Page 170 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

Literacy-Based Speech Language Therapy Activities

Cumulative Stories

A cumulative story is a story that builds on a
pattern. It starts with one person, place, thing, or
event. Each time a new person, place, thing, or

event is shown, all the previous ones are repeated,
such as, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed
a Fly.

Cumulative stories are great for
therapy because:

 There is LOTS of repetition, repetition, repetition (can you say, “Increased number of
productions?!”). We love this for teaching a new sentence structure and for articulation

practice.
 The macrostructure tends to be a problem/solution type of structure. Each event reinforces
the initiating problem of the story and a new attempt at solving it. It helps children to think

outside of the box of different solutions to the same problem.
 Many contain the “typical” macrostructure elements such as characters, setting (time and

place), problem, solution, initiating event, character intentions and desires, and moral.
 The end of the story is distinctly different from all the previous, reduplicated events. This
gives the end of the story an OOMPH that can be used to teach the concept of wrapping up

a story with a strong ending.
 There are many opportunities for predicting what might happen next. Many times, the

sequential events (and attempts to solve the problem) are the same, so the child can pick up
on that pattern. The final, different event makes predicting even more fun and shows that
there can be numerous ways to make a prediction.

 They can be adapted across age/grade levels, to work at the cognitive level of the student(s).

How to use Cumulative Stories in Speech Therapy

As an example, here is one of our favorite cumulative stories, and how we
like to use it in therapy to target a variety of goals:

The Giant Turnip/El Nabo Gigante

by Aleksei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey

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