The Mitten: Articulation

Due to the holiday and a teacher workday, I have had to condense therapy into a shortened time span this week.  I adore the illustrations in Jan Brett’s “The Mitten” so I definitely wanted to include it in my rotation this season. All of my students were familiar with the story, so that helped me get to the articulation and language content much quicker.

Multi-tasking with dominoes and roll-the-dice

My articulation students practiced story-based vocabulary and target sounds using speech dominoes, sentence level roll-the-dice, and an action based roll-the-dice game.  This worked really well to accommodate for various reading levels.

My view of the game station

The dominoes also served well to keep little hands busy while their partner had a turn to share words/sentences.  I try to train my students to practice their words/sentences quietly while I am listening to their friends.  Some are more skilled at this than others!  You can see my data collection sheets keeping my hands busy!

Reading the story and putting the characters “in” the mitten

My communication and early language groups read the story and created a craft.  As we read the story I used a visual choice board for vocabulary identification and to talk about story characters.  I also used an oldie-but-goodie set of pictures.  We practiced the concept of “in” as we put each animal in the mitten. The kids were loving this.  Several students initiated signing “more” to be able to do this over and over. I also asked basic WH- ?s that were repetitive throughout the story (What color is his mitten?).

Choice board for requesting, choice making, and character ID

We then created a mitten.  I was inspired by a post on Chit Chat & Small Talk to make the craft with tissue paper, animal pictures, and contact paper. Check it out here…I can attest to it being a quick and easy craft that yields an attractive end product! We quickly cut the materials and talked about actions (“I am cutting”).  Students used the choice board to select the animal they wanted to put in the mitten.  I didn’t have any white tissue paper on hand so I used the scrap paper from the inside of the mitten frame.  Students practiced cutting (no particular size or shape) and we stuck the scraps on the remaining sticky spaces.  We then flipped the mitten over and all of the story characters were inside!  They loved this, I was able to address multiple skills at once, and now my windows are nicely decorated 🙂

Looking at language through the context of map skills

Another activity I used was from a teacher materials book with story related activities.  This was for my older students.  It focuses on following specific directions within the context of map skills.  The students completed it independently then we went back and reviewed some of the vocabulary (north/ south/ east/ west, capital, borders).  They worked with each other to determine if their maps were correct.  We did not read the story in this group, however tapped into their prior knowledge of it and then expanded their vocabulary to talk about the story being based on an Ukrainian folktale.

You can find my “The Mitten: Articulation” unit in both my TPT and TN stores.  It has dominoes, word cards, roll-the-dice games (sentences and actions) and production cue cards for {l, th, ch, sh, vowel+R, j, s/z, multi syllables, r/r-blends, f/v, k/g}.

Have a great rest of the week!  I hope you have some mittens to stay warm!