Task Oriented Movement Activities support executive function. Activities that meet the criteria for TOM activities have:
Seeing how to implement these activities is helpful, so this episode can be viewed on Youtube, in addition to listening on your regular podcast platform.
Check out the freebies in the Free Resource Library—one for planning task orientated movement activities and one for reflecting and recording. They are located in the Form and Lists section.
— Useful Links —
Complex Articulation Targets: Interview with Kelly Vess
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Welcome to the Speech Umbrella, the show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I’m Denise Stratton, a pediatric speech language pathologist of 30 plus years. I’m closer to the end of my career than the beginning, and along the way, I’ve worked long and hard to become a better therapist. Join me as we explore the many topics that fall under our umbrellas as SLPs. I want to make your journey smoother. I found the best therapy comes from employing simple techniques with a generous helping of mindfulness.
Welcome to another episode of the Speech Umbrella podcast. This podcast recently passed the 7,500 downloads milestone, so thank you, thank you for helping this podcast grow. The more we know, the better clinicians we’ve become. The most popular podcast of all time is Episode 45, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? It just edged out number 19, Peaceful Speech, which has been the most downloaded episode for many months. But not far behind those two in popularity is my interview with Kelly Vess about complex articulation targets. That’s episode 40. Kelly also has a podcast called The Preschool SLP, and I was so interested in an episode she did recently about task-oriented movement that it inspired this podcast.
I’m going to be demonstrating a lot of movement-based activities, so today’s podcast is also on video. This is episode number 76 called Three Task-Oriented Movement Activities for Executive Function. You can watch this episode on thespeechumbrella.com/blog/ 76, or on my YouTube channel, which is also The Speech Umbrella. Of course, you can also listen to it on your usual podcast platforms. I will describe what I’m doing as well as showing.
Now, here’s a question for you. Who doesn’t wish their kiddos had better executive function? A well-regulated attentive child can be very rare in our field. Some clients with a few artic errors fit that description, but they are the exception. So the question is, what can we do to promote executive function along with therapy? That’s what I’m going to answer today.
You don’t have to set therapy aside to work on executive function. It’s all part and parcel of what we do, and it can be fully integrated with communication goals. I’m summarizing some of Kelly Vess’s podcast here, which is number 32, How Task-oriented Movement Activities Improve Executive Function. So if you want to know more about it, I recommend going to her podcast and listening to it.
Her podcast, by the way, is the preschool SLP. I learned a whole lot. Here’s what we’re covering today, what is task-oriented movement? Why does task-oriented movement improve core executive function? We’re gonna talk about three core executive functions and their relation to task-oriented movement.
These three core functions are inhibitory, also known as self-control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. And after that introduction to task-oriented movement, I’m going to demonstrate three activities that fit the bill for task-oriented movement. They’re child-centered and motivating, and my clients absolutely love these activities.
Okay, so what is task-oriented movement? task-oriented movement is purposeful, goal-oriented movement, and we know getting kids moving is so important, but the child who’s orbiting the room isn’t learning much. Sure he’s moving, but it’s not purposeful. Or the child who is seeking sensation may be happy to jump off a chair over and over and over again, but she isn’t taking multiple steps toward that goal, so there’s very little complexity in her goal, and so little chance for growth. When you think of task-oriented movement, think purposeful and goal-oriented. Next point, task-oriented movement has been shown to be highly effective at improving executive function, but why? Well, it works on three core executive functions, inhibitory control or self-control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility.
Let’s unpack that, starting with self-control. It means controlling your attention, your emotion, and your thoughts. When you have a strong purpose, you can ignore the distractions that are all around you and keep moving towards your goal. Multiple steps beyond simple cause and effect improve attention, and as clients are able, you can add steps to increase complexity to your activities.
Now, how does task-oriented movement improve working memory? Working memory is what you remember and use to solve a problem or move towards a goal. So in task-oriented movement, you have a problem to solve and you need to keep that problem in your mind until it’s solved. So you’re using your memory. You also have an ordered plan you follow.
