Angry Birds: Executive Functioning

If there is one thing SLP's know... it's that finding a motivating tool, will take your therapy session a long way! This week I've been using an angry birds kit I got on Black Friday for $4 bucks! The game comes with cards that describe sets of building set ups worth different points.

I get a lot of SLP's who know how to use games as reinforcers, but sometimes the game itself if worth a second look at it. I have some 3rd grade students who are working on language skills and that includes executive function.

What do we know about executive functioning and language impaired students? Lets take a quick trip through the research. This information is based on a ASHA Poster from 2011 found here from Sarah Lambeth, Jacquelyn Liesen.  

Executive functions are comprised of attentional and inhibitory control; working memory; planning and organizing; initiation and shifting; self- monitoring, and emotional control.   

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) may have deficits in attention, narrative language skills, and auditory working memory (Hoffman & Gillam,2004; Marton & Schwartz, 2003) 

Significant correlation is evident between preschooler's narrative language abilities and executive functions skills of inhibition, working memory, flexibility, and planning, measured by the BRIEF (Trainor, 2010)  

Typically developing adolescents and adolescents with SLI differ in executive functions measured by the BRIEF (Hughes, Turkstra, and Wulfeck, 2009) 

So in summary, planning, sequencing & recall are all important executive functioning skills! Those skills match perfectly with the Angry Birds game when used with intention by a SLP. 

Here's what we did during each round. 


1. Develop a plan.  (ie: Jake will build the bottom parts and I'll add the top parts.)

2. Describe the plan, step by step, which is scribed by the SLP.  (First, stand the grey parts in the tall position next to each other. Then add a short grey piece. etc.)

3. Develop questions to request items, using ATTRIBUTES (Ms. Rayburn, may I have the piece that is round, grey and bumpy?)  ((We skipped this skill in younger or more delayed students, but it was a perfect way to add those skills for 4th graders!)

4. Build it! (Recalling the steps outlined above.)

5. Use those metacognitive skills! How did we do? Does it look like the picture? Do we need to adjust? What did we miss?

6. Knock it down! (And start again!)

The best part is that they think they're just playing! Have you used any games to work on executive functioning skill in your students?

Angry Birds Invade the Speech Room

Part of engaging the little guys we work with everyday, is finding things they are interested in. Most of my students love to play angry birds, so we had angry birds week in The Speech Room!

It looked a little something like this...

It went a little something like this...

Angry Birds War

This game is played just like the card game war. Students split the cards and flip them one at a time. The more powerful Angry Bird wins the hand and the cards. Students use the 'winning hand' cheat sheet.

We used this activity for articulation and language students after each turn, and as a quick 3 minute reward game at the end of our speech time for older kids.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.


We have played lots of Angry Birds Space!

Angry Birds with the EET. (If you don't have the EET - Find out about it here... I would highly recommend it!)

The students selected one angry bird to complete the EET about. We then turned it into a narrative or persuasive writing activity.

Adjective Angry Birds

Because the birds can't always be angry! 

After we talked about adjectives and generated a list on the board, we each picked an adjective for our bird. We then worked on writing sentences, describing the bird or whatever else they need individually. In this example, the student needs to work on sequencing and using transition words, so we told how the bird went from angry to stinky!


Yesterday my bird...

Many of my students are working on verb tenses. We wrote sentences about what the birds might have done yesterday today and tomorrow. Then the kids highlighted the verbs.

DOWNLOAD these writing sheets HERE.



Sticker Stories

One last writing activity involved a package of Angry Birds stickers (mine are from Wal-Mart).

I let the kids pick a few stickers and develop a story about them. This was my example. You can make it work for basically any goal !!


Building Angry Birds

Just for fun we decided to make the speech room into  the real life angry birds game!

We used some green cups to represent the pigs! The kids earned the cups throughout their session and then we spend the last 3 minutes stacking them and knocking them over with my little angry bird. The most exciting thing about him is he makes noise! The red angry bird is from Wal-Mart (don't tell the kids I got it in the pets dept!)

This was SUCH a fun week, and I have a feeling the kids will be asking for more angry birds days :)

Other SRN Angry Bird download include Conversation Starters and Angry Birds Executive Functioning!



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