If you are looking for ideas to address direction following , sequencing and executive functioning with your older students, I have a few! Of course my all-time favorite way to work on these skills would be carrying out a recipe (you may have noticed this based on my food/cooking-themed blog!) I realize this may not always be practical or permitted. Plus, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for all those extra pounds SLP’s everywhere would be gaining from all the delicious food they were preparing with their students! So here is an activity that requires only a few materials (paper, tape, scissors and a stapler) and no food! I have tried this activity with several of my middle and high school students with great success. Besides direction following and sequencing, there are many other language-related opportunities waiting to be addressed (requesting clarification, vocabulary: crease, excess, diagonal, overlap, conversational turn taking, describing skills.) I found the length and complexity of this activity to be just right for my older kids. Plus it isn’t juvenile and will keep them engaged. Want another reason to give this a try? It’s great practice for those students working on fine motor skills. You would be surprised how difficult it is for some older kids to press a crease into a piece of paper, line up the edges of a paper, and cut a somewhat straight line. Even older students need reinforcement with these skills. I know we are not occupational therapists, but SLP’s are accustomed to wearing more than one hat, as we are aware!
So here is what the completed project looks like—–
At first, many students reacted by saying that it looked too complicated. “There’s no way I can do that!” was a typical response, “What is it?” was another. The reactions I received provided the feedback I was looking for. It started a dialogue about seeing the big picture versus breaking down a task into small steps to avoid being overwhelmed; and it got their creativity flowing as we discussed all the possible objects that our paper folding design could represent (a flower, a star, a pinwheel…) As a result, I decided to create some language extension activities to go with our project. I included full-color photos of all the steps for making the project, a graphic organizer, a writing prompt page so your students can write a story about their paper fold and what it is supposed to represent for them. You can get this for FREE in my TpT store!
I also thought it would be fun to put together a quick little video (sped up for the sake of time) demonstrating this hands-on activity. You can watch my hands at work play here:
Looking for more ways to use paper folding to address direction following and sequencing? Check out this awesome find at my local Dollar Tree:
These paper airplanes are so great for older students (especially all of my boys!) I was ecstatic to find these for just a dollar!! They come with such cool designs and have step by step directions (written and visual) that we can read through and talk about together. We are having so much fun with this!! I didn’t get a picture of it, but this package also contains a foldable cardboard runway/landing strip! We plan on taking our paper planes for a ride in the school parking lot (as soon as the weather cooperates!)
And multi-sided 3-D shapes are the COOLEST! Dodecahedrons, icosahedrons, and other multi-sided objects are fantastic direction following paper-fold activities—and I found them at the dollar store!! You can write on each of the sides—-vocabulary words, numbers, articulation targets–the possibilities are endless!
Looking for more ways to use hands on activities like paper folding with your older students? Have you tried origami???? How about a cootie catcher/fortune teller ??? (The girls on my caseload love these!) There are tons of these ideas on TeachersPayTeachers and various sites on the web. I hope you find some of these ideas inspiring and motivating for your older students. Let me know if you have other fun ways to work on direction following and sequencing with the big kids!
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