Easy Ideas for Middle School Speech Therapy

Hey, everyone! I hope you all have either enjoyed their spring break or will be enjoying it soon! My spring break is over, but I only have six weeks left in this school year. It is time for me to make the final push through statewide testing and end-of-the-year IEP meetings in addition to the usual schedule.

I don’t know about y’all, but I am struggling with new therapy ideas right now, especially for my middle school kids. It seems like there is no end to cutesy, fun stuff for the younger set, but finding age-appropriate, relevant, interesting activities for my older ones is a constant battle. Thank goodness there are some other speech therapists and special ed. teachers who seem to have it figured out. Here is a list of my go-to resources for middle school therapy:

Speech Therapy Middle and High School Collaborative Pinterest Board

This is a collaborative board, which means many different people are allowed to pin ideas to it. It really seems to have something for everyone.

Newsela (online Instructional Materials based on current events)

Newsela is fantastic for older students! Signing up for the basic account is free, and I use my students' interests to choose articles for therapy. The articles can be adapted to different reading levels and include comprehension questions, but I use them to target ALL my IEP goals! Seriously, it is awesome!!

Erik X. Raj (SLP, Blogger, App Creator)

Erik seems to be really in tune with middle school boys. His blog posts almost always have something that will interest this hard-to-please group of kids. Fair warning though, sometimes the ick factor is pretty high (probably why the kids love them so much)!

Curriculum Materials

This suggestion is one of my favorite tools to use, but it is often easier said than done. If you have access to your students’ curriculum materials, they are perfect for therapy use. What better way to facilitate carryover than to incorporate vocabulary, assignments, etc. from other classes? I seem to get a lot of resistance (maybe resistance is the wrong word-perhaps lack of cooperation would be better) from both teachers and my students in this area, so I do not use it as much as I should. That is something I plan to work on.

Apps

Who doesn’t love apps? My favorite for this age is Word Vault Pro (pricey, but so worth it). It just seems like putting something on a tablet appears like less work and more fun to my sweet middle schoolers.

I hope this post helps you with your pre-teen/teen caseload! Comment YOUR favorite ideas for this population below!

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