Articulation Carryover Activities

You’ve taught the skill and had success in structured activities. All that’s standing between your student and dismissal from speech is carryover. Here are some of the best articulation carryover activities to help get your students to mastery and dismissal.

Using a variety of activities during your sessions will help students start to use their skills in a variety of ways. It’s so important to make sure they have plenty of opportunity to practice in different ways.

Carryover Activity #1: Story Retell

Books are some of the best therapy tools out there. Using books for carryover is a great way to work on carryover because it takes the focus off of the “drill” and shifts it to the story. When using books for carryover, I like to do have my students retell after every page. So I’ll read the page and then we’ll talk about what we see happening in the picture. Then I will have the student tell me about it in their own words (sometimes I have to cover the words so they don’t just read the text).

Carryover Activity #2: Jokes, Tongue Twisters, etc.

Kids love jokes and tongue twisters! They love to learn jokes that they can then go tell to their friends, parents, and other teachers. I have used regular joke books from my school library or from a google search. If you want jokes to target a specific sound, you can search on Teachers Pay Teachers for articulation joke activities. There are a ton.

Carryover Activity #3: Sound Loaded Scenes

Sound loaded scenes are one of my favorite carryover activities. You can use them in so many ways and for a variety of different goals. When I use sound loaded scenes, I will usually start out by telling a story about the picture to my student, and then they retell it. But then I give them the freedom to create their own story about the scene. This is a great way to work on narrative language skills, too. Many students simply want to describe/label what they see in the picture, rather than tell a story.

I have a set of sound loaded scenes that I use daily. This resource can be printed, but I recommend using it digitally. You can open it on your computer or tablet. There are some downloadable pages from this resource available at the end of this post. This entire resource is available inside of the KI Speech Resource Library.

Carryover Activity #4: Wordless Picture Books

Wordless picture books are perfect for carryover because they allow students to break free from feeling tied to the text. Since there are no words to read, students really need to examine the pictures and decide what they think is happening. I love using wordless picture books because we can build our own narrative. It’s also fun to see what different students notice and focus on with each page. Here are some of my favorite wordless picture books (affiliate links are provided here).

These are some of my most used articulation carryover activities. The most important thing to to provide students opportunities to practice their skill in a variety of ways. Just be sure you don’t rush the process. Spend plenty of time at the word level before moving on. You’ll be amazed at how much carryover happens naturally.

Need ideas for older students? Check out this post for my speech therapy tips for older students.

Here are some files you can use for articulation carryover:

/K/ Sound Loaded Articulation Scene (PDF)
/S/-Blends Sound Loaded Articulation Scene (PDF)
/TH/ Sound Loaded Articulation Scene (PDF)
Sound Loaded Scenes for /t, d, g, f, v, s, z, l, r, ʃ (sh), tʃ (ch), dʒ (j)/ (Members Only PDF)

There is also a Boom Card version of this resource that is available on Boom Learning. It includes moveable pieces that make each picture scene fun and interactive.

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