Maximizing Your Teletherapy Speech Therapy Materials

For many speech language pathologists, making the switch to a teletherapy setting often means saying 'goodbye' to your worksheets and investing in (or creating) a collection of digital materials and online resources. 

I (not so fondly) remember that part of the transition to speech teletherapy as an overwhelming, time-consuming, and expensive process. All of a sudden, the toys, books, and games I used for in-person sessions felt useless, and I wondered how I'd ever conduct speech therapy without the toys, books, games, and worksheets I'd always relied on to target speech and language.

Over time, I collected or created a variety of teletherapy materials to suit my virtual caseload. Since that caseload has pretty much always been a little bit of everything (kids of all ages and all the goal areas 🤪), I've found digital resources I can get a lot of mileage out of.

In order to drastically reduce planning time, make mixed groups actually productive, and not break the bank, I’ve filled my teletherapy toolbox with great resources that I can use again and again in my lesson plans– not just activities that target one goal and fill one session for one age group. 

FEATURES OF VERSATILE TELETHERAPY MATERIALS

Consider these general guidelines (and plenty of examples) when shopping for or creating activities for teletherapy sessions.

Facilitates Multiple Goals

Look for resources that can help you target more than one goal or goal area, because, well, mixed groups. But also because you can keep that resource open on your computer and use it with student after student or group after group.

These picture scenes for speech therapy (and these for middle and high school students) were born of such necessity. They target multiple articulation and language goals on every page.

Something as simple as high-interest poll questions can also target a variety of goals simultaneously. Use the word lists to find questions that include the target sound(s) while also addressing perspective-taking, asking follow-up questions, maintaining a topic, and more. 

Remember to think outside the box when designing or selecting teletherapy activities. Just because a resource wasn't designed to target a certain goal doesn't mean it won't be effective in doing so! So don't shy away from adapting resources to fit your students' needs. 

Allows for Open-Ended Use

Some of the most versatile teletherapy activities don’t have any built-in goals or targets! SLPs are pretty magical. We can find ways to incorporate speech therapy goals into nearly any interactive activity or digital game.

Building Activities

"Make-a-Games" on ABCYa and the "Sticker Cartoon Animation" on Toy Theater are perfect for elementary students. For articulation, we can practice words with the child's target sound. For social communication, we work on turn-taking, making polite requests, and working as a team. For language, there are prepositions, descriptions, asking and answering questions, and so much more.

Games

It's no surprise that teletherapy students love to play games, but online activities can also be therapeutic and versatile. Interactive games can be used to target all of your students' goals, from social skills (like turn-taking and being a good sport) to language skills (like formulating questions and identifying vocabulary) to using articulation sounds in sentences and structured conversation.

Digital games (like this spring Boom Cards deck) even include the option to click right over to an activity that uses the same vocabulary to practice words that include any articulation target.

Scavenger Hunts

Scavenger hunts are every bit as fun in teletherapy as they are in in-person therapy! Not only does the activity get some of my most reluctant students talking, but it also facilitates a ton of language structures, concepts, and vocabulary. Using regular, everyday objects (or pictures or videos of objects), you can target nearly everything.

Provides Visuals that Offer Flexibility

Using visuals in speech therapy is just as important in a virtual setting. Combining a goal-specific visual with open-ended games and activities is a simple way to make nearly any activity work for a goal.

For example, students can practice fluency or intelligibility strategies while playing an online interactive game such as the 'Four Colors' game on Toy Theater by using split-screen with the visual on one half and the activity or game on the other.

Can Be Customized for Unique Needs

Resources that you can edit are so incredibly versatile because you can make them to be just about anything you need them to be! For example, I love using a Google Slides template to help older students make their own articulation "cards". Not only is it fun for them to find pictures relevant to them, but it's also a functional and easy way to use as homework practice.

This Google Slides guessing game template lets SLPs add any pictures they want to tailor the game to their students' goals and/or special interests. In this example, Google Images have been used to create a game for a student who loves baking and is working on their /k/ sound (in words such as "cupcake", "bake", "pink", etc.).

Supports Multiple Skill Levels

Another feature to consider when looking for teletherapy activities is how well they suit a range of skill levels. Obviously, comprehensive resources with leveled practice (such as this subordinating conjunctions Boom Card deck) provide material for students of different abilities. Plus, the ability to progress through the levels makes the resource more usable with the same student across multiple speech therapy sessions. 

Another way to differentiate teletherapy resources is to include optional visuals you can use or hide for each student, as in this chocolate-themed activity for older students.

Can Be Used Across Multiple Sessions

Resources that can be used week after week are speech therapy GOLD. This National Parks resource includes passages about 7 parks (plus questions for vocabulary, making inferences, and comprehension for each one), so we can do a park or two each session for a month or more. 

Other activities can be reused in teletherapy, even when you’re using the exact same page or slide. Many students benefit from the repetition, plus the activity is never the same since the game plays out differently each time!

Articulation students also love this virtual game (get it here on Boom Learning), and like 'Spot It,' it plays differently every time! This Line of Four Game (available here on Boom) is another example of an articulation activity that can be used repeatedly to practice a target sound.

Incorporates a Useful Theme

I use themes in speech therapy for many reasons. Themed therapy is a way to save time and create versatility in my sessions. Themes not only provide a schema for functional and relative learning, but also a set of concepts and vocabulary that I can adapt to nearly any speech therapy goal.

For SLPs with diverse caseloads, themed resources that offer options for addressing goals across the bulk of the caseload are invaluable. That's true even for seasonal or holiday resources, such as this pumpkin-themed PDF that includes activities for several different goals. It can be used session after session in the fall, so it's earned its spot in the teletherapy activity toolbox.

Building a collection of teletherapy platform-friendly materials does take time and likely some money. But I hope the tips in this blog post help avoid that “one and done” problem we’ve all had—impulse-buy something 5 minutes before a session, use it once, forget about its existence, and never use it again in a virtual speech therapy session. 

Instead, you'll create a collection of versatile, go-to telepractice speech and language materials that will help you be more efficient with less. Not every resource will hit every mark above. But if you start looking at activities through the lens of these considerations– and selecting resources that fulfill multiple of them– you will find you need less, buy less, and use more of what you have. 

To make teletherapy planning even more efficient, learn more about the features of teletherapy and digital activities and resources, and how to choose materials you can use again and again.

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