Graphic Organizer for Sentence Structure

Graphic Organizer for Sentence Structure

by | Jan 9, 2023 | Therapy Materials

One of the best ways to work on sentence formulation with your students is with graphic organizers. When you have a sentence structure graphic organizer that is easy to adapt across a lot of different activities, it makes language therapy planning easier! Today, I will share a free graphic organizer for sentence structure that you can use with any activity.

Why Use Graphic Organizers for Sentence Structure

For many of our students with language impairments, learning syntax and parts of speech can be overwhelming. Frequently our students are visual learners, and when they see words organized, it helps reduce their cognitive load so they can take in new information.

The free sentence structure graphic organizer has color-coding for the parts of speech which helps your students understand and remember how to build a sentence.

A parts-of-speech graphic organizer can visually break down how to build a sentence and provides a hands-on approach to learning sentence formulation.

Grab your free graphic organizer for sentence structure

How to Use the Sentence Structure Graphic Organizer

If you have syntax or morphology goals on your caseload, this free sentence-frame graphic organizer can help you cover many speech therapy goals.

In a group or individual session, you can use ANY photos related to your theme, wordless short videos, pictures, or images from your story books.

To start with the graphic organizer, you can show the student the video or image. Explain any unknown vocabulary or discuss concepts that will help build their knowledge of the item.

Then, you can brainstorm vocabulary words that describe the video, photo, or picture by the part of speech.

I will often write the words and allow the students to focus on verbally sharing their vocabulary words. Many of our students need help with spelling, and this graphic organizer is for you to work on creating sentences rather than how well you can spell a word.

After you brainstorm all the parts of speech on the graphic organizer, students can create sentences using the frames. Having the list in front of them helps your students to develop a novel sentence with less scaffolding from you!

And you can incorporate discussing morphology for verb tenses while using this graphic organizer.

Grab your free graphic organizer for sentence structure

Tips for Using in Mixed Groups

We all have had mixed groups where every student in the group has different goals. That can be so stressful for planning therapy, right?

You can use this graphic organizer for sentence structure activities and other speech and language goals.

For example, if you have a student working on R, give them some R challenge words when describing the photo that has R. Or, you can have the student circle all the generated words that have their /r/ sound.

Furthermore, you can have students working on speech fluency create sentences using their fluency strategies.

And, when you need to work with another student to explain some concepts or get 2-5 minutes of quick artic, you can have your language student use the pre-filled graphic organizer at an independent station to create sentences.

Sentence Structure Resources to Use with the Graphic Organizer

If you are doing a theme with your caseload, pull up real photos related to your theme from Google Photos. You can also find videos on YouTube of items from your themed unit. For example, I pulled up some funny squirrel videos and used them with the sentence graphic organizer. Check out this blog post for the squirrel videos.

Pull up any wordless short video and use it to describe what happened in the video. My favorite wordless shorts are from Simon’s Cat videos. You can use these cheat sheets to work on a LOT of goals. 

Find scenes or pictures you can use to describe with the organizer. You can use the images from my seasonal verb and vocabulary activities. 

One of your best therapy resources is the pictures from the books you are already using in therapy! Grab any book and describe what is happening in the picture. You can see how to do this with the book, “The Mitten.” Here is a blog post with more info about this book.

Grab your free graphic organizer for sentence structure

Need more grammar tips for your speech therapy sessions?

If you have a lot of students with syntax and morphology goals, check out these grammar blog posts:

 

How to Conversational Recast with Grammar Therapy

How to Implement Grammar Intervention

 

What activities or strategies have you used to help your students learn how to create grammatically correct sentences? Share your expertise or therapy material find in the comments!

Easy Fall File Folders for Language

Easy Fall File Folders for Language

by | Oct 28, 2022 | Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

One way to keep your students engaged in your speech therapy sessions is to use interactive materials.

Making your fall file folders for language goals can be an easy way to plan for various goals.

And, once you prep the file folder, it’s easy to store in your bag, a filing cabinet, or a book shelf holder.

Today, I will share four easy fall file folders for language that you can pair with your favorite books.

Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post, where I earn a small commission for using the link.

How to Make Your Fall File Folders for Language

Check out these fun fall file folders for language therapy to help you cover a LOT of different goals with one activity.

You can make DIY file folders using a file folder, printables, and lamination sheets.

