How to Teach Sequencing Skills in Speech Therapy
It is so important to teach sequencing skills to your students. Sequencing is a skill that impacts so many areas of language and comprehension. When we teach sequencing skills, we give our students a necessary tool to help them both in and out of the classroom. Here are three tips to help you teach sequencing skills in speech therapy.
Start where your student is most successful.
When you teach sequencing skills, it’s so important to start at a level where your student is most successful and build from there. This might mean starting with only sequencing 2 or 3 pictures. Maybe they need real photos rather than clipart. You might want to start with familiar routines or activities that are relevant to your student. When I teach sequencing skills to young learners or students who have a difficult time with this skill, I often start with basic, clear photos that allow us to focus on the actual steps and language. I often use this 3 step photo sequence set that I created. It’s a great place to start and build from.
Gradually increase complexity.
As your student’s sequencing skills improve, make sure you are gradually increasing the complexity of the skill. This may be by adding more pictures/steps, or it may be by using more complex pictures. When I address sequencing skills, I use a variety of resources depending on my student’s current level of functioning. Some of my favorite resources to use when teaching sequencing skills include:
Teach sequencing skills AND narrative skills
I like to work on these skills at the same time, but make sure I assess them as two separate skills. Both are such important skills, and sequencing (ordering of the pictures/events) is best used to help teach narrative skills as well. This does not have to always be story retell. Narrative skills are what help us communicate things that have happened to us and share our experiences with others.
One of my favorite and most used resources for teaching sequencing and narrative skills is Story Champs. Story Champs helps make narrative based language intervention so easy! You can see more about Story Champs on their website.
Helping your students improve their sequencing skills can impact their overall language ability so greatly! I encourage you to address it at some point, even if it’s informally.
If you are interested in using the 3 step sequence set mentioned earlier in this post, you can get it on TPT using THIS LINK. You can also get the entire resource, plus ALL of my other speech and language resources in the KI Speech Membership.
Here is a free download you can try:
- 3 Step Sequence Sample (2 sequences) (PDF)
- Full 3 Step Sequence Set (10 sequences) (Members Only PDF)
If you are interested in reading more language intervention tips, check out the following posts…
