Receptive language tasks/skills are vital for performance in school, during formal assessments, and in order for us to gauge what our clients know. However, drilling during this type of activity can be somewhat boring at times. When I see little friends getting a bit bored of the typical receptive activity, I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it more engaging!
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I made these super hero clothespins to go with my “Superhero Syntax” flip book.
They were so simple to make! I just cut large triangles out of cardstock in various colors, glued them to the clothespin, cut a small rectangle of paper for the “mask”, and drew eyes and a mouth. Now students can easily clip it near the correct picture to indicate their response – which adds some fine motor practice, too! (If that’s too tough for smaller hands, the super hero can just point.)
I use these pointer fingers ALL the time in therapy. I have many different colors and love that they extend to three different lengths.
The shorter size can be used while sitting at the table, or make it really long and have the student stand “far away” to reach and point. This always gets them laughing!
These are by Learning Resources.
For the older crowd, possibly during testing, you can use a laser pointer or finger light to indicate a response. I know of some teachers who use these when using a projector/interactive white board. If a student gets a turn to use it they’ll see the cool factor!
This summer, Target had some great wooden pointers. I grabbed this pencil to add to my bag of tricks. Isn’t it adorable?!
These vampire and witch fingers are all over this time of year but can be used all year ‘round.
I use them for tracking while reading, pointing to a communication board, or tapping each word of these sentence strips.
I love the vampire fingers from this pack:
These witch fingers are a bit less gory:
Another great tool for tracking, searching for speech sounds, finding matches, and more are these eye finger puppets.
When using them with reader’s theater scripts, I have each student choose a different color. Then, I highlight his/her part in the corresponding color. It’s another visual cue to help students remember which part they are playing/reading.
Do you have any tricks to help spice up receptive tasks? Leave me a comment and lemme hear ’em!
