Hello, friends! As promised, I’ve created an activity for you to target the first Expanding Expressions quality:

Categories

As a speech therapist, I often had my students describe words and ideas using the qualities I mentioned in the last post: category, function, appearance, composition, parts, location, and “what else.” In doing so, they were able to better understand and use the targeted vocabulary and ideas.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say Suzy Speech is our first grade student client. Suzy is struggling in particular with receptive (understanding) and expressive (use) language. So, we decide to target vocabulary understanding and use with Suzy. Our end goal, (read: long term goal on IEP,) is for Suzy to write a paragraph about one of her vocabulary words.

One of Suzy’s vocabulary words is “pig.” We don’t just want Suzy to be able to link the written word “pig” with a picture of a pig. We want Suzy to understand the words she uses.

Okay. It’s a start.

Now let’s put our special qualities to use! Quality one: Categories. What category does “pig” belong to? I always asked my students, “A (target word) is a type of what?”

Not half bad!

So here is an activity I created to help students practice separating target words into categories:

FREE Category Sorter

 

Let me know what you think! And stay tuned for our next installment: Expanding Language: Functions.

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