Expand Utterances After Reading a Book

Lately, I’ve been inspired to blog about different ways to use books in therapy. Recently, I wrote about the question I love to ask students after we’ve read a book. Check that out here.

Today I’m talking about a way to expand utterances after reading a book. I used this strategy recently with my students and it worked really well. We read the book first, answering questions as we went. Then we went back to the beginning and I put a post-it with “on this page…” on the top of the page.

Students went through each page and took turns formulating a sentence to describe what was happening in each picture. Here’s a short video of one of my students trying it out! A lot of my students are ESOL and many need help with overall expressive language. This was a great way to do it and they had fun. They especially liked when I recorded them and let them listen to it.

Do you think you’ll try this tip? Let me know in the comments!