One of our MAJOR goals as special educators is to get our kids TALKING. No matter how they do it, we want them to communicate their ideas, express what they are thinking and most importantly TALK about what we are learning!
I had been having a lot of trouble getting my students to talk about topics. We would spend a MONTH on penguins and I would ask my students to tell me one thing about penguins and they looked at me like they didn’t even know what I was talking about.
The solution? As always, more VISUAL SUPPORTS!
I created these mini communication boards to give kids an idea of WHAT they can talk about. Coming up with information can be tough for our kids without a visual, but I was surprised that once these boards were in front of them they could fill in the blanks with EVEN MORE INFO. More than was even pictured in front of them. (teacher win?!)
I created these topic boards with our lower kiddos in mind! This means that they can pick a verb and a noun to build a sentence fragment (step one to sentence building) OR kids that are a little higher can add in an adjective.
But what if you have kids that are little higher than that ( I do!)… these students can add in all those little words on their own on the sentence building sheet, while the lower kids can simply cut and paste the pictures from the communication board.
Have students form sentence fragments using the provided communication topic boards. They can answer questions using the boards, and use them for other thematic lessons as well!
Ask students to form ideas about the topic by cutting and pasting their own ideas onto the topic worksheet!
How am I using these boards in my room?
After introducing students to a topic using a book, video, story, or theme work from the week/ month, I want to encourage even our lowest students to TALK ABOUT IT! I will introduce a theme and then use the topic board all week to get kids TALKING, whether that be using their voice, communication device, or picture symbols. At the end of the week we will fill in the writing worksheet with the pictures provided or writing if we can!
You can grab these topic boards in my TPT Store. It includes all major holidays as well as some more general broad topics too! Keep an eye out for more, my kids are loving these and I have more ideas up my sleeve for them!
