At the end of my school year last year the buzz in the speech room was all about end of the year parties!
I decided to harness the energy into a stellar language activity. It was a great way to work on specific skills and then generalize them.
When I did it in May, it looked a lot less beautiful. We walked through the steps to plan a party and then develop an invitation.
We use our paperwork to go online to evites.com and make up an invitation.
The kids picked the party they wanted to plan, the themes, activities, menus, and more! Their favorite part was going online and developing their own invitations!
The Secondary packet is made for middle or high schoolers. Have your students design their own party using the party planning packet. Packet includes party checklist, party plan worksheet, menu worksheet, shopping list worksheet, and venue sketch. Target problem solving, language, and social skills during this planning.
After planning the party, have your students design an invitation. Four pages are included that give students support about the type of invitations commonly used including: text messaging, Facebook events, evites and paper invitations. There are specific directions that include how to use each of these event types. A page for determining which invitation type is appropriate supports discussion about formality. 12 flashcards are included for students to read the situation and determine which type of invite would be best. These are great for discussion.
12 safety cards are included. Students decide if the card demonstrates something safe or dangerous. These topics focus on sharing location and personal information on social media or as part of an invitation.
A vocabulary matching worksheet is included. If your students need more practice, use these words on flashcards.
The Elementary packet is similar. There are 70 pages in this Party Planning packet is developed for elementary aged students. It will work perfectly for grades 2-5 but I was able to easily modify it for kindergarten and first graders as well!
Students will develop plans for a party including menus, venues, and activities. This is great to use in small groups to work on communication between peers, social skills, negotiations, and compromise.
The set includes 13 vocabulary matching cards, 18 social problem solving cards, perspective taking worksheet, Expanding Expression Tool companion page for describing the party, and a thank you card template. In each party planning packet your student will consult the checklist to make sure they have included all necessary items. The pre-made party-themed materials include: Fiesta, Movie, 4th of July, Gamer, Winter Princess, Ice Cream, and Super Hero. To plan a party, print the packet that includes the planning form, menu, shopping list, invitation, venue sketch, and articulation word list for S/L/R.
Work individually or in groups to plan the party and design the details. There is also a set of blank forms to make up your own type of party. Targeted goals include: categories, problem solving, articulation, social skills, vocabulary, perspective taking, writing and more!
Grab the Secondary Packet here and the Primary Packet here.
SRN is usually a big mix of therapy ideas, materials reviews, materials I have made and whatever else randomly pops up! This week, I’m blitzing you with all the new materials I have made over the summer! It’ll be back to balanced soon, but for now prepare to be blitzed!
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I would use this with older elementary and middle school students.
Would love to work on this with my upper elementary kids. I think general language building activities are great!
I have several middle/high school students that this would be perfect for. I especially like the safety aspect where you discuss safety online and giving out personal information. We don’t always think to target that area but it is so important!
Nice to see some “formal” materials for an activity I do every year across grade levels. Super motivating for students of all ages and the perfect functional application for nearly every language target! I look forward to having “cool” materials as an alternative to my “legal pad” version! Great for my co-treat sessions with OT in my high school MD unit.
Thanks Jenni!!
I would love to try this out with my older kids!
I would love to use this with my older elementary school kiddos!
I would use it for my junior high students
I have two high school groups-one social and one language. This would be great for them as well as some of my middle schoolers, who could definitely use some fun motivating activities.
Excited to use this in my new position as a prek-k SLP this school year!
As an SLP, switching from preschool to elementary school this year, this would be a great to use with my older kiddos!!
Already bought the elementary version but would use this with my high school autism students. They love having parties.
This is an activity that I would use with my students with ASD that need to work on pragmatics as well as other language skills. Great job with designing this activity.
Wow, such a great activity. It will be great with my students.
My upper elementary kids would enjoy this
I would use this with Middle school students (mostly 6th grade). My only concern with the MS/HS version is that most of our middle school parents don’t allow the kids to use facebook/social media so doing an activity that mentions or teaches the use of facebook might not go over very well. I do love the idea though and I think the kids would love a break from traditional sit at the table and wait your turn therapy! I think the MS/HS version looks more appropriate for HS. I think the elementary could work for MS students as long as the social scenarios aren’t too “elementary” in nature. Looks like a great comprehensive product though!!