First, you want to glue the printables that will be the activity’s base onto the file folder. The bottom printable will not move and require you to laminate the file folder.

If you have a school laminator, you can run your file folder through that. You must run your file folder through twice with two laminating sheets when using your laminator.

Ensure your laminator can fit a file folder because it measures a little wider than paper.

My Swingline laminator is wide enough to fit file folders.

Whatever pieces you want to move or place on the central part of the activity must be laminated and attached with Aleene’s Tack It or Velcro dots.

Fall Seasonal Clothing File Folder for Language

Using this Dress Me Seasonal Clothing file activity is a great way to work on categories for clothing, body parts, and weather.

You can build vocabulary with categories but also work on functional communication, describing by the colors of the clothing, building MLU, sequencing, and CORE words.

Grab this resource HERE.

Check out these fun fall file folders for language therapy to help you cover a LOT of different goals with one activity.

Monster and Jack O’ Lantern File Folder Language Activities

During October, it’s fun to use a monster theme or books that reference Jack O’Lanterns in your sessions.

One of my favorite books with a jack-o-lantern is the book, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything by Linda D. Williams.

After you read a book, your students can design their jack-o-lantern or monster.

Using interactive file folders is highly motivating because they control how to make their monster or jack-o-lantern, and you can get a lot of excellent language practice!

If you need these two file folders, they are in the monster push-in language lesson plans and the pumpkin push-in language lesson plans.

For more monster-themed ideas, check out these posts.

Check out these fun fall file folders for language therapy to help you cover a LOT of different goals with one activity.

Dress a Turkey File Folder Activity

Having a dress-a-turkey file folder activity can be fun to pair with your turkey-themed books!

You can work on the clothing category, describing by color, building sentences, explaining how they dressed the turkey, and answering yes/no questions.

If you need this file folder activity, it is in the turkey push-in language lesson plan guides.

For more turkey-themed activity ideas, check out this blog post.

If you are struggling with making worksheets engaging for your students, one way to make worksheets interactive is by turning them into file folder activities. You can read more about how to do that in this blog post.

How would you use these file folder activities to target goals with your students? Share in the comments. 

First Week of Speech Therapy Ideas

First Week of Speech Therapy Ideas

by | Aug 29, 2022 | Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

When you start back at school running speech therapy groups, it’s kinda hard to know where to “begin” with your sessions.

You know some students from previous years while others on your caseload are brand new to you!

The ultimate goal of the first week of speech is to build rapport with your students and help them understand why they come to see you!

And this is the time when you can begin to set up processes with them for therapy. For example, if you want them to have a speech folder, you can create those together during that first week of treatment.

There is also the situation where you are not sure “where” to start in therapy because you don’t have current baseline information on goal progress since the end of the school year.

Navigating all the components of your therapy groups at the start of the year is increasingly overwhelming because your speech schedule has changed what feels like a hundred times.

Planning therapy for the first week of sessions can be stressful. So, I am here to help you with some ideas to help you have a successful first week of speech!

If you need more tips on setting up your caseload at the start of the school year, check out this blog post. 

Low Prep Activities for The First Sessions

Grab a set of index cards or these free speech time reminders from Miss V’s Speech World, and have your students write in the day and time they are coming. You can tell teachers to tape them to the student’s desks to help them remember.

Spend the sessions reviewing routines and expectations. Check out this blog post to get more tips on setting up speech routines.

You can also play games and have a list of questions to discuss while playing to learn about their interests and family. For younger students, have a station rotation where they get to play with one of your toy sets while you collect baseline data on the other students.

Low All About Me Themed Mixed Group Games

You can play mystery square games from the August Themed Unit in the Themed Therapy SLP membership. First, you print the game mat and cut out post-it notes (affiliate link) to cover the squares. Pick one mystery winner number. Your students pick squares to see if it is the mystery number. Whoever gets the mystery number wins!

This game helps you get to know your students while targeting category groups and verbs, answering wh-questions, building sentence structures, and working on articulation carryover. You can see a demo on Instagram.

First Week of Speech Therapy Ideas with Crafts

At the start of therapy, we want to focus on increasing our student’s awareness of “why” they come to speech. That’s why doing a craft that can reference their goals can be worthwhile. Try out this FREE backpack craft that allows them to write the goals they are working on the craft.

