I'm sharing my whole week of lessons plans with you for week one of teletherapy and distance learning!
Obviously I couldn't stray far from themes, since you KNOW my passion for themed therapy. For week one, I picked a theme my students were already familiar with and love:
Next, I'm going to do a "my favorites" activity. This allows the student to show me something they LOVE from home, almost like show and tell. I'll be showing something I love from my home, too! This will be great for my gen ed students grades first through fifth.
For my younger students and self-contained students, I'll be using this freebie (click for link) from Panda Speech (loveee the visuals to guide them!).
TIP: For students who aren't able to "take control" of the screen, I like to just tell them the pieces "float around like magic." I've tried this method and it successfully engages them, even without them being able to touch and move pieces themselves!
After that, I've split my lesson depending on the grade/skill level.
For all grade levels, I'll be using my Farm Themed Unit because it covers SO MANY goals!
PreK, Kinder, Self-Contained:
Activity: Little Blue Truck story mat for coloring (included in my thematic farm unit!). I'll simply screen share the coloring sheet and student's can annotate/color right on the screen. If the student doesn't have that capability, I'll have them tell me what to color and with what color (helloooo expressive language!)
Working on phonological processes or articulation?? I'll be splitting the screen to show both pages for the student: the Little Blue Truck coloring sheet, AND my busy HW page with picture targets. You can easily cross off words as you say them, or use a stamp via the annotate feature ("stamp 5 times after saying the word 5 times!").
Need to engage the little ones with more than just coloring??
Pull out your farm set, your farm animals, a fun animal craft. I'm going to hide my farm animals in a box, mixed with some other mini objects (maybe food items?). I'll add a couple silly things from my home like a spoon, tissue, maybe even my slipper (lol). I'll slowly pull things out (and act very shocked at everything that comes out!), and the student can help me decide: is that a farm animal???
We can work on describing, categorizing, labeling... or even just use it for fun!
This will get some silly's out, and I know I can use this when I need to "reel" them back in.
I'll have a similar activity at-the-ready for all of my teletherapy sessions!
Grades first to third:
My first through third graders will be using these real-life images for discussion and describing, right from my
thematic farm unit!
The best part? When you click on each image, it takes you to an educational video, directly related to each picture. I know my kids will LOVE this, because it's not something we normally do in speech. I'll have full control of the video, so I can pause to ask questions and generate discussion. Then, we can come back to the picture and work on describing, talking about what we learned, etc.
TIP: Want to extend this activity even further? Use a "KWL" method of discussion.
"What do you already know about ___?"
"What do you wonder about ____?"
and after the video, "What did you learn about ____?"
Grades fourth to fifth:
I like using articles with my older elementary students, because I can target both speech therapy goals, AND skills that they're responsible for knowing in their classrooms.
For our first or second session together, we'll be reading this article from NewsELA (I even like to split articles into two sessions). We'll work on goals such as using context clues, comprehension, summarizing, and main idea.
If you're not familiar with the
NewsELA website... you're missing out. It's free with a school email, and it's
incredible. You can change articles based on student lexile or skill level (for example, I chose a third grade level for the above article for my 4th graders so that it's easy for them to digest). It also includes quiz questions AND a writing prompt. All the work is done for you! My students are already familiar with NewsELA, so it helps bring some normalcy to our session.
I won't be adding a carryover activity to any of my plans this week, because I want the focus to just be on getting used to this new platform together. If you want to keep things simple, ask the student to pick another show and tell item for next week, and be prepared with 3 ways to describe it for your next session. Otherwise, keep it simple for them (and parents!).
I hope this has helped bring a few fresh ideas to your distance learning.
Happy speech-ing (from afar!)