Thats great feedback! My middle schoolers are all using social media. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Vine and more. So I think it would be depending on the area you live in. Thanks!
Very creative! I love that it is a project the student can take ownership of and be creative. Activities that incorporate life skills are also nice to do as well 🙂
I am starting at a middle school this year and I am at a loss for what to do with them. This is totally what I am going to do. A whole semester of planning a party. Great for my social skills and language kids. I need to look up more of your middle school activities.
I would use it with my high schoolers working on pragmatics and maybe even higher functioning life skills students.
I would use this with my middle schoolers! This looks like a great product and a great idea for incorporating lots of language and social skills!
I would use the ms/hs packet with my social thinking groups to allow the students to generalize the skills they are learning.
Another great activity!
I have worked with HS students for the past 14 yrs and was thrilled to run across your packet. This would save me hours of work and give me fresh materials to use this year. Fingers crossed that I am selected! Thank you!
I would use this with my middle and high school students. We have been working on language and social skills.
What a great idea! I love this concept!!
This is great. I am starting a new class students of 30 teaching pragmatics, perspective talking etc. The class is all ages so this activity is perfect! Thanks for opportunity to be i drawing. Great work and activity
Holidays are always easy to plan a party for. Also, how about “Explorers Party” after their Social Studies unit is finished, “Great Scientists” party, “Time in History” party or “A Place int he World” pary. For English, have a party with characters from a novel that the students just read!
I love the entire concept, and how it expanded! It is such a creative idea to work on so many different skills.
This would be wonderful to use with my middle and HS students especially my 4 soccial communication groups!
Such a great idea! Students of all ages will jump through hoops for a party, so why not make it educational!
Thanks for the great tool. I can’t wait to see how my middle school and high schoolers react to the activity.
I would love to use this with my junior high and high school kids!
This is amazing!!! Your ideas are so inspirational! I start my first year of gradschool this August! This sort of party planner idea has been on my idea list too! It’s too perfect!
I do party planning every year with my HS students and my 18-21 transition students. This is much cuter and more organized than the notebook paper and simple checklists that we use! The only thing that I add is a visual and script for inviting guests over the phone and a script for calling venues/restaurants to make reservations or order food for delivery. Facebook is blocked at our school, plus most, if not all, of my students need to work on phone skills. I will try using Facebook with my transition students, though, as it is a major avenue for keeping social connections after high school.
I am starting my CFY working with K-8 and the middle school party packet would be great to use! I already bought the elementary aged one! Can’t wait to use them!
This would be great for my low functioning students at the HS level 🙂 It is always hard to find functional and relateable activities for this population.
This is a wonderful idea for the end of the year!! All of my kiddos, especially the middle schoolers, would love this type of activity; they enjoyed Speech, but no one wants to leave a class party to come to the Speech room in June… I would definitely use this with them!
Would love to add more structure to an activity that I think is highly motivating and very relevant to life.
Party planning is so motivating and incorporates everything we do in speech and language! It would be wonderful to have a structured approach to tackling the activity.
I would definitely use with my middle school and high school kids. I think it would be a great skill to foster that can be used to target a multitude of speech and language goals.
I work with older elementary students and know they would love this!
Absolutely love this activity for my middle school kids! Such an engaging and different activity that would get the kids attention and keep them engaged throughout! Great job keep up the amazing work!
I would love to use these materials with my older elementary school students, especially my social group!
What an awesome idea!! I would have never thought to come up with this. A very functional way to work on so many language skills. Hope I win!!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE tis idea! I will be working with ms & hs for the first time this year and I wish I had your creativity!
I would use this with my life skills middle and high school students. I am always trying to think of new ideas to integrate practical real life situations into therapy. Also talking about social media and technology is important!
I would love to use this next week for the last week of ESY
This would be great to use with my high school social groups. So functional!
This would be great for ESY when I work with older kids AND for my 4-5th graders working on carryover of artic and language goals!
These look like great packets to work on with my social skills/language groups in elementary and middle school, even artic kids. The activities can be used in many ways.
I think my older middle school students would benefit from this activity. It looks fun but practical and applies to life skills I continually address with my students.