September 2022 - "Speech Helpers" Community Helpers Theme

by Amy Curley December 14, 2022

TPT Seller of the Month

Our "Speech Helpers" TPT Seller of the Month was Aimee @aimeewaltonslp! We love that Aimee focuses on functional skills in her products! Check out her store if you have students on your caseload working on life skills or problem solving!

Did you miss this box?? Grab her Community Helpers Boom Cards by clicking the image below!

This box included the following Community Helpers themed materials:

Community Helpers Matching Game

Community Helpers is always a popular theme with students! Your younger students are probably very interested (maybe obsessed) with police officers and firefighters; and your older students are likely interested in jobs available in their community. This Community Helpers Matching Game from Spark Innovations will be a hit with your younger students. You could use this material with individual students, small groups, or even a whole group lesson. Here's some ideas:

1:1 clients or small group - Play a game of Memory and find the matches. When a student find the match, work on skills like labeling, articulation sounds, describing, or sentence formulation.
Large group - Give each student 3-4 cards (or however many they can hold in their hands), hold up a target card for them to match. When they make a match, work on the skills noted above, or incorporate "who?" questions. Use the sentence strip included in his Cube as a visual aide!

Match 'n Stack Nesting Blocks

Do you teach 3-4 year olds? If so, they will LOVE these community helper nesting blocks. My own 3 year old son played with these nonstop for a month! He gave me some great ideas for incorporating this toy into therapy:

Add more cars! And people!
Use the Transportation Speech Cube picture scene (City/Town) or road tape to make a road for the cars to travel on.
Use the picture scene included with this month's Cube (Garage Scene) plus small toys/pictures of related items (i.e. hydrant/fire station), to "drive" the items to correct garage. This is also a great opportunity to incorporate "who?" questions! (i.e. Who uses a fire hydrant?)
Focus on core words to fit your imaginative play: go, up, fast, slow, stop, help, in, out

Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do

This book is a hidden gem! It's great for targeting inferences because it gives a couple of clues and visuals to each different job. Following the clues, it shows the worker in a detailed picture scene. The picture scenes are a great opportunity to describe, label, or identify different related vocabulary. Or, continue with inferencing by asking questions, like (on the Farmer page), "what food it round and red?"

This fun book inspires lots of conversation and is easily adapted for students who use AAC or working on functional communication skills. It's a great opportunity to work on sharing opinions. You can engage with your students about which jobs sound fun, boring, exciting, or hard. Each student can take a turn sharing their opinion about each job -- would they want this job? Why or why not?

Garage Scene Dry Erase Board

There are so many ways to use picture scenes! One idea (also shared with the Match 'n Stack Nesting Blocks) is to add small toys/pictures of related items (i.e. hydrant/fire station) and "drive" the items, in their corresponding car or truck, to correct garage. This is also a great opportunity to incorporate "who?" questions (i.e. Who uses a fire hydrant?)

I also like to use these open-ended scenes with mixed groups because you can focus on vocabulary building in context, sentence formulation, asking/answering questions, problem solving, inferencing, articulation, and more! Picture scenes are also a great material to use during assessments to gather a language sample!

Sequencing Cards

This month's @thesparkinnovations Sequencing Cards set is focused on police officers. This 4-picture sequencing set is perfect for your younger students, and includes eight different question prompts that correspond to the pictures.

I like to use these sequencing card sets as an opportunity to find out more about my student's background knowledge on different topics. It's a great chance to engage them about their own experiences and hear how they share stories.

"Who" Questions Visual

This month's visual strip for "Who Questions" is one you will use all the time! It's dry erase compatible and can be used over and over again with all your books and many of your play items! Scan the QR code included in the package to download a digital version. Grab a set for yourself by clicking the image above!