Keeping Kids Engaged During Speech

You have a speech group (2, 3, 4+ students) sitting around your speech table. Great! Now how the heck do you go about keeping them ALL engaged and learning? Today I’m sharing my tips for keeping your kids engaged during your group sessions. It’s not an easy feat!

First, my students know to head to my Student Speech Goal area on my whiteboard. I tell them what their target is for the day and they write their names on one of the colored papers. Then they find their target and stick it on. This way, they are aware of what they’re working on.

Second, I do more of a round robin type therapy for the most part. Even if we’re reading a book, I make sure each student gets approximately the same number of turns. If we aren’t reading a book, I try to have an easy activity (coloring, play dough, etc) to occupy the other students when it’s not their turn. My free Ten For packets all have an opened ended page in them that are perfect for this.

Third, if an issue arises (Johnny is out of his seat, Sally isn’t listening), I address it quickly and move on. I find that being firm in these situations are key. You can be nice, but still firm!

Fourth, find a universal motivator. For my students, it’s slime. Yes, slime! See a video here. I don’t know what it is, but almost every single one of my students will work for 2-3 minutes at the end of the session to play with this.

Fifth, don’t beat yourself up if a session gets away from you. It’s happened to me and I’m sure it’ll happen many more times!