Complete Homework and Practice Speech at the Same Time

The school year is a very busy time for most families. Evenings are often packed with homework, family dinner, ballet classes, football practice, bath time and if there is time getting some speech practice worked in somewhere. Following are some suggestions on how to incorporate speech practice into your child’s regularly assigned school homework.

Articulation practice

Articulation practice is probably the easiest to incorporate into nightly homework. Find words containing your child’s speech sound on worksheets and practice them while completing the worksheet. Most children are asked to read daily which is a perfect time to look and listen for speech sounds and repeat them either at the single word, phrase, sentence or even reading level. Written work is another great place to look for articulation sounds (especially since a child may misspell the word with their target sound).

Following Directions

If your child has goals of following directions, homework is a great time to practice this skill. You can ask them to get materials to complete their homework, follow the written directions on a worksheet, and break larger tasks into simpler directions.

Comprehension

If you child struggles with reading comprehension or the ability to answer wh-questions, utilizing the daily assigned readings is a fantastic way to work in some practice. Using short stories or information in their school books helps foster this skill. Another hidden place for comprehension is within math story problems (i.e., what are they wanting to find out).

Pragmatic (Social) Language

This can be targeted through demonstrating/re-enforcing the appropriate way to ask for help or to get attention. As children get older they are often assigned group work which presents the opportunity to remind your child how to be a good member of a group.

Expressive Language

This skill can easily be targeted by asking your child to use complete sentences when answering questions, utilizing the vocabulary in your student’s curriculum to create sentences, or use synonyms/antonyms, etc.

Fluency

Fluency can be targeted during nightly readings, reading the directions on a worksheet, answering questions orally, or formulating sentences with vocabulary or spelling words.