Everyone loves a snow day (or any unexpected school closure) and SLPs are no different. But in these situations, some districts are pivoting away from the traditional snow day and instead providing students with some form of e-learning... which may also include virtual speech therapy sessions.
PROVIDING SPEECH THERAPY ON E-LEARNING DAYS
Hold the eye rolls and hear me out. While many SLPs (and students) would rather neglect all academic instruction on inclement weather days, remote learning days are not all bad.
From the comfort of their own homes, SLPs can keep students' learning and progress on track without unexpected disruption. Students are offered the minutes written into their IEPs which alleviates the need to make up owed minutes (or entire school days) at a later date.
And we can all get behind summer break coming sooner, am I right?
Occasional virtual learning days also help students practice flexibility. The change develops competence in using technology. Additionally, parents or caregivers (who are not usually present in sessions) may get the chance to observe their child's speech therapy when logging in from home.
TIPS FOR PROVIDING SPEECH THERAPY ON E-LEARNING DAYS
Communication and planning are the keys to successfully implementing remote speech therapy. Use these tips to make the temporary pivot to online sessions less stressful for you, students, and parents.
Communication
Set the expectation. At the beginning of the year (or as winter approaches), remind students and their families that in the event of a school closer, virtual speech therapy will be offered.
Give the details. Provide parents or caregivers with clear instructions and information on accessing remote speech therapy, including the time of the session, hyperlink to the teletherapy platform, password, and any equipment needed (e.g. headphones, paper/pencil, etc.).
Technology
Use a reliable and familiar teletherapy platform. In most cases, students will already have the technology (i.e. computer or tablet) for a virtual speech therapy session if they are also doing the day's schoolwork remotely.
Be ready to troubleshoot. Expect that some technology issues (such as muted microphone, headphone volume, etc.) will arise. Sharing simple visuals in the platform can minimize the time needed to solve these problems.
In the Session
Follow the routine. As much as possible, use a similar structure to that of your in-person sessions.
Have fun with interactive materials. Engaging activities will make it easier to hold attention and keep students interested in this new setting.
Keep it simple. Don't stress over finding novel activities for each session or group throughout the day. Instead, find a few adaptable activities that can be used across different ages and to target multiple goals.
SPEECH THERAPY ACTIVITIES FOR E-LEARNING DAYS
The last thing you want to do is scramble for activities that hold your students' attention when they're at home or shuffle between gobs of different activities. The following activities help you streamline your planning, as they can be used with many different students.
Picture Scenes
An interesting scene is a great way to target tons of speech therapy goals at the same time. These seasonal picture scenes have multiple articulation and language targets right on the page so you don't have to flip around. You can even send a scene for students to complete as homework.
For older students, these high-interest picture scenes are easy to present virtually to individual students or groups. They facilitate lots of communication and target several speech therapy goals.
Vocabulary and Language Games
A language-rich game is a great way to incorporate many goals into one motivating and engaging activity. And your students surely won't complain about playing a game!
Guessing Game
This "guess my snowman" game is a fun challenge for a group of two students (or more if divided into teams). The activity naturally facilitates tons of speech and language opportunities and the game format motivates students to participate.
Digital Card Game
If your students love a card game (such as Spot It) during in-person speech therapy sessions, they'll love this fast-paced digital version. In this winter-themed Boom Card game (get it here on TpT) students race to find the matching picture between the two sides of the card.
Picture Search
A picture search is another activity that keeps students engaged. In these articulation picture searches, students race to find all of each item. The PDF can be uploaded directly to the teletherapy platform or screen-shared for students to view.
Bingo
For most students, bingo is likely a familiar game they'll get the hang of right away. You can send them bingo cards to print out ahead of time or use the Google Slides version with movable bingo chips. This bingo game is full of winter vocabulary and is easy to adapt for preschool, elementary, middle, or high school students.
Fill-In-The-Blank Activity
Activities that include humor are a sure way to keep students drawn into the session when they might otherwise be distracted in their home environment. These fill-in-the-blank passages are winter-themed and perfect for a snowy or icy day. You can easily target language (or articulation with these sound-specific word lists) while making the funny stories.
Scavenger Hunt
A scavenger hunt is a great small group activity that lends itself to targeting multiple goals with some everyday objects. This scavenger hunt uses winter-themed household items (that students can find in their homes or in pictures or video clips that you share) for an exciting challenge.
Videos
YouTube is a treasure trove of engaging videos that can be used in lots of different ways in remote speech therapy.
Find a read-aloud for any book. Mute the sound and pause the video to read the words yourself at any pace.
Short, animated videos (which are often wordless) provide a great context for language goals including narrating, making inferences and predictions, formulating sentences, answering wh- questions, and more. Some examples include Simon's Cat or Disney Pixar shorts like "Piper" or "Lava".
Playing funny animal videos (or Ellen's Epic or Fail videos) in a remote speech therapy session is definitely going to be a hit with students.
Short educational videos (such as these from National Geographic Kids) are a great way to introduce any winter theme or build vocabulary.
Building Activities
Digitally creating pictures or scenes is a great collaborative activity to use in your remote speech therapy sessions with younger students.
ABCYa's "Make A Games" give students the opportunity to build robots, faces, cupcakes, and more while you target any number of articulation or language goals.
Boom Cards also give users the ability to move pieces to create scenes or pictures. This snowman deck for speech therapy (get it here on TpT) even has articulation targets right under each piece that you can read or click to play an audio recording of the word.
While remote learning days may not be everyone's preference, they do offer a unique way for SLPs to continue supporting students’ speech therapy goals without disruption. So next time the weather throws a curveball, you'll be ready to turn those snow days into a win for everyone—students, parents, and SLPs alike!
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