23: Incorporating Themes
Some ideas on how and why I incorporate themes into my TOD sessions. These are tips that work for an itinerant caseload, low prep and ideas for lots of ages!
Resources Mentioned:
Auditory Processing Made Simple
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transcript episode 23: INCORPORATING THEMES
Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other Deaf Education Professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking about incorporating themes. If you spend any time on Instagram you probably see teachers and SLPs posting a lot of cute themed activities. They do so many cute things for fall and Halloween and even like random themes like pirates and farm and things like that. The problem that we as itinerants have is that we usually have such a large age range on our caseload, either birth to grade 12 or pre-k to grade 12. It's a huge range. And theme therapy might only be appropriate for a small percentage of our students and therefore it's not really worth our time to do it if we can only use it with a quarter of our caseload, if that. So because of that I don't do a ton of like laminating themed materials. However, there are circumstances in which I like doing themed therapy. I think that if you have preschool students on your caseload it's really helpful to do the same themes in therapy that they're doing in the classroom, because they really need that repetition or reteaching or pre-teaching of the vocabulary of that unit. So a lot of the themes are full of words that they're going to need to know. I also think sometimes with elementary school kids and even middle school kids tying your sessions to things that are happening seasonally can help with engagement because students are excited about things happening in their lives and in the community around them. Especially things like the seasons changing or different school vacations or different holidays that are relevant to that student.
So today I'm going to talk about the ways I incorporate themes into my sessions that are appropriate for itinerant teachers, who don't have the time or energy to make specialized materials for just part of their caseload.
My first tip is to stick to big broad themes, ideally themes that can last an entire month is really how I try to think about it. So for example, I might not do a Halloween specific theme, but I will do a fall theme and maybe incorporate some Halloween elements like pumpkins. But I'm probably not going to go crazy for something I can only do for one week. Themes with things like I don't know flowers or insects I'm just going to do an overall spring theme for a whole month. I like to stick to these bigger broader themes because they encompass all the smaller themes that they're doing in the classroom and I could still do a lot of the previewing and reviewing vocabulary that's appropriate. However I don't need to provide such specialized materials. So usually for preschoolers I go off the classroom themes but I try to consolidate so that I'm more focusing on the broader more functional vocabulary. So for example in the month of January a lot of preschoolers might do a theme for arctic animals and winter weather and things like that and I'm just going to stick with winter. So maybe I'll incorporate some of the arctic animals from the classroom, but I'm not going to go out of my way to create materials just for arctic animals. I'm going to create things for winter and then adapt it using the vocabulary they need to know.
This leads me into my second tip is to borrow materials from the classroom. So if a preschool class is doing a unit on pumpkins for example, I bet you there are some pumpkins in that classroom that you can borrow. They probably have different materials that they're not using at the moment and you can tell the teacher, "Hey I want to preview this vocabulary with the student, can I borrow your pumpkin? Do you have any specific centers you're going to put out this week that I can preview?" And she might be able to give you like a file folder game or some manipulatives or things that she's planned to use but it's not currently using that you can use so that when they do do it in the classroom, they've already heard that vocabulary with those same exact materials. And this is I actually think more effective in a lot of ways because it makes the carryover really simple in the classroom. I also recommend even if you're not doing themed things to borrow toys from the classroom, so that you don't have to carry around a lot of toys if you only see a handful of preschool students. I always return them and like in good condition but a lot of teachers are willing to share. This also applies to books. So if there's like different themed books that you know they're going to look over later in the week or in the next couple of weeks, you can preview them with your student. So it's a great way to support those themes in a way that's going to carry over really naturally.
