I love articulation ladders! They’re such a great visual representation of the different levels of speech and can help scaffold students from one level to the next. Since it’s time to bust out the summer speech therapy activities, I decided to make a sandcastle articulation ladder! These can be found in my membership, The Speech is Sweet Club!
This fun summer articulation ladder craft is no prep and super simple! No glue required! Just have your students color it and cut it out! It tackles five levels of speech: sound, syllable, word, phrase, and the sentence level.
You can also find these crafts in my TPT Shop! Let’s climb the speech ladder!
Isolation Level
You start at the bottom of the ladder and work on the sound by itself. This comes with a visual cue to show students how to position their articulators to produce the sound.
Syllable Level
Next students slowly build upon the isolation level and add a vowel sound! This level has visual cues for five different vowel sounds. Students can work on one vowel at a time and when they master them all with the sound in the initial position, they can then go backwards and work on the sound in the final position!
No time for scissors?! These can also be used as a good ol’ fashioned coloring sheet!
Word Level
These ladders provide five different words at the word level! Also, I chose summer themed vocabulary words as the targets! I love this detail, because it also exposes children to summer vocabulary! I love hitting two birds with one stone!
Phrase Level
At this level, students are given 10 total two-word phrases for two different summer themed vocabulary words! Typically, the phrases feature a pronoun or adjective + the target word.
Sentence Level
When students reach the top of the ladder, they have a silly sound-loaded sentence to tackle! All throughout the ladder, I made sure not to repeat any of the target words to maximize the variety of words used!
You can also turn this activity into an interactive notebook activity with ease! Just have students put glue under the top part of the sandcastle and then they can glue them into their notebooks or one a loose-leaf sheet of paper. They can then write or draw under the sandcastle. They can come up with their own word targets, their own phrases, or even write sentences! Students who are not yet writing can draw word targets.
These are also great assessment tools! Throughout therapy, you can assess where students are on the articulation ladder and students can even assess themselves!
I hope you and your students enjoy this simple craft this summer! It’s not only a great activity, but a powerful tool!
Looking for more summer themed activities? Check them out HERE!
Want more articulation ladders?! They can all be found in the membership or in my TPT shop:
School Articulation Ladders
Haunted House Articulation Ladders
Gingerbread House Articulation Ladders
Have fun climbing the articulation ladder!
