Middle School and High School Language
Lessons
Surveys
For All Occasions
Working with students at the
middle school and high school level can be quite the challenge. Keeping things
fun and functional can be difficult for even the most seasoned therapist.
Middle school and high school students will let you know if the activity you
have planned is not appropriate for them or if it is the dreaded b word:
B-O-R-I_N-G! With this in mind I wanted to let you know about an activity that
I use with my students.
Surveys! Surveys you may ask
– yes surveys. I like to use this tool to target a variety of communication-based
goals. Goals may include but are not limited to: greetings, asking and
answering social language questions and following directions.
The student will have a
survey template with a question written at the top. Under each question are 4
choices and boxes to make tally marks for when people vote for their answer. So
if we are working on a survey about school, the question may be “What is your
favorite lunch to get at school?” The choices may be a. spaghetti b. walking
taco c. hamburger d. pizza. The students
would read the question to the participant and show them or read the answer
choices. When the participant answers, the student would make a tally mark
under the correct choice.
After they have asked the
correct number of people and tallied their answers, they will return to the
individual or small group therapy session. We will then talk together and see
which answer had the most votes and which had the least amount of votes. If you
are working in collaboration with a classroom teacher, you could turn this data
into a math lesson. Pie charts anyone?
I love this activity because
it gets therapy out into the larger school environment. Planning for the
generalization of social language skills is so vital for all students, but must
be a priority with older students. If a student can only perform a skill with
you in an individual session and nowhere else, it will not help that student
become a more independent communicator. Independence with communication is our
goal for all students!
So next time you are feeling
overwhelmed about how to embed functional language practice for your middle and
high school students, think survey! You can check out one of my winter themed surveys here.
I have many surveys in my TPT
store and will continue to add them. Have you tried this strategy before? Come
on over and sign up for my freebie newsletter at www.abaspeech.org. Each month is a new freebie!
