Using YouTube to Work on Articulation

Are you sick of just drilling your articulation sounds? Are you looking for something different to do with your articulation students? Today I want to give you an idea that you can use with your students this week whether you are virtual or in person!

I want to show you some of my favorite wordless videos that you can use to work on articulation. The same way you can use a book to work on articulation skills, you can use a video. I love using wordless videos for articulation because you can decide what words are there and what goals you want to work on. And if you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love using Edpuzzle because I can add questions to any video ahead of time and Edpuzzle will automatically pause the video at that point and pop up the question so I don’t have to worry about it and I can focus on other things.

The first video I want to show you is called Pip the Pup. This Edpuzzle I made for students who are working on /r/ articulation sounds. So, the video starts and then it pauses with the prompt that pops up saying use the word “over” in a sentence. My student was then able to say a sentence like “there is a sign over the road”. And then we were able to self-reflect how the student did.

The video continues and then it pauses and the prompt says “use the word more in a sentence”. My student was able to come up with the sentence “now there are more dogs on the screen”.

So, with these wordless videos you can think of any word that might be used to describe what the student is seeing and then have them say a sentence describing what they see with that word. When I used this video with my student, I was taking notes of how the student did and wrote down words we needed more practice with at the end. That way the words that the student did independently and correctly, we didn’t need to practice again. At the end when we were working on those words the student needed more practice with, I said the words in different ways and then had the student correct me and how I was saying the words.

Using videos like this is also a great tool for if you are working with mixed groups because you can easily set up all the targets within one video. And in the same way we would work on goals with a book, we can work on a variety of goals with this wordless video. I have used it to work on comprehension questions, vocabulary, sentence structure, articulation, predicting, social skills, and really just a variety of higher-level thinking skills. Any video that doesn’t have words will work because we can decide what the targets are. It’s all about thinking outside the box and being creative to get the job done.

I highly recommend checking this video out and if you like this, there are so many other wordless videos you can use with your students as well! There is one wordless video called For the Birds or one called Soar that are both great for working on /r/ sounds. If you’re working on S clusters, a couple of my favorite videos are Lilly and the Snowman and Snack Attack. All you have to do is look at these videos that we love to use in a little bit of a different way and I’m sure you can think of so many questions and ways to use them for articulation with your students. Your students will love these fun and engaging videos and it’s a great way to work on those articulation skills that doesn’t feel like work.

Want to learn more? Check out the video and the resources I mentioned for engaging, no-prep and low-prep activities to use with your students this week!