No-Prep Ideas for Language Therapy

It’s No-Prep December and that means that I’m challenging you NOT to prep any therapy activities for the whole month.

But how do we do that for language therapy?

How do we do it for younger children?

Or teenagers?

Or elementary-aged students?

Is it possible to go no-prep for language therapy??

Well, I’m speech-language pathologist Carrie Clark and in this episode of The Speech and Language Kids Podcast, I’m going to answer all of these questions with three easy ways to do no-prep therapy for language skills.

Listen to the Podcast Here

You can listen to the full podcast episode below:

No-Prep Language Therapy Step 1: Choose a Skill

When starting off with no-prep language therapy, the first thing to do is to choose a skill to target.

You can choose one skill to dive deep on or a few that you’ll work on as they come up.

You’ll hold in your mind the level of the skill you’ll be working at (scaffolding) or what cues you’ll use.

No-Prep Language Therapy Step 2: Choose a Type of Activity

There are three levels of no-prep therapy to choose from.

The level you choose will depend on the age and developmental level of the child along with how things seem to be going that day.

Here are the levels:

Through Play: Model the language skill during play. Provide communication temptations for the child to use the skill. Use expansions and recasting to correct the child’s use of the skill.
Through Drill & Practice: Explicitly teach the skill and then practice it in isolation.
Through Natural Interactions: Talk about the skill explicitly but then wait for it to come up naturally through conversation, reading, writing, homework, playing games, etc.

Keep in mind that you may find yourself moving from one level to another throughout the session, based on how things are going.

But you should at least have an idea of where you’ll start.

No-Prep Language Therapy Step 3: Follow the Child’s Lead

Now comes the part where you have to learn to let go.

It may feel uncomfortable at first but I promise that when you allow the child to lead the activity, you’ll get better buy-in and they’ll make faster progress.

Plus, you’ll be spending less time up front on planning and prepping elaborate activities.

Let the child choose the toys, games, or activities.

Have them bring in something they are reading or an assignment they’re working on.

Ask them if they’d like to go for a walk.

Ask them if there is anything they’d like to talk about.

Ask them about their interests.

Invest in them as a human first, then work the communication skills into it.

No-Prep Language Therapy Example!

Let’s go over a few examples to help you understand what we mean:

Example: Pronouns

Play: play with dolls, action figures, puppets, etc. Model use of the pronouns “she is sliding, weeeee”. Provide communication temptations: “what is Molly doing?” Recast incorrect productions: “SHE is sliding! Yes!”
Drill & Practice: Look at pictures on the iPad of children doing different things. Use sentences to describe what they are doing. Emphasis on correct pronoun use.
Natural Interactions: Have the student tell you about their day, use a signal to indicate when a pronoun needs to be corrected. Or edit and revise a writing assignment for pronoun use. Or read a book together and point out pronouns. Retell that section of the story with correct pronoun use.