Speech Therapy Games for Middle School
Speech therapy games for middle school can be a great way to engage older students in speech therapy!
Middle school students sometimes don’t want to come to speech therapy – at least that has been my experience. Gone are the happy kindergarteners who volunteered to go to speech … and replaced by grumpy students who are more than aware of social dynamics. They would rather disappear into a sea of faces inside a regular classroom than be pulled out for speech therapy. So it’s our task as speech pathologists to get those kids motivated and excited to participate in speech therapy. That’s why we’ve brought you our Top 5 Speech Therapy Games for Middle School!
Now games can be incorporated into speech therapy sessions as the therapy themselves working on language skills or articulation, but games are also great as reinforcers after successful trials. How you implement games in your speech therapy room I will leave up to you and your clinical judgment. But here are the five best speech language games I’ve used with middle schoolers:
Top 5 Speech Therapy Games for Middle School
1. Apples to apples
This game gets students laughing so much! They have to think about related/associated items. Things get silly fast and that’s why it’s been the hands down favorite with middle school students that I’ve worked with.
2. Taboo
Taboo is super fun naming game that makes you again think about related or associated names, but it forces you not to say the most closely associated word. To read a more detailed post about ‘Taboo’ and ideas for using it in speech therapy, please click over to this post.
3. Pictionary
Even though many students say they can’t draw, they actually end up surprising themselves. It’s also fun for the students watch adults draw – I know it sounds odd, but my students get a kick out of it.
4. Spot it
Spot it requires the player to visually scan stimuli and then name the one identical picture. Kids get engaged and very competitive when they play this game! For more info and ideas for using ‘Spot it’ in speech therapy, check out this post.
5. Scattergories
I love this speech language game because you work on categories and naming vocabulary words, but with the restriction of rolling a letter dice. This game can be used for articulation very easily because of the letter dice. For more information on ‘Scattegories’ and ideas for using it in speech therapy, please check out this post.
Most of these games are vocabulary builders that assist students that they can be more effective when answering questions and with reading comprehension tasks in the classroom because they build their knowledge base. Now go play (and learn)!
Bio: Sarah Wu is a bilingual speech-language pathologist from Chicago, Illinois. She blogs at speechisbeautiful.com
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