You can also have students make a speech or language wallet. These speech wallets can help keep hands busy while you are collecting baseline data. Once your students finish making the wallets, they become warm-up or quick drill material for future sessions.

Try the kindness wallets or the final /l/ and /s/-blend templates for free.

Have the first week of speech activities that are easy to prep and help you get valuable information about your student's interests and get the ball rolling with practicing their speech and language goals.

Digital Getting To Know You Activities

Looking for digital first week of speech therapy ideas for your speech therapy sessions? Check out this blog post for some digital options!

If you are tight on prep time and need engaging first week of speech therapy ideas to use ASAP, here are some great digital getting-to-know-you activity options:

All About Me Getting to Know You Boom Cards
Sound Loaded “Would You Rather?” Boom Cards – All About Me Theme
Would You Ever? Boom Cards
All About Me from ABCYA
All About Me Games on Baamboozle

What is your favorite first week of speech therapy ideas?

Do you have first week of speech therapy ideas that you use with your caseload? Share what activities you have planned in the comments to help inspire other SLPs with engaging speech therapy materials.

Ice Cream Preschool Activities for Speech Therapy

Ice Cream Preschool Activities for Speech Therapy

by | Jul 9, 2022 | Themed Speech Therapy, Therapy Materials, Toys for Speech, Uncategorized

Eating ice cream on a hot summer day is something that many of your students experience on break!

That’s why it is a great theme to plan during the summer months.

Whether you need quick low prep digital activities or ideas for hands-on speech therapy ideas, this blog post will share engaging ice cream preschool activities for your speech therapy sessions!

Hands-On Ice Cream Preschool Activities

Struggling to come up with ice cream preschool activities that will engage your students in speech therapy sessions? Check out this blog post with different therapy ideas to use with an ice cream theme.

Your speech therapy lessons will always be more engaging if you find ways to make them hands-on. Use ice cream playdough mats for an easy-to-prep activity covering many speech and language goals. The mats pictured are from the ice cream push-in lesson plan guides. Here are some ideas for using the playdough mats:

-Following directions
-Commenting, requesting, and describing by attributes
-Reinforcer for any goal, or they can earn playdough or decoration after practicing their sounds
-Demonstrate basic concepts for the middle, bottom, on top, on, off
-Sequencing the steps for making an ice cream cone

Create an ice cream sensory bin using this kinetic sand set from Lakeshore Learning, or add white cotton balls, cups, ice cream scoop, colorful mini pom balls, or cut-up rainbow straws.

Easy to adapt ice cream preschool activities for speech therapy!

Ice Cream Themed Unit for Prek-5th Grade

Using a theme-based approach for your entire elementary caseload can help you plan more efficiently with therapy. But, it can become time-consuming hunting down enough activities to cover preschool through 5th grade. Because I don’t want time to be why you don’t use themes to serve your students, I created a Themed Therapy SLP membership to help take themed therapy planning off your plate. When you sign up for the membership, you get access to three monthly themes that have everything you need to cover goals on your caseload. See the pictures below for some of the ice cream-themed activities you can use for July. Doors re-open for the membership on July 22nd. Get on the waitlist HERE.

Have an Ice Cream Party in Speech Therapy

Struggling to come up with ice cream preschool activities that will engage your students in speech therapy sessions? Check out this blog post with different therapy ideas to use with an ice cream theme.

You can plan a real ice cream party with your students, which can be great for wh-questions and social pragmatic language. As a whole class lesson, you can map out all the details and then work on speech and language goals during the ice cream party in the next session.

If you don’t have the money to do a real ice cream party, use a pretend play set and invite your student’s favorite stuffies and characters to an ice cream party. Or, you can take a trip to the ice cream shop. I love the set from Melissa and Doug, but there are many playsets on Amazon (Amazon affiliate links are included for your convenience.)

Need more ideas for how to use an ice cream play set? Check out this blog post.

Digital Ice Cream Preschool Activities

Whether in person or teletherapy, digital apps and tools can help increase engagement and keep therapy low prep for you!

ABCya and the My Ice Cream Maker app are great for teaching sequencing for making an ice cream cone. You can also work on the following skills:

-Following directions
-Describing by color, size, texture
-Making an ice cream cone for someone else to work on perspective taking and conversation
-Answering wh-questions
-Use sound-loaded words or phrases to work on speech sounds in a naturalistic activity

Sago Mini has a fun fair app that features an ice cream cart to make your own flavors.

