Do you have Mixed Groups?
It is not uncommon for speech language pathologists to have 40 or 50 students on their caseloads. In fact, during my school SLP internship I had close to 100 students on my caseload! With all of the meetings, assessments, and reports to complete, it is nearly impossible for school SLPs to fit everything into their schedule without forming mixed groups.
A mixed group is made up of students with different needs who have varying speech/language goals. Student needs may include articulation, fluency, receptive language, expressive language, or pragmatic language skills. Mixed groups can be challenging but they can also be a lot of fun! In my opinion, the best activities for mixed groups are open-ended so they can be used to target a wide variety of speech and language skills. Open-ended activities can easily be adapted to meet the needs of all the individuals in the group. Today I am sharing 5 of my favorite activities for mixed groups. You will also find a FREE conversation dice activity at the end!
Guessing Games
Last fall, I wrote a blog post about Guessing Games (Find it here!). When we are playing these games, my students don’t even realize that they are practicing their speech and language skills. Some examples of common guessing games include the following: 20 Questions, I Spy, Charades, Headbanz, and Guess Who. In my opinion, guessing games are perfect for mixed speech and language groups because you can address speech carryover, social skills, and receptive/expressive language skills.
I have listed some Pinwheel Speech Guessing Games below:
- Printable Seek and Find
- Seek and Find Boom Cards Activity (shown above)
- Seasonal Vocabulary Seek and Find Riddles
- Guess the Picture Seasonal Bundle
- Guessing Games Bundle
Hidden Picture Scenes
I have fond memories of searching for hidden pictures as a child and I have also found them to be useful for speech therapy sessions. My students always enjoy using a magnifying glass to search for vocabulary words and articulation pictures in the sound loaded scenes. You can practice answering questions, describing, vocabulary, using carrier phrases, expanding utterances, and speech carryover skills. For this reason, this makes them perfect for mixed groups! As a result, I have created a variety of hidden picture scenes for articulation practice and vocabulary practice (printable and digital). In fact, the Hidden Picture Scenes Seasonal Bundle will have you covered all year long!
Books
You can address just about any goal with a book! For this reason, this makes books a great choice for mixed groups! My favorite books are wordless picture books (see Wordless Picture Books blog post). Here are just a few speech and language skills that you can target with books:
Expanding utterances with carrier phrases (e.g. “I see a ____”)
Speech sound carryover skills (sentence or conversation level)
Answering questions
Specific grammatical structures
Vocabulary
Narrative Language Skills
Reading for details
Describing
Making inferences
Sequencing and Retelling the story
Busy Picture Scenes
It’s no secret that I love Busy Picture Scenes (Learn more). Have you ever heard that a picture is worth 1,000 words? This is so true for busy picture scenes! You will find that busy picture scenes are ideal for mixed groups because there are so many different ways to use them. Depending on your students’ goals, you could target any of the following:
* Expanding utterances with carrier phrases (I see a ____)
* Speech sound carryover skills (sounds in sentences or conversation)
* Increasing overall speech intelligibility
* Speech fluency
* Answering questions
* Prepositions
* Specific grammatical structures
* Explaining absurdities (What’s Wrong in the picture? Why is that silly?)
* Making inferences about the pictures (“How are they feeling?”, “What season is it?”, “How do you know?”)
* Practicing conversation skills (Have you ever been to the zoo? Who did you go with? What did you see?)
* Following directions (“Point to the black and white dog”)
* Vocabulary (Naming items in the picture, seasonal vocabulary)
* Writing skills (Have students provide a written description or write a short story about the scene)
You can find a variety of busy picture scenes online. Check out this page that I created on Pinterest for some free options! You can also purchase scenes in the Pinwheel Speech TPT store:
- Busy Picture Scenes
- Seasonal Bundle of Busy Picture Scenes
- Sound Loaded Busy Picture Scenes
- FREE Spring Busy Picture Scenes when you sign up for the Pinwheel Speech Community! (Shown above)
Finally, to thank you for visiting my website, I have included a FREE Conversation Dice Icebreaker (aka: Dicebreaker) for you to try! Simply click on the image below to download this activity:
Your Turn!
I am always looking for new ideas too! Please share your favorite speech and language activities for mixed groups by commenting below! 🙂
