As you are reading the story outloud to your students, you can conduct think-alouds about the book. A think-aloud is a strategy you can use to demonstrate how you are thinking about the text you are reading. This helps you students to learn the strategies they need to utilize to understand the content they are listening to or reading. You can have your student think-aloud about what the character’s are feeling, making predictions about the story elements and to help your students check to see if they understand what is happening in the story.

Free Activities for The Mitten Book

The Mitten speech therapy activities for the busy SLP. #slpeeps #schoolslp #speechies #oralnarration #sped #vocabulary #freeprintables #themitten
Get Your Free Sentence Frame Graphic Organizer

As you read each page of the story, you can create visual sentence frames you want the student to use with the book.

By having one or two sentence frames, helps reduce the cognitive load for your students. It can help your student expressively demonstrate their grammar or comprehension skills without feeling overwhelmed with what they have to produce.

A simple sentence frame for “The Mitten” could be, “The ___ went inside the mitten.”

A more complex sentence frame visual could be working on inferencing, such as “I predict the ______ will _______ because of ______.”

You can also use this FREE sentence frame graphic organizer to create more complex sentences about each page in the story.

Place the graphic organizer in a page protector and use it with a dry-erase marker. Have you ever tried Ultra Fine Tip dry-erase markers? They are the best! You can get them on Amazon (affiliate link).

AAC CORE words for The Mitten by Jan Brett

One way you can make this book more accessible to your students using AAC is by adding the CORE and FRINGE vocabulary to your book!

Many of your students with moderate language impairments may need the story simplified to help them understand the main parts. These visual sidekicks from The Language Ladies SLP can help you have the visual supports you need to help improve your students’ grammar and vocabulary.

For your students that are struggling with comprehension and need the book adapted, having those visuals to reference while you are reading can be very helpful to increase engagement. When our students understand the language, they are more likely to be excited to participate.

I just attached the visual sidekicks with Velcro Dots that I got on Amazon (affiliate link).

Mitten Sensory Bin for Articulation and Language

After reading the book, “The Mitten,” you can work on describing mittens by attributes such as category group, function, parts, textures, where, etc.

You can talk about how mittens come in pairs and why you need them for both hands.

This mittens match-up sensory bin resource allows your students to find “pairs” of items that go together, such as word association, antonyms, and categories. This helps build depth of knowledge for words being taught to our students with language impairments.

For the filler, you can use salt, white play dough, cotton balls, white yarn, cutup white straws, or white pom pom balls. To see more winter sensory bins, check out this blog post. 

The Mitten Speech Therapy sensory bin for word associationas #slpsensorybin #sensorybin #preschool #preschoolslp
The Mitten speech therapy sensory bin to work on ca category groups #slpsensorybin #sensorybin #speechtherapy #preschoolslp

The Mitten Sequencing Activities – Free Printables

If you have students that benefit from hands-on activities, I highly recommend downloading these free printables for, “The Mitten.”

You can use them to help your students with story retell, which is an evidence-based practice for improving vocabulary and comprehension. You can also use these visuals to create a sensory bin. An SLP submitted this sensory bin idea. She used ripped up white paper for filler, and a long piece of string to be the mitten. Then, she placed the printables in the bin and worked on oral narration. 

speech-therapy-activities-for-the-mitten
Get Your Free Sentence Frame Graphic Organizer

You can work on the vocabulary word “fit” and “big” while using this free printable art project that can also teach vocabulary.

While coloring the item that can fit in the mitten, you can talk about mittens by attributes as well as the item the child chose to draw. How would you use this free printable for The Mitten in therapy? Share in the comments. 

The Mitten Activities Printables – FREE

Here are some more free printables and activities that you can use with your students to work on language and oral narration with “The Mitten”:

– The Mitten Emergent Reader

–Jan Brett Story Maps

–The Mitten by Jan Brett Activities Flip Book FREE

–The Mitten Sequence Cards

The Mitten speech therapy activities to build language in an engaging way for students. #slpeeps #eslteacher #sped #themitten #visualsuppors #literacyinspeech #literacy #speechtherapy #schoolslp

What activities for The Mitten do you plan for your sessions?

I would love to know what resources or tools you use to incorporate the book, “The Mitten,” in your speech therapy sessions.

What skills do you target? How do you use the book in mixed groups? Share in the comments what is working for your students. I would love to add some new ideas with this book.

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