Are you teaching verbs in your teletherapy lessons with your students? That can be tricky to do over a video chat, am I right? We are used to being in person for speech and language therapy and being able to give directions to our students that are right in front of us. Why is teaching about verbs so important? It is an important language skill that students must learn! Simply put, students who struggle with speech and language skills must learn that verbs typically mean “an action.” I have 3 tips for you today about teaching verbs in teletherapy.
#1-Use What is in their Home
Since you are not there in person to choose items for the students during teletherapy, you must use things that are in their home to help with teaching verbs in teletherapy. One simple task that I like to give students during teletherapy is to follow directions. I love working on this skill because it is a life skill that students need to learn and it will help them to be more independent in the future. You can give them directions to follow in their homes, such as “get your shoes or coat.” Make the direction something that you know they are capable of doing, this way it will be easy to take data for their IEP goals.
#2-Use Boom Decks
Are you familiar with Boom Cards yet? If not, you need to familiarize yourself with them because students love them! You can set up a free account and assign “boom decks” to each of your students or groups of students depending on the speech and language goals that they are working on. Students can click through the boom deck using a computer or ipad either with you or independently and the boom decks are SELF-CHECKING and animated! They are very engaging for students to use for learning.
Here are a few of my favorite Boom decks to use for teaching verbs in teletherapy during different times of the year:
Winter fun with “snowing” animated GIFS! These snow globes “snow” while students practice naming verbs and move four images per page to the snow globe. After the scene is created, they target pronouns, positional concepts, WH questions, or describing. There are 20 cards total to go through with students.
Practice Verbs + Helping Verbs + Pronouns in 10 different apple-themed puzzle activities! Tracing, shape matches, and a traditional board game will keep your students engaged while eliciting a high number of trials.
30 animated fall action cards are included in this Fall Animated Actions deck to work on identifying verbs with your students. The page is left intentionally simplified and the student uses a single click to select the correct verb. The verbs are animated GIFs. Each question or direction includes a sound file. The included actions cover autumn, Halloween, and Thanksgiving.
This Winter Sports Vocabulary book was designed for teaching vocabulary concepts related to Winter concepts. The interactive books are designed to allow students to match pictures to each page of the book. These books are really great for minimally verbal students. They can show their knowledge without needing to verbally produce answers, just match.
For kids just learning to express themselves in single words or simple phrases, pictures support that level of speech. If students are communicating in sentences they can make up their own language to describe the picture/scene. Interactive books give little hands something to do. They also have a very clear ending. The kids can see if they get the 12 pictures done they are finished with this activity. You can easily work on many additional goals (verbs, pronouns, functions, attributes, etc.) while targeting this activity.
This Making Cards Actions Vocabulary book was designed for teaching vocabulary concepts related to Valentine’s Day concepts. The interactive books are designed to allow students to match pictures to each page of the book. These books are really great for minimally verbal students. They can show their knowledge without needing to verbally produce answers, just match.
For kids just learning to express themselves in single words or simple phrases, pictures support that level of speech. If students are communicating in sentences they can make up their own language to describe the picture/scene. Interactive books give little hands something to do. They also have a very clear ending. The kids can see if they get the 12 pictures done they are finished with this activity. I can work on many additional goals (verbs, pronouns, functions, attributes, etc.) while targeting this activity.
#3-Use Books
The final tip that I have for you for teaching verbs in teletherapy is to use books and READ with your students. There are two easy ways to do this. First you can read books to them from your office or home by showing it under a document camera as you read. If you are unsure of which document camera to use for teletherapy, I have a blog post, Picking a Document Camera for Speech Therapy all about this topic. I will tell you, once you begin using a document camera for teletherapy, you will never want to stop using it because the possibilities are endless! Find some books that work on teaching verbs and read away!
The other easy way to read with your students to teach verbs in teletherapy is to use a website such as Epic. Epic is great for reading online to or with your students. Educators can set up a FREE account and the books are all read aloud by the website or you can read them yourself. There are a wide array of fiction and nonfiction book topics plus there is a simple 5 question comprehension quiz after most stories to use.
What are your favorite ways to teach verbs in teletherapy?
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