Using Inferencing Visuals on a Stick in Speech Therapy

Visuals help our students. They can also increase student engagement.

Yes. We know our students benefit from visuals. It helps them understand what is expected of them. It breaks it down for them. It simplifies tasks and helps them process their answers. We love using them in speech and they really help our students grasp what is expected of them.

Working on Inferencing In Speech and Understanding Background Knowledge

That is ONE reason why I love using visuals on a stick! Give each student with a Popsicle stick with two visual choices on each side. They know what is expected of them – one of the two answers. They don’t have to worry about retrieving the vocabulary since it is right in front of them.

What is another reason why I love using visuals on a stick? Have you ever had that one student in the group that always calls out the answers for all of the other students? How about that group that did not do well with waiting for their turn to answer a question? Give everyone their own visuals so they can all participate, all showcase what they know, and won’t have to wait for their turns!

How can you use these visuals?

Have students identify if they hear a literal or an inferential question? Use it with You Tube videos (see my favorites by CLICKING HERE). Use it with any reading comprehension activity. Give them two different question types and let them listen or key words to identify the differences and know how to answer them!

You can have your students participate in academic discussions. Let them make inferences or predictions and let them debate about it. Let your students know that there are no wrong answers but as long as they can defend their responses with evidence. You can even make sure students each share a different piece of evidence without having to repeat a fact! It keeps them all listening to each other’s’ responses.

Have them identify between story clues and experience clues! How did they know?! Was it from a fact from the story or their background knowledge that helped them?! Give them sample clues from stories that you can easily generate on a cheat sheet. See if they can identify the differences! CLICK HERE to read more about working on background knowledge in speech.

These visuals are so much fun and easy to prep and use. I printed out copies for as many students as I would have in a group (for me…the most is 5). I laminated them so I have them forever. I took 5 Popsicle sticks and put Velcro on one end on both sides. I put Velcro on the backs of all of the visuals. I can easily switch up the visuals onto the Popsicle sticks without needing to prep ALL visuals with Popsicle sticks at once (that would be A LOT of Popsicle sticks needed).