Why homework for social skills? updated 9/2024 I’m not a fan of homework for homework’s sake, especially with middle and high school students. Sometimes, there is a need to reinforce certain social skills or social communication concepts with students outside of our speech therapy sessions and sometimes homework can serve as a way to get through more content. Also, some… Read More
Social Skills Homework Activities
Teaching Personal Space: Middle High School
Updated 7/24 Do you teach personal space concepts to middle and high school students with autism during your in-person or online speech therapy or special education sessions? This blog post is on personal space activities with older students. If you are looking for personal space ideas for preschool or elementary students, this blog post may help or you might like… Read More
HOW TO TEACH SELF ADVOCACY SKILLS
Do you advocate on behalf of your high school students with disabilities? Hopefully, all SLPs firmly answered “yes.” Do you teach your students how to advocate for themselves? This is as important, if not more! RESPECT to the school districts that teach students about their educational rights well before their transition meeting, but knowing your rights is only one part… Read More
Teaching Social Rules
Are you teaching social rules? updated 1/23 What do we mean by social rules or social norms, aka inferred rules? Are there really rules for social interaction? Yes. They are not absolute like, say school rules or sports rules. As SLPs and special education teachers, we often discuss what skills are important to teach in our social skills or speech… Read More
Make a Visual Schedule like a PRO!!
updated 9/23 This post contains Amazon links. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a small commission for clicks! Making a visual schedule or visual supports is a common intervention for neurodivergent students. Visual schedules give a sense of what is expected during each activity. They help create connections, increase language skills, and build independence. They provide the magic trio of structure,… Read More
Neurodiversity Books
If you are interested in building or expanding your library of neurodiversity books, as I am, check out the descriptions below! Looking to help a child celebrate their neurodiversity, be proud of their differences and understand their strengths in your speech therapy sessions? A carefully-chosen neurodiversity storybook is a great place to start! Affiliate links are used in this post…. Read More
Goal-directed Summer Homework
Do you send goal-directed speech therapy summer homework to your students? Updated 1/23 I’ve never been a fan of sending huge summer speech therapy packets home with students, even when I was in a brick and mortar setting, unless they were requested by a parent. I figured if the parent was asking for work, there’s a fighting chance they will… Read More
Teaching Cyber safety to High School Students
What cyber safety concepts should we cover? Teaching cyber safety or cybersecurity to high school students can be a daunting task, given all the online risks they face. What are the important internet safety topics to address with our high school students? In the United States, 50% to 97% of teens aged 13 to 17 years are active on at… Read More
Informal Pragmatics Assessment of Social Communication
The Evolving Definition of Pragmatics Informal pragmatics assessment of social communication should have both a receptive and an expressive component. Using a video based assessment tool allows the evaluator to efficiently obtain information about what the student understands about the skill as well as how the student uses it. The definition of pragmatics has evolved to recognize the receptive and… Read More
Boom Cards for Social Skills
Are you using boom cards for social skills? Updated 1/23 Are you looking for online social skills games to use during speech therapy sessions? Are you a teletherapist that teaches social skills in an online format? Maybe you are already using some Boom cards, but you’re wondering “what makes a quality set of Boom cards for social skills?” According to… Read More
Lessons on Diversity and Bias
Updated 1/23 Do you incorporate lessons on diversity and bias into your speech therapy sessions? As speech language pathologists and teachers, we can be on the front lines of fighting racism. Have you been hesitant to incorporate lessons on diversity, bias or racism into your speech therapy sessions? Please don’t be-for some students, you might be the only adult encouraging… Read More
Teaching Formal & Informal Communication
Formal or informal communication? updated 1/23 In the world of texting, social media and multiple avenues of communication via technology, the lines between formal and informal communication can be blurry. Understanding the differences between them is a valuable skill for our speech therapy students. Students need to understand that each type of communication has a time and a place. They need… Read More
Topic Appropriateness & Oversharing
Do you teach the skills of topic appropriateness and oversharing to your students with social communication differences? Do you have students that don’t know what information to share with others? Do they have a good understanding of what things you can say to friends versus family versus strangers? Topic appropriateness and oversharing are two important social communication skills to cover with… Read More
New Years Activities for Older Students!
New Years Activities for Middle and High School Students! Updated 12/22 Looking for some new years activities to use during speech therapy with older students? Upon returning to school after a break, is the perfect time to have students reflect upon challenges and accomplishments of the prior year. Since many of them may have watched or participated in a new… Read More
Why work on giving and receiving gifts in speech therapy?
