Topic/Description: Speech Therapy Unit for Articulation - dinosaurs. Activities built around book "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" by Hudson Talbot. Breakdown of words by phoneme (R, S, and L) and position is included as well as game idea, bulletin board idea, oral and written language activity.
Level: Grades 2-5 depending on reading level. Best for later phases of articulation therapy such as reading, carryover.
Materials: Book: "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" by Hudson Talbott
Procedures/Activities:
1. Discuss cover and predict.
2. Study applicable words from below. Practice in therapy and/or send home list to practice.
R WORDS - Initial position - Rex, reading, research, reply, real, replied, run, right, read
L WORDS - Initial position - looking, little, life, lucky, long, lifetime, light, like, line, loved, late, listen, luck, learn, land
L WORDS - Medial position - called, feeling, jolted, easily, silence, welcome, holiday, walked, falls, familiar, old, allosaurus, fella, quickly, hold, perfectly, carefully, kneeling, timidly, yelled, halls, muscle, models, million, probably, early, trilobite
L WORDS - Final position - little, meaningful, all, you'll, natural, thrill, tell, well, until, call, pool, while
L WORDS - Blends - planet, Bleeb, reply, plunging, exclaimed, Bloomingdale's, replied, plan, still, publicity
3. Read book - SLP or partner charting of correct/incorrect production.
4. Vocabulary - discuss, use in sentences. Pick words as needed for the level of students. Suggestions: research, diorama, era, familiar, trilobite, demonstration, century, ceremony, publicity, Paleozoic, destiny, extinct
5. Oral Language - Students interview parents and/or grandparents to find out what they have that their parents/grandparents didn't have at their age. How has the world changed? Report back to group using correct articulation.
6. Written Language - Display cover of book - have students, either individually or as group, write descriptive paragraph
7. Bulletin Board - "We have DINO-mite Speech!" Underneath put footprints with each student's name on
8. Game - Cut construction paper into 40 1-inch squares. One side of each square can be decorated with footprints or dinosaur stickers. On the other side, write 1 letter of the word DINOSAUR (you should have 5 squares of each letter). Shuffle cards. Take turns giving the students a word containing their sound. If they say correctly in a sentence, they get a card. The first one to correctly spell D-I-N-O-S-A-U-R, yells "DINOSAUR"!
9. Synonyms - Reread story (or certain pages) using synonyms - does it change the meaning? reply/answer, run/jog, weird/strange, partner/friend, far/distant, freeze/halt/stop, mistake/error, little/small, silence/quiet, quickly/fast