St. Patty's For Upper Elementary

Next week is going to be March already! I bet you've been seeing lots of items on Pinterest and the other speech blogs that feature activities with St. Patrick's Day themes. I've been pinning and downloading from all my favorite websites. So when I was deciding what kinds of materials I still needed for my caseload, I  realized I was really lacking activities for the upper elementary aged students. All of the following activities are focused on language, problem solving and reasoning skills for the 3-5th grade population!

So let's get to it! The first activity I created was a multiple meaning words matching game.

I used foam green shamrocks from the dollar store. I used all body part multiple meaning words. I wrote the body part on one side and the alternate meaning on the other side. For example "heel" and " what a trained dog does on a walk." Students had to match the pieces and then explain the 2 meanings in their own words.

The next activity requires the students to logically evaluate statements. Print one of each card and attach them to a popsicle stick. The SLP reads aloud a statement and the students hold up their answer card. A variety of example sentences are included, such as "Doctors are women."

The next activity focusing on problem solving and inferences. Students draw a card with 3 items listed. They read the items listed and determine what activity they could be used for. Given the words: Rod, Bait,  Boat, the students should infer that the person is going fishing. 

The last activity has an activity listed and students need to express the sequence of steps to complete the activity. 

All the activities include these extra cards to make them into a fun game! 

Grab your free download HERE.

What other goals are your upper elementary school students working on? 

Grab your shopping ads!

Many of my students this year have been working on auditory comprehension skills. They are working on listening to paragraphs and other short snippits of information, and then recalling the information, identifying key details, sequencing information and making inferences. As academic content becomes more difficult, many of my students with language disorders have difficulty with these auditory comprehension skills, impacting their success in the classroom.

My students were getting pretty good at completing these questions with my standard short stories and follow up questions. This week I decided to see how well they are transferring those skills!

This is where it's time to grab your Sunday paper ads! I had Target, Giant Eagle and Meijer.

I wrote this little short story up about a lady running errands. She had 3 days worth of activities to buy items for. The student's needed to listen to the activities, and then look through the ads and develop a shopping list. For example if Mrs. Baker needs to do the laundry, dishes and vacuum. She probably needs to make sure she has laundry detergent and dish soap. The kids had to recall the errands and chores and then make inferences about what she might need. It was a great activity to work on pulling out the key details presented.


To follow up we compared our shopping lists. Students worked on some social skills, such as persuasion  and negotiation to decide on a single list of appropriate items for the group.

This is the printable I used for each student. As always in my room. Activities need to be flexible for all different groups! Here are 5 more ways I used the ads:

1. Students searched for items with their articulation sound
2. Find items that fit into a category (ie: electronics, vegetables, etc.)
3. Find items with a certain attribute (ie: noisy, spicy, etc.)
4. Find two things you would like to buy. Compare and contrast them.
5. Find an item. Give your neighbor clues, until they guess what you have on your wish list!

Grab your printables here!
Story Example
Worksheet


What other ways can we use these ads? Thoughts?