I LOVE summer!!! Talking about summer in therapy is always a treat for myself and my students. Using functional and no prep materials always makes my therapy a tad bit easier.

I like to use adapted books in therapy. Using adapted books with real pictures is a functional way to address language skills for students of varying ages. Real life pictures are engaging and mirror what is happening in the natural environment.

The summer fun book includes one line of text and one picture on each page. I have students who can read, take turns and read a page. I have students who may have difficulty with reading, label a picture on the page. At the end of the book we go over early comprehension skills and then social language questions. This is a great way to embed work on social skills!

After we read the book, we look at our summer picture scenes. These pictures are open ended and can be used to target a variety of language skills.

Labeling: have students label what they see in the picture. In this picture they could label baby, mom, beach, ocean.

Sentence construction: have them develop a grammatically correct sentence about the picture. The mom is holding the baby.

Narrative skills: have students tell you a story about what is going on in the picture. The family is on vacation. This is their first time at the beach. They are having so much fun!

Social questions: have students engage in a conversation about the picture. Use questions like: Have you been to the beach? Would you want to go to the beach someday? What do you like about the beach?

Summer is a fun theme to cover in therapy! Use these materials to help your students practice functional language skills.

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