Keeping your online therapy sessions engaging can be a struggle. It can require creative strategies to address literacy through a camera. But fear not! There’s a treasure trove of FREE online literacy resources waiting to be discovered at your local library. Websites like Internet Archive also provide these resources. These free online literacy resources offer a vast array of materials to target various speech and language goals. This keeps your students motivated and learning actively.

Online Libraries – The Best Free Tool for Reading

Now, we all know that books are one of the greatest tools to grow our students’ language, right? We can reach pretty much any goal  with a well-planned literacy unit: articulation, fluency, auditory skills, comprehension, memory, critical thinking, inferencing, prediction, and story craft. Also, story grammar, figurative language, vocabulary, prefixes and suffixes, and even pragmatics. Try getting all that in one breath!

Have you ever considered the library as one of the best-kept secrets in the world of online teletherapy for accessing free online literacy resources? Believe it or not, your local library – especially if it’s a large metropolitan one – is a treasure trove of FREE online resources just waiting to be tapped into! The online resources available have exploded in the past couple of years. So, if you haven’t checked yours out lately, do so.

Picture this: your middle school students engrossed in graphic novel versions of classics like The Odyssey, Anne of Green Gables, or Sherlock Holmes. Or, your emerging language learners delighting in interactive stories.

Boost Engagement & Stretch Your Budget:

• Cost-Effective Magic: Budgets are tight! Online libraries provide a massive selection of resources at no cost. This allows you to create dynamic learning experiences without breaking the bank.  Often, libraries offer reciprocal memberships. This greatly expands your selection of free online literacy resources!
• Content for All Ages & Styles: From interactive stories for beginners to captivating graphic novels for middle schoolers. Online resources cater to diverse age groups and learning styles.

Highlighting Powerful Reading Sites for Teletherapy:

• Local Library Gems: Your local library’s online branch is a hidden gem! Explore their website to unearth a universe of resources waiting to be used in your sessions. Explore the website or talk to one of the librarians eager to get these resources into your hands.
  • There’s more than just print books waiting for you – there’s audiobooks, graphic novels, and easy-read versions of the classics.  These free online literacy resources are incredibly diverse.
• Interactive Storytelling with TumbleBooks: For younger learners, platforms like TumbleBooks offer a delightful world of interactive stories. These bring learning to life. This platform is often a free offering from your local library system. 
• YouTube Read-Alouds: Many engaging YouTube channels offer high-quality read-alouds of children’s books. Find stories that target your students’ specific interests and age groups to add variety to your sessions. For video playlists, check out my YouTube channel – Mrs. Speech!
• Dive into the Internet Archive: This vast digital library holds a wealth of books and learning materials. Explore their collection of ebooks, audiobooks, and even teacher resources like curriculum materials and literature notebooks from top publishers.
  • Need a ready-made literacy lesson?  IA has the Teacher’s Editions of many Literacy Textbooks!  Plus, my middle school students can’t get enough of the classic short stories. These include ones by Saki, Poe, Thurber, Twain, O’Henry, and more. There’s a reason they’ve stood the test of time!
• Try ESL sites like Voice of  America:  VOA has a multitude of famous American short stories that have been simplified.  And bonus, they have an audio version and supplemental materials as well!

Empower Your Students with a Free Bonus!

View my curated list of 85+ FREE resources from the Internet Archive, featuring a variety of short stories and adapted novel collections! This list gives you a head start on incorporating these valuable materials into your teletherapy sessions. FYI – Check out my Lesson Guides to some classic short stories on TPT: Ultimate Short Story Comprehensive Lesson Guides Bundle.

Visit my other posts on using short stories in therapy:

• Why, and How, I Started Using Short Stories in Therapy
• Unlock Student Engagement: The Magic of Short Stories in Middle School Speech Therapy
• Activity Magic: Short Stories for Multi-Goal Mastery in Speech Therapy

Update 12/24

I recently found the free internet browser Brave and have been using it the past couple of weeks.  It was simple to move my Google bookmarks into Brave, and I am using it solely for use with the kids. This streamlines my therapy sessions too.  I haven’t had a single YouTube ad. Also, I haven’t noticed other ads popping up on websites.  I will say that, while it does block the ad on a website, there is often still the space where the ad would be.  Often, a reader extension like ReadBee will remove those spaces and focus on the text.

Stay tuned for more insider tips and resources to level up your teletherapy game!

Happy Teletherapy,

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The post Level Up Literacy Teletherapy: Unleash FREE Online Resources to Captivate Students! appeared first on Mrs. Speech Online.

Why Short Stories?

Here’s the deal: short stories provide a natural context for practicing:

• Context Clues: Piecing together meaning from surrounding information.
• Inferences: Reading “between the lines” to understand deeper meaning.
• Vocabulary Development: Encountering new words in a fun and engaging way.
• Comprehension & Retelling: Following the story arc and summarizing key events

I’ve explained how I use short stories in my therapy room here!

The Power of a Good Story:

One of my students recently graduated from speech therapy, and guess what he told me? He was sad because he loved our story time! (Don’t worry, I sent him home with my trusty story list!) That’s the power of these engaging tales.

