Your students can channel their inner astronaut with a fun outer space theme speech therapy unit!
There are so many benefits to using themed units in speech therapy, including greatly reducing prep time! Yes, that’s right, themes can mean less prep time, not more! If you follow a routine with your speech therapy lesson plans, it’s easy to just change out the theme, without changing out your strategies, visuals, and supports.
My Outer Space Themed Language Therapy Unit for Speech Therapy includes everything, all the stimulus materials and quality graphic organizers you need for just about your whole caseload!
Simple Ways to Have Fun!
Outer Space Themed Activities
If you need a fun video to increase engagement, check out Chris Hadfield’s space kitchen. Your students will love seeing and hearing all about eating in zero gravity environments! Videos are fun, but they also have the added benefit of giving our students some background knowledge if this is a topic they don’t know a lot about.
For some app fun, check out Dr. Panda Space. The Dr. Panda apps are another great series with minimal language, so you can talk all you want!
Outer Space Theme Books
A fun wordless picture book with a space theme is Field Trip to the Moon by John Hare.
Target Language
There are lots of other simple ways to include the volcano theme into your therapy:
- Turn the lights off and have a flashlight scavenger hunt to look for speech and language targets
- Target simple directions and make a toy rocket go on the planet and around the sun (don’t have a toy rocket? You can make a fast one with a toilet paper tube and some construction paper!)
- Ask simple wh- questions about outer space: What shape is a planet? Where do spaceships go? Who rides in a spaceship? When can we see the sun?
- Sequence the steps astronauts take during a launch
- Talk to your science teachers and find out which of your students will be studying space this year to see if you can work in some curriculum-based speech therapy!
- And most importantly: Listen to what your child says and recast and expand!
Outer Space Theme Language Speech Therapy Unit
If you’re looking for something more comprehensive, with just about everything you’d want to target in your language therapy, my themed language speech therapy unit is for you!
My outer space themed language unit includes all the materials you need to target:
- Core vocabulary (big, turn, look)
- Basic concepts (big, far, round)
- Describing (vehicles, planets, telescope)
- Tier 2 vocabulary (far, explore, launch, many, orbit, rotate)
- Prefixes (trans-, ast-)
- Inferencing/predicting
- Sentence combining
- Comprehending narrative texts
- Comprehending non-fiction texts
- WH questions
- Comparing and contrasting
- Storytelling
We’re talking over 100 pages of outer space themed goodness, with gorgeous photos, helpful icons, and systematic instructional materials.
Other SLPs absolutely LOVE my outer space language therapy unit. Here is some feedback I’ve received:
“This is the first themed unit of Speechy Musings I purchased and WOW. I have used the word comprehensive in a lot of TPT reviews, but this product gives a whole new meaning to the word “comprehensive.” I can literally use this one resource for an entire month’s worth of therapy for all of my caseload (except artic). There aren’t a lot of resources that are 100% appropriate for both my second graders and my fifth graders, but this certainly is. I cannot wait to have all of your themed units!”
— The Mobile SLP
“This resource was so comprehensive in targeting so many different language goals. It helps me understand themed therapy so much better! I used to think it would be too confusing, but it is actually so much more efficient and I’m excited to keep implementing more themes!”
— Meghan N.
“Once again this themed resource has ready-made materials for nearly my entire caseload. I am in my second week of lessons using this topic. Students already seem to love the outer space, and are so excited to show me current events and news they’re eager to find on the topic. I can target basic concepts, higher level vocab, morphology, phonology, comprehension, expressive language, and syntax practically all in one lesson. Children are very engaged with the visual format that they are becoming familiar with. Please keep creating more themed materials like this one (and dinosaurs, weather, trees, volcanoes) that are not focused on holidays or seasons!”
— Norah B.
Have fun in your therapy sessions and get the work done!
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