34: Session Ideas for Middle School
Let’s chat about some of the common goals and activities I’ve used for middle school students!
Resources Mentioned:
Digital Self-Advocacy Journal Template
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transcript episode 34: Session Ideas for Middle School
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 through some activities for middle school students. I was looking through old session notes and I feel like there's two main goal areas that I was seeing a lot. The first is self-advocacy. In middle school a lot of times they're changing classes, there's a lot more independence, and a lot more chances for self-advocacy. So I'll talk through a bunch of self-advocacy activities. The other thing I noticed is a lot of the middle schoolers who are still getting weekly or more services are getting those services because their skills are below grade level. A lot of them have either other disabilities, or learning disabilities, ADHD, syndromes, or something that has impacted their learning in addition to the hearing loss. So I've had a lot of remedial language and listening goals. Usually if a student is in sixth, seventh, eighth grade and is on grade level, I don't have a ton of listening and language practice outside of vocabulary. But the reality is that I do often work on those skills with middle school students who need that extra practice for one reason or another. So I'll talk through the vocabulary activities but also some language activities for students who do need that support.
Alright so let's start off with some self-advocacy activities that I like to do with middle schoolers. Like I mentioned a lot of times middle school is where they first start moving around to different classes and they might be able to pick their own seat for the first time if they had assigned seats in elementary school. So I think seating is probably one of the first things I like to focus on with middle schoolers because they're picking their own seat and I want them to make good choice for their hearing loss and for the room they're in what's going on. And it's dynamic right? Like there's not only one right seat. It's not always front and center. So they need to learn about why it's a good seat not just which seat is the best in any particular classroom. So I do have a resource in my store where it's like a bunch of different sample classrooms with various sources of background noise like a fan or a pencil sharpener or if it's like next door to the music room things like that that are external sources of background noise and then the student has to factor that in with their own hearing loss to circle the best seat with a dry erase marker.
I've also had the student draw a picture of each classroom and together we label all the different sources of background noise for each specific classroom that they go to. And these can be simple sketches like they don't have to be super detailed just some squares for the desks, rectangles for tables. And I show them an example of one that I do that's pretty simple sketch and it's really helpful for them to think about the sources of background noise and put it in themselves. And like I said I could go in there and together we can find their best seat but really the point is to get them to think critically about why it's a good seat. So that's why I think it's worth spending time actually go through and label the diagrams because it teaches them to really think about it and then they can apply that to whatever situation they're in. Like I can't predict if they move to a different room for an activity or if they sit in a different location or something like that. You can always go into the classroom and take pictures of it if that's available to you and then you can label the pictures. So those are all like different versions of the activity that I've done with different students.
Another thing I tend to do with middle schoolers is games. Like I have a collection in my store of self-advocacy games that are meant to be played on the computer like in powerpoint or Google Slides and I feel like middle schoolers are not so big that they don't want to play games but they're not so young that they don't want to play babyish games if that makes sense. So I feel like games on the computer are good in between where it's interesting for them but not too babyish. And the reason I like to do games is because sometimes middle schoolers can be a little difficult to talk to, like they don't necessarily have great conversation skills yet, and we can certainly work on that. But if I want them to talk about different self-advocacy topics, sometimes it's just easier to do that within the frame of a game because it gives us some structure, it gives us something to do instead of just sitting across on the table from each other talking staring at each other. So I think you could really do this with any online game and you could download free versions of like Connect Four on the iPad, or Battleship is a really good one that the kids tend to really like and they don't get bored of. It's a little more strategy based so it feels more appropriate for middle school. Some old ones like Checkers is fun because like I said you can really play against them to win. Also games that are like actual computer games like Breakout which is that one where the ball bounces around and it hits the bricks and makes them disappear. Those can be fine. You can take turns doing them like while you're discussing self-addvocacy topics. The games that I've made they have the game and then they also have the conversation starters and questions. So one of them is like Battleship that goes over accommodations, I feel it's good to start that at middle school because even if they might not know all of the vocabulary around an IEP yet I do want them to know that they have certain rights and accommodations that are protected. There's one about using the remote mic system. That's basically a checkers game and in middle school that's when sometimes we start having issues with the remote mic, like some resistance to that. So if I can get ahead of that sometimes that's really helpful and I'll talk more about that in a sec but sometimes talking about it in the context of a game is just a little bit easier than randomly trying to talk to them about it. There's also a parts of the ear game. That's in the style of the game Sorry which is fun because you like bump each other's pieces off the board. There's a communication breakdown game that's similar to Candy Land like I said they're all on the computer so it doesn't seem as babyish as playing an actual game at least in my experience, they've been more interested in things on the computer. Oh and there's actually one more that's a Connect Four type game that's just about their own hearing loss. Sometimes I notice that if a student, like if they haven't been my student, or if they didn't have a TOD before and I get them in middle school, sometimes there's some gaps in their knowledge like I would have expected them to know more about their own hearing loss. But for whatever reason they don't. So it's always nice to like touch base with that kind of self advocacy stuff even if I assumed they had learned it prior sometimes they don't.