Ready to Dive In?

I’m excited to share some of the short stories that have been a hit with my students, along with a few new ones we’ll be exploring soon.  Here’s what I look for when selecting stories:

• Engaging Plot: A reasonable amount of action to keep things interesting.
• Relatable Characters: Kids connect better with stories they can understand.
• Twist Endings: Surprise endings leave a lasting impression (the kids love these!).
• Manageable Length: Ideally under 5,000 words (around 40 minutes of reading time).
• Student Choice: Involving them in the selection process boosts engagement.

Tried and True Stories

With links to Lesson Guides:

• The Wife’s Story by Ursula le Guin
  • A “backwards werewolf” horror story with a twist ending that the kids find fascinating.
• Three Skeleton Key by George Toudouze
  • A horror story of three men stuck in a lighthouse surrounded by man-eating rats.  Has a bit of a twist at the end.
• The Night the Ghost Got In by James Thurber
  • A humorous ghost tale that had the kids asking for another.
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
  • A psychological murder story with a twist ending.  I used an adapted version.
• The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs
  • A dark story about being careful what you wish for.  The kids loved the twist ending.
• The Storyteller by Saki (H.H. Munro)
  • A humorous look at what makes a good story when a bachelor entertains three children on a train.

Stories For the Future

Other stories I’ve found that I think my middle-schoolers will enjoy:

• The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
  • A story about a virtual reality nursery that gets out of hand, with a twist ending.
• The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton
  • A woman must decide between her lover’s potential death or his marriage to another woman…there is no end, which I love/hate, so students will have to debate what happens.
• Hey You Down There by Harold Rolseth
  • The story of a couple who discover strange creatures living at the bottom of their well.  A nice twist ending students are sure to enjoy.

Remember: This list is a jumping-off point! Don’t be afraid to experiment and find stories your students adore.  If you want my full list, it is FREE on TPT!

If you’re looking for a structured way to determine your students’ needs before you begin, my new Middle School Contextual Language Screener provides a practical starting point to assess skills related to literature.

Want a FREE bookmark to help students generalize speech sounds?  Sign up below for this and more exclusive freebies!

Let’s Chat!

What are your favorite short stories for speech therapy? Share your experiences and recommendations in the comments below!

Want to learn more about middle schoolers? Read Middle School Language Development: What They Don’t Know May Surprise You.

Happy Reading!

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The post Unlock Student Engagement: The Magic of Short Stories in Middle School Speech Therapy appeared first on Mrs. Speech Online.

Hands down, short stories in speech therapy emerge as a champion tool for those of us working with mixed-skill groups! Forget juggling endless flashcards or hopping between disparate activities. A meticulously planned story can address a multitude of speech and language goals, all within one engaging context. This saves you precious planning time and making therapy sessions flow seamlessly.

And the best part? The skills practiced during a short story unit are often easier to generalize than skills practiced in isolation.

Research-Backed Reasons to Use Short Stories in Speech Therapy:

• Engages Multiple Brain Areas: Stories activate more parts of the brain than simple facts or lectures, including areas involved in language processing, sensory experiences, and even motor functions if the story describes actions. This creates a richer, more holistic learning experience.
• Emotional Connection: Narratives evoke emotions, and emotions are strongly linked to memory and engagement. When we feel something, we’re more likely to remember it.
• Context and Meaning: Stories provide context for information, making it more meaningful and easier to connect new concepts to existing knowledge. Facts presented in isolation are harder to retain.
• Empathy and Perspective-Taking: Stories allow us to step into the shoes of characters, fostering empathy and understanding different perspectives, which can deepen learning about complex social or emotional concepts.
• Relatability: We naturally relate to characters and their struggles, making the learning feel more personal and relevant.
• Simplicity in Complexity: Stories can simplify complex ideas by presenting them through relatable scenarios and character experiences.
• Sequencing and Causality: Narratives inherently involve sequence and cause-and-effect relationships, which helps in organizing information and understanding how things work.

Plus, once you’ve created or chosen a great story unit, you can use the same material across multiple groups and years, adapting it to diverse needs.

Consider grabbing ready-made short story lesson guides to jumpstart your planning! You can find a comprehensive bundle of my guides on Teachers Pay Teachers for 30% off the individual prices!  ➡️Find my FREE list of favorite short stories on TPT! 

Short Stories are Pure Magic for Mixed Groups

Short stories provide a natural, rich environment for practicing a wide range of speech and language skills. Here’s why they’re so effective:

Core Language & Literacy Skills

Short stories lay a strong foundation by naturally targeting essential skills:

• Context Clues: Students inherently practice deciphering unfamiliar vocabulary by using surrounding words and sentences.
• Vocabulary Development: Encountering new words in an authentic narrative context makes learning fun and helps solidify understanding far better than rote memorization.
• Comprehension & Retelling: Following the story arc, identifying key events, and summarizing what happened are direct, functional language goals.
• Sequencing: Stories provide a natural framework for ordering events. Students can practice identifying the beginning, middle, and end; using transition words; and retelling events in logical order.

