Have you ever picked up the book Diary of a Worm and been a little overwhelmed at trying to determine which speech and language therapy goals to target in your mixed group sessions? And not only that, but doing it quickly because you don’t have much planning time as a busy school-based SLP!
You’ve come to the right place! I have chosen 5 speech and language goals that you can specifically target using this book. Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin is one of my favorite bug-themed books to use in my speech therapy sessions, especially with my older elementary students.
This hilarious book found in Doreen Cronin’s “Diary of a…” series is perfect for preschool through 3rd grade students. It’s a diary written from a worm’s perspective, including his interactions with other bugs and humans. It is probably my favorite in the “Diary of a…” series.
I love using this book to target several different speech goals. Here are my top 5 favorite speech and language targets for the book Diary of a Worm:
- Temporal Concepts and Dates
- Past Tense Verbs
- Point of View
- R Phoneme
- Pronouns
Target 1: Temporal Concepts and Dates
Since this book is in a diary format, each entry starts off with the date it was written. There are also other temporal concepts like “last night,” “today,” and “morning,” are found throughout the story.
Target 2: Past Tense Verbs
This children’s book is written after the events have happened. So the entire story is written in the past tense. The great part about the book, is there are tons of regular AND irregular past tense verbs, making it easy to target either of them during your speech and language therapy sessions. Some of the verbs I would specifically target during a literacy speech session would be the following: ate, dug, got, made, said, and told.
Target 3: Point of View
Because the story is written from the worm’s point of view, it makes it easy to discuss theory of mind and the point of view of others. It’s great for all of those students who need support with this area of their social skills. Try to put yourself in the worm’s shoes by spending some time pretending to be the worm.
Target 4: R Phoneme
This book is LOADED with the R sound in all positions of words including medial R, final R, and initial R blends, making it a great book for your 3rd-6th grade students! Have them practice saying their good R sound as you find the words throughout the story. Some of the specific words I would target during my articulation therapy practice would be the following:
- Medial: April, March, morning, tomorrow, very, worm
- Final: are, never, spider, teacher, we’re, your
- Initial R blends: ground, three
Target 5: Pronouns
Diary of a Worm is written in the first person which means there are lots of examples of the “I,” “you,” “me,” and “my” pronouns. Worm mentions some of his friends throughout the story, so there are also “he” and “his” pronouns as well.
Now for the FREEBIE!
Books are such incredible tools for speech and language therapy sessions, but sometimes it can be difficult to choose the targets to use in therapy!
👉🏻To get you started, I created a list of 10 of the best bug and insect-themed books for literacy based speech therapy that includes a total of 50 speech and language targets. AND, it’s FREE. Check it out below!
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