Making Worksheets Fun and Functional

Worksheets. Ugh! As speech-language pathologists, we usually struggle with two conflicting viewpoints: “I really dislike worksheets, I just want to make my sessions fun.” versus: “I need to ensure carryover and mimic the types of lessons my colleagues do in their classrooms.” I fall between the two. Yes, I use a lot of task cards and speech-language games to keep sessions fun and motivating. However, I also feel worksheets generate great data to see if students are carrying over the strategies and skills they learn in the treatment room to regular classrooms. How do I gather this data? I find worksheets from resources designed around the skills I teach. Below are some of my favorite websites to use for free resources: Read Works – a nonprofit offering research-based and Common Core reading comprehension resources. NewsELA – a mobile app generating current news stories and quizzes at five different reading comprehension levels. K12Reader – reading and writing worksheets organized by targeted skill. Once my students demonstrate improvement or even mastery of a skill, I give them worksheets to show them how they can use those skills during classroom comprehension tasks. Can they identify higher-level versus lower-level questions, for example? Can they identify which skill they need to respond to questions? I also ask students to highlight key words in the questions to help them determine what type of information they need to find the answer. Wha...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Language Disorders Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs