My Favorite Things as a Literacy Specialist
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By Lauren Kline, M.S., CCC-SLP, A/OGA, C-SLDI
I get asked all the time what materials I actually use in therapy. Not what looks good on Instagram — what I'm grabbing off the shelf week after week. So here it is: my go-to literacy materials that earn their spot in my therapy bag (and yes, it has to earn its spot, because I see three of my kids in person on the road).
If you caught my Reading in the Rockies presentation Syllables: Types, Division, and Everything in Between you saw these in action. (I'm presenting it again at SHAA, and they'll also be making an appearance when my SLP Summit presentation becomes part of the BIM library!)
I love this set for building words when a student has a wide range of knowledge of prefixes and suffixes. The domino format makes word building feel more like a game than a drill, and kids stay engaged longer because of it.
This one gets a lot of love in my therapy room. Since I see three of my students in person on the road, it's the perfect travel companion. It folds up easily, it's great for blending and building words, and it comes with way more letters than just what fits in the folder — so you're not scrambling when you need a second "t."
I use a ton of these for sound sorting, early phonemic awareness practice, and rhyming practice. I have multiple syllable types and just love them. They're a staple.
These are so useful for building words with prefixes and suffixes. When I want to get my kids up and moving, I put review reading words into the sleeves, let them throw the cubes, and whatever word it lands on (or whatever word they catch), they read it.
Although the colors aren't perfectly green for prefix, yellow for base word, and red for suffix, we make the blue work as a suffix when working on morphological awareness.
Easily one of my most used items. These are SO great for spelling, phonemic awareness, blending words, and even drawing. I love that some have a different number of boxes, and since they come in a larger set, they're perfect for small groups. If you only buy one thing from this list, make it these.
These get a lot of use too. Full transparency, I don't love the "blend cubes" that come with them, because I typically teach clusters as two separate graphemes rather than grouping them together as one. But the yellow family cubes and the alphabet cubes? All the time.
A really fun way to practice building words, especially for my kids with speech sound disorders. We can blend and build words silently while still practicing phonics concepts. It takes the pressure off the speech component and lets us focus on the literacy skill.
My younger learners love these. They get to pick out their own color, and it's great for tracking while reading. Simple, cheap, and the kids think they're special. That's a win.
---
Those are just some of my favorite reading materials — I hope you find some that work for you and your students!
Links in this post are Amazon affiliate links.
---
Lauren Kline is a speech-language pathologist and structured literacy specialist. She writes about the intersection of speech, language, and literacy at lkslo.com.
Comments