Keep your making inferences activities and perspective taking scenarios relevant by working on how to receive a present and choose the right gift! Do your students celebrate Christmas, Kwaanza, or another holiday where gift-giving is part of the custom? If this answer is “yes,” this post is for you. Most of our students love to receive presents! However, the process… Read More
Halloween Speech and Language Therapy Ideas
Updated 10/2021 Looking for some fun halloween speech and language activities for your speech therapy sessions? What is not to love about fall and halloween? I love decorating my home, both inside and outside for fall and Halloween and I also decorated my therapy room with… Read More
Starting and Joining a Conversation!
updated 3/2023 How do you teach your students to succeed in joining a conversation during your speech therapy sessions? An important social competency, it can be a difficult social communication skill for many of us to acquire, especially when we are joining a conversation with unfamiliar people. I like to start by discussing with my students that there are two… Read More
Screening & Informal Evaluation: Selective Mutism
Are you planning for a screening or informal assessment for selective mutism? What is selective mutism? According to Asha, selective mutism is a childhood anxiety disorder. It is also known as “situational speaking.” A primary characteristic is a child’s inability to speak and communicate effectively in select social settings, like school. A child’s symptoms of reluctance to speak can vary… Read More
Mother’s Day Activities for Speech!
Updated Jan., 2023 Struggling to come up with Mother’s Day activities for speech therapy? There are so many cutesy things out there for younger kids to do to celebrate Mother’s day but what about our older students in speech therapy? Check out this variety of mostly free ideas to do with older students around mother’s day! I think the animal… Read More
Assertive Communication Skills
Why teach assertive communication? Assertive communication means you are standing up for yourself, and letting others know how you are feeling, in a kind and respectful manner. It is an important skill for our students to learn. Why? A multitude of reasons! Other blog posts on important life skills for older students: How do we teach students to be assertive?… Read More
Conflict Resolution: Therapy Activities!
Updated 4/2024 March is a great month for working on conflict resolution skills (compromise, I messages and more) with your middle school and high school students. Navigating a conflict involves a variety of skills, including listening, emotional regulation, problem-solving, communication, and the ability to compromise, to name a few. The ability to successfully resolve conflict depends on your ability to manage stress… Read More
Spaghetti and meatballs S blends!
Updated 2/2022 I often work on teaching s blends and reducing the cluster reduction process of prevocalic and postvocalic s blends with younger (pre-k to k) children. From a phonological standpoint, we teach the child how to mark both sounds in the s blend to reduce the pattern of cluster reduction. I… Read More
Books for Social Emotional Learning
Why use Books for Social Emotional Learning? Research shows that reading stories is an effective method for social-emotional learning. Using books therapeutically, also known as bibliotherapy, helps foster social-emotional growth in children. Children participating in bibliotherapy are able to develop insight, a deeper understanding of self, solutions to personal problems and the development of life skills. These SEL books are… Read More
Receiving and Giving Compliments!
Giving compliments is an important social communication skill with your middle school or high school students! updated 1/2023 February is a great month for working on the important social communication skill of receiving and giving compliments with those middle and high school students, because of Valentine’s day, but you can work on it anytime! Giving compliments is one way to… Read More
Valentine’s Day Activities for Older Students
updated 1/23 Looking for ways to merge a Valentine’s day theme into therapy with your older students? Read on! I’ve got activity ideas and freebies for hassle-free planning! Valentine’s Day Activities – Compare and Contrast Emotions and Character Traits! A great vocabulary activity for Valentine’s day. Here’s a list of emotions and character traits you can compare (beyond the typical… Read More
Teaching Conversation Skills-Older Students
Are you working on conversation skills with your middle or high school students? Looking for ideas for working on conversation skills in your speech therapy sessions? The main conversation skills I cover in this post are: You might find these other blog posts on conversation skills helpful: Starting and joining a conversation Having meaningful conversations Conversation Skills: Dialogue versus Monologue… Read More
Hanukkah, Kwanzaa & Christmas Vocabulary Activities
Looking for vocabulary and language activities for speech therapy AND to facilitate understanding of multicultural traditions, including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa? Exploring these holidays is an activity rich in vocabulary! If you are working in a school district that still supports the “month-long Christmas-curriculum” in December, it might be time to make a change! If you need language activities for older… Read More
Understanding Polite Lies!
