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Our students LOVE all things community helpers especially during whole group speech and language therapy lessons. Check out how we target this favorite theme through a book, hands-on activities, music, and more! And don’t miss our awesome community helpers freebie for even more speech and language fun!
Check out these versatile community helper themed speech and language activities to use not only in your next whole group lesson, but also great for those small groups and table rotations. And don’t forget to check out our awesome Community Helpers Mini-Language Books for FREE down below!
We like being overly prepared for whole group speech therapy lessons. Typically we have four to five activities ready to go for a 20-30 minute large group session. And since we did the work for you this week, you will be extra prepared! So here are our five community helper themed speech and language activities to do with a large whole class group!
- Activity #1
- Activity #2
- Activity #3
- Activity #4
- Activity #5
- Community Helpers Language Mini-Book FREEBIE!
Community Helpers Whole Group Activity #1: Book
When planning a whole group lesson, Mandy and I always start with a book. Books are a great way to introduce a concept, but also work in WH questions, describing, and more! For our community helper themed whole group lesson, we love the following books: Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do by Kathryn Heling and Deborah Hembrook, Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha, and Whose Hat Is This? by Sharon Katz Cooper.
We love Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do because students can inference what job is being discussed through super cute pictures and rhyming phrases. Challenge your students to find the mail carrier on each page as well. We always count down the rocket ship at the end of the story together too!
Next up, the book Trashy Town is a class favorite. Not only do students love following a silly garbage collector around different community buildings and places, but they love spotting the two little mice along for the ride on each page. With a cute repeating phrase about picking up the garbage, students will get lots of community helper vocabulary practice!
Lastly, a solid community helper book choice is Whose Hat Is This? Similar to Clothesline Clues, students can use the rhyming verses plus pictures to guess which community helper is next. We even bring in a real hat for each page to increase engagement with the story. With fun community helper facts, this book will quickly be a go-to for your community helpers whole group speech and language whole group lessons!
Community Helpers Whole Group Activity #2: Interactive Fun!
After reading a story together, we like to get our students up and moving with a hands-on activity. Grab these adorably cute occupational finger puppets for endless whole group lesson fun! We like to describe each community helper and have students guess which helper. Once they guess, they can come to the front of the class and place the puppet on their finger.
Then, we sing “The Finger Family” song for each occupation with finger puppets. This song is not only great for receptive and expressive language practice, but also usually a huge hit with our gestalt language processors. Here is a link to the tune of the song, but we just use the community helper within the verse instead. Such a fun community helpers speech therapy whole group lesson activity!
Want more community helper whole lesson ideas? Check out this blog post: Dental Themed Speech & Language Therapy Whole Group Activities
Community Helpers Whole Group Activity #3: Technology
We typically incorporate an activity on the Smartboard to encourage turn-taking during our whole group speech and language lessons. For our community helpers themed whole group lesson, we really like these BOOM Card lessons target community helper vocabulary, WH questions, and more.
- Community Helpers Guess Who Game by Ms Herraiz
- Tools For The Job by Ms. Lora
- Community Helpers – What Goes Together? by Wanda Ashby
Community Helpers Whole Group Activity #4: Song Time!
No whole group speech and language lesson would be complete without an musical number! So we always end our groups with a fun song to allow students a chance to get up and dance and following along to a themed song. For our community helpers speech therapy whole group song, we choose “Alphabet Occupations” by Bounce Patrol.
Students love hearing all of the different occupations throughout the song. After listening, we always prompt students to think of what they might want to be when they grow up too!
Want more whole group lesson ideas? Check out our other themed speech and language whole group activities: Whole Group Speech & Language Lesson: Clothing Activities & Winter Speech and Language Activities for Whole Group.
Community Helpers Whole Group Activity #5: Scavenger Hunts
If you happen to move through the above activities super quick or just have additional time, we suggest these super fun and versatile scavenger hunts! Simply print out the vocabulary cards and choose from the following activities: scavenger hunt vocabulary checklist, find and color page, find and cover page, or hidden picture scene.
With multiple different community helper themes available, your students will get lots of expressive and receptive language practice! Check out the different versions available below!
Want awesome community helper themed articulation scavenger hunts as well? We have those too! Check out the different versions below and grab yours today.
Community Helpers Language Mini-Books FREEBIE!
After the conclusion of our community helper themed speech and language whole group, we have the perfect activity to keep the fun going at home! Instantly download and print these Community Helper Language Mini-Books to review lots of common community helpers as well. Best part??? They are FREE!
Just click here or the image below for your copy today!
We hope you enjoyed these community helper themed speech and language therapy activities for your next whole group lesson! Have a favorite? Share it with us on social media…we would love to see!
Kate & Mandy
Talking Mama Bears
