We have been celebrating our Earth in the therapy room 🙂 Our school has an involved recycling program, so we really have conversations about it throughout the year, but it has been fun to have a unit focusing on Earth Day.
I have 9 Earth Day related words that I am introducing in the multiple meaning activity. Most of my students can give an example using one of the meanings, but it’s a really difficult task for them to expand to two definitions. In fact, defining the word at all is tricky. We have been working really hard on learning how to provide descriptions, synonyms, and actions in our definition, not just repeating the same word (It drives me crazy to hear something like “A rock is like a rock outside”).
We started by focusing on just three of the words at a time. I asked the kids about the words and we tried to generate definitions from previous knowledge. Then I spread out 8 definitions (6 that matched the three words then 2 distractors). There happened to be three students in each group, so they each chose one of the words.
They looked through the sets of cards and recycled the items that had definitions matching their word. When they matched them up correctly, they switched words and did it again. The whole time we were using the words to provide examples that would allow them to make meaningful connections.
Since this was the introduction to the words, we broke the process down and worked together in small increments. As we continue through the unit I will increase the amount of words that each student is responsible for. For example, instead of us working together on one mat on 3 words, I will set up three stations and they will have to rotate through all 9 of the words, working independently on 3 at a time.
We will continue to expand our word play with sentence completion, word identification, and a draw & write activity. This gives the kids many ways to play with the word meaning and to make stronger memory connections.
Check out this FREEBIE at my Teachers Pay Teachers or Teachers Notebook stores. I also have two other Earth Day related packets: “I love my Earth Articulation” and “Down to Earth: Idioms, Categories, and Descriptive Language”.
I’d love to hear what you are doing in your therapy room to celebrate Earth Day!