What is a polite lie? A “polite lie” is also know as being a “social fake” or telling a “white lie.” We consider telling a polite lie when the unfiltered truth would unintentionally hurt someone or cause an unintended conflict. So, we filter what we want to say to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. When I tell a polite lie, I… Read More
Teaching Tone of Voice
Teaching tone of voice to middle and high school students can be a challenge! Updated 1/23: Why? It’s a type of nonverbal communication that most tweens and teens are not thinking about at this time in their life! Add onto that, a student with a developmental challenge, such as autism and you’ve got your work cut out for you! … Read More
Halloween Youtube Videos for Language Therapy
Halloween is a perfect time to use youtube videos! I love incorporating youtube videos into my therapy sessions! Although trick or treat and dressing in costumes is no longer allowed in my school (sad face), I still find ways to incorporate Halloween into my speech therapy sessions. My preschool students love them! Here is a description of a few of… Read More
Ready for NO Print Icebreakers for Teletherapy?
updated 1/23 I love a good no print icebreaker for my middle and high school students. The perfect icebreaker to use in speech therapy is one that helps me learn about my students but doesn’t make them uncomfortable. Brick and mortar SLP or teacher? Check out this prior post on printable icebreaker activities for your middle and high school students!… Read More
Perspective-taking activities middle & high school!
Perspective-taking helps us avoid rash judgements! Many of our speech therapy students on the spectrum, or those with ADHD or mental health challenges, are impulsive in their first impressions of people and situations. The October lesson plan for social skills is devoted to perspective-taking. This post is about perspective-taking activities for middle and high school students-you can find ideas for… Read More
Parent education: preschool stuttering
Do you have cases of preschool stuttering on your caseload? Next to social skills, fluency is my favorite SLP area! I have both personal and professional experiences to draw upon as my father was a stutterer and one of my now adult daughters had a long period of disfluencies (8 months-felt like years) during her preschool years. These experiences were… Read More
Nonverbal Communication and Tone of Voice
Are you planning lessons to teach students about nonverbal communication and tone of voice? This blog post is for you if you are teaching nonverbal communication skills to students with autism or social communication challenges. For example: recognizing facial expressions and identifying and using tone of voice. Help your students understand and recognize the common emotions we communicate through our… Read More
Teaching Sarcasm: Understanding and Use!
Updated 1/23 Are you teaching sarcasm to your students and clients during speech therapy or counseling? It’s a nuanced topic and people have strong opinions about the its place in the world as a communication tool. Some SLPs and parents wonder if detecting sarcasm is a skill we should (or shouldn’t) be teaching students with autism during our speech therapy… Read More
Social Skills: Conversation
Social Skills Conversation Skills – Responses that form Connections. updated 1/23 Do you focus on how to have meaningful conversations in your social skills or speech therapy sessions? How can we teach our students to have meaningful conversation skills? You know, conversations that don’t just bounce around on the surface but actually help them form friendships and work towards enhanced… Read More
GOOGLE Slides in Speech Therapy!
Do you want to use GOOGLE ™ slides in speech therapy but you’re not sure where to start? No problem, we are all on a different learning continuum with technology! This post is intended for speech pathologists or teletherapists that aren’t sure how to use GOOGLE ™ slides in speech, are completely new to GOOGLE™ slides, or have purchased a Google ™ slides… Read More
Social Rules for Community Settings!
Do you teach social rules or social norms by community setting? The experience of one student Recently, one of my high school teletherapy students faced a manifestation determination because this student had exposed his/her private parts during an online class. He/she gave no thought to the fact that they were on camera and what camera view the students in the… Read More
Test-taking Vocabulary Interventions!
Do you work on test-taking vocabulary with middle and high school students? Do you have middle or high school students that don’t do well on formal tests and assignments with open-ended questions? Are you spinning your wheels when working on academic or high stakes vocabulary? One way to have your interventions make a cross curricular impact is to work on… Read More
Social Media to Teach Inference Skills
Do you use Instagram or other social media to teach inference skills? It is engaging for our middle and high school students! The format of social media gives our students the visual supports and cues they need to make an inference. Social media can be a great way to teach students how to draw conclusions using materials that they are… Read More
Using youtube for social skills!
