Speech Therapy Ideas for Middle School — Board Games!
Middle School Speech Building Ideas. Image source: Eagleharborva.com
Does your 12 year old son or daughter struggle with speech and communication skills? If so, it’s not too late to get your child on the path to improved communication — and have some fun doing it. It can be tricky keeping a middle school student interested in anything educational for very long , so we’re always on the lookout for good speech therapy ideas for middle school students. The key to keeping this age group interested and motivated is providing them with games and activities that keep them engaged, while giving them the opportunity to see noticeable improvements within a fairly short period of time.
Often, middle school students are resistant to participate in any form of speech therapy because they may feel embarrassed or may be the target of ridicule from their peers. But, it is in this adolescent time period that speech therapy is so crucial to future communication and language skills. Encouraging your middle schooler to participate in speech and language building activities at home is an excellent way to help speed up the therapy process, and engage your child at the same time. But where can you turn to find good speech therapy games and activities? We have narrowed down a few of our favorites that your middle school child will surely enjoy, and they won’t feel like “therapy.” All of these activities can be done at home or on the go, with siblings and friends. If your family already sits down to a weekly family game night – your child may not even know that he is improving his speech skills. Just be sure to add these games to your collection.
Speech Building Games for Middle School Students
- Mad Libs – A great review on nouns, adjectives, adverbs and descriptive parts of speech. If your child is struggling with a particular articulation disorder, you can alter the game to encourage your child to come up with only “r” words, or “s” words or which ever sound he needs to improve. The sillier the answers, the more engaged your child will become!
- 20 Questions – Remember this classic? One person thinks of an object, person or place and all players are given 20 questions to guess the answer. This game is an excellent vocabulary builder for your child, as well as teaching him to phrase questions in the proper word order.
- Apples to Apples – This is a board game from Mattel that is great for a large group of people playing together. It offers many opportunities for teaching parts of speech, vocabulary, grammar, correct sentence structure and more!
- Scattergories is a fast-thinking, competitive word game of various categories where all the answers have to begin with the same letter. Players are forced to use their classification and organizational skills to think of the correct answer. This game also rewards players who think outside the box and come up with unique answers.
- Taboo – This is an excellent game to help teach expressive language skills, parts of speech such as synonyms, antonyms and vocabulary building skills. Taboo also encourages players to work as a team to find the answers.
If you are looking for online games and activities for your middle school student – be sure to check out our own Speech Buddies University for a great selection of activities designed to help with all types of articulation disorders.