Higher-Level Language & Critical Thinking

For students ready for deeper engagement, short stories offer rich opportunities for analytical and inferential skills:

• Inferences: Reading “between the lines” to understand unstated meanings, character motivations, or future events becomes a natural part of following the plot.
• Perspective-Taking & Emotion Identification: Characters’ actions and reactions offer perfect opportunities to discuss feelings, motivations, and social problem-solving.
• Word Choice & Writer’s Craft: Students can analyze how authors use specific words and literary techniques (like humor, suspense, or vivid descriptions) to create meaning, mood, or character. This enhances expressive language by encouraging more precise and creative word use.
• Syntax, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing: Students can create their own sentences using conjunctions or practice putting the paragraph in their own words, as well as summarizing key events in the story.
• Literary Analysis: For older students, stories are perfect for diving into more advanced elements like point of view (including unreliable narrators!), figurative language (similes, metaphors, personification), tone, mood, and plot structure.

Speech Production & Fluency

Beyond language and comprehension, short stories provide a natural context for speech goals:

• Speech Sounds and Fluency: From just finding target words with a specific sound to practicing smooth, connected speech during read-alouds and discussions, students with articulation and fluency goals can participate easily and meaningfully within a short story lesson. The natural context makes practice more engaging and less isolated.

Practical Strategies for Multi-Goal Mastery

You’ve got the perfect short story for your speech therapy, but how do you use it? Once you have your story selected, here are some ways to weave in goal work:

“What Is It?” (Defining and Describing Game)

Pause at key moments. Select a noun (character, setting detail, object) or even an action. Have students describe it using multiple attributes (category, function, appearance, parts, location, what it’s made of). This hits defining, describing, vocabulary, and expressive language (and plugs in to comprehensive vocabulary learning). You can even draw or pantomime what you see!

“The Five Questions” (Another Approach to Defining and Describing/Comprehension)

After reading a paragraph or section, challenge students to answer five key questions about it: Who? What? Where? When? Why? (or How?). This reinforces comprehension, summarization, and expressive language.

Modified Text for Audio/Read-Aloud

For students who benefit from visual support, provide a written text with simpler synonyms written above or next to challenging vocabulary words. They can follow along while listening to the original audio or your read-aloud, bridging the gap to complex text.

Prefix/Suffix Hunt

Have students identify words with common prefixes or suffixes and predict their meaning, then check the context. This works great for our grammar kiddos too!

Check out my article for more vocabulary ideas: Comprehensive Vocabulary Instruction for Teachers & SLPs

Character Emotions & Motivations: At various points, stop and ask, “How do you think [character] is feeling right now? What makes you say that?” Then, “Why do you think [character] did [action]? What was their motivation?” This supports emotional vocabulary and inferencing.

Plot Predictions: Regularly pause and ask, “What do you predict will happen next? What clues make you think that?” This builds prediction and inferencing skills.

Figurative Language Detective: After introducing similes, metaphors, or personification, have students identify examples as you read and discuss what they mean and why the author used them.

Tips & Tricks for Reading in Speech Therapy

Don’t forget to model your own thinking!

This is an excellent way to teach “in-the-moment”! “I was curious…” or “I was remembering…” are great instruction tools. Showing them your thought process help students understand how to slow down and pay attention to their thoughts!

It’s Okay to Take Your Time! (Multi-Session Approach)

Don’t feel pressured to rush through an entire short story in one session. Breaking it down over several sessions allows for deeper comprehension, more intensive skill practice, and repeated exposure to vocabulary and concepts. This flexible approach makes short stories highly adaptable to your schedule and student needs (and makes planning so much easier!).

Boost Engagement with Student Choice

Student buy-in is gold! When students are interested in the story, their motivation skyrockets, leading to more meaningful participation and better generalization of skills. Get to know your students’ genre favs. Try offering your students a selection of 2-3 short story options to choose from for their next unit. These simple actions can dramatically increase engagement and ownership of their learning.

Ready to Take On Reading in your Speech Therapy sessions?

I’m excited to support you in making short stories in your speech therapy a cornerstone activity. See these strategies in action and explore a wealth of ready-to-use materials!

➡️Find my Ultimate Short Story Comprehensive Lesson Guides Bundle on TPT, with 30% off individual pricing!  All of these stories have been vetted by my own middle school students.

➡️ Download my free short story lesson guide sample! This 20 page comprehensive sample from “The Night the Ghost Got In” is waiting in my Subscriber Exclusive Freebie Library!

Join Here to Visit Our Full Freebie Library! 

What are your go-to short stories for speech therapy? Share your experiences and recommendations in the comments below!

Want to know more about using literature in therapy? Check out my other articles!

• Level Up Literacy Teletherapy: Unleash FREE Online Resources to Captivate Students!
• Unlock Student Engagement: The Magic of Short Stories in Middle School Speech Therapy
• Why, and How, I Started Using Short Stories in Therapy

Happy Reading & Therapizing!

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The post Activity Magic: Short Stories for Multi-Goal Mastery in Speech Therapy appeared first on Mrs. Speech Online.