Speech and language therapy ideas using the Articulation Vacation app

Concepts of present continuous, future and past tenses

Before students practice the different forms of tenses, they should learn the concept behind each tense. The Articulation Vacation app offers the following four games to help students learn the concept of the three basic tenses: 

Fishing game: The objective of this game is to fish for different objects by tapping the fisherman in the boat. This game can be easily used to teach future, present continuous and past tenses. To teach the concept of future tense, a speech language pathologist may start by explaining that “future” means something that has not happened yet, is not happening now but will in the future (for example, in a minute, soon, or tomorrow). Following the short explanation of the concept, a speech and language pathologist can demonstrate the concept by playing the fishing game. The speech pathologist could note that the fisherman did not catch any fish yet (pointing at the empty hook), but he will in a second. The pathologist could then tap the fisherman to convey that “He will catch something soon” or “I will catch something soon.” The speech pathologist could use this same idea to teach past and present continuous tenses. For example, after the fisherman catches an object, the pathologist could model “He caught a pillow.” 

Beach treasure hunt game: Similar to the fishing game, the beach treasure hunt game helps speech pathologists demonstrate basic tense concepts by uncovering sand and finding different treasures. From there, the speech pathologist could model “I will uncover the sand,” “I will find something in the sand soon,” or “I found a teddy bear,” for example. 

Picture taking game: With this game, the speech pathologist can explain basic tense concepts by taking pictures with a camera and modeling “I will take a picture soon,” “I just took a picture of a peacock,” and so on. 

Parachute game: With this game, the speech pathologist demonstrates each concept by landing objects from a parachute and modeling “I will land an apple soon,” “I just landed a car,” and so on.

 

Students can be easily engaged in describing an activity by playing any of the four games mentioned above. Each game contains beautiful graphics of different objects that the student can describe. For example, after the child catches an object in the fishing game, the speech pathologist can ask the child to describe the object he or she caught. Examples are: “Is this a yellow fish?” “Do we use a pen to paint?” “What is it?” “What color is it?” “What do we do with it?” “Where can we find it?” “What size is it?” 

By selecting the paragraph level for different phonemes, students may work on auditory comprehension of short stories. More than 90 stories are included in the Articulation Vacation app. To practice auditory comprehension, students should not be shown the written text of the stories. A speech pathologist may ask comprehension questions, such as what, who, where and why. 

Reading comprehension

By selecting a paragraph level for different phonemes, students can work on reading comprehension. For this task, the audio recording of stories should not be played. After the student finishes reading the story, the speech pathologist may ask reading comprehension questions.

Retelling of stories

By selecting a paragraph level for different phonemes, students can work on story retelling. After listening or reading the story, the speech pathologist can ask students to say the same story in their own words.

To receive more therapy tips/ideas, please sign up for our newsletter at: https://www.virtualspeechcenter.com//register.aspx