Are you searching for back to school themed books to incorporate into your speech therapy sessions? Books offer a fantastic opportunity to target a wide range of language and speech goals while keeping the sessions fun and engaging. Below are some of my favorite back to school books along with ideas on how to use them in your speech therapy sessions.
“The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn
This book is about a young raccoon named Chester who is nervous about starting school. It is great book to use to address emotions and social skills. It is also great to use to help with building self-confidence. After reading the book, you can talk about how Chester feels and how he overcomes his fears.
“Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes” by Eric Litwin
Pete the Cat is always a go to in my sessions! This book is perfect for working on colors, prepositions, and vocabulary. You can create a scavenger hunt activity where your kids find objects of different colors or place objects in various positions to work on prepositions.
“Llama Llama Misses Mama” by Anna Dewdney
In this story, little Llama experiences separation anxiety as he starts school. This is another great book to use to work on emotions. This is a great book to read when your kids miss their parents because you can find ways to help them overcome that. You can also work on WH- questions after reading the book.
“The Pigeon Has to Go to School!” by Mo Willems
This is always a fun series to read! In this book, Pigeon has to face the challenge of starting school. This book is perfect when you need to work on inferencing. You can have your kids predict the reasons why Pigeon doesn’t want to go to school and then have them come up with ways to help him overcome his concerns.
“If You Take a Mouse to School” by Laura Numeroff
Any adventure with mouse is a fun one, especially on his adventure at school. This book is fantastic for working on sequencing, cause and effect, and vocabulary expansion.
What goals can you target when you use books in your speech therapy sessions?
I enjoy using books in my speech therapy sessions because I can target multiple goals making them a great resource for any mixed speech and language groups that I have. I can target articulation goals and even different language goals like WH- questions, inferencing, and sequencing. The language goals are pretty self-explanatory when it comes to reading books. You can read the books and ask questions during or after and then also have them take parts of the book and put them in the order that they happened.
With my articulation kids, I will use words from the book that have their sound in them to practice. I will either scan the book beforehand and write down a few words that I see for the speech goals that I have written, or I will have the kids write them down as they listen to the story. After the story is done, you can have them practice the words while the other kids are working on their goals as well.
Let me know down in the comments what your favorite back to school book is! Just an FYI, you can always pull up book readings on YouTube if you don’t own the physical books. There isn’t any need to go out and buy them if you don’t have to, although I always love to have a copy on hand. š
Enjoy!
