These sites offer some excellent ideas for literacy based speech therapy activities and will make your life a little easier.
When I went to grad school over twenty years ago, I don't recall much attention being given to literacy. This is mind-boggling to me now, given how inter-related we know language and literacy are.
Everything I know about literacy development and how to teach it has been learned either on the job while getting to collaborate with talented educators and consultants, or through countless continuing education courses.
From the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986), to Scarborough's Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001), as well as other more recent models of reading, it is undeniable that language and literacy are intertwined; kids need solid language abilities for strong reading comprehension, and exposure to text helps to develop their language skills. When things go well, language and literacy grow in tandem.
In many cases, we are the only SLP in our building, despite the fact that we are specialized in many of the foundational components of reading, like phonology and articulation, vocabulary knowledge, syntax, morphology, etc.
But because of the typical service model, i.e., 2x30 or something similar, I've had to figure out ways to support these foundational skills while trying to complement the (hopefully) structured literacy curriculum my students are participating in in their classrooms.
The two websites below are really nice sources of ready-to-go lesson plans that allow me to provide additional teaching and reinforcement around the skills and concepts my kiddos are simultaneously learning in their literacy programs. I adapt the lessons as needed so that I can be addressing their IEP goals as well.
First up is the Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy (SEEL) site from the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University. This site is geared toward younger students (preschool to first grade), and the free, downloadable lesson plans include all the materials you need to provide 1:1 or whole-class lessons around early literacy skills. Lessons are aligned with Common Core Standards, and are organized by grade level and specific phonological awareness skill, letter, or spelling rule.
The second website I love is The Florida Center for Reading Research. They have an array of excellent, free literacy based lesson plans and activities for pre-kindergarten students up to fifth grade. Try a simple search and you'll find all sorts of amazing, research-based, printable activities for literacy and language that are organized by grade level and skill area.
I hope you find some goodies in there that make your literacy based speech therapy lesson planning a little easier!
LEVEL UP YOUR SPEECH THERAPY ACTIVITIES WITH STORYWHYS
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Have you heard? StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.
Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.
And get your FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the Special Offers page.
Enjoy!
References:
Gough, Philip B., & William E. Tunmer (1986). “Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability.” Remedial and Special Education: RASE, 7(1), 6–10.
Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis) abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. Handbook of Early Literacy Research, 1, 97–110.