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Speech

 
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MJUSD Speech and Language Resources

 For School Closure

Please use this resource list as optional activities for your child to engage in during school closures. These resources are optional learning opportunities. Contact your speech therapist if you have questions about your child’s goals or the best resources to access. 
 

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Stories for Kids about COVID-19

Info:

Change and uncertainty can be difficult for many children at this time, here are some resources that could support them in understanding COVID-19. 

Websites:

  • Here are two Amazing Social Stories to help kiddos understand our current closures and COVID-19

Articulation:

Websites:

  • Speech Teammate - https://www.speechteammate.com/free-articulation-worksheets

  • Carrie Clark- SLP Solutions: This YouTube channel includes 5-6 minute videos that can provide direct instruction, models, and verbal/visual cues for a student’s target speech sound. It also includes videos that can provide parents with strategies for expanding language skills in young children.

Game Ideas/How-to:

Rule number one: Make working on articulation at home FUN!  Your child will be encouraged and self-motivated to work on their articulation sounds if they are having a good time while doing it.

Rule number two: Try not to focus too much or draw negative attention to articulation errors.  We do not want to discourage your child from talking or communicating. Your child wants to feel successful. If your child makes an error, have them repeat it correctly, and then move on. To reduce frustration, only have your child focus on one sound per activity and correct those errors only. For example, if working on /s/, don’t have the child correct errors for sounds besides /s/.

Game Ideas: Find a word list/pictures online and have your child repeat a few words before taking their turn. The game possibilities are, but not limited to:

  • Go Fish, Old Maid, Bingo, Tic-Tac-Toe, Uno, Board Games

  • Race Car- Have the child build a road with their cards and as they drive over it they must say the word on the card.

  • Hide and Seek- You or your child hides pictures/words that you have cut out, when the cards are found the child must say the word.

  • Ball Game- Any type of ball or crushed up a piece of paper and a trash can. Have the child say a card and then throw the ball or paper into the trash can. Add variety and competition however you want on this.

  • Penny Slide- Get some pennies and sit on a hardwood or linoleum floor. The object of the game is to slide your penny on the floor and have it stop as close to the wall as possible without touching the wall. Have your child say a word or two before every slide.

  • Memory- You will need double cards for this game. Words can be written on index cards or paper squares  Place cards face down on the table/floor. The goal is to have the most matches by the end of the game.



Language:

Suggestions for Fostering Language Development at Home:

  • Say/read nursery rhymes so your child can hear the rhythm and flow of language.

  • Sing simple songs together to encourage vocal use, teach concepts, and expand vocabulary. (i.e. Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes)

  • Use body language in everyday communication to support multi-modal communication. (i.e. shrug your shoulders, shake your head)

  • Name and describe objects you and your child are looking at together. You can ask your child to help you come up with descriptive words (i.e. What color is it? How does it feel? Soft or hard? [Giving them a choice of words reinforces vocabulary and decreases the language demand.])

  • Model correct pronunciation and grammar. You don’t need to always correct them; just repeat what they say with the corrections. Children are like sponges – they soak up what they hear repeatedly!

  • Expand on your child’s sentences to be more descriptive/clear/grammatical. This validates his/her efforts and provides a model, which supports and encourages language growth.

  • Talk during play. The more language models your child hears, the more he/she will want to talk and will know about language.

  • Ask open-ended questions instead of yes/no questions. This encourages your child to produce language rather than answering yes or no. If he/she has difficulty, you can provide two choices. (i.e. what do you want to eat? Spaghetti or pizza?)

  • Focus on the positive! Children’s attitudes often reflect their parents’ attitudes!

  •  Listen to your child! – Give them your full attention to show that they are an equal communication partner.

  • Look at books/read together. This supports language development in so many ways! You don’t need to read the pages word for word, but talk about the pictures, make connections to your child’s life (i.e. in the book the boy has a red ball; say to your child “Oh look, there is a red ball like yours! What do you do with your ball? What does he do with his?”

  • If your child is working on a specific sound, you can look for that sound/letter throughout the book and practice saying words with that sound.

  • Summarize the main idea and a few details of what you have seen together in a movie or what you have read.  “What was your favorite part of the movie? What was that paragraph about?”

Websites:


Fluency:

Info:

  1. Practice inhalation and exhalation as well with deep and shallow breathing. Talk about how we speak on exhalations. Then practice taking a deep breath in, then slowly exhaling while saying a single word. Gradually increase to speaking in longer phrases and sentences.

  2. Practice smooth and prolonged speech while playing games. Take whatever games you have and practice using smooth and prolonged speech during those games. For example, play ‘go fish’ and have the child slow down and elongate their words when asking ‘do you have a …’

  3. Have the child identify when they have stuttered and then practice the different types of stutters to help them be less sensitive about it

  4. Practice different techniques for reducing stuttering e.g. slow rate, light contacts, easy onset, pausing.

Websites:


Literacy/Phonology:

Info:

Reading, vocabulary, and spelling time are great times to incorporate activities which develop phonics skills (learning letter-sound relationships) and phonemic awareness (how sounds within words are connected to meaning). Here are some suggested activities:


Rhyming Activities:

  • Nursery Rhymes provide an excellent framework for clapping along to the rhythm of the nursery rhyme, finding the words that rhyme, going through the alphabet to discover other words that rhyme with these words (at, bat, cat…)

  • Dr. Seuss books contain a lot of fun rhyming words. Raise your hand each time you hear a certain word or phrase (Sam I Am, green eggs and ham…)

  • There are fun poems for kids at poetry4kids.com 

  • Play the Hinky Pinky game at americanliterature.com. A “hinky pinky” has 2 rhyming words, each with 2 syllables, that answer a riddle. E.g., How do you say goodbye to a reptile? - “Later Gator”.


Alliteration Activities:

  • Create a story around a certain letter. Start with one word, e.g., “Peter” and take turns adding a word to it to make a story; e.g., “Peter played”, then “Peter played ping pong”, “Peter played ping pong and ate pizza, etc…”

  • Tongue Twisters - See if you can say these tongue twisters 3 times fast at smart-words.org/tongue-twisters.html!

  • Discuss how alliteration is different from rhyming because the words all start with the same letter whereas in rhyming, the first letter changes and the rest of the word stays the same.


Analyze Spelling or Vocabulary words:

  • Clap for each syllable as you say the words to see how many syllables are in each word.

  • Use spellingcity.com - Phonics activities - to discuss sounds within words such as which sounds are in the initial (beginning) positions of the words. Also, medial and final positions (middle and end).

  • Talk about which “speech helpers” are being used for a particular sound (jaw - open/shut; tongue - tip/middle/back; lips - spread/rounded; teeth - f/v/th; voice - off/on e.g., p/b, s/z, k/g).

  • Come up with synonyms (same meaning), antonyms (opposite meaning), and homonyms (words that sound the same but have different meanings - right/write/rite) for words.

Websites:

Social Skills:

Info:  

PEERS role-play videos are a free resource that is good for older students that are working on a variety of social skills (e.g. taking turns in conversation, joining or exiting a group discussion, don’t police, appropriate use of humor, etc.). There are often both good and bad examples of different social situations. The videos are meant to be watched together in order to generate discussion. See link below:

Websites: 


Students with Autism:

Info:

Change and uncertainty can be difficult for many children at this time, but for those students who struggle with change in routine and unstructured, here are some resources that could support them. 

Websites:

https://afirm.fpg.unc.edu/supporting-individuals-autism-through-uncertain-times 

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing:

Info:

This resource can be used to add closed captioning to videos. There are free subscriptions for families. 

Websites:

https://dcmp.org