When my students walk into the therapy room, I have my computer open waiting on them and three students sit down at my horseshoe table. They know when they sit down for therapy to open up their devices and get them ready to use. We talk about their weekends and I have already assigned each of them target goals through lesson planning for their varying IEP needs. Because of the robust library of vocabulary therapy materials, I can easily locate the targets necessary for each individual student without searching for physical materials or data collection materials.
This is a group of 1st graders. All three are working on narrative language and comprehension. This makes for a very interactive session! I create learning paths for all three students and get them started on independent work.
Student A is working on answering questions about what he sees. He is asked to describe what he sees and the computer is documenting his utterance/responding to each stimulus. This is great because then I can look at the variation of responses across months and look for progress. I’ll use the same stimulus every month and my goal is that I’ll get more and more words in the response and it evolves to fluent responding as I meet the goal. We used activities like:
- Objects around a dentist’s office
- Objects around the doctor’s office
- Objects around the playground
Simultaneously, the other two students are working on their respective learning paths. After we get through these activities “What do you see?” All of the students take a break. Now, Student A gets to ask his peers, “What do you see?” while pointing to the computer. This allows him a chance to not only respond to the question but also get an opportunity to ask the question. We repeat this three times for each student. It’s perfect because they are all practicing the entire session. Many more responses than I could ever get with pencil and paper/traditional tasks. We repeat this with all three students. They enjoy the interaction with the technology as well as their peers.
- Three students sit at my table
- All are working on comprehension and narrative language skills at a similar level
- Learning paths are set
- I work with student 1; student 1 answers the questions and then gets an opportunity to ask his peers the same questions
- Repeat with student 2
- Repeat with student 3
- Happy to engage with technology as well as their peers
