As you know, being able to read is a crucial skill in today’s world. Children with speech sound delays/disorders are at a higher risk of having difficulties reading. A great way to help lessen the potential difficulties is to add phonological and phonemic awareness activities into speech therapy. A bonus is these activities make great stations if you are working in groups. Here are some of my favourite literacy activities in speech therapy.
Sorting by Syllables
Have a syllable sorting mat out, and after the child has said their sound put it on the corresponding part of the mat. Be careful with this one. If you have a child who already breaks up a word and has trouble blending them back together (for example, they pronounce “spot” as “s-pot”), I will not do this activity. It would only reinforce pronouncing the sounds separated from the rest of the word. I would also avoid onset rime activities.
Sort by where the target sound occurs in the word.
Once a student can pronounce their sound at the initial word level, I like to work on it in the middle and final position. Then I go up the hierarchy. Once they have said their word, then they place it on the sorting mat.
Alternatively, you can layout their artic cards. Name a location (e.g., beginning, middle, end), and then the student finds a word with their sound in that location.
Sort by the number of sounds in a word.
After the student has said their sound, have the student sound out the word, slowly separating the sounds of the word. When done, put the card on the sorting mat and then blend all the sounds back together again.
Make up silly words by replacing words with their sounds.
Making up words is usually good for a laugh but go through the words you make so that you don’t accidentally make up an inappropriate word. Show your student(s) different artic cards. Have them pick a card. Delete the beginning sound or ending sound of a word with their sound to make a new word. Sometimes for fun, I’ll have the students make up a definition for the new word.
The examples here were from my Lunch with CH product from my TpT store, but most of these sorting mats can be easily and quickly made or you can download a freebie. For other speech therapy ideas go here.
What are your favourite ways to bring literacy activities into speech therapy?
One Comment
Great ideas!