Some of the things that I think are good to talk about with middle schoolers are identifying their personal strengths and interests and talking about ways they can use their strengths to help them. Just related to that like trying to build their self-esteem in middle school years I think can be really valuable. It's when they maybe start to question being different or experience different social situations they might not have experienced in elementary school and bolstering that self-confidence and self-esteem in any way I think it's a good thing to do in middle school. So you could talk about identifying personal strengths and interests.
And I do this like if we're playing a game and they're particularly good at that game or even if they're very patient or they're very good at figuring things out like, I point out those soft skills to them and make sure they can identify what strengths they have and sometimes it's things like that. I've had a lot of kids whose strengths is being creative and drawing so that kind of goes into the second idea which is I do a lot of drawing activities with middle schoolers. Not necessarily coloring, it can be coloring if they find that relaxing because you can get those like coloring books that are like really intricate and you can have some of these like self-advocacy conversations with some conversation starters or you could just think of them depending on what the student’s like going on with them. But you can do it while they're coloring and I feel like. I feel like I read somewhere, but it's like easier for people to have like important conversations when they're sitting side by side like not looking at each other and that definitely feels true for me because like this happens a lot when people are driving like it's easy to have like deep conversations with people in the car because you're not looking at each other. And I feel like you can apply that here because if you're both independently coloring your own paper you don't have to look at each other. It's just easier to talk about meaningful things.
Some of the other topics I found helpful for middle schoolers are going over some of the vocabulary related to their hearing loss and getting more detailed than maybe you did in elementary school. So like making sure they know words like decibel, frequency, things like that. Like just a little more detailed, a little higher level. I like talking about challenging listening situations and identifying them and then also what you do in those situations and like how to ask for help from your teachers so that you have like different teachers in middle school, there might be different ways to ask different teachers for help. Like maybe some of them you raise your hand right away, some you feel more comfortable talking to after class. Like I like to just like pull up their schedule and literally go through it class by class and talk about the different issues in those classes and how you can fix them. And like I'll pull it up while we're coloring you know it's like we're just chatting and coloring but it's helpful to have the schedule in front of you and you just go through class by class to check in.
The other thing too is that at least where I live they teach about sound waves in sixth grade science and that's something that we can talk about how it relates to like their hearing aids or their devices and they can kind of be like an expert on that topic because they already know things like decibel and frequency and they know a little bit about sound. And they can be like the expert. It's an opportunity for their hearing loss to be something for them to teach others about in a positive way. I happened to be pushing into a class where they were working on a sound unit and it was very exciting for my student because they recognized a lot of the vocabulary and they got to tell their class about like how their hearing aids work and how sound waves work. And just like a very basic way but it was very empowering for the student. So just something to watch out for if you're in sixth grade or around that age group and you want to check in to see if the science covers that topic and prepare your student to talk about it because that was like a good that was a good moment for my student, especially if they are struggling with self-esteem in any way like that can be something positive for them.
