I find that one of the areas lacking in practical therapy ideas for SLP’s is word-finding. I usually have at least one child on my caseload with word-finding difficulties so I am always looking for new and effective ideas.
I blogged about spending some time this summer with Jan Schwanke who has presented at ASHA on word-finding and is full of great, practical therapy ideas to help kids with word-retrieval. She spends a lot of time teaching her kids strategies to retrieve words and has some clever ways to remember what they are:
“Do Yourself a Favor and See” these word-finding strategies in your mind, reminds kids of the acronym, FAVOR-C which stands for:
Fill in the blank: this cloze activity involves giving the child a phrase (then move to sentences) where he has to use the information in the previous words to come up with the word to fill the blank. “I sat down to read and opened my____” Use this strategy with curriculum vocabulary provided by the teacher.
Association: Name words that are associated with a give word. “Bath: tub, washcloth, soap, towel, clean, etc
Visualize: visualize the word by “seeing” it in your mind as it is written
Opposites: Name opposites of a given word: up/down, high/low, sad/happy
Reflective Pause: pause for a few seconds to take time to retrieve the word
Categories: Name words in a category: multiplication, ocean, writing a story etc.
I will be sharing apps and other sites that I am finding valuable for practical therapy ideas
Here’s one, Speech Therapy on Video, that also covers phonemic and semantic cues, that seems to be geared toward adults but has activities for many of these strategies that can be used with children.
