Imagine this: there is an epic battle going around you. You hear screams ‘aaaahhhh’ and soft, little whimpers as last breaths are drawn. Your opponent ever so slowly turns to face you and you know that this can go either of two ways. They quickly draw two cards and flip them over. It’s not looking good.
“My kangaroo is going to pull out corn kernels and shove them up your shark‘s nose so that you can’t breathe”.
Dang. You didn’t see that coming. Think quick. This is a battle. No, not just a battle. An Articulation Battle. You got this, kid, you got this!
“Before your kangaroo shoves the corn up my nose, my shark will whip out his candle, light the corn kernels on fire so they turn to popcorn and then throw the candle in the kangaroo’s pouch and wins!”
It’s unanimous. The shark with the candle wins… that is unless the joey in the kangaroo’s pouch blows out the candle and then pokes the shark in the eye. That COULD technically happen!
Well now, didn’t you practice tons of /k/ sounds in spontaneous sentences (ahem.. not to mention different positions) and probably didn’t even know it! Are you with me on this? This IS a game changer! Our poor kids have usually had it by the time we’re crossing our fingers and hoping that those sentences magically generalise.
This is when kids are at a therapy low.
They’re bored and your popup reinforcers and stickers just aren’t cutting it no more. I’ve seen it, and it’s hard to turn them back around. But when you let them, no, encourage them to be cheeky, crazy and downright wild, their sparkle comes back. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about working with kids, it’s that they love ‘the ridiculous’. Why?
Because it’s at their level.
Because laughter produces endorphins and endorphins are important. Aren’t they??? I’m sure I learnt that 12 years ago in my near lectures.
In all seriousness now, I think sometimes generalisation and carryover to conversation can be hard because there aren’t a lot of resources and ideas out there that mimic the back and forth flow of conversation. We are great phenomenal at getting kids to copy our targeted words and sentences… but then, ahhh… what do we do for carryover? Because I’m telling you now, imitation of sentences is a slower way to get there and kids have a knack for answering in one word sentences when we try our best to use open-ended questions to give them feedback.
So the premise of Articulation Battle is simple, with tons of variations for individual or group therapy. You choose a random Fighter and Object/Weapon. They do the same. You verbally go back and forth counter-arguing how your combo would ‘win’ in an imaginary battle. I said it was simple.
But can you imagine a group battle with all of your kids having decks for their different speech targets going round the circle?
Are you blocking your ears from the squeals of laughter? Are you practicing your defeated face when you let some kid beat you in a battle? Can you see how this game would go for the entire 30 minute session and when you play next week, it will be different? Can you see all the language goals that you can check off at the same time? Are people peering through your tiny window to see just what is going on in your room? Yes. To. The. Above.
GRAB THIS SET NOW – all 1032 cards. Don’t even bother laminating. You don’t need to. Cardstock, maybe. Or the kids can take their battle deck cards home and colour them in or tell their parent’s about the battle.
4 Comments
I would love to download the cards but I am unable to, can you please help? Thank you!
I just added the link again – thanks for letting me know!
Hi! Are these cards still available. I am a second year grad student and to get my hands on these would be amazing for externship.
Hi Robin, I’m just in the middle of updating the resource so it is not for purchase at this point in time. I will notify people via email when it is finished, so make sure that you are on my newsletter list.