Welcome to our brand new “Sing to Speech” series! In this video series, our music therapists will share music-based exercises and activities to help support speech and language goals at home. We hope you enjoy!
About this Episode
This song was written to assist students in forming and expressing 3-4-word sentences, specifically about what they will start to see, hear, and smell now that the seasons are changing. “I see ___” “I hear ___” “I smell ___” sentences are basic 3-4-word sentence structures which can be utilized both within this song and later generalized outside of this song experience.
The music and rhythmic structure within this song provide a clear and predictable space for students to both fill in blanks to these sentences and later state the full sentence within the song. If working with your student at home or in school, you may want to utilize this song experience along with other prompts such as sign language or a visually written sentence for your student to read. This will promote multi-modal learning as your students take in information via many avenues of thier brain.
Utilizing a drum, rhythm sticks, or patting knees along with the rhythmic beat of these sentences will promote rhythmic speech, assisting students who experience trouble in fluency to create a smooth sentence. Pair this song experience with either visuals of some things you can see, hear, and smell in the spring or by simply looking outside with your student to assist them in creating sentences via relevant speech to their surroundings.
You may want to expand this experience via utilizing other “I” sentences about spring such as “I like the ______,” or “I want to _________.” You can later bring this experience into other academic settings to assist your student in speaking these functional 3-4-word sentences throughout their day. You may need to begin the experience with your student by speaking most of the sentences for them and having them fill in blanks, slowly moving toward utilizing sign prompts, visual cues, and later, no prompts at all, but musical ones. This will also be the case when transitioning to utilizing these 3-4-word sentences outside of the music setting.
Utilize those same prompts you use in music and slowly take these prompts away. Hopefully, your student will soon be finding success in creating functional 3-4-word sentences without any prompts at all.