It can be hard to find engaging activities for older students. These students have worked to establish their speech sounds and are now ready to carry over their new sound outside the therapy room. It may take them several sessions and lots of practice at home to generalize their speech sound into conversation. For those sessions, I’ve got you covered! Instead of searching for carryover activities each week, read on to find 6 no prep articulation carryover activities for older students to last you several sessions!
Best no prep carryover activities for older students
1. Sound-loaded sentences
Sound-loaded sentences, or tongue twisters, are great because they allow the student to practice their speech sound multiple times within the same sentence. They can be silly and fun to make the activity more engaging! You can think of words that include the target sound and make fun sentences with them, or find some loaded sentences already made and ready to use. If you have a student working on vocalic R, get the free sound-loaded sentences from the Vocalic R Home Packet Freebie! It also contain a free articulation menu and roll-a-story activity which are also great for supporting carryover.
2. Fill-in Story
Fill-in-stories are super fun activities where students read a story that has blanks, and fill in the blanks with various words which can make the story silly and engaging. Mad Libs is a great example of this and is really fun to play. If you’re looking for a fill-in story that targets specific speech sounds, I have created stories for each sound and have a free Vocalic R fill-in story available for download on TPT! It’s no prep and easy to use. The kids roll a die to select one of 6 words within the category (noun, verb, adjective) to make the story. I always have lots of laughs and giggles in my therapy room when I use this carryover activity with my students!
3. Guess Who
Guess who is a staple in my therapy room. I love using it to target multiple goals (articulation, describing, fluency, etc.) especially with older students. They have fun playing the game, and get to practice their skill in a naturalistic way as well! It’s super easy to use for articulation carryover. Simply play the game and ask the child to monitor their speech while playing. As their sound comes up naturally, you can observe their productions to see if the child is self-monitoring their speech! One difficulty with this is that you don’t know when the speech sound will come up. The child may end up only getting a few opportunities to practice their target speech sound naturally while playing the game.
Since I love using Guess Who with my students, I have made my own guessing game that contains the speech sound in each word. This ensure that my students are practicing their speech the entire time that we’re playing the game! Not only are the students practicing their target sound while guessing, but when we switch roles and I am the one guessing, I’ve designed it so that their response to me also includes their target sound.
For example, for vocalic R, they would respond by saying that my guess is either “correct” or incorrect”. When practicing the /s/ sound, they would tell me either “yes, that’s right”, or “no it’s not”. For the /f/ sound, “yes, for sure” or “no, good effort”, and so on. That way, whether they are guessing or I am, they always have an opportunity to practice their target speech sound. You can check out my Guess the Word activity for free in the Vocalic R Carryover Activity Freebie!
4. Would You Rather
Would You Rather questions are a fun and interactive way for older students to practice their speech sounds in connected speech. They get to read the question, then answer which of the two options they would prefer. Finally, they explain why they prefer one option over the other for additional practice. I’ve used so many Would You Rather questions with my students, and they stay engaged for the whole session! I prefer using Would You Rather questions that are silly so that the activity offers lots of practice and lots of giggles. If your students enjoy Would You Rather questions, check out my free Would You Rather activities on TPT! I also have additional Would You Rather activities here as well!
5. Speech Categories
Speech Categories is a categories game, like Scattegories, but with speech sounds in mind! I’ve tried using a regular Scattegories game with my students. However, I found that some speech sounds are harder than others. It was hard for my students practicing the “J” sound to find many items within random categories compared to my students that are practicing more common sounds such as /s/ or “R”. As such, I’ve made a Speech Categories game that takes this into account, and has different prompts for each sound. This ensures that there are multiple answers a child would likely know to fill each category. It’s one of my most popular activities with my students and I love playing along with them! If you think your students would like this game, check it out! It’s part of a Carryover Packet Bundle which includes 10 games for each speech sound.
6. Continuous story
Last but not least, Continuous Story. This is one of the first carryover activities I played with my students when I was a newly graduated speech-language pathologist. I used an articulation card deck that contained my student’s target sound faced down. Then, I flipped up one card and made a sentence to start a story with the first word. Then, I would flip the next card and the student would continue the story using that word. We would go back and forth continuing the story with each new word from the articulation cards. My students love it and it’s still an activity I use all the time, though with newer articulation cards.
I’ve also made a variation of this game to switch things up, and to use easily in teletherapy. We still go back and forth creating a story with target words, but using words on one page, rather than with articulation cards, as a no prep, grab-and-go option! You can find it in the Carryover Packet Bundle which includes 10 carryover games.
Where to find articulation carryover activities for older students?
We’ve discussed 6 no prep activities to support articulation carryover when working with older students. With these, you should be set for multiple sessions! If you’d like a comprehensive packet so you’re always prepped to target carryover, check out my Articulation Carryover Packets! They include 10 games for every sound to provide a variety of activities for your students all in one package. Save time and get organized—click here to grab your bundle!
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