• Skip to main content

Speechy Musings

Speech therapy materials for pediatric SLPs

  • Shop
  • Learn
    • ⭐️ Sounds / Phonology
    • ⭐️ Words / Vocabulary
    • ⭐️ Sentences / Syntax
    • ⭐️ Narratives
    • ⭐️ Comprehension
    • ⭐️ AAC
    • Goals + Data Collection
    • Easy Therapy Activities
    • Language Therapy
    • SLP Organization
    • Speech Sounds
    • Therapy Planning
    • Supports for Success
  • Goals
  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Help

Sequencing

Temporal sequencing skills, or the ability to put events in order, is important for organizing and effectively communicating story information. It can also be a simple way to increase engagement in story retell tasks.

Other narrative skills:

  • Story Elements
  • Story Generation
  • Story Retell
  • Summarizing Stories (SWBST)

Sequencing Goal Ideas

  • After being read a familiar picture book out loud, NAME will correctly sequence 3+ picture scenes from the story across 4 consecutive sessions.
  • After being read a short text, NAME will correctly sequence 3-5 pictures to show the information in order given a familiar visual in 2 out of 3 opportunities across 2 sessions.
  • Given sequential pictures from a story read out loud, NAME will sequence the pictures and retell the story verbally in 2 out of 3 opportunities across 2 sessions.

Read more about my goals here.

Sequencing Resources

Here are my favorite resources that target sequencing skills for speech and language therapy:

Sequencing for Simple Story Retell Boom Cards

$7

Sequencing for Simple Story Retell Expanded

$14

Teaching Text Structures

$30

Searching for Home Story Unit

$25

Teaching Sequencing Skills in Speech Therapy

Sequencing can be thought of as the first step towards story retell, story summarizing, and understanding more complex narrative structures (like cause/effect). Sequencing skills are also one of the building blocks necessary for storytelling. In other words, sequencing skills help build a solid foundation for later narrative skill development.

While language skills also build an important foundation for narrative development, they do not fully predict narrative skills. Sequencing skills are thought to be another separate influence on narrative skills. This means that explicitly targeting them, in addition to language skills, can be an effective way to increase overall narrative abilities in our students.

Another reason to target sequencing with students is to increase their understanding and use of temporal language concepts such as “before”, “first”, “after”, “next”, and “last”. Children with language difficulties show relative weaknesses in their use of this type of language when describing sequences of events (Barton-Hulsey, 2017).

Depending on the individual student, you can sequence a lot of things including the parts of a story, the steps to do a task, or the sequence of an event they’ve experienced. To scaffold for success, simply adjust how many pictures you are asking the child to sequence and the supports you’re providing. I usually start with 3 (to show a story’s beginning, middle, and end) and increase based on each student’s language level.

There’s two very important things I want to note about sequencing skills:

  1. Sequencing is generally considered a low level language skill. It can be appropriate to teach and target with younger students, or those with lower language skills. But, moving onto more complex tasks (that more closely predict reading comprehension skills) as soon as a student is ready for them is supported by research (Dempsey, 2021).
  2. Sequencing assesses conceptual understanding of the story or topic and a student’s attention and memory skills. For example, many students can sequence picture cards or stories they’ve never been exposed to (through inferential knowledge and knowledge on the topic overall). This means that it might not be an appropriate goal/target area for many students. I’ve found sequencing to be an easy to measure skill, especially for young students or those with limited expressive language. It is a way to measure that a student understands the story or taught sequence, however it is not required for narrative performance overall and is not an isolated skill.

To summarize, sequencing or telling temporally linked stories, is an important developmental stage of storytelling skills. I would recommend that you target sequencing when working on skills like the use of temporal words (first, next, last), improved story organization, story retell, and to demonstrate comprehension of a topic or story. You should move on from sequencing to those more robust and meaningful skills as soon as possible. Below are some ideas for how to incorporate sequencing into a contextualized unit.