For elementary school students I like to stick to whatever their school is celebrating. So if they're doing a fall festival, or a science fair, or some other event, it's really nice to pull from those schoolwide events for your ideas for themes. I feel like the whole point of doing themes is so the activities are cohesive in terms of vocabulary. It's not like every single activity you do has to fit within that theme, I just think sometimes when we do themes we get away from the actual point and trying to make it like cute. But the point is for me, is to make the therapy session feel more cohesive and relevant to the child's life. So if you're looking at the school calendar and there's a Halloween event coming up. Maybe then it's worth it to do some Halloween activities because one, the student will be interested in what you're doing because they're looking forward to that Halloween event. And two, you can expose them to some vocabulary that they might encounter at the carnival that they might not know. I feel like with older kids it really helps with buy in and to do themes. They also just help with increasing the breadth of vocabulary that you're giving them. Because if you're always just pulling from like tier 2 tier 3 vocabulary school lists, it's going to get kind of boring and it's not super relevant because it's not connected to anything else in their brain, they're just like floating vocabulary words. But if you do something that's themed, something that's going on in their life, then they have a reason to use those words, if that makes sense. And you'll expose them to words you wouldn't have thought to introduce them to had you not been thinking thematically.
I'm going to use Halloween as an example still because this episode is coming out in October. But let's say you're talking about the word scary. Like these decorations are scary. And then you want to introduce some synonyms for scary, maybe frightening, petrifying, sinister, eerie. These are all words that you can talk about the different nuances of what's different between sinister and frightening because they could both be used to describe certain Halloween characters but they definitely have different connotations. And I'm not sure I would have brought up the word eerie on my own had we not been discussing Halloween. And when you're doing vocabulary instruction within a theme the words are automatically more meaningful because they're learned in context. They'll remember that word eerie because of its association with Halloween.
Alright so another way I like to incorporate themes is to do a lot of different drawing activities because it doesn't require me to have anything themed specific. All I need is some paper and crayons or markers, which I can use for every theme but what we draw can be specific to the theme.
So back to Halloween or fall, let's just say. I wanted to draw some pumpkins and we could follow directions to draw different pumpkins. We could do out a whiteboard if we want to keep erasing it or we can just draw all over the paper and I can give directions.
So if I'm doing a following directions activity, maybe I say "okay I'm going to draw a fall tree with orange leaves and three of the leaves fall on the ground." And that's the kind of thing they can draw and then it's an open set following directions activity. You can do it as a barrier game where you each draw a picture and then you take turns describing it to each other. When I do barrier games I like to take a piece of paper and fold it into four quarters so that way we have the opportunity to draw four times on one piece of paper.
So you can see the directions can be themed but the activity itself is not themed so it's really easy to incorporate specific vocabulary without having to prepare anything themed when you do different drawing activities. Similarly if you're working with elementary school students then you have certain vocabulary or language targets like context clues or multiple meaning words, sometimes you can just come up with sentences that are themed even if the words themselves are not themed. So let's just say you're working with multiple meaning words. You can just Google on your phone multiple meaning words fall, multiple meaning words spring. And you'll probably see a list pop up and then you can use a whiteboard or just a piece of paper and write that word at the top and then make a little chart where you talk about the different meanings and then you write a sentence with that word in each meaning. So I'm going to do right now. Just an example I'm going to type in on my phone multiple meaning words fall. Right away I see a picture with a bunch of words including fall, like the season or the verb, bat, leaves, squash. So I'm going to pick one of those, maybe squash, and I write squash at the top and then we can talk about the different meanings of the word squash. It can be a verb like to squish something, or it can be squash like the noun, the food item that's kind of like a pumpkin. And maybe they didn't know about the food squash, they only knew about but the verb squash. Or maybe the other way around. And then they can write a sentence with each one. Maybe we put a star next to the one that has to do with the season. So this is just an example of a themed therapy activity that is for older students who are working on multiple meaning words and it's exposing us to words we might not have otherwise thought of because we're working in the theme. And it has the extra benefit of being in context with what's going on at the moment. So because we put that star next to squash, the pumpkin-like food, they're much more likely to remember that this is a fall thing and it's going to get filed in the fall folder in their brain and they'll be more likely to remember it because they have more connections to it. Which is really what we want when we're teaching vocabulary is for them to make as many connections to that vocabulary word as possible. So that's one of the things that I think theme therapy does really well is that it presents words in a way that all make sense together and that if you learn them all in a theme you're more likely to remember them because they have connections back to your brain in various ways.
