Wordless Picture Books for Narrative Language Intervention in Speech Therapy

Wordless picture books might not have text, but they are packed with opportunities for rich language learning!

Because the story is told entirely through illustrations, children get to use their own words to describe, predict, and make sense of what’s happening.

In speech therapy, these books can be powerful tools for building vocabulary, narrative skills, grammar, and more!

I’ve rounded up my top 10 favorite wordless picture books to use with elementary students in therapy sessions below, and if you’re looking for even more, check out my YouTube playlist with 25+ book read alouds.

My Top 10 Wordless Picture Books to Use in Speech Therapy

1. Pancakes for Breakfast

2. Flashlight

3. Red Sled

4. Where's Walrus

5. Wolf in the Snow

6. Nope

7. Goodnight, Gorilla

8. Skunk on a String

9. Fly

10. Journey

Want to see even more? Here is my YouTube playlist with 25+ books!

Ideas for Using Wordless Picture Books in Therapy

Here are some practical ways you can use these books to target a variety of goals:

✨ Narrative Skills: Have children tell the story in their own words. You can incorporate story grammar and sequencing using temporal concepts (e.g. first, next, then).

After reading the story, you can work on story retell skills by:

• Using beginning, middle, and end as framework

• Incorporating story grammar

• Work on sequencing by putting events in the correct order

✨ Vocabulary: Label objects, actions (can work on grammar here too by focusing on a specific tense), and emotions shown in the illustrations. Labeling emotions is also a great way to work on synonyms (e.g. angry, upset, mad, frustrated, furious)!

✨ WH Questions: Ask questions like Who is in the picture? What happened? Where are they going? Why do you think that?

✨ Drawing Inferences & Making Predictions: Ask questions like What do you think will happen next? What might they be thinking? What do you think the character is feeling right now? How can you tell? Why do you think the character did that?

✨ Grammar: Model and elicit specific grammatical skills (e.g. past tense -ed verbs, plurals, conjunctions) and/or sentence types (e.g. complex sentences, compound sentences) while describing the pictures.

Introduce the focus skill before reading the book: While we're going to work on making nice long sentences using the word "and."

As you read the story, take turns modeling the target in a sentence and prompting the student to create their own.

✨ Perspective-Taking: Discuss how characters might be feeling or what they might be thinking (the books Fly and Nope are great for this!). Have students compare this to how they might feel or what they might think if they were in the situation.

Good perspective-taking isn’t only about guessing what someone else is thinking or feeling. It’s also about speaking up when something doesn’t make sense. Letting others know when you’re unsure helps cut down on misinterpretations and encourages open, respectful communication. It's also a key part of supporting our students in a neurodiversity-affirming way.

Here are some example statements and questions you can model and encourage students to use to help them practice their self-advocacy skills:

• I don't understand what you're upset about.

• You seem upset, but I don’t understand what happened.

• I want to help, but I don’t know what you need.

• I hear you. For me, I feel ___.

• I see that you think it’s funny. For me, it feels different.

• Can you explain what you’re thinking?

• What do you want me to do right now?

• Did I hurt your feelings?

• Can you give me an example?

✨ Written Expression: Have students write their own dialogue for the characters or a sentence summarizing key story events. You can easily incorporate story grammar, grammar and syntax, and perspective taking too while writing sentences.

A little tip: Writing dialogue is a super simple way to work on formulating complex sentences! For example: Piggie said, "Let's go to the beach!"

As you can see, wordless picture books are incredibly flexible!

You can use them to meet children where they are, and they provide multiple opportunities to target a wide variety of skills in an interactive and engaging way.

It's a win-win!

Hope this has been helpful! 😊