Several years ago, I decided that I had had enough. My students had spent five minutes negotiating whether or not they should play “Candyland” or “Sequence”; then five additional minutes deciding who was going to be “red”; then three minutes deciding who would be going first. I accomplished less than ten trials/data points during the entire session. I was done. D.O.N.E. I found a cabinet with closing doors, put half my games into it and gave away the other half. Although my students that year continued to beg for their favorites, by the next year the games had been mostly forgotten. Today, my students don’t even realize that I have a treasure trove of games next to my desk collecting dust.
Please don’t misunderstand. I want students to like coming to speech. I hope that they will tell their parents and teachers that they enjoy speech time. But I do not want them to think that speech is just where we have fun and play games. For my articulation students that could graduate in a few years, I hope they will see graduating from speech as a great accomplishment and not a punishment. For my students that will likely be in speech for many years, I hope they think of speech as a safe learning space. For all of my students, I hope that my caring, fantastic personality* will make students feel special. In none of these scenarios is speech equivalent to a game room.
*If you know me in real life, please do not let the rest of the world know the extent to which I exaggerate my character traits.
How can we make speech enjoyable and still accomplish our goals? Here are some ideas:
- Add laughter into therapy sessions. There is nothing like making students laugh to make speech enjoyable. Use ridiculous mad libs, puppets, acting, or jokes to lighten the mood while remaining true to the speech goals. Sometimes, I make my students get out of their chairs to demonstrate a new vocabulary word that we are working on, or to act out a scene for a story.
- Use crafts to engage speech and language. I am a big fan of crafts. They work on so many direction-following skills in addition to providing hands-on experiences. Crafts are also perfect for taking home and re-explaining the entire process again and again. Win! My lesson plans always include crafts to do with students, in addition to the plethora of crafts you can find on Pinterest (please follow me here for tons of organized pins and ideas!).
- Play word games. I designed my speech club curriculum to entail daily word games that also work on articulation sounds. Students enjoy these activities while still knowing that they are learning.
- Occasionally use simple games that take no time to set up or clean up. I recommend open-ended game boards that you can find free in many of my book units or on teachers pay teachers. I am a huge fan on Super Duper’s Chipper Chat for an easy, fun reinforcer.
- Have a party! My groups receive speech dollars for being safe, respectful, and responsible in speech. They can earn additional money by returning signed homework. When the team earns $75, they get a party. By making the party expensive, they only get one or two parties per year. But by reminding them during each session about how much money they have and what they are working towards, they are excited about that lofty goal of ice cream and popcorn (seriously… that’s all it is!).
What do you think? Should speech be all fun and games? Comment below.
On the topic that it’s not always fun and games, I have finally put together a book unit on one of my favorite picture books (Amazon affiliate link) “Jumanji“. This classic book was made into a popular movie starring Robin Williams in 2000. In this story, the amazing author/illustrator Chris VanAllsburg tells the tale of two bored children that find a board game that literally transforms their world for the duration of its play time. You don’t want to miss either this book or the speech/language book unit that I have put together for students in second to fifth grades!
Wondering why to use literature in speech therapy? Read this post.
Check out all of the parts in this book companion: vocabulary, grammar, story comprehension, and articulation!
Make sure to check out the Jumanji book unit here !