Sequencing Skills in Context

Sequencing is a great skill to practice as part of a larger, contextualized unit. Instead of sequencing several different sets of picture cards back to back, it can be helpful to see sequencing as part of a bigger lesson sequence.

Here’s an example of steps (adapted from Dodd, 2012) that you could follow to improve the narrative skills of students of nearly any language level:

  1. Read a simplified story out loud to the student. Show the picture cards as you read and encourage students to imitate some of the story’s language as you go.
  2. Ask questions about the story, looking through the pictures to locate the answers.
  3. Have the student sequence the picture cards.
  4. Support the student in retelling the story using the pictures.
  5. Remove all supports and have the student retell the story independently.

A lesson sequence like this provides multiple opportunities to hear the language of the story and multiple opportunities to imitate and express language as well.

You can easily scaffold the activity for increased challenge by adding more picture scenes (making the story longer) or removing some (down to as few as 3) to reduce the language and cognitive demands.

For an easy way to target sequencing skills within a contextualized narrative-based unit, check out my story units! Each one includes an original wordless picture book that you can use to target any language therapy goal!

Shop Story Units
Sequencing Sampler freebie for SLPs

Sign up for my email newsletter and get four FREE sequencing worksheets!

After signing up, you will receive 4 worksheets that target story sequencing skills ranging from 3 to 6 steps. Each worksheet includes a short story, a visual, and images to sequence the story.

Read more about sequencing:

Make Your Own Story Visuals for ANY Book!

Story Squares FREEBIE

The Story System: Building a Story Unit

Using Elephant and Piggie Books for Speech Therapy

Research to Read

The Role of Sequencing in Reading Comprehension
Gouldthorp, Bethanie & Katsipis, Lia & Mueller, Cara. (2017). An Investigation of the Role of Sequencing in Children’s Reading Comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly 53 (1), p91-106. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19016130/
Nonverbal Temporal Sequencing Skills in Relation to Narrative Skills (open access)
Carlsson, Emilia & Åsberg Johnels, Jakob & Gillberg, Christopher & Miniscalco, Carmela. (2020). Narrative Skills in Primary School Children with Autism in Relation to Language and Nonverbal Temporal Sequencing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09703-w
Adapting Stories for Complex Language Learners
Dodd, Janet L. (2012). “Adapted Stories: Creating Accessible Stories for Children With Complex Language Problems.” SIG 1 Perspectives on Language Learning and Education 19(4), 139-146. https://doi.org/10.1044/lle19.4.139

Learn more about similar skills:

  • Story Elements
  • Summarizing Stories (SWBST)
  • Story Retell
  • Story Generation
See All Skills

Foundational Skills

Sounds
  • Shop Sounds Resources
  • Sounds Overview
  • Phonological Awareness
  • Speech Sound Production
Words / Vocabulary
  • Shop Words / Vocabulary Resources
  • Words / Vocabulary Overview
  • Context Clues
  • Direct Vocabulary Instruction
  • Morphology/Affixes
  • Categories + Word Associations
  • Describing
Sentences / Syntax
  • Shop Sentences / Syntax Resources
  • Sentences / Syntax Overview
  • Sentence Deconstruction
  • Sentence Combining
  • Sentence Formulation
  • Defining

Generalization

Narratives
  • Shop Narratives Resources
  • Narratives Overview
  • Story Generation
  • Story Retell
  • Summarizing Stories (SWBST)
  • Story Elements
  • Sequencing
Comprehension
  • Shop Comprehension Resources
  • Comprehension Overview
  • Comprehension Monitoring
  • Summarizing (Main Idea + Details)
  • Text Structure
  • Inferencing + Predicting
  • WH Questions

Additional Supports

AAC
Social Communication
  • Language Areas and Skills
  • Goal Bank
  • Shop Resources
  • My Account
  • All Access Pass
  • Shop TPT
  • Articles
  • About Speechy Musings
  • Subscribe to Newsletter
  • FAQs + Contact
  • Privacy Policy + Legal
  • Terms of Use

Copyright © 2025 Speechy Musings •  All rights reserved  •  Site Design by Emily White Designs

0