Carryover SOS: Strategies for Speech Therapy! {Linky Party}

Today I am super excited to be joining Crazy Speech World for a linky devoted to one of my favorite topics: Generalization.

It does nothing for me when a student is able to meet their goals in my therapy room but is not able to do it all in their classroom. Here are some of my favorite carryover strategies.

1. Use your “extra” school pictures as reminders. Some of you might have already seen my post on this activity HERE. My school is so generous with our pictures that they give us each around 30 self portraits. I love their generosity but for years I was baffled about what to do with all these pictures! I finally started telling my articulation students that I was going to tape a “Mrs. Allison” to their desks so they would start remembering to say their sounds correctly in their classroom.

 It works! I’m not sure whether to be offended by this but for some students, just the thought of having a “Mrs. Allison” on their desks was enough for them to start remembering their sounds! You can download a free speech bubble printout to use with your school pics HERE.

2. Parent sheets. This Thursday are our parent teacher conferences. I am prepared this year with my parent handouts. I often find that parents just need a few materials to start working with their kiddos. You are likely to get better results if they are easy to follow and not overwhelming.

You can find these easy articulation practice sheets, along with a few language ones in my packet, Parent Teacher Conference {Speech and Language Forms}.

3. Finally, a simple reading carryover strategy I’ve been using this year is during the time I have my kiddos read consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words. I use paint cards for this activity and am in love with them (previous post).

However, instead of just asking my students to read the word, I ask them immediately after “What does this word mean?” By not saying the word, I can gauge if my students actually know what the word is. For example: Student reads the word “bed” but changes the vowel only slightly. It sounds fine so if I was only monitoring how he read it, I probably would have marked it correct. However, when asked what the word means, the student says “something that’s not good.” Hmmm…so he thought the word was “bad.” I constantly tell my students the reason we read is for meaning. Even if we read it correctly but have no sense of meaning, we did not truly read it. I’m picky, I know. This activity is listed as one of my “carryover” activities because it works on so many skills at once and students are able to generalize this skills within the classroom.

I hope you’ve found some of these things interesting!
Thanks again for hosting, Jenn! Make sure to stop by her blog for more carryover ideas!