These are steps you take to solve the problem, and you’ve gotta remember those steps. And so that uses your working memory. Finally, there’s reflect and record. Check it off when you’re finished. We all know how good that feels. In fact, as soon as I finish recording this podcast, I get to move a card in my to-do app that takes this project to editing. I love doing that and it helps me remember what I’ve done. Last but not least, of these core executive functions is cognitive flexibility. This means responding differently to new information. It means you can accomplish different meaningful tasks and you can change it up and make it more complex. This is going to develop after self-control and working memory, so be mindful about where a client is as you introduce changes.
Now, even if your client is not ready for that level of cognitive flexibility, I like to introduce small changes in therapy to avoid getting stuck in a rut with my clients, and the changes can be very simple at first, like being in a different part of the room or using a different ball if you’re playing ball, moving from a chair activity to a floor activity or placing a toy similar to one they love in their vicinity.
And these are really important steps when a client is very inflexible. Now that we’ve covered self-control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, it’s time for show and tell. Every one of these three activities meets the requirements for task oriented movement, as I understand it. So that is purposeful movement, a problem to solve, a plan with multiple steps, a way to reflect and record, and ways to introduce variations. And although not a part of task oriented movement, I also introduce turn taking when I’m doing these. I always take turns with the child and that helps them with self-control and attention because they need to wait for their turn and attend while I’m taking my turn.
The first activity is hopscotch, and what you need is a hopscotch rug, a bean bag, a basketball and a basketball hoop, and possibly pictures of articulation words. So what you do is you set the basketball hoop at the end of the hopscotch rug, and if you’re using articulation cards like these I have here, you’re gonna place them on the numbers on the rug.
You take turns throwing the beanbag, hopping to where the beanbag landed, saying the target word if you’re using them and then shooting the ball. And if we’re using target articulation cards, we also pick those cards up as we say them, so we’re clearing the rug as we go. Now let’s break this down to see how it meets the five requirements. Purposeful movement is your moving purposefully towards the basket. The problem is we’ve got to get closer to the basket so we can shoot the ball in the hoop. Now, if their beanbag lands on number one, I mean, we still practice the word and then let them move close enough to the basket to make it. Um, multiple steps, we’ve got throwing, we’ve got hopping, we’ve got the word practice, we’ve got picking up cards if we’re using them and shooting the ball. Reflecting and recording. Review the articulation card to the end. One way you could do this is to feed them into a box with a mouth and you can talk about what you did. You can review it. Ooh, the owl said ‘poome’, or we said ‘weeme’, or we said I. And so that’s a fun way to review them. Or you could also match them if you have two sets of each card and match one card to the other card. Sometimes I do this activity with clients who are just learning to use their voice to control phonation, and in that case, I might just use the words hop or ahh for on or bah for ball. And I keep it really simple. I don’t use artic cards then, but we do review the words at the end. We’ll act out hopping and say, oh, we hopped. We’ll point to the ball and say, bah, we’ll sign on. And we do that for review. For recording. all you need is a laminated checklist, and this is all purpose, it’s got Velcro here, so whatever activity you did, you can stick on the Velcro and you just check off, yeah, we played basketball.
Now ways to introduce variations are, you can change the articulation cards, you can use dice instead of a beanbag. You can throw the ball through a hula hoop and then to the basketball. You can create an obstacle course where you crawl through things and you can do all that in lieu of the hopscotch rug.
