Barrier games appeal to a wide age range and can help you target a variety of language goals in speech therapy
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Quick: You've got three elementary-aged students walking into your office for their speech and language therapy session with you and, due to (insert any of the million school-based SLP reasons here), you don't have a session planned. Does anyone else loathe this feeling as much as I do?
Barrier games to the rescue!
I feel compelled to dedicate an entire blog post to barrier games. I use them in speech and language therapy with kids of all ages, and they are such an effective tool for all kinds of comprehension and/or expressive language development goals.
Barrier games can help to develop:
receptive and expressive vocabulary, including nouns, adjectives, spatial concepts, colors, superlatives, etc.
comprehension and use of compound and complex sentences (e.g., "Find the nest in the tree and color it pink," "Color the dog that is sleeping brown," etc.)
turn-taking, the asking of clarifying questions, and other social communication skills
articulation of targeted speech sounds
When I play barrier games with my students in speech and language therapy, my students get immediate feedback about their language comprehension; if they've missed a detail in a direction that was given to them, they'll see exactly where they went wrong. From an expressive language standpoint, students are often super motivated to generate detailed, multi-clausal sentences when it’s their turn to give a direction. Some of the best complex sentences I've gotten out of my younger students have happened during barrier game activities! They also get immediate feedback about whether the sentence they just generated was understood by others. In addition, students can practice using their targeted speech sounds in a structured context.
Pro Tip: Real magic happens when students are giving and following directions with each other!
This is how I play barrier games with my students during either 1:1 speech-language therapy sessions or groups:
I have two favorite tools for barrier games: coloring pages, and these reusable sticker pads from Melissa & Doug. I’ll describe how I use each below and have a free download you can use to get started right away.
The reusable sticker pads from Melissa and Doug allow you to choose pictures by category and are great if you want to target a whole bunch of vocabulary in one category, e.g., underwater animals, vehicles, town, farm, etc. I get two of each sticker book so that I have two sets of pictures and stickers.
When using coloring pages, I try to find a coloring page of my students’ favorite characters, superheroes, shows, interests, etc. Sometimes, I'll try to find coloring pages that are related to what they are learning in their current Science unit, e.g., the solar system, the water cycle, plants, etc. When choosing a coloring page, I am mindful of the level of detail in the picture and how much background knowledge, and therefore knowledge of specific vocabulary in the picture, I expect my students to have.
Consider these examples:
Example A:
This is a terrible coloring page for a barrier game (but a great one for relaxing!). It’s not interesting from a vocabulary perspective because all the parts of this mandala don’t really have names.
Exhibit B:
This is a great coloring page for a barrier game. There are so many language possibilities with this picture – spatial concepts like top, middle, and bottom, verbs to talk about what the different mice are doing, and lots of specific vocabulary for items in and around the house. For a free download of this and other coloring pages that would be great for a barrier game, click here.
Using either the stickers or coloring pages I do the following:
I call barrier games the “Same Game” and I tell my students that the object of the game is to keep our pictures exactly the same.
I give everyone the same materials – the same pictures and the same crayon colors if you’re using coloring pages. The same scene and stickers if you're using the sticker pads.
I use game boxes, books, or whatever else is nearby to create a “barrier” so no one can see anyone else’s picture. Cheating accusations ("No peeking!") are often met with mischievous giggles!
I encourage the group to take turns giving and following directions – that way, both comprehension and expressive language can be targeted. Each student gets turns being “the direction giver” and “the direction follower.”
After each direction, I wait for everyone to follow it. When everyone is finished following the direction the way they think they should, we all hold up our pictures (“One, two, three… SHOW!”) and examine how similar everyone’s pictures still are. Fix any errors that have happened by examining what went wrong. Was the direction confusing? Did the listener not understand a word or concept? The immediate feedback kids get in barrier games is concrete and meaningful.
The next person gets to be the direction giver now!
One piece of advice: Be careful about spatial concepts in a 2D context; words like "behind," "under," "on top," etc. can be interpreted in different ways.
Do you have any fun materials you use for barrier games? Share them in the comments!
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Have you heard? StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.
Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.
And get your FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the free downloads page.
Enjoy!
