Therapy ideas: Virtual Field Trips
Finding novel, highly-motivating activities has always been a challenge. The push for creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is an ongoing reality especially with tele-therapy becoming the new normal. Recently, I started embellishing my speech sessions with free virtual visits to popular museums, zoos, special attractions, and national parks. Utilizing virtual visits allows one to address speech goals while catering to each patient’s personal interests while expanding the battery of therapy tools available at one’s disposal.
Virtual field trips offer the flexibility to utilize free tours online through your speech platform. Because patients, parents, caregivers, and others can easily access the sites as well, these virtual tools can help with generalization, or carryover, of skills that are targeted in therapy. Virtual tours can be paired with pictures, words, and sentences using a Word document, Boom cards, or Google images. For therapists providing in-person therapy, virtual field trips offer an activity that can be done on a tablet or laptop to help with utilizing materials that are easy to sanitize. If you would like to pair some target words, pictures, sentences with your virtual tour, you can consider printing out your targets and laminating them to make them easy to sanitize. Check out the following links—maybe you’ll use some of these in your next session.
ZOO
WORLDWIDE ATTRACTIONS
NATIONAL PARKS
MUSEUMS
https://www.louvre.fr/en/visites-en-ligne
If you or someone you know needs the services of a licensed and certified speech-language pathologist, please be sure to discuss your concerns with a physician, a speech-language pathologist, or another qualified provider. You can also find a provider through the ASHA ProFind service or visit us at www.bilingualspeech.org for more information. Additional information on this topic can be found at stutteringhelp.org or at asha.org. NOTE: This article is intended only as a general source of information, i.e, it is not intended to replace information given to you by a qualified health professional that is familiar with your particular circumstances. Lastly, if you have an urgent medical need, please seek immediate medical attention.
