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
Category: Receptive Language
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
Teaching Complex Sentences III: Comprehending in Paragraphs
If you've been following my posts Teaching Complex Sentences and Teaching Complex Sentences II: Lengthy Nouns, you may already know that many students with SLI struggle with comprehension at the sentence structure level and need explicit instruction. We've previously discussed having students learn simple definitions for subordinate conjunctions and practice their uses in sentences as … Continue reading Teaching Complex Sentences III: Comprehending in Paragraphs
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
Sketch and Speak: Teaching Students to Take Pictograph Notes in Speech Therapy
One of the major issues I encounter with secondary school students is they both don’t know how to and are generally unwilling to take notes on what they read. Recently, this got me thinking about a sketching/pictograph technique I used all the way in my student clinic days called Stickwriting wherein the student basically took … Continue reading Sketch and Speak: Teaching Students to Take Pictograph Notes in Speech Therapy
How to Use Videos for Language Therapy
Often, getting our students to engage with reading-based therapy tasks can feel like pulling teeth- both for students and therapist! Our school clients often present with co-morbid reading and learning disabilities that make reading a daily struggle, and so it's no wonder they immediately deflate when we put an article in front of them. My … Continue reading How to Use Videos for Language Therapy
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 II: Lengthy Nouns
In my earlier post on complex sentences, I talked about teaching student to use and understand a variety of conjunctions. In this post, I'd like to address another area of syntax that can be challenging for students with language impairment: lengthy noun phrases.
