Resource shows that sentence combing is a really effective way to expand and improve syntax or sentence structure for our adolescent students with Specific Language Impairment; however, *finding* free or low-cost and easily accessible activities that target this skill can be a challenge. This is why I am excited to share all the wonderful sentence … Continue reading Sentence Combining Activities: The Roundup
Category: Expressive Language
No Prep Vocabulary Activities for Middle & High School
Secondary school students with language impairments are often quite behind their peers in vocabulary, and it can be difficult to know where to start with them; moreover, we want to find a way to target their vocabulary deficit and use middle/high school class and curriculum materials. How do we make sure we are targeting vocabulary, … Continue reading No Prep Vocabulary Activities for Middle & High School
Middle School Language Goals
I don't know about you but when I first started working in middle school, I was tough to transition from elementary to secondary level speech & language goals. Students in middle and high school are spending less time reading narrative or stories and more reading expository non-fiction texts. They are "reading to learn" and need … Continue reading Middle School Language Goals
Virtual Grammar and Sentence Combining Resource for Teens
Grammar and sentence structure goals are pretty common for our middle and high school speech and language students, yet it can be difficult to come up with ways to target them that keep our students engaged. I find my students get sick of answering questions about pictures quickly and also find some of those grammar … Continue reading Virtual Grammar and Sentence Combining Resource for Teens
Vocabulary Description Guide for Teens and Tweens
I don't know about you, but I have found those HedBanz questions pretty inadequate for teaching my students how to describe vocabulary. Similarly, EET type guides or TPT visuals that focus on category, function, location, etc can be great for basic nouns but insufficient to teach students to describe the higher-level tier 2 vocabulary (including … Continue reading Vocabulary Description Guide for Teens and Tweens
Teaching Students with SLI about Dialect and Code-Switching
Because I work at a fairly diverse district, I hear a lot of different dialects being spoken by my students. I do not write goals around it because obviously students are entitled to their culture and speaking style; however, I do like to at least teach students that they speak a different dialect that may … Continue reading Teaching Students with SLI about Dialect and Code-Switching
Break-out/Escape the Room Speech Therapy Activity!
With the school year wrapping up, I felt inspired to do an escape-the-room type activity with my speech & language middle school students. I'm still on a tight budget, so I kept things simple.
Teaching Complex Sentences
Complex sentences are the bread and butter of academic subjects. Language arts, science, and even math classes are rife with long, complex sentences that students with speech/language impairments find difficult to decipher. Speech-Language Pathologists sometimes point out that complex sentences with conjunctions have been explicitly taught in regular and special education classrooms, so what can … Continue reading Teaching Complex Sentences
Generating Definitions
For students with language disorders, definitions are tough work. So how does an SLP break down the skill of defining words into manageable steps? One word: templates!
Context Clues: Start with the Basics
Context clues activities are hard to select because we don't know exactly which words are familiar or partially familiar to the student. Nonsense word context clues eliminate the confounding variable of prior word knowledge or exposure and allow my students to focus exclusively on using their pre-taught context clue skill.
