FREE Escape the Speech Room - ARTICULATION CHALLENGE

I love how hands on activities spark engagement in my therapy sessions. Don't get me wrong, I don't go big in every session but when I do, I often find that as engagement goes up, behavior management goes down. I love how escape challenges facilitate cooperative learning (hello social skills) in a structured way as students work together to complete each mission. I couldn't resist taking the fun into my articulation sessions!

The /th/ Escape the Speech Room Challenge is included in my free resource library if you would like to try it out!

Mission One:

The first mission requires them to complete a 9 piece puzzle containing the target phoneme in the initial, medial and final position of words. They give you the flexibility to tailor expectations to your student's level of success (say each word 10x, identify the position within the word, auditory bombardment paired with sound in isolation, etc.). Once they complete the puzzle, the remaining three pieces will determine the first lock code. (Total puzzle pieces: 12)

                                          

Mission Two:

In the second mission, the students use the decoder ring to decipher the lock code by spelling it out. Each letter of the alphabet is represented on the decoder ring with a picture containing the target phoneme in either the initial, medial or final position of the word. You may also choose to use the decoder ring for additional therapy activities outside of the Escape the Speech Room Challenge. For example, students could spell their name using the target pictures, spelling/vocabulary words, etc.

                                              

Mission Three:

The third mission includes sentences containing words with the target phoneme. Students determine if the statements are TRUE or FALSE to color a grid which will reveal the third lock code. This mission encourages students to practice the target sound at the sentence level. Two different lock codes are provided for this mission for you to choose from.

When the students unlock all three locks, they can then open the toolbox to discover "I Escaped the Speech Room" brag tags (included) or a prize of your choice (not included). 

Materials you will need to purchase separately:

⇨ 3 Three Digit Combination Locks 

(Locks that you can program work best. Links are included for the ones pictured).

⇨ HASP - Allows all three locks to be attached to one toolbox. 

If you prefer, you can add holes to your toolbox or use separate toolboxes.

⇨ Toolbox or container to attach locks to.

I purchased the one that I use at the dollar tree.

★ Lock codes are consistent for each Escape Room Challenge to alleviate the prep of reprogramming locks between groups/phonemes. It also allows missions to be used interchangeably within mixed groups. For example, you may choose to use a different phoneme for each mission.

★ If you prefer to set your own lock codes, an option for you to customize is included. This is not digitally editable but allows you to customize printed missions.

Click here to try the /th/ Escape the Speech Room Challenge for FREE

If you would like to try more Escape the Speech Room Challenges, you can find more Articulation Challenges here.

I would love to hear what activities your students love! If you try an Escape Room Challenge, let me know how it goes!

P.S. If you are looking for an Escape Room Challenge to teach all about SLP, you may also want to read about one I used for my son's career day in this post.

Got Goals? Increasing Student Accountability & Goal Awareness

One of my biggest pet peeves is when students do not know why they come to speech therapy. "To play games" just doesn't cut it in my book. Do we ever play games in my room? Absolutely. Not every session, but it does happen. However, that game is a medium to address the specific goals, not the goal itself. Now, I know that you all know that so you're probably thinking I'm preaching to the choir, right? My point is that WE know what the purpose of that game or activity is but do our students?

Having students know what they target in speech-language has always been an important factor for me but a couple years ago I had to take a good hard look at HOW I was doing that. As a token of congratulations for being nominated educator of the year, my sweet SLP colleague compiled a book for me with responses from my students about what they love about coming to speech. The responses truly touched my heart (I may have shed a tear or twenty) but responses that referenced the WHY they came to speech were in the minority. I am a big proponent of self-reflection so I had to take a step back and really think about what I could do to make sure that was in the forefront of their thinking about speech. My challenge? It was important to me to address that in a way that would not sacrifice the strong interpersonal relationships with my students that I hold near and dear to my heart. 

Flash forward to the next year... our SLP assignments were changed and I was now tasked to ensure that my self-reflection of increasing goal awareness took place while also establishing authentic relationships with new students. The solution that worked for me was using Speech Therapy Goal Tags. I'll be honest here... they weren't just helpful for my students but for me as well! Not only were my students learning what their speech therapy targets were, but I was learning what their specific targets were. Particularly for my students targeting language skills, this can be a difficult task.

What I didn't anticipate was how much the students would LOVE the tags. I intentionally made the goal tags in landscape orientation so they would be easy to discern from brag tags that we added. To the students, the tags were regarded as an ID badge. I included a schedule badge to encourage students to come down to therapy independently at their scheduled time. I had to hide my giggles when I would spot a student testing out their badge to see if it would gain them access to the elevator like staff badges do. 

How did they work?

Students were active participants in assembling their goal badges onto their lanyards. This was a great opportunity to talk about what they were working on in speech in a relevant project based manner that held relevance. The badges then traveled with students back and forth from class. They were also a helpful reminder to teachers about what each student was targeting in student friendly "I can" terms. Students took pride in them and would often ask for special permission to take them home and show their parents (ummm... absolutely!). 

I highly recommend trying it out to see how it works for you and your students. You can create your own tags with index cards/cardstock or use the Speech Therapy Goal Tags that I made if you want a print and go option. I added a customizable option as well so you can taylor them to meet your specific needs. 

What works for you? I'd love to hear. Shoot me a message or let me know in the comments below!

UPDATE: Do you want to hear more about using Goal Tags? Check them out in the video below!

(Don't mind the awkward screen shot... thanks YouTube!)

Escape the Speech Room

I was recently invited to participate in a career fair at my son's elementary school. I was excited to participate and share my passion for speech-language pathology with them! I did not learn what speech-language pathology was until I was in college (gasp!) but am so thankful that I was blessed to be housed in the dorms across from a SLP major. Watching her creatively develop materials for her client in her clinical inspired me to take an introductory course to check out what speech-language pathology was all about. The rest is history!

In speaking with my son, one suggestion that he had was for the presentation to be interactive and engaging. I couldn't agree more so I decided to create an "Escape the Speech Room" activity that would introduce the students to various aspects of communication with missions in Articulation, Language, Fluency, Voice and Pragmatics! The students had a blast and they learned a bunch along the way! 

Knowing that the students would likely be listening to various presentations throughout the day, I wanted to give them the opportunity to get up and move while learning in the process.

Escape the Speech Room was broken up into 5 “missions” which were broken up into centers. Each of the 5 Missions reflected on an area within our scope of practice: Articulation, Language, Voice, Fluency, and Pragmatics.

Each mission contained a Debriefing Sheet with information about that particular area. It also included a list of materials that they needed as well as a description of their mission. Each mission uncovered a key to the help unlock the individual padlocks on the box. Once the groups solved their missions, they came together to learn about some of our work settings and decode the final clue. The individual padlocks all contained a card with a setting an SLP may work in. The students used those cards to collectively determine what the passcode to the final word lock was.

When the students completed their challenge, they filled out a Reflections sheet to show what they learned and share it with the other students. This allowed students to learn about the different centers or areas of speech-language pathology by reading their fellow classmates' reflections.

Does this sound like something that you would be interested in using in YOUR setting? Let me know what you think! {Update: If you missed the copy sent out in my newsletter, don't fret! Per your requests, I included it here in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. Sign up for my newsletter if you would like to have first dibs and try out some new products for free.}