Another self-advocacy activity I've done I talked about this I think in my Instagram stories before but not on the podcast was to use this book, Now Hear This, Harper Soars with her Magic Ears, which is a book written by a Deaf Hard of Hearing teenager Harper Gideon and her mom Valie Gideon and the mom will actually be on the podcast in a couple of months. But the book is autobiographical just about her life and when she got her cochlear implants and things like that. And all the things outside of hearing loss that she enjoys like skateboarding and everything. So what I've done is I've read that book with my students and then together they create their own book about themselves. So they talk about their hearing history like what type of hearing loss they have and also when they got their devices. They also just talk about their life in general, what interest they have, what they're good at, kind of in the same style as the book. So we use the book it like a model and then we make a very similar book like oh like she talks about this on this page like what can we make in your book on that page. And then after they write it we type it up. And then I print it out and then they draw pictures to go with it and we kind of bound it together and it was a good like culminating project. Especially for students who are working on that like self esteem, self-advocacy goals of accepting their hearing loss.
And seeing this book as an example and then making their own book was like a good long range activity that took a couple months to do honestly because we didn't do it like every single second of every session. But worked on at a little bit at a time and it was a great way to build up their self-esteem. If you have like older middle school students like an eighth grader who maybe doesn't want to draw, they could probably like find pictures online if they wanted to like use those for pictures in the book like it doesn't have to be drawing. My student just happened to really be into drawing but you could definitely age it up a little bit to make it more like what the actual book is.
Another activity I do with middle schoolers if you go back and listen to episode 29 about digital self advocacy journals that's one of my favorite things to do. I have a free template of it I'll link it in the show notes or if you're on my email list I sent it out a while ago if you want to search your email for it. But basically it's just a Google Slides presentation but I don't use it other presentation I use it as like a digital journal where every session we update it with what we talked about that day and sometimes we do the whole activity inside of the Google Slides and sometimes we just like summarize the activity, so if we take a picture of it or it kind of depends on what the activity was. But it just kind of keeps track of all the different self advocacy things we've done and then when we open it up every session we read through it before we get to the next blank page. And that repetition is what really solidifies some of these concepts for my kids because it's not like a one and done lesson. It's practicing something they can learn and then they get to see it every week for the rest of the year basically at least for a little bit until we go through the journal every time. And then we add a new entry and I feel like no matter what activity you do you can always screenshot or take a picture or summarize the main takeaways into the self-advocacy journal and it really helps everything come together for them to actually learn the topics because of that repetition. I go into more detail in the episode if you want to go back and listen to episode 29.
Alright so we're going to move on to some vocabulary activities because that's probably my next most common thing I work on with middle schoolers. Most commonly I'm doing either idioms or multiple meaning words and like I said sometimes it's in a more remedial way, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just academic vocabulary they need help with. So starting with idioms I feel like there's a few different activities I like to do. I like to do it in a like progressive manner meaning when I first start with some idioms I like to have a group of idioms that I teach that are new to the student. And I first present them in context with heavy context clues, like I want the student to be able to understand this idiom really easily based on the context in which it's presented. I want them to be able to figure it out on their own basically without me just telling them what it means. The reason I want to do this is because like me just telling them what it means it won't stick in their brain usually. But them thinking about it and figuring it out actually will stick in their brains a little bit better. I have a resource in my store. It's called Idioms in Context Units and it has all the activities and about talk about but you can come up with your own if you have specific idioms that you want to target. But like I said usually I start with heavy context clues because I want them to use their brains to figure out what it means using the context clues. I also try to stay away from like really obvious idioms and pick ones that are more likely to be spoken aloud like in spoken language. I feel like there are idioms and sayings that are like cliches and then there's some that come up in conversation all the time and I'm one of those people like I use idioms all the time when I talk. I didn't quite realize it until I started teaching idioms that I just tend to speak with idioms a lot. So I'm unlikely to teach one like oh it's raining cats and dogs because like I don't think people say that that often [LAUGH] I mean if they sometimes, but it's so silly and it's so obviously not literal that I don't think it would trip up a lot of students like even if they didn't know what it meant they would know it's not about cats and dogs right? Maybe not everyone, but there are some that are a lot more subtle and I think it's helpful to work on the more subtle ones in middle school versus something like I'm on the fence or she got a second wind. These are idioms I feel like people are more likely to say in conversation and not even realize are using an idiom. And things like that could trip up a student. So those are kind of the ones I like to pick. So after we practice them with a lot of context then I like to do some games just to give them like more exposures. So you could do like matching games like either like memory matching or just like simple like you have the sentence on one side and the idiom on the other side and you literally match them.
