Hitting Multiple Targets with Your Middle School Speech Students

 

Use each child's strengths to target their goals while giving them specific “jobs” during speech sessions. This tip is particularly effective in middle school populations. 

 

Let's say you planned a therapy session where you will read a book, answer questions about it verbally and in writing, then maybe compare/contrast, target vocabulary, etc. Given the group I described earlier, I would give each the following jobs: 

 

Reader: If you have an articulation targeted student, assign them the role of reader for this activity. This gives them a chance to practice those sounds at the phrase up to conversational level depending on the text. 

Organizer: Assign your pragmatics goal student to this goal. This job entails speaking to each student in the group and consolidating ideas so that everyone is heard. There are SO many ways this job targets many areas of pragmatics! 

Spokesperson: I would assign my fluency goal student to this role to assess their speech and usage of fluency strategies-just make sure they're comfortable doing this prior to assigning! 

Writer/Illustrator/Proofreader: Depending on the task you assign, ask your language targeted student to listen to what the others ask them to write, see if they can generalize it to a writing activity and to use goal-oriented objectives like using complex sentences/describing/etc. 

 

The great part of this tip is that you can adjust it to whatever you need that day! I would recommend writing the jobs on a post-it or flashcard so there's no confusion, and clarify what each job is expected to contribute. 

 

Let me know if you use this in your mixed groups and I hope this tip makes those mixed group sessions a little bit easier 🤞🏼

Happy speeching!