A Primer on Teaching Describing Skills in Speech Therapy Sessions

Many students, especially grades 3-6, have goals that focus on describing, categorizing, and comparing and contrasting. These goals can be tricky to teach and require a lot of background knowledge and skills, so some tips for teaching these skills within speech therapy sessions are listed below.

To get started, check out our last blog post for three tips to get started, and this blog post will build on that.

1. Consider Teaching Multiple Items within a Category

   Focus on teaching multiple items within one category (i.e. ocean animals, vegetables, school supplies). This can help students learn how items within a category are similar and different (i.e. these two ocean animals swim, but these two ocean animals can crawl). This can also give students an opportunity to learn new vocabulary and understand more about the items you are describing.

2. Use a Word Bank of Descriptive Words to Reference

   Often times, students are expected to describe items without really having the descriptive vocabulary they need to describe such items. What are the parts of the item? What is the item made of? Using the ocean animals example, you may want to go over some vocabulary such as: flippers, fins, scales, shells; and create a word bank so students can reference these words.

3. Repetition and Expansion is Your Friend

   Give this process time and repetition. It can be easy to think that after a few lessons, your students should be able to describe novel (untrained examples) items and categorize them, but that just isn’t the way it works. Take time to teach several categories and items, and then work on adding to the items in that category. Eventually you can try categorizing items and naming items in categories that are novel.

I hope these two articles were helpful as you continue to teach these common IEP objectives. If you’d like a done-for-you activity that already includes all these tips and suggestions, check out this bundle in our store.

Tips for SLPs Teaching Categories and Compare & Contrast

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 - 

1. 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. 

2. 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. 

3. 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.

For this product, visit this link. 

Telepractice - Expectations Versus Reality

Many SLPs right now are making their first foray into the world of telepractice, so we want to share some telepractice expectations versus realities. Think of it like that perfect speech room you saw and were expecting in your first year as an SLP only to find yourself without even a desk, much less a room location on your first day of work. So we want to share a little bit of that with you here today regarding the myths vs realities of teletherapy right now. 

Myth - If you have telepractice experience, this transition will be easier on you. 

Reality - pandemic telepractice isn’t typical telepractice.

There’s so much going on, from video chatting into homes where parents don’t know how to work the technology to how to serve kids at school wearing masks (it’s so hard to hear them!) and how to do assessments via telepractice. 

Myth: You will only be able to use digital materials when providing teletherapy. 

Reality: You’re not restricted to only using digital materials at all. 

You get to use a mix of both digital and physical materials during your sessions. Do you have a favorite flashcard deck, bring it out and hold the cards up to your camera. Favorite book? Read it just like you would if your students were sitting at your table. 

Myth - learning how to do telepractice therapy will be the hardest part. 

Reality - serving the increased workload associated with Coronavirus is the hardest part. 

With everything being put off last spring (our schools closed in March) - it’s the workload and backlog that’s the hardest. 

Myth: You will be notified if a student won’t be able to make their therapy session. 

Reality: It doesn’t matter how many session reminder emails you send out, you’ll still find yourself stood up in that virtual speech room quite often. 

Parents may have needed to take their kids with them to work, or to another place for daycare that doesn’t know the routine or maybe doesn’t have internet, or maybe they just plain forgot. Try to be understanding. Showing up, being ready and supportive is our job right now. 

To hear more on telepractice expectations vs realities, including tips for SLP sessions, listen to Episode 77 of the SLP Happy Hour Podcast. You can listen on Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher here.