What’s your first thought when you get a new older student working on articulation? Let me guess–“What speech therapy activities will motivate this student AND facilitate progress?”
Yep, same.
As an SLP serving kindergarten through 12th grade via teletherapy, I regularly see middle and high school students with articulation goals. And I learned that while my cute build-a-scene Boom Card activities are fun, they are not going to get a 9th grader to take me (or our teletherapy sessions) seriously.
Over the last several years, I have been on the hunt for articulation activities for the older crowd. For some students, I use an overall intelligibility approach by teaching clear speech strategies, while other students need specific articulation practice.
No print activities that allow for functional practice of articulation targets and don’t offend my older students by being too babyish can be hard to find. Need some inspiration? Get ready for this rapid-fire round of 10 different articulation ideas (although many can be used for language too)!
Teletherapy Articulation Activities for Older Students
Category Game (for Any Articulation Sound)
Scattergories was one of my favorite games as an adolescent, but many of my students have never played it! When given a list of categories, the student has a few minutes to think of as many words that fit in those categories and contain their target sound as they can.
This activity also works well to increase students' awareness of their speech sounds. I use these category lists, but you (and your students) could also make up your own!
Speed and Observation Game
My younger students are obsessed with playing these Boom Cards decks that are similar to the game Spot it. My middle and high schoolers like playing Spot It too, but since brightly colored clip art might be too childish for many of them, I often use photos or words to create a Spot It-style game using this free website.
Memory Games for Teletherapy
Match the Memory is my go-to website for memory games for students of all ages. To find one, click 'Search' at the top and type in the target sound, such as 'r blends'. You can then preview the images (or words) used in games to determine if they are a good fit for your older students. If you create a login, you can also make your own game for free!
Articulation Boom Card Activities
Boom Cards are a favorite for all of my students (and me), but decks for older students (especially for articulation) can be hard to find. Activities like these Articulation Word Puzzles, this Line of Four game, and this Peg Game appeal to older students because they incorporate elements such as strategy and competition.
Dots and Boxes Articulation Game
Who knows the dots and boxes game? This was another of my childhood favorites. So naturally, I created a digital version for targeting articulation in speech therapy! This activity comes in two digital formats for teletherapy– a PDF that can be annotated and a version for Google Slides.
Fill-in-the-Blank Stories
Here’s an activity that I can guarantee will bring laughter to your sessions. Seriously. My students LOVE doing Funny Fill-Ins on the National Geographic Kids website (an online version of Mad Libs) using words with their target sound. This bundle has stories in PDF form that automatically fill as you create your word list!
I screen-share the website and a list of words with their target sound simultaneously using a split screen on my second monitor. I love this activity so much that I made lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs organized by sound/word position so this activity is ready to go in just a couple of clicks.
Digital Articulation Drawing Activities
If you're looking for something totally unique and different, check out this constellation drawing activity. Students use an annotation drawing tool (in Adobe Reader or their teletherapy platform) to create lines between target words, then figure out the constellation they drew.
In this activity, students can draw their articulation targets using the drawing tool in Boom Learning (or using PDF annotation if you prefer). Let your older students try drawing this free set of /z/ words to see if they like it!
Random Holiday Passages
Silly Holiday Texts by Kiwi Speech is literally a year-round go-to. For every single day of the year, there is a page with a short passage about a random, fun holiday, including word lists for commonly targeted sounds and language prompts. MIXED. GROUPS. Need I say more?
Digital Ship-Sinking Articulation Game
Several of these activities are throwbacks to favorite childhood games, and this one is no different! Battleship has allllll the elements to engage older students– strategy, competition, mystery, and more! If you need a digital version, this articulation activity opens in Google Slides and can often be used across multiple sessions... without a single complaint from your students😉
Online Quizzes
The last idea is one that I learned about from my students. Kahoots! are multiple-choice, game-based quizzes. Players participate simultaneously on their own devices or on a shared screen. There are several different membership plans, but even the basic, free plan allows you to search through the games created by others and make your own!
In the game that I created below, I loaded the questions and answers with /s/ and /z/ words. That's some sneaky SLP magic, right there.
One quick honorable mention– my friend and colleague Stacey at My Teletherapy Room shares about a Chrome extension called Weava. It's a great tool for highlighting a specific target sound on a page of text (such as an online article), which is a very functional activity for older students!
Planning articulation therapy for middle and high school students doesn't have to be stressful. By strategically integrating words with target sounds into meaningful and motivating games, activities, and websites, your older students will put forth greater effort to make changes in their speech production. And even if they won't admit it, they might just have a little fun along the way 😊
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