Animated video clips can be a fun way to elevate a clinician’s session plan to target a variety of areas of communication. From story comprehension to speech sound production, speech therapists can use these videos to improve their client’s skills in a way that is likely to be enjoyed by clients of any age.
Story Comprehension
Literal and inferential Wh questions: Story comprehension can be targeted throughout or after watching videos. Animated clips inherently include dynamic visual supports that encourage engagement. This can be especially useful for clients who have difficulty attending to orally presented information or static storybooks. Ask your client questions like “Who needed help?” or “How is X character feeling? Why?” to target interpreting stories.
Main idea vs supporting details: Videos can be accompanied by graphic organizers in order to identify main ideas vs supporting details. Animated videos typically have a central idea or overarching theme that is supported by smaller events that have less significance individually. Clinicians can rewind to point out how specific moments support the big picture.
Story Retell
Story grammar elements: Clients can be tasked with filling in story grammar graphic organizers with the appropriate information, or can be tasked with retelling the story presented in the video including all elements, depending on the client’s level. Story grammar elements are often very clear and tangible in animated clips and their detailed depictions help children in visualizing each concept.
Transition words: Specific elements that make a story retell more developed can also be targeted. Clients can be tasked with focusing on the use of transition words or dialogue in their story retell to create a more robust narrative. If the video is wordless, the child can create their own dialogue in their retell.
Higher Order Language
Inferencing: Clinicians can use animated videos to practice drawing conclusions based on the combination of prior knowledge and presented context. Pause the video before an event is revealed and make inferences about the scenarios in the story. For example, if there is a scene where a family is seen packing boxes and there is a For Sale sign in front of their house, find the clues that could tell you what might be happening (e.g., the family is moving).
Perspective taking: Discuss the motivations behind characters’ actions. What would the client have done in that scenario? What clues tell you how the character is feeling (e.g., facial expression, body language, dialogue)?
Making predictions: Clinicians can incorporate prediction-making into the watching of animated videos by pausing and having the client make a guess about what will happen next. This again incorporates combining information from the videos with background knowledge and personal experiences to extrapolate what may be the effect of a certain course of action.
Grammatical Forms
Animated videos can also be a great way to target specific grammatical forms any older clients may need to develop. For example, clients can generate sentences about a short clip from a video using progressive -ing, regular past tense -ed, or irregular past tense verbs. Conjunctions can also be targeted by pausing the video throughout and having the client combine two sentences using a conjunction or generate their own compound/complex sentence. The use of animated videos in this case could be positive in that they are often much more engaging for an older client working on grammar compared to materials like picture cards. Videos also allow for clients to demonstrate their skills in a more dynamic context than still images.
Articulation
Word and phrase levels: Engage young clients in their articulation therapy by using exciting animated videos that contain a high frequency of their target sounds. Pause the video throughout to practice the production of target words or phrases about the story or characters.
Conversational level: It can be difficult to think of activities at the structured/semi-structured conversational levels, but watching animated videos can be effective and fun. Pause the video throughout to ask the client a variety of Wh- questions with the focus being on using their target sounds. Clients can also practice generalizing their speech sounds by generating a retell of the video. Here, the focus is less on the story grammar components and more on having the client self monitor and use their sounds in new contexts with less structure.
Ehrlich, S. (2024, July). Animated Video Clips in Speech Therapy. Zebra Speech. https://www.zebraspeech.com/blogs/?b=108
this blog post is by
Speech-language pathologist (SLP)
more speech therapy articles posts (blogs) by Sarah Ehrlich