Get some ideas for digital ice cream preschool activities you can use in your mixed groups for speech therapy.

If you are looking for language Boom Cards that focus on various skills, check out these ice cream sequencing Boom Cards. Some of the activities may be more advanced for the preschool level. Still, the three and four-step sequencing activities work on basic temporal concepts (i.e., first, next, then), and there is also an emphasis on targeting verbs and vocabulary related to ice cream.

Based on research sharing that focusing on a broad set of language skills leads to better reading comprehension, you can approach language therapy to target various skills in one digital activity.

Needing More Summer Speech Therapy Ideas for Preschool?

Ice cream isn’t the only summer theme that works well for preschool-aged students! There are lots of other play themes you can use. To read more about that, check out this blog post. 

Research articles:

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

Hadley, E. B., Dickinson, D. K., Hirsch-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2018). Building semantic networks: The impact of a vocabulary intervention on preschoolers’ depth of word knowledge. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.225

St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Play Ideas for Speech

St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Play Ideas for Speech

by | Mar 16, 2022 | Themed Speech Therapy, Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

I don’t know a student who doesn’t get excited about hiding items in things or going on hunts to discover something sneaky. You’ve come to the right blog post if you need st. patrick’s preschool play therapy ideas that incorporate sneaky leprechauns or hidden gold!

When I spotted some wooden buildings at the Target Dollar Spot, I knew I needed to hoard, I mean, stock up on these fab toys.

You can use them with a community helper and transportation theme, and you can also do some theme smashing with st. patrick’s preschool play!

St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Speech Therapy Materials You Need

To have some sneaky leprechauns invade the town, you need the wooden buildings from the Target Dollar Spot. I don’t think the wooden buildings are available anymore at Target, but I found some alternatives that I will link below. For your St. Patrick’s preschool play activity, you will need the following:

Gold coins – You can find these at Dollar Tree

Mini pots – Usually, these are at the Dollar Tree during Halloween and St. Patrick’s season

Wooden buildings: Found at Target Dollar Spot, you can also find them on Mercari or try these Melissa and Doug blocks. 

Leprechaun printables – You can get them in the St. Patrick’s Day Grammar and Vocabulary set

Leprechaun and St. Patrick’s Day props – I always look in the dog toy section at TJ Maxx. Check out where you can find themed props HERE. Here is another version like the one in the pictures in the blog post. 

Binder clips to attach your leprechauns

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St. Patrick’s Day Play-Based Learning Activity

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Hide some leprechauns under the wooden buildings and tell your students that some sneaky leprechauns are in our town! We must find them.

Grab your favorite toy car or vehicle and look ‘under’ the buildings around the town. While you drive around, target ‘go’, ‘stop’, ‘look’, ‘where’, and ‘around.’

Have your students share three things they might see at each building. So, if you stop at the school, they can name school supplies.

Give your students inference clues about ‘where’ the leprechaun could be hiding and target ‘where’ questions during this entire activity!

How would you use this activity in your mixed groups? Share in the comments.

Gold Hunt Play-Based Speech Therapy Activity

If you have those gold coins and the mini pots, you can have students drive around the town looking for gold coins. With a permanent marker, you can write different numbers on the coins. Whatever number it says, that’s how many times your student has to practice their speech sound.

Or, you can put different amounts of coins under the buildings to work on none, more, less, and a plural noun marker. 

What’s great about this activity is you can also work on ‘where’ questions and category items that would belong at each building!

How would you adapt this activity for your students? Share in the comments.

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St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Circle Time Activity

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It can be tough to engage your young students during your co-teaching lessons! They want to wiggle and move, so it can be challenging to keep them excited at the carpet time activity.

But, if you make it feel like a fun game, they will stay excited during circle time. And in the process, you can target waiting, turn-taking, functional communication, and language skills.

With your gold coins, leprechaun printables, or St. Patrick’s themed props like shamrocks, or rainbows, you can tell your students that SOMEONE took the gold coins from the leprechaun’s pot.

To see these therapy ideas in action, head to my Instagram. 

If you need some more St. Patrick’s Day preschool activities, check out this blog post from Pocket of Preschool. 

