Officer Buckle & Gloria: Activities for Speech Therapy

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I'm a little late, I know.  I had a week of fantastic therapy sessions with my kids exploring various community helpers last week and I have lots to share!  Ready?  Go!

The book I used this week was Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann.  This book is SO good and it fits right in with the theme because the policeman in the story visits the schools in the community to give safety speeches…with his good buddy, Gloria.  This book is also great for inferences, because Gloria does a lot that Officer Buckle doesn't see 🙂
 One of the activities we did was centered around the EET and describing the characters in the story.  I used the describing page from my Community Helpers Packet.  It is no accident there are 7 bubbles on those pages 😉  My kids took a marker and marked each of the bubbles with the color of the bead and then they filled it out to describe Officer Buckle.
 I seem to have a TON of grammar goals this year, so I am always trying to think of a new and different way to target those.  For this group, I projected the book onto my screen and we picked out verbs, talked about they tense, and made new sentences.  They recorded the verbs on another page from my Community Helper packet (“On the Job Thoughts:  Police Officer”) and took it home for practice.
Another activity with the book that we did was to talk about emotions.  I used student pages from my Story Grammar Marker materials and we wrote the emotions we found Officer Buckle having in the story.  Then we talked about what made him feel each way with this quick fill in the blank activity I made (and put in my DIY Dry Erase Pockets so we could erase and do the next one :))
 With some of my older kids, I let them choose their own helper, then they filled out the KWL chart about their helper and shared with the group.

I am really incorporating a lot of writing in my therapy this year, so I loved using the “When I Grow Up” prompt with them after we did the KWLs.  They compeleted a graphic organizer and then wrote a short essay on what they wanted to be.  I let them choose anything they wanted and helped them complete some of their ideas.  They did a great job and I loved reading them!
And I had to share with them an example (I always do this, SO important) and I got to share a little bit about being an SLP…this was a lot of fun and may have opened their eyes a little about our job.
I also used my WHOO Is It?  Freebie, which you can grab in my TPT store HERE.

I love using this theme and my kids really learned a lot!  Have you used Community Helpers in your speech world?  What other activities did you use?