Musical EET - DIY Therapy Game

Most SLPs are familiar with Expanding Expression Tool, or EET in short, an amazing therapy technique to work on description skills (find out more information about EET here). EET is my go-to strategy whenever I have students working on describing an item.

For those of you unfamiliar with EET, it is basically a visual of multicolored circles. Each circle represents a different descriptive aspect of an item: Green - Group, Blue - What does it Do, Eye - What does it look like, Brown - What is it made of, Pink - Parts, White - Where do you find it, Orange - What else do you know?

Students are guided through this hierarchy and provide the respective information about the item they are describing. I like EET because it is visual and easy to implement.To add some variety to my EET session, I came up with a really fun game that my students just loved: Musical EET! And the best part is that you can recreate it for virtually less than $1.50.

You will need:
* Felt sheets (Green, Blue, White x2, Brown, Pink, Orange)
* A paper plate or other large circular object
* A marker
* Scissors
* Some sort of music

Cheap materials.

Preparation:
1. Using the paper plate and marker, draw circular templates onto each felt sheet.
2. Cut out the circles.
3. On one of the white circles, draw the outline of an eye and cut a smaller circle from the leftover blue felt which is glued in the middle of the eye (this will be the iris). Draw some eyelashes.
4. On the orange circle, use the marker to draw a big question mark.

Our EET circle.

Once all of the circles are ready, place them in a big circle on the floor. The circle should be large enough for students to walk around the outer perimeter without being crowded. Also note that if you have bare floors, students may slip if they step on the felt. It is therefore most feasible to do this activity on a carpet. If you don't feel like taking the time to make these circles or have bare floors that are not conducive or safe for felt, you can buy non-slip steppers from the company (unfortunately only with the purchase of the entire kit).

Game play.

Tell the students that they will get to play a game like musical chairs. Start playing some music. As the music is playing, have students walk around the circle. When the music stops, they have to stand by the nearest circle. Once everyone is placed at their spot, they will look at a "mystery object" (i.e. a picture card) and have to provide the information about the item based on the color of their circle. For example, if they are standing on the brown circle, they have to state what the item is made of.

My students had a blast with this game and the activity reinforced their memory of what each color stands for. In addition, the movement piece added a kinesthetic component and was especially feasible for my students with an ADHD diagnosis. 

~Viola

Using Carrier Sentences and EET

Most of us are familiar with the Expanding Expressive Tool (EET) Program, designed to build students' describing skills by assigning colored circles to a specific property of an item. I use this program a lot with my students, and this week came up with a different way of using it with my cognitively lower functioning Special Day Class kids. A lot of my SDC students have difficulty constructing more complex grammatically correct sentences and have grammar/syntax goals along with conceptual (e.g., category, function) goals. Most of them know basic sight words and respond very well to carrier phrases, so I thought of using EET within the context of a modeled sentence. In our teacher workroom I found these long paper strips (about 1.5') with handwriting lines on them. After snagging a few, I created the following visuals:

EET carrier sentences.

I also own a box of noun picture cards from Language Builder that I like to use when working with EET, so I picked a few suitable cards for our session. I presented each stimulus item as follows:

"Group" & "Do"

Students were expected to fill in the "group" (green circle) and the "do" (blue circle) independently. For this example, an acceptable response would have been, "A fish is an animal that swims." This was a great way to work on 3rd person singular "-s" morphological markers, too! We also practiced this activity with other aspects of EET.

"An apple is a fruit that is red."

While my students often needed a couple of initial examples for each sentence strip, they caught on quickly!

"A sea gull is an animal that has feathers."

"A table is a furniture made of wood."

"A swimsuit is a clothing that you see at the beach."

We even combined multiple aspects of EET to build even more complex sentences:

"A tiger is an animal that roars in the jungle"

This level of support was exactly what my students needed to successfully build grammatically correct sentences and work on their conceptual language skills, as well. I'll be hanging on to these sentence strips and probably make a few more! The best part: This activity was practically free!

~Viola