Reading books is a great way to work on language goals. They contain a lot of complex language. In the next day or two we will post a video of someone reading a book aloud, there will be pauses to give students chances to comment, as well as questions and pauses so that your student can answer the question. Always respect "I don't know" as a response, and use it as a chance to show, that when we don't or can't remember in a book we can go back and find the answer, and move the clip back to the part with the answer in it.

After the story is done, in the limits of your students ability, have them tell the story back to you. When we up load the video we will upload a series of photos that you can print, cut out and use to have them arrange the story in order. It is important that the story have clear beginning, character, settings, feelings, a problem, ending and end feeling. If this is too many steps feel free to reduce the number of steps as needed and let us know in your feed back.

If your student enjoyed this activity it can be extended by helping them ask questions like "what else has this author written" "which artist drew this book?", "I wonder what happens after the end". This can also lead to an extension activity of writing your own story about this event. If your student is working on some of these elements you may get a note from the Speech Language Pathologist working with your student asking you to do these steps.

In speech at Dan Peterson we primarily practice push in therapy. Which means that a lot of the time we spend with your student is when they are in their classroom routine doing the typical schedule. We use those opportunities to develop language, because we know that language in a useful and meaningful context is most powerful for our students.

At home an activity that has a lot of potential for this is unpacking after a trip to the store. A task that is often done in most homes. If during this time you are unable to get to the store, it is always fun to change this activity by making it a game of "where does this go in the house?" while presenting objects in your house.

This task will most likely need to happen over a few opportunities. At first you will need to show them where things go using the vocabulary in their device, "on", "off", "beside", "in", "out" and other words. Most devices will not have all the words we want so you may need to be flexible. The best way to learn what words are available to your student is to use their device to tell them where stuff is as you are showing them. This will also help them understand how to navigate to where they need to in their device, as well as build confidence that their voice is an acceptable form of communication.

When you think they have a good idea of where stuff goes, or if they normally spend time with you when you're putting stuff away you can go right to this part of the activity. As you empty a bag you could say, "This ice cream is frozen, we should put it away first, tell me where to put it." The phrasing there is useful. Your students know that you know where ice cream goes. If you asked them they may choose not to answer, but if you say it like that, they realize that you're wanting them to show you that they know where it goes.

If you are worried about your student knowing where something preferred is and going to get it when they shouldn't having one person engage them in this activity can serve as a good distraction while another person at home puts away the preferred item you would prefer they didn't track.

This way you are still controlling when what gets put away (we don't want anything to spoil), while involving them. You don't need to do this with all of your grocery run, this could be something that you do with one bag at first, and over the weeks you could extend it. In time this could be a life skill that your student can do independently. If your student can move and put things away, it will feel very rewarding for them to be the one to put the things away themselves.

Use your voice and theirs to label stuff. "These noodles are your dad's favorite food, they go in the pantry on the top shelf." On the device you might say "food, in, top". You could later ask "who likes noodles". They can answer "dad" or "he" depending on what options they've learned in their device, although it is also acceptable if they say "me" sometimes when I ask questions like this I learn interesting things about my students when they let me know they agree with the person I was hoping they would give as the answer to my question.

Be careful to let them know when something is different. "These paper towels go under the sink, they're not food, but we use them to clean up food messes sometimes." Labeling what kind of thing goes in what place will also help your student become more independent in time, as well as helping them understand the language concept of categories.

This activity can help your students understand how to answer "what is this for", "where does this go" and "who likes this", "who is this for", and maybe even "why do we buy this" questions for some of the things they interact with most frequently.

If food is something your student doesn't interact with in a meaningful way, this can be done after a shopping trip to any store (fabric, hardware, etc.), the more the activity is around an area that they are interested in the more they will engage in it.