I also like to do pictures where they draw pictures of the idioms but I specifically focus on them drawing the meaning of the sentence and then if they also want to draw like the literal meaning just to compare them. But I don't want them to just draw the literal meaning because it's not really what I want them to think about I want them to think about what it really means. So this works best if you give it to them in a sentence. So if there's a sentence with the idiom like: Kelly was on the fence about playing softball or lacrosse in the spring. The picture might be like a girl with a thought bubble and like a softball and a lacrosse stick and she's thinking about it. Versus like the literal picture would be her sitting on a fence and we can look at the pictures and be like which one of these make sense right? And that'll help them remember that it's not the literal one like I actually have them put like a big X over that one so they like remember that's not it, it's this actual meaning.
And then after we've done the heavy context Clues and the matching and the pictures, I really want to make sure they can do it through listening alone. So this is where I might like read them a little paragraph that contains an idiom. And ask them some questions about it afterward like details and sentences questions about the meaning of the idiom. It also works on like auditory comprehension level because realistically the place that kids misunderstand idioms is in conversation. So If you're reading and there's an idiom you can go back and reread it and understand the context of the idiom. But idioms don't show up that much in written text like especially as you get older but people use them in spoken language all of the time. So I always like to circle back and make sure that they can understand them when they're spoken in like a little paragraph.
And then after all that I have them produce their own sentences using the idioms because I mean at this point they've heard lots of examples because I'm using the same set of idioms with all these activities like I'm giving them a lot of repetition. And if I give them an idiom and ask them to produce their own sentence that means they can demonstrate a deep enough understanding of the true meaning of that idiom. So that's how I approach idioms for older kids because it can show me progress over time of them really mastering those specific idioms and like I said this is how my idioms unit is set up. I have two of them, each have 16 idioms that they focus on. So I find it really helpful to just do it in a structured way because with middle schoolers I think they appreciate seeing their progress over time. The other vocabulary topic that comes up frequently is multiple meaning words. Once again I always try to present these in sentences like with context because it's really using context clues as a skill to identify the meaning of the word if they don't already know it. And not just assuming that their first understanding of the word is the right word. So first they have to be able to pick up that the meaning is different than what they thought and then they have to be able to use context clues to identify the meaning. So I have a resource in my store for multiple meaning words basically like I give 2 examples of a word that has 2 different meanings and then there's a picture and they have to write a sentence about that picture using the word. But they have to use the correct meaning, you know? I really try to focus on the meanings of words that are less common. Like a lot of words actually have more than 2 meanings. But I always try to present them the ones that I think they don't know. Like I want it to be a little more challenging in middle school. This resource has it broken down into three levels. So the second two would be appropriate for middle school students and the first one would be more like remedial level. So basically the way that I do it is the first sentence. Let's just use rate as an example as our multiple meaning word. The first sentence is: At this rate we will never finish painting the house. So they have to identify the part of speech and the meaning in the sentence and then the second sentence could be: This movie is rated PG-13 because it's not appropriate for young children.
So they have to identify the part of speech and the meaning in that sentence. So that's a little more advanced than just like bat like baseball bat and animal bat, right? And then I would have them write a sentence using the word rate and I like to give them a picture. So that way they have something to write about and let's just say the picture is of a man who looks frustrated and he's holding a remote control. So you can kind of go either way with that one. You could say like: At this rate, we'll never watch the movie because it's taking forever to load. Or you could just say: I wanted to watch this movie but it was rated R so I couldn't. Like either way could have been right like there's not one right one to pick but it's always interesting to see what they come up with when having to actually produce a sentence about a picture. So if you have a list of words you could just Google image some pictures and see what they come up with.