 

Have all your students close their eyes while you give some students a gold coin. Tell them ahead of time that if they get a gold coin, they have to hide it with their hands. Then, everyone opens their eyes and has to ask different friends in the group if they stole a gold coin.

You target yes/no questions, ‘who’ questions, initiation of questions, waiting, and turn-taking!

If you have a leprechaun prop, you can also play “Who did the leprechaun sneaky upon?” to target the basic concept behind it.

Need More St. Patrick’s Day Speech Therapy Ideas?

I would love it for SLPs on social media if you tagged me @thedabblingspeechie to share how you used these St. Patrick’s preschool play therapy ideas in your sessions with students.

Don’t stress about St. Patrick’s Day for your elementary caseload. There are a LOT more engaging therapy ideas on this blog post to help you with planning. 

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3 FREE Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities

3 FREE Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities

by | Jan 28, 2022 | Themed Speech Therapy, Therapy Materials, Uncategorized

Planning themed therapy activities for your caseload can be kinda hard because we treat so many different goals and needs! Plus, we have limited time to plan and it feels like a rare commodity if we work for a district that actually gives us a material spending budget. So, we often have to fork out our own money to find quality speech therapy materials for our caseload. Today, I am sharing three free speech therapy Valentine’s day activities that you can use with mixed groups!

Easy Mixed Group Craft for Valentine’s Day

Use this Mouth Loves _____ to pieces craft to cover ANY goal on your caseload. It is super low prep. You just need to print the mouth template and grab any colored construction paper.

You can have students write words that are related to their goals. Or, if you have students glue their target pictures to the craft. In my TPT store, there is the Any Craft Companion Speech and Language Resource that has picture target words for this craft.

If you need more craft ideas to use during the month of February, check out this blog post.

 

Get Your Free Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities
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Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Verbs and Vocabulary Activities

speech-therapy-Valentines-day-activities

When it comes to serving our students with language goals, we want themed materials that can cover a lot of different language goals. Did you know that it takes children with language impairments up to 36 engagements with a word before they master it? That’s why it is super important for the word targets you chose. When you use a Valentine’s Day theme, you want to choose words related to the theme. Those words are more likely to appear in the Valentine’s Day books you read and the words being discussed in the classroom in February.

 

 

Get Your Free Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities

How to Use Valentine’s Day Vocabulary

Use this free Valentine’s Day grammar and vocabulary activity set to cover the following goals on your caseload:

 

  • -Pronouns
  • -Verb tense
  • -Present Progressive Verb Marker
  • -Describing nouns by attributes
  • -Answering wh-questions about Valentine’s Day-themed nouns
  • -Building MLU

Hit the pink button below to get all the activities mentioned in this blog post. 

 

Get Your Free Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities

If you love using vocabulary words related to your favorite seasonal themes, check out these themed grammar and vocabulary activities to pair with any seasonal book for your k-2 caseload!

Valentine's-day-speech-therapy-activities

List of Valentine’s Day Verbs to Use in Speech Therapy

If you are needing some ideas for themed verb lists for Valentine’s Day, here are some examples in the picture. You can use the EBP strategy of conversation recasting paired with explicitly explaining the grammar rule to teach different verb markers. To learn more about the conversational recasting strategy, check out this blog post. 

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Valentine’s Day Grammar Worksheet Activity

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Valentines-day-grammar-worksheets

Are you struggling with keeping your older students motivated to practice their language goals? That’s when you introduce a challenge to them and it changes everything.

Giving your students a challenge, it makes the activity about what they produce rather than what you are directing them to do in the session. So, you can search Valentine’s Day photos on Google Photos and use those with this lesson. Have students write sentences or short stories about the pictures. Give them a challenge card to have them try and include elements in their writing. After you give them some time to write sentences, you can give them points for the elements in the sentence. This allows time to discuss what the student did well with their vocabulary and grammar and how they can improve on the sentence. Grab this free Valentine’s Day language activity by clicking the pink button below. 

Get Your Free Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities

What Free Speech Therapy Valentine’s Day Activities Have You Found Helpful for Your Students?

speech-therapy-Valentines-day-activities

Do you have a go-to Valentine’s Day activity you love to use with your students? Better yet, is it a free download? Or, something that you can access on YouTube? If you have something that your students LOVE, let me know in the comments. I am sure other SLPs would love to know what is working for your students.

thedabblingspeechie