Dog Themed Lesson Plan Activities For Teletherapy

I00% dog person here, folks.

National Dog Day is August 26th, and I've got your teletherapy dog themed activity needs more than covered. Full disclosure, I probably won't be your go to for National Cat Day ideas (is that a thing?) , but check out these doggone good finds from around the web to engage your students at the end of August.... or any time!

BOOM CARDS

This Boom Card deck has something for nearly all of my students. With 8 different speech and language activities including vocabulary, sequencing, inferencing, listening comprehension, verbs, and more, I'll be using this to introduce the theme and tons of dog-related vocabulary, hone in on specific skills, and send for homework practice.

books

Fiction

• My Dog Thinks I'm A Genius by Harriet Ziefert on Epic (suggested age 4-8)

• Lucy Rescued by Harriet Ziefert on Epic (suggested age 4-8)

• King & Kayla and the Case of the Missing Dog Treats by Dori Hillestad Butler on Epic (suggested age 6-7)

• The Mutts Autumn Diaries by Patrick McDonnell on Epic (8-12)

Non-Fiction

• My Dog Likes Me by Bobbi Kalman on Epic (suggested age 3-7)

• Guess the Dog by Kari Noel on Epic (suggested age 5-7)

• Short, Shorter, Shortest by Rebecca Felix on Epic (suggested age 5-7)

• Cool Pets for Kids: Dogs by Dawn Titmus on Epic (suggested age 9-12)

**If you want to talk about a specific dog breed, just search it on Epic. There are several breed-specific books!

VIDEOS

Perfect to address almost anything! Verb tenses, pronouns, making inferences and predictions, sequencing, retell, and so much more!

• "The Present" animated short film

• "Pip" animated short film

• DOGS by All Things Animal TV

GAMES and activities

These activities can be used for reinforcement or any number of speech and language goals!

• The PBS Kids website has a slew of fun dog-themed games and activities.

• "Puppies and Buddies" memory game on Disney.com

• 101 Dalmatians Match and Dash on Disney.com

• Dog With a Blog: Stan's Dream Escape on Disney.com

• Dog Jigsaw Puzzles

• "Dog Doodle" on Toy Theater

COLORING

There are dozens of digital coloring pages of dogs on thecolor.com, which are great to fill a few minutes of extra time or target description and vocabulary.

OLDER STUDENTS

These activities are great for targeting comprehension, vocabulary in context, main idea and supporting details, articulation carryover, and more!

• The Kiddle Encyclopedia's article on dogs

• A Brief History of Dogs by National Geographic

• "Through The Nose" on ReadWorks

• Dog themed articles on Tween Tribune

• Articles about Dogs on Newsela (filter by text level)

Phew! You should be set to "work like a dog" on those speech and language goals for National Dog Day, or any day. Have fun!