updated 9/2024 Do you use youtube for social skills instruction? Do you incorporate social skills videos into your speech therapy sessions? Whether you see students in person or online, youtube is a great option for working on social skills. I had a second grader last week who whispered (loudly) “my speech teacher is letting me watch youtube” to his older… Read More
Social Skills Websites for Teletherapy
Are you looking for social skills websites for your online instruction for teletherapy, speech therapy or distance learning? This blog post is for you then! The sites are in no particular order and I am including the sites that I use in my digital social skills arsenal! These include sites that have social skills materials specifically for online learning. I… Read More
TPT Digital Activities Platform, EASEL
Udated 1/23 Are you ready to add another tool to your digital classroom? Whether you work in a brick and mortar school, do distance learning, or perhaps a hybrid, you’ll want to know about the TPT digital activities platform, also known as “EASEL.” Teachers Pay Teachers is making it easy for buyers of TPT products to turn that ho-hum static… Read More
Meaningful Conversations: tool for older students
Updated 1/23 In speech therapy, what is the end goal is for social skills or pragmatics instruction? For me, an important one is meaningful conversations. While individual therapists may differ on some of the details, we want our students to be able to function successfully in jobs and social settings, right? This boils down to relationships and connections. After all,… Read More
Digital Annotation on Google Classroom Speech Therapy
Interested in more digital tools for google classroom speech therapy? Worksheets? Ho hum. Worksheets online? Fun! Distance Learning? YES! You can assign speech therapy homework to your students using your pdfs and have them complete it online with fun and interactive online writing tools known as digital annotation. Kami is one free chrome app that you can use and it… Read More
Social Skills and Teletherapy
How do you do a social skills session during teletherapy? I get it. When you think of providing social communication therapy, teletherapy might not seem like the best service delivery option for speech therapy. You might even think, how can you work on social skills when you are not person to person? After all, the word “social” conjures up images… Read More
Responsible Problem Solving & Sportsmanship
ARE YOU TEACHING RESPONSIBLE PROBLEM SOLVING TO YOUR MIDDLE OR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS? Updated 1/2023 Do you teach life skills such as responsible problem solving and decision-making? Do you cover the social skills and sportsmanship skills related to playing indoor and outdoor games, with your middle and high school students? This post will give you teaching ideas and resources for… Read More
Developing Perspective taking with Younger Children
Do you work on developing perspective taking with younger students in speech therapy? The social skill of perspective taking is the ability to look beyond your own personal viewpoint and consider another person’s perspective or point of view. Teaching perspective-taking to younger students can be challenging. Have you asked yourself, “how do I teach it to students who barely have… Read More
Google Classroom for Speech Therapy!
updated 1/23 Have you considered google classroom for speech therapy? Yes, google classroom has benefits for SLPs, especially for assigning homework. I recently set classrooms up for my older students as a place to assign homework for teletherapy. (At this time there is no limit on the number of classrooms you can set up). It’s a work in progress but… Read More
Google Apps or Boom™ Cards?
Google apps or Boom™ cards? updated 1/23 There is alot of buzz about google apps and boom™ cards for speech and language therapy. When I first started using and publishing boom cards, I’d get questions about how they were different from Google apps. I’ve used both so lets compare and contrast them for SLPs. Many SLPs are already using google… Read More
Autism in Girls: Search and Find!
Teaching Inferences with Greek Mythology!
Social Skills Groups: Middle & High School
Self-assessment of Social Skills!
Icebreakers: Middle & High School Students
Why icebreakers for middle and high school students? Back to school is already a reality for many teachers. We need icebreakers to help us form relationships with our students and get off to a good start with them. Icebreakers also help our students get to know each other! Icebreakers for high school students? An effective icebreaker game for this age… Read More
School Supports for Students with Selective Mutism
Speech language pathologists and speech therapy can help identify accommodations for students with selective mutism. updated 2024 Children with selective mutism often talk normally in settings where they are comfortable, like home. In other places, such as speech therapy, at school or the community, they can’t speak due to anxiety. A first step in treating these children is to remove… Read More
Best Winter Books for Social Emotional Skills!
There are so many great winter books available for teaching social emotional skills in speech therapy! Sometimes it’s challenging to find books that target important social skills, like perspective-taking and theory of mind, and also fit into a seasonal theme so I can use them in mixed groups! I’m often looking for winter-themed books that are not related to Christmas… Read More
Attitude of Gratitude: teaching thankfulness
Do your students need to develop an attitude of gratitude? Are you looking for Thanksgiving speech therapy ideas? updated 11/2024 November, Thanksgiving month, is a great month for fostering an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness with your middle and high school students. Keep social skills and social communication interventions relevant and help your student shine at the Thanksgiving table with… Read More
Coping with Waiting!
Coping with waiting is a skill we can all use! Waiting is one of those unavoidable hassles that bring out the worst in us. Add on autism, adhd, emotional dysregulation, and it can be a big challenge! If waiting is a challenge for your middle and high school students with autism or adhd, you can easily work on it while… Read More
Grey Area Flexible Thinking
Flexible thinking is a common goal for students with autism, adhd and mental health challenges. Using this grey area thinking approach is a strategy for reducing rigid thinking. Let’s discuss what grey area thinking is not. In the counseling world, rigid thinking is sometimes referred to as dichotomous, or black and white thinking. Black and white thinking is when one… Read More
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