My Favorite High School Materials

My last blog post gave you 8 tips for working with high school students, but you may still be wondering where to find engaging and age-appropriate materials for secondary speech therapy. I've scoured my therapy room, social media, and the internet to find some of the best materials for high school students.

The Real World

I try to incorporate as much classroom work as I can into my speech therapy sessions. Although I do not find working on classwork with my students to be particularly exhilarating, it is a very effective and functional way to address therapy targets. When working on schoolwork, I am careful to provide speech therapy and resist the urge to be a tutor/homework helper. When working on classwork with students, be sure you know what goal you are targeting, and target that goal. If you don't know what you're targeting, you run the risk of not providing therapy for the student.

Some therapy ideas include:

• Students who are working on vocabulary can find 5 words in their history essay that they could replace with more advanced words.

• SLP explains an algebraic principle to a student with comprehension needs and have them explain the concept back to the SLP prior to working on problems.

• Students working on social skills discuss characters from a novel they are reading. They can make inferences, interpret character motivations, and practice using empathy to understand the characters' feelings and actions.

• Whenever you can, incorporate a strategy that the student could benefit from learning into one of their academic tasks. (context clues, highlighting, asking questions, emailing teachers, etc!)

Working on schoolwork also helps lessen students' academic burden. My students always appreciate the help and seem to feel a sense of relief after working on their schoolwork.

I love incorporating real-life skills activities into my therapy tasks.

• Many of my students struggle with their test to obtain their temporary driver's license. Google "driver's permit test [your state]" and you'll find practice tests that you can complete with your student. I also keep a copy of my state's rule book on hand for studying and practice.

• We also work on

  • budgeting,

  • real-world math problems,

  • job applications,

  • college applications/essays,

  • and hold mock job interviews.

Many of these tasks really push my students out of their comfort zones, but I know I am serving my students when I incorporate their goals into real-world tasks.

The Internet

YouTube - My students LOVE YouTube. In fact, a solid 1/2 of them believe that they are going to be YouTube stars and won't have to rely on things like social skills, high school diplomas, and traditional careers in the future. [insert exasperated SLP face here] While I hope that my students are able to fulfill their dreams of Internet stardom, I have serious doubts that all of them will be gainfully employed via YouTube. Here are a few ways I use my students' favorite website in therapy.

• TV/movie clips are a fan favorite in my speech room. I use the clips to target inferencing, predicting, empathy, humor, and retelling. Most TV shows have dozens if not hundreds of clips on YouTube. Some particularly great shows are: The Office, Parks and Rec, Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, and Impractical Jokers. A tip: when you find a great video, put it on a playlist so you'll be able to easily find it with your next therapy group.

• Type "wordless videos" into YouTube and you'll find tons of great videos. Wordless videos are perfect for building inference and narrative skills. I think you'll find wordless videos to be versatile and engaging for your caseload. Some favorites: Simon's Cat, Mr. Bean, Pixar shorts, and Zig & Sharko.

• Commercials are wonderful for working on inferencing, social skills, and comprehension. Commercials are entertaining and are often humorous. Hallie Sherman has a great blog post with ideas for using commercials in speech therapy.

• When I am attempting to explain a complex idea of feel that my students could benefit from additional background knowledge on a topic, I often turn to YouTube. There are informational YouTube videos on almost every topic you could ever want. I often look for these videos "on the fly" and don't always have time to vet them prior to sharing them with students, but I'm usually able to find exactly what I'm looking for.

Online games are a fun way to practice a skill or demonstrate comprehension. My current favorite website Baamboozle. There are thousands of pre-made games and creating your own games is a snap! Kahoot is another great game website the has pre-made games (there are thousands) or the ability your own. Students need their own device to play. They can use their own phone, a tablet, or a laptop. One great thing about Kahoot is that you can download student answers, so the data is taken for you! You can make your own Jeopardy-style game at https://jeopardylabs.com/ or https://www.playfactile.com/. These websites are really easy to use and are a and great way to target multiple goals in mixed groups. Finally, you can make interactive video lessons by using https://edpuzzle.com/. It's a great way to get data without having to take data.

Websites - Websites - There are a ton of websites that have free articles that are age-appropriate and interesting for high school students. readtheory.org, newsela.com, and k12reader.com are great because they hare articles/stories of varying complexity and accompanying comprehension activities. Wonderopolis is an a great place for high-interest information (you’ll love this website MORE than your students!) The Skimm is a daily email that breaks down the day's most important news stories. I also love news and talk show websites like CNN and Good Morning America that have a video story and an accompanying article. My students benefit from watching a news story to gain some background knowledge prior to reading and analyzing an article.

Everyday Speech is an online catalog of social skills videos and activities, but it does come with a price tag. I have found it to be helpful for my high school caseload, but sometimes I feel the videos are a bit too juvenile. It is definitely worth checking out, and I do recommend it, especially if your district pays for it. https://everydayspeech.com/.

Materials

Workbooks - I'm not a huge fan of workbooks, but they do come in handy at times. I like the No Glamour, WALC and HELP books. I have dozens of workbooks, and I know they are packed with great materials, but I just don't have the time to sort through the books to find the right activity for every student. Not to mention, after you sort through the books, you have to copy. Ugh. If your school is like mine, the copier is usually in use or broken, so copying random pages out of multiple books just isn't always an option for me.

TeachersPayTeachers - One reason that I love TpT is that all of my purchased items are easily accessible through the TpT website. I can browse my purchased items at the beginning of the week and print all of the materials I need. If I need something new, I can find it and download it in a snap. My TpT store has oodles of materials for high school students. My Every Goal Units are my go-to activity that I utilize almost every week in my therapy room. You can find out more info on my best-selling units here! Some other great TpT authors are Detig Dialect, Stacy Crouse, ABA Speech, The Speech Express, and Speech Time Fun.

Scholastic Magazine - Scholastic has several age-appropriate magazines subscriptions. The magazines have engaging content and are applicable to the lives of high school students. Two of my favorites are Choices (focused on SEL) and Upfront (focused on today's news and issues that are important to teens).

Games

I love playing games with my students - mostly because I am competitive and I love to win. Kidding aside, games are a great way to relieve stress, reward hard work, and motivate students. The game that I couldn't live without is Uno, and I think my students would agree. Besides Uno, some of my favorite games are Apples to Apples, Left Right Center, Scattergories, Would You Rather, Bubble Talk, and Life.

What other materials do you love for your speech room? Let me know in the comments!