Alright I also do a lot of vocabulary just in conversation meaning we talk about different words. So sometimes kids in middle school will have ELA vocabulary that they have to work on. And you know just learning some vocabulary words from vocabulary list is not my favorite thing to do. However, you can challenge yourself to pick a topic that they are interested in. So maybe they're interested in Marvel superheroes which is a real example and we have to make a sentence about Marvel superheroes using every word on the list, just verbally not in writing. So if one of their words is superfluous. Maybe you could think you could challenge them to use superfluous in a sentence describing a power. Like what power do you feel is superfluous in the Marvel universe? Or something like that. You have to be creative with that but sometimes limiting the topics can make it more interesting and challenging and then when they have to go back to that word they have a common thing to latch onto in their memory. So it's like oh yeah, we talked about marvel superheroes which I love and I have a lot of knowledge and information about Marvel superheroes and when I see the word superfluous I remember which power I thought was superfluous because I know a lot about superheroes. And that will help them going forward as opposed to just writing random sentences for every word. So I found that to be helpful and then like I said I mostly do this all verbally. But if there's a word they really struggle with maybe we write that one down so we can look back on it later.
If you have a vocabulary list I've also played a version of pictionary where I like to draw 1 of the words on the list and it could be really abstract because a lot of them are not nouns. So you have to draw like a little scene basically and they have to try to guess what word you're drawing and why they think it's that word. And in doing so you're talking about the meaning of the word and you could take turns doing this. That's always a fun activity. I like to do that on a whiteboard, easier to just you know do it a bunch of times.
When it comes to supporting academics I find something I do a lot in the middle school age bracket is helping with things like algebra or science or all these things that are academic subjects and I feel like it's totally fine to spend time previewing and reviewing that vocabulary by talking about it frontloading it, the information, making sure they have like a good basic understanding of it before they have to apply it in the classroom. But if a student is struggling in a specific subject like math for example, I find it to be a really good opportunity to dig in to what supports they could use to be doing better in math. So if they're struggling to do their homework and they say they don't know the steps. We can look at how is the teacher giving notes, is she expecting the student to listen and write at the same time, is the teacher facing the board while they're explaining the math problems, because they're writing on the board and it's making it harder for them to hear, is the pace of the class too fast and it's just too hard to comprehend what she's saying, because your brain is working so hard to understand the math that listening is difficult, and you're experiencing a lot of listening fatigue, is it because the classes at the end of the day and listening fatigue is really impacting the student. It really depends on the student and sometimes it might just be that it's not their best subject. But even if that's the case, what a supports would help them? And can you help the student identify what supports would help them? Like you can brainstorm it together. And this is the activity like brainstorming what is stopping you from learning this material, and what can we do so that you can be more successful in the class? And like it's brainstorming together. And then you can brainstorm how to tell the teacher the things that you came up with. So sometimes I'll just tell the teacher, but I'll also have the student tell the teacher in some way. Maybe an email, talking to after class, we'll do it together. Really whatever works depends on the student but this in itself is a really good self advocacy experience or if they're having trouble with something, you don't have to just sit there, and like it's good to teach them that they don't have to just sit there and struggle. That they can identify a problem and come up with solutions and apply those solutions, like that in itself is an activity that I think is a good thing to start with middle schoolers, that if you notice there's a problem, if you're having trouble, it's important to be proactive in your own learning.
So that's a lot of the activities that I have done with middle school students. I hope that some of these ideas are helpful for you as you plan some of your sessions. I'll make a post in the TOD Community Facebook group and if you have any fun ideas for middle schoolers that you'd like to share, feel free to comment it there I always like to hear what other people have done too. As always links and transcript are in the show notes and at listentotodpod.com. I'll see you next week, have a fantastic day. Bye!