Three Activities for Interactive Teletherapy Sessions
When Speech-Language Pathologists begin teletherapy, they often agonize over what exactly they're going to do with their students. How do you conduct a therapy session without board games, cards, worksheets, and books... or even so much as a shared table space?
Lean in for this little secret.... you can still do variations of all of those things. You just have to think outside of the box– I mean inside of the screen! Allow me to introduce the three tools that I use every single day to conduct engaging and interactive teletherapy sessions.
Boom™ Cards Teletherapy Activities
My friend Belinda at BVG SLP introduced me to Boom Cards, and it was a true turning point in my teletherapy career.... I'm not exaggerating. Watch this and thank me later when you're admittedly obsessed.
Boom Cards make it easy for students to interact virtually (and for in-person sessions, too!). Here are a few of my favorite Boom Card decks to use in teletherapy to keep kids drawn in while still targeting goals:
Speech Click-It Fast-Paced Games for 17 sounds and consonant blends (purchase on Boom Learning).
Language & Listening Activity Bundle uses real sounds to keep kids actively listening (purchase on Boom Learning).
Following Directions with Embedded Basic Concepts is loaded with vocabulary and has separate decks for each season (purchase on Boom Learning).
Leveled Memory Games allows you to target vocabulary, answering questions, and more language skills (purchase on Boom Learning).
Short Stories and Passages includes both multiple-choice and open-ended comprehension questions (purchase on Boom Learning).
Functional Communication and Conversations targets identifying social responses in various settings (purchase on Boom Learning).
Life Skills Activities Bundle works on functional skills such as understanding signs, dressing for the occasion, and identifying task supplies (purchase on Boom Learning).
We've barely just scratched the surface of what Boom Cards can do for SLPs, so learn a lot more about using Boom Cards in speech therapy if you're interested!
Annotating PDFs in Teletherapy
"But what about all the PDF resources I've purchased or made over the years for my speech therapy sessions? Can I use those in teletherapy?"
Yes, you can! Check out this video to witness the brilliance of using annotation tools with PDF resources.
Nearly any PDF can be annotated in some way, although you might find that some are protected against digital annotations (depending on how they were saved). But I've created these PDF activities that can be digitally marked up!
Articulation Menus which can be used for tons of language goals, too!
Articulation Coloring Pages that may be digitally colored or the items circled.
Set of Guessing Games for multiple themes/topics.
An Ice-Breaker/Get-to-Know-You Game that's great for older students.
Articulation Picture Searches is a game-like activity to draw on.
Annotation is a great way to get more mileage out of your maybe-meant-to-be-printed therapy activities. Get a whole lot more information on digital annotation if you want to use it in teletherapy (or in-person therapy using a device such as an iPad)!
Interactive PDF Teletherapy Activities
Teletherapy is like a whole new world. A new fantastic point of view.... of digital materials. Pardon the #aladdinreference, but you know how sometimes when you download an information form from to fill out, it already has those magic little text boxes for you to type into?
That, my friend, is an example of an interactive PDF. But interactive PDFs for speech therapy are much less lame than forms. See for yourself!
With such a range of interactive features, you can find an interactive PDF for just about any goal or age group. Here are some of my most loved (and clicked) interactive PDFs for teletherapy:
Needless to say, this set of 600 digital articulation cards gets tons of trials with its clickable checkmarks.
Poll questions are a speech therapy favorite. They're great for a warm-up or targeting any number of social language goals.
Target any and all goals using these seasonal picture scenes with clickable boxes and prompts right on each page.
These seasonal resources address multiple language skills at once, making it easy to incorporate into mixed groups.
Fill-in-the-blank stories work magically for older students as the boxes auto-fill from the word lists they create!
These high-interest weather-themed passages for older students include both clickable answer buttons and fillable text boxes to target various language skills.
Interactive PDFs are true gems for speech therapy since they are versatile and work great for screen sharing in teletherapy, but can also be used in-person on a tablet or computer.
Boom Cards, digital PDF annotation, and interactive PDFs can help you keep your teletherapy students focused and engaged in sessions. Learning to use any (or better yet, ALL!) of these tools will help keep your sessions moving right along with a variety of student interaction.
For an additional type of teletherapy activity, don't miss Google Slides! I discovered this one after writing this post, but it definitely deserves a mention as well 😄
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