As an SLP, everything is changing right now. From the types of activities we are using, to how we track data and lesson plan - and more. Here are some specific therapeutic techniques and therapy tips for working with students.
I feel like I kind of had to flail my sessions around a bit and was just treading water for awhile until I figured these out - so maybe you know some of these and others are new - but these are things I learned from honestly doing it wrong for awhile and these are my three top tips on teaching categorization and compare/contrast.
So let’s get into the tips -
Teach Vocabulary!
If you are talking about vegetables you may want to talk about roots and stems and tops. If you are talking about furniture, you may want to talk about cushions and buttons and legs - or materials like wood and cloth. The biggest mistake I made for YEARS was not realizing how I get so much more of a bang for my buck with teaching vocabulary first.Use visuals.
Teach students to use a visual - there are commercial ones out there like EET - the expanding expression tool - or you can of course make your own and go SLOWLY. For example, you may want to start with JUST categories. And once your students can do that teach categories and what it’s made of or it’s parts. Go one by one and add on over time - don’t try and use ALL the descriptors or ways to describe at once. This is something that thankfully I’ve done from the beginning and you probably are too - but that idea of starting with just ONE area and slowly moving forward is something I haven’t always done and wish I had.
Consider background knowledge.
Use pictures of real items whenever you can, and show multiple pictures of the same item - for example a drawing of a beet and a photo - you can just use google images or whatever you’d like - sometimes we are expecting students to describe things they’ve NEVER seen in person, so this is another space to really take your time talking about prior knowledge and background experiences with items and if they don’t have them, hitting pause on describing and comparing and contrasting and just talking about what the item is. A lot of times we work on categorization and compare and contrast without the strong foundation of experience into WHAT the item is.
These strategies will help to strengthen a clients’ mental lexicon and all of these tips are so helpful, crucial even for laying a solid foundation to learn from and to help ensure they will remember what they’ve learned.
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