I’m a big fan of animated shorts for working with students. The body language and facial expressions are great for addressing non-verbal communication! The “problems” that they present are engaging and provide a rich backdrop to address many aspects of higher level language skills.
The first 30 seconds of this animation is full of therapy activities for older students with goals related to executive functioning, non-verbal communication, making inferences, identifying context clues, identifying problems and providing possible solutions, and social communication.
Some ideas of things you can work on:
How does she feel when she misses the train? How can you tell?
What time of day is it? What clues do you notice that help you make that smart guess?
Where do you think she’s going? What clues did you use?
Why do you think she was late? What could she do next time?
Maybe she was at a friend’s house who wanted her to stay longer, but she had to catch a train so that she would be home on time. What could she say to her friend? Why do you think her friend wanted her to stay? Do you think her friend wanted her to be late getting home?
Maybe she’s been late getting home before. How do you think her parents feel? How do you think she will feel if her parents are angry with her? Why do you think her parents want her home before it’s too late?
Maybe she was was having so much fun with her friend, that she lost track of time.
Maybe she was working at a job and her boss made her stay late to finish some things up.
Maybe she had to take a bus to get to the train station, and that bus was late.
What other ideas do you or your students have about this clip? Leave a comment below.