Using visuals and visual schedules in speech and language therapy is far from a new idea. Visuals are one of an SLPs favorite tools for scaffolding and teaching new skills! This is because they’re practical, can be used to teach a wide variety of skills, and can even be useful in carryover of target skills into new environments.
Some examples of visuals SLPs might use in therapy are:
Visual Schedules (including first/then boards)
Visual schedules are so important for many of our students with autism, anxiety, or lower receptive language skills. They help our students understand what is coming next and because of this, can reduce anxiety and frustration.
If you’re looking to increase your use of visual schedules, I’d highly recommend the app ChoiceWorks. It’s a fantastic, versatile app that I’ve used for years!
Panda Speech also offers a completely FREE visual schedule on this blog post of hers.
Visual Strategies (e.g., graphic organizers, mind maps, anchor charts)
Graphic organizers and anchor charts have become a staple in my therapy sessions. I love using the large Post-It note posters to make these so I can write and draw them live during sessions.
Sentence Strips
I love using sentence strips for my students of all ages! I use them to expand utterances and to model functional carrier phrases that my students can use to comment, label, request, ask questions, and more!
Because I was using them so often, I created a resource filled with functional carrier phrases that I could use in a wide variety of activities including games and picture books. It contains 70 different sentence strips with a variety of carrier phrases on them. Click here to check it out.
Skill Specific Visuals
These types of visuals usually provide direct teaching about a specific speech, language, or social skill. The ones I provide for my students typically provide a short, student-friendly explanation of the skill and a visual representation of that skill or strategy.
If you’re looking to increase visual supports in your speech and language therapy to teach specific skills, I have several resources that will help you do just that!
First, if you want to teach specific language skills including vocabulary strategies, reading comprehension strategies, types of text, and more, click here to check out my Visuals for Language Skills and Strategies resource.
If you’re looking for skill specific visuals to target social skills, click here to check out my Social Skills Focus Sheets. They’re great for getting students to focus on one targeted skill each session and for self-reflecting on their use of that skill.
And because of my love for visuals, most of the resources in my store contain helpful visuals for both students and SLPs alike!
Hope that’s helpful! Thanks so much for reading!
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