Page 110 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

Literacy-Based Speech Language Therapy Activities

Make a copy of this chart and observe a student in a handful of settings to see where he is having the
most success and where he is having difficulty. Once you know his level of functioning, share the

information with his teacher to make her life easier and the child more successful. We then chose to
increase his average performance by adding one step or one component. Count your tick marks in
these boxes to serve as your data collection.

We identify where the child is functioning and share that with the teacher. We then increase
complexity (below move over or down one box) until the child demonstrates difficulty. Use the
chart below or collect your own data in a similar fashion.

Do your therapy materials address your goals?
This question almost sounds silly but the truth is that not everything we do in speech therapy

addresses our goals very well. True, some activities are magical and can be used in almost any
situation. But how do we know? We need to evaluate our therapy materials and decide whether they
address the goals we are working on. If they do not, we can add things to our therapy sessions or

abandon them all together.

As an example, I had a book that I loved and that the students loved to work with. This book make
many of my therapy sessions fly (Where the Wild Things Are). I had another book that I loved that

completely stunk as far as speech therapy went and I was always trying to find ways to make my
therapy better (The Gift of Nothing). The truth was that the good book inherently addressed therapy
goals better due to the sequence of the story, the variety of words, and high concentration of
articulation sounds. The other book was just cute. Chances are, what works best for you is also

therapy-rich. We can evaluate everything that we use in therapy to know how richly it supports our
goals and efforts. Use the chart on the following page to remind you what to work on and whether
an activity is good or not. A word of warning, sadly you might have to ditch some of your favorites.

Both through the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) Schools Surveys and
through surveys that we have conducted through The Speech Therapy Blog, we see professionals
continually beat themselves up for not being able to take good data. They worry about not providing

great therapy for the same reason because they are overwhelmed. Hopefully by now you see that
what you choose to work on (goals) and what you measure (data) are one and the same. I think that
we have traditionally treated this as two different processes.

Secondly, we are also guilty of seeing data collection as something that is painful or something that
interferes with intervention. Hopefully, you also see that the children can take their own data and
that their work is data collection. You just need the right templates and materials so that what they

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