10 Games & Activities for Junior High SLPs
If you're new to middle school or junior high age groups, it can be tough to figure out age appropriate activities. These students are not little children but not quite teens, so you don't want to speak down to them or above their heads.
While many speech/language specific games are not designed for this age group, there are commercial games that can easily be modified to fit into therapy, elicit turns, and motivate these preteens. After 5 years in the junior high setting, I compiled this list of some of my favorite games (and game modifications) for this age group: 1. Teacher "Guess Who"
Make 3 color copies of the staff pictures in your yearbook. Cut out one set to be a deck. Use the other two copies to be game boards as you play "School Guess Who" with the teachers as the characters. (Just cover up the pics with coins, chips, or small paper as you go). This works well for targeting descriptive language.
2. Would You Rather...
Working on the structured speech level for articulation? Play "Would you Rather..." Give 2 choices of hypothetical situations and ask the kids "Would you rather A or B?" Tally how many answers the students have in common. (You can have them do this by dropping a chip in a cup every time the agree with the student answering the question and counting them at the end). Students enjoy this game and you can get do it online for free by using the website: yourather.com (Just read each question yourself first to make sure it's appropriate). You can also have students who are working on speech sounds at the reading level read the question choices for you.
3. Electronic Catch Phrase
This game is a favorite of mine because it is fun for students and adults. I use this game to illustrate the concepts of giving clues for an inference, defining a word with categories and attributes, providing a distractor (the game beeps) for fluency students, and working on structured speech for articulation students.
4. Apples to Apples
This language game is a classic that helps target adjectives, comparing and contrasting, and visualization. Later, I even created my own version using facial expressions, emotion words, and social scenarios to target pragmatic language!
5. Jenga
This multiplayer game allows you to reward each student in your small group with a quick turn removing and replacing a block from the Jenga tower. This is my go to for multi-student articulation therapy. I usually have them say their target 5-10 times (see here articulation probes for older children) and then they can take their turn while the next student is saying his/her target 5-10 times. Quick and rewarding!
6. Connect Four
Another game that I use for quick reinforcements is Connect-4. Again, kids can get earn a chip after they do their target 5-10 times. However, this game can also be adapted to build targets right into it! I created my own goal specific Connect-4 mats for both articulation and grammar. The mats can be attached to the back of the Connect-4 stand or played on a flat surface using any kind of round token. We love using the transparent magnetic chips, like those found in Super Duper, Inc's Chipper Chat games so that the winner of the game can be additionally rewarded by using the magnet to pick them up. Some older kids want to pretend that they don't care if they get to use the magnet or not, but they all eventually cave to the power of how cool magnet's are. You can just pose it like they're doing you a favor, "Could you pick up the chips for me? Here use this magnet to pick them all up quickly." They fall for it and enjoy it every time ;).
7. Model Me Kids
Use the "Model Me Kids" DVDs to target social skills. This video modeling series features middle school in High School students in a few of the DVDs (including "Conversation Tips and Tricks"). My students respond well to seeing kids their age talk about what to do and what not to do in social situations that they will face.
8. Show Off
This board game is among my students favorite speech therapy activities. Like the old game "concentration," players must think of a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet for a given category. This board game adds the feature of being able to steal someone else's turn if they are taking to long. The game is perfect for targeting categorization, but I have also adapted it to target word-final articulation; for each letter have the students come up with a word that starts with the letters of the alphabet, but end with their target sound. For example if your student is working on the word-final "er" sound, responses could include "Archer, Barber, Caterer, Doctor, Easter, Foster, etc."
9. 20 Questions
Have each of the students in your group think of/write down the name of an object. Then, allow the students to take turns asking each other a series of 20 yes/no questions until they can guess the object. This is a good game for structured speech practice and descriptive language skills.I will continue to add to this list so keep checking back here for additional game ideas...
10. Know Your Audience - A card-game about HOW to have a Conversation
This one is a game I created as a companion to my Visual Guide for HOW to take 3 Turns in Conversation visual guide. The game encourages players to examine their communication partner's verbal and non-verbal communication for clues as to whether the are interested, disinterested, or indifferent, and prompts them with how to respond accordingly. Both this game and the original guide are available in my online store, but members of the Expand Your SCOPE Facebook group can access them right from the group's files section!
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