Abstract
Speech in action is a resource book written by a speech and language therapist, a speech and language therapy assistant, and a physical education teacher. The book is based on the two disciplines – speech and language therapy and physical education – and combines these to create lesson plans that target communication and motor skills. The book highlights the small but useful evidence base in this area. This active approach to lessons is used to make them more engaging and exciting for the students. The resource is aimed at parents, carers, teachers, occupational therapists, and other professionals working with children with communication difficulties.
The book contains 90 photocopiable lesson plans, which clearly set out the skills the lesson plan is targeting, materials required, how to carry out the lesson, and a useful list of variations to step up or step down depending on the abilities of the children taking part in the lesson. The authors suggest that the chapters are designed with ability of students in mind, starting with a chapter aimed at lower-functioning students and then moving up from there. There are six chapters of which half state clearly what they contain, such as ‘warm-ups, cool-downs, and breathing’ and others that are vague, such as ‘moving on’.
Speech in action is a wonderful resource of ideas to keep students engaged and motivated to work on skills in a game format in which they will often not realize that they are actually working. Unfortunately, in order to gain the full benefit of all the ideas it was necessary to read the whole book, and then bookmark lesson plans that targeted specific areas to work on. It is possible to, as the authors state, ‘open up the book to any page and be able to find a fun activity’. However, if the book had been organized into headings, such as ‘language concepts’ or ‘pragmatic skills’, it would have been much more user friendly as a resource to dip in and out of. It should be taken into account that the book is written with an American audience in mind, and therefore some of the language is American and it includes the American Sign Language alphabet and American slang.
This book would be a useful resource for a newly qualified speech and language therapist to add to his or her toolbox of ideas. As well as a wide range of ideas for activities to target communication skills, the appendix contains very helpful lists of emotions/feelings, synonyms, antonyms, and idioms. The book would also provide a good resource for teachers for circle time and other group activity times.