Pre-reading Activities for Apple Themed Books in Speech Therapy

I am often asked how to structure pre-reading knowledge activation sessions in a way that is engaging and meaningful for students, especially if I'm recommending to spend up to two whole sessions in this phase of the literacy-based therapy framework!

The goal of pre-reading sessions is to engage students in lively discussions about topics and words that will help students comprehend the story.

If we want students to be engaged during discussions, we need to provide interesting stimuli.

Below are some ideas for activating knowledge and pre-teaching key concepts prior to reading apple themed books in your therapy sessions!

Virtual Field Trips

Take a virtual field trip to an apple orchard! This is a great way for students to see where and how apples are grown, especially for those that live in urban areas.

Pause the video throughout to talk about orchard related terms like hayride and tractors, discuss how apples grow, and how to harvest apples.

Encourage student driven discussion and pause the video to listen to what students have to say. Student interaction and hearing the connections they make is the goal for this type of activity.

Here are a couple of videos on YouTube you could use:

For Elementary Students

For Younger Students

Pre-teach Vocabulary

Understanding vocabulary is essential to text comprehenison. Make a list of vocabulary works from the story that are essential to understanding the story.

I like to write these on a sticky note and place it on the inside of the book cover so that I can reference it year after year!

Here are some ideas for explicitly working on vocabulary:

• Make a word cloud

• Vocabulary journal

• Create vocab posters to refer back to when reading the story

• Sort words by part of speech

• Make a word wall

• Semantic maps

• Look up the definition and then practice using the word in a sentence

  
  

Parts of an Apple

Discuss the parts of an apple! Bring a real apple into the session, cut it open, and see what students have to say/are able to label!

This is a great opportunity to work on describing and use of adjectives (e.g. smooth, juicy, moist, soft, mushy) too!

Here is a great YouTube video you could use to introduce and talk about the parts of an apple.

After watching the video, review by having students label the parts on the real apple you brought in.

How Apples Grow

Talk about what apples grow on, what apple trees need to grow, and how to harvest apples.

This a great opportunity to discuss words and concepts like seeds, planting, blossoms, pollinators, pollinating, pollen, harvesting.

You can look at pictures in chapter two of this book to support your discussion.

What Can You Make With Apples

Talk about what you can make with apples! Search Google for pictures to support your discussion.

If you're able to use food at your school, this could be a fun time to make something with apples that students can also eat!

Discuss ingredients and tools that are needed for various recipes - you can even compare and contrast recipes and have students vote on which recipes seem the easiest and hardest to make.

KWL Chart

You can pair a KWL chart (know, want to know/wonder, learned) with all of your discussions.

You can fill one out as a group and fill in the "learned" column together after reading your story.

And if you're still on the hunt for the perfect apple themed book, check out my YouTube playlist full of read alouds!

I hope this has been helpful! 😊