Bilingual Therapy Ideas

I like using books in my therapy sessions because there are many great stories waiting to be read. Reading is an excellent and fun way to increase children's vocabulary repertoires. Additionally, many language skills can be targeted using the same book. I have heard seasoned SLPs mention that they use the same book for a month, which sounds awesome! Using the same book lessens the amount of prep and the amount of time reading and rereading the book since the students will know the book very well by the second or third week. Books can be used to target character traits, figurative language, grammar, inferencing, rhyming, sequencing, story elements, story recall, vocabulary, and so much more. That being said, I also work with younger students whose dominant language is Chinese (my current caseload is mostly Mandarin Chinese). I find that I have to translate the books I read to Chinese most of the time, which isn't hard to do, but sometimes I do have difficulty translating specific words or phrases to Chinese on the spot. Another way to supplement books is to use videos. There are some story reading videos available on Youtube that are only a few minutes long and will not take too much screen time during sessions. There are many ways to use the videos, make it work for your sessions!

Some examples of story reading videos:

The Lion and the Mouse Fable

The very Hungry Caterpillar in Mandarin and English

The Very Hungry Caterpillar in Mandarin