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The next little tip I have for theme therapy is to only get print and go materials. Basically if I'm going to get something from TPT or if I'm going to make something, I usually try not to do things that need to be laminated or things that need to be laminated to be used. I feel like there's a lot of things where I could laminate them and that would be helpful but I don't have to it doesn't require a velcro. I feel like if it requires velcro, that's too far at least for right now for me for themes [laughs]. This is my thought process behind those little following directions units I've been making this year where I kind of just print and go. They're kind of open-ended following directions. And then a couple worksheets that you can print and use for data collection and things like that. Like the apple ones that I posted have just a bunch of different types of apples and then trees and baskets and then you have a lot of options on how you can do following directions activities. And you can use the same pictures over and over again throughout the entire week, months even depending on how long you want to practice with them. But it's not something that needs to be put together. It's not something that can only be used for one skill because if it's going to be themed then I want to be able to use it with as many kids as possible. So I do think it's helpful to have print and go materials that don't require a lot of prep and can be used for various goals.
My other suggestion is to use digital activities for themes because they don't require any prepping at all, umm same reason I like print and go activities. If you have access to an iPad or a computer but no internet then PowerPoint or interactive PDF resources can be really nice since you just download them ahead of time. And you'll have them on the device and you can use them without internet. I do have a free fall following directions interactive PDF in my store if you want to try it out if you've never done the interactive PDF. But basically it's just a PDF that you open in Adobe or books on the iPad, any PDF reader, it doesn't matter. And then there's buttons that the kids can push or little spaces that they can type. And it's a little more fun because they can push those buttons and it brings them to a different page but those can be really helpful because once you download them. You don't have to do any extra prep. And truly I think what holds me back from doing more theme therapy is the prep work, so I find that really helpful. If you do have internet then like the world is your oyster. You can do Google Slides activities, you could do different computer games, you can look at a lot of pictures on the internet related to themes.
There's also Boom Cards which I made a bunch of boom cards during virtual learning because I was virtual for a pretty long time and so I made a lot of themed Boom Cards for early language and early listening. And I did kind of what I was talking about before like big themes like I've won big one for fall and a big one for winter. And it's like a bunch of different open-ended activities that I could use for like the whole month over and over again.
And I like Boom Cards because they're fun. They're open ended, mine are like play based, if you could say that, they're not like, there's no right or wrong answer you know. So if you do have internet Boom Cards are a fantastic option. But even if you don't those interactive PDFs or PowerPoint activities can still save you a lot of prep time.
One other digital thing you can look into is looking up books on YouTube. I will often go to my public library to get books out to read with my students if I don't want to purchase them or borrow them from the classroom like I said earlier but sometimes I don't have the time to do that or they don't have the book I want so I'll just look them up on YouTube. Just type in the book's name and read aloud. What I like to do actually is turn the volume off and I read the words aloud that way I can pause it, we could talk about it and it's more like we're reading a regular book as opposed to being read to from the computer. Real books are still my preference. But if there's a specific book that fits a specific thing that you'd like to talk about it's really beneficial and nice to have the option of pulling it up digitally on an iPad. Overall using books is a really easy way to start incorporating themes into your sessions.
So just to summarize, I think the two main reasons I do theme therapy are one, to increase engagement and buy-in with the students and make it relevant to their lives. And two, it helps with vocabulary knowledge because you're teaching it in the wider context of the theme. And in my experience that really helps them retain that information better. My main tips are sticking to big themes that you can apply to a lot of little themes, borrowing materials from the classroom whenever you can especially toys and bigger materials, try drawing activities that you can apply to anything, use print and go and digital activities to reduce your prep time for these specialized themes.
Alright that's it for today. As always everything I talked about today and the transcript will be linked below and in the show notes at listentotodpod.com. Also I wanted to remind you that if you're not part of my e-mail list, you might want to join at listeningfun.com/emails because I'll occasionally send out fun little thematic freebies to my list. And more importantly, they're always the first one to know when something is new and half off, as all of my new resources are always 50% off the first day they're posted and my email list is the best place to stay updated with that. Alright, thanks so much for listening, I'll talk to you next week. Have a fantastic day! Bye!