Conversation for Articulation and Social Practice

Hey all!

Today I thought I would post a free download with questions and topics for eliciting conversation. I use these ALL THE TIME in my therapy room for artic carry-over and working on conversational skills. The download has 36 cards with open-ended topics/questions. Sometimes when working at the conversational level, my students decide to switch from their excessive hallway talking to four-word answers. Anybody else have this happen to them?!?! Anyways, I've found that some of these cards really help to get my kids thinking and cut down on the need for me to say "tell me more about that" all the time. I hope you enjoy them too!

I'm pretty short and sweet today, as it is SPRING BREAK here! The attachement is below for you to use. What are some tools you use to elicit conversation?

Conversation Questions and Topics

Sometimes Life is a ZOO!

I realize that last week's post was about preschool language group, but this week's lesson turned out so cute, I just couldn't resist talking about it again.

As you can guess by the title of this post, we have been talking about the Zoo in preschool. Here's what we did:

First we read the book "1,2,3, To the Zoo" by Eric Carle. My kids were immediately excited about this book because the first page showed favorite item....a TRAIN! As we looked through the book (there are only numbers, no words), we sequenced the story on the white board using some train cars I made and magnetic numbers. Each time we turned the page, I had my kiddos start chugging like a train to see what animal was coming next. Those simple movements and actions always keep them more engaged!

Next, we made our own zoo cages with a styrofoam meat tray, yarn, and pictures. The students chose which animals they wanted in their cage and then got to close them in by wrapping the yarn around. I think this activity would have been even cuter if we used stickers. I got so much language out of this craft and the kids were excited to be zookeepers!

The last thing we did invovled my monkey puppet and a plastic banana from my play food. We played the game "Do you have my banana?" and here's how you play:

1. All of the kids sit in a circle and one child is picked to be the monkey.

2. The child playing the monkey goes away for a minute while the banana is hidden in the lap of another student.

3. The "monkey" comes back and asks everyone "Do you have my banana?"

4. Once the banana is found, the child who was hiding it becomes the new monkey.

I wish so badly that I would have recorded this activity and that I could have shared it with all of you. The kids were so into it because they got to use the monkey puppet. Some of them even made the monkey do funny voices! By the time the "monkey" actually found the banana, the kids were positively giddy and it was WONDERFUL! Plus, for my lower students, this was a great way to work on yes/no questions and identifying peers. One of my students with apraxia was able to engage with his peers because "banana" is a word he can achieve sucess with. It was just one of those moments where I was reminded of how stinking awesome my job is. I love that. And I love that it happens often. I know there are many different versions of this game (i.e., "Doggy doggy, who has my bone?"), so I would highly recommend you adapt it with a puppet of your choice!

I've included the train cars to go with "1,2,3, To the Zoo" for you below. Let me know what you think!

1,2,3 To the Zoo

Clipart for this activity was purchased from Scrappin Doodles.



Community Helpers!

One of my favorite parts of my week is the "Language Group" I teach to our preschool class. It's a short, 30-minute, theme-based lesson that is always so much fun. I love planning for it and I love giving my students the chance to practice language skills in such a functional way. Plus, since the preschool is a combination of typically developing peers and students who qualify for special services, my students get great modeling and social interaction throughout.

A couple of weeks ago, we finished up a unit on "Community Helpers." I always get so excited for this unit because talking about firefighters and policemen not only gets my kids talking, but also gives me a great way to practice and introduce "who" questions. Here are some things we did:

First, we sat as a group and sorted items that belong to a firefighter, mailman, or doctor. We introduced some vocabulary terms, talked about "Who would need this?", and "What does a _______ do with a ______?"

Next I divided the kids in to three groups or stations. I'm lucky enough to have my preschool teacher and a paraprofessional help split up the work on this! They are life-savers! 

Group 1 (or the doctors) drew pictures of body parts out of an envelope and then put a band-aid on the drawn body part. We targeted positional concepts, vocabulary, and "where" questions here.

Group 2 (the firefighters) sorted items as "hot" or "cold".  This was a great way to target the concept of temperature, answer yes/no questions, and even some of those higher level questions like "Could a toaster catch on fire?"

Group 3 (the mailmen) matched "letters" (index cards) with a variety of shapes/colors on them to a corresponding envelope. Then the kids had to put their letter and envelope in the correctly colored mailbox. This was by far the favorite of everyone, as they really loved these little mailboxes I found in the Target dollar section. It was a great way to work on sentence expansion ("Three green circles"), preschool concepts of colors/shapes/counting, the concepts of same/different/matching, and PLAY, of course!

I included all of these activities in a packet for you below. I would love to hear what you think and if you do groups in your school too!

Community Helpers Packet