There’s lots of ways to move this activity up and down the complexity skill. One way I’d like to scale it down is by using carpet markers for them to hop on as they hop towards the basket. So if they need something really simple and the hopscotch rug is just too much for them, you can scale it down to just hopping on, um, carpet markers as they move towards the basket. But that can still meet their requirements for a task-oriented movement activity. The next much beloved activity is hopping frogs. You need a tub with water in it, toy frogs, a towel, and be prepared to sing five little speckled frogs and sign some of the main words. My preschoolers love this activity. They’re playing with water, so what’s not to love? I really like to use hopping frogs to work on the word hop, but you’ll see it has a lot of other speech and language possibilities. This is how it goes. I say, the frogs are so hot, they want to go swimming. Let’s help them hop to the water. I set three to five frogs out and we sing the song and I model signing the number and frog, and sit, eat, bug, yum, jump or hop, and swim. Then each time they say the target word, I hop a frog closer to them until they get to put it in the water. And I do substitute the word hop for jumped when we’re working on that word. And we also count the frogs after each one goes in. So we’ve got one frog in, and then I’m gonna count again. 1, 2, 3, 4, four little speckled frogs. And it helps us keep track of where we are in the song.
So how does this meet the criteria for task-oriented movement? It’s got purposeful movement, the frogs are moving towards and eventually into the water. And if they’re able, the clients could maybe hop the frogs themselves as they say their word, but some clients don’t have the self-control for that. So I’m usually hopping for them until I hand the frog off to them. Signing the words is another purposeful movement, and each repetition of the song brings us closer to another frog going swimming. It’s got multiple steps. They choose which frog we want. We sing and we sign the song. They say the target word three to five times. The frog hops towards the water. It goes in the water. It has a problem. The frogs are hot. It has a plan. And we count the frogs. We sing the song, we say the target words. They put their frog in, they count the frogs again, and we find out how many are left and we repeat it. Reflect and record.
There’s a mini reflect at the end of every verse as we recount the frogs. Now we have three left, and at the very end you can use the checklist again. And here I’ve written the numbers cuz we put five frogs in. So we check off, we count the frogs as we take ’em out of the water. We did one, we did two. Oh we did three frogs, now four, now five. So we’ve recorded that we sent five frogs swimming.
One way I vary this, is I use a large tub and a styrofoam tray for a boat. So the large tub is filled with water, got a styrofoam tray, and we use all sorts of animals and different words to move animals to the boat, action words or animal sounds, whatever they need to work on. And we can change the song up, sometimes we’ll change it to Old McDonald and get lots of nice vowel work with the E I E I O. And we also talk about which animals go on the boat and which ones swim in the water. So that’s one way to vary the hopping frogs activity.
The next activity is going shopping. It’s a great multi-layered activity. This one has a lot of moving pieces, and it’s more cognitively challenging than hopscotch or hopping frogs. They are pretending to do something that mom and dad do, and that requires what we call episodic memory. So it helps to be aware of where your clients are in symbolic play when you plan these activities. This activity does require some ability with symbolic play. If they’re ready for it, it’s a great fun. I especially love the planning part of the shopping activity. Need a clipboard with Velcro, pictures of food with Velcro like this, and play food and something to put your food in as you select it. Now I like to spread the food around the room, so we’ve got the vegetables in one spot and the fruit in another spot, and the bread and other things, in yet another spot.
I might set this up beforehand, or I might have the child help me sort the food into different locations, just depending on where they’re at. Then we make a shopping list using the clipboard and food pictures, and we go shopping. So let’s run this through the task-oriented movement checklist. It’s got multiple steps. We’ve got to make a list. It’s got going shopping. So we pick up our basket, we move around the room, and we find the things that are on our list. And the problem is, we need food for dinner. We’re hungry. The plan is, well, the plan is your shopping list as is looking in the right location for what’s on your list.
Now, reflect and record. You are recording as you go along, just as you do when you go shopping. We got the kiwi. Let’s put it in the basket, check. We got the kiwi. But when you get back to the table and you’ve done all your shopping, what you can do for even more reflecting and recording is as you unload your basket or whatever, you can go down and look, yeah, we got this. Yes, we got this. Yes, we got this. Did we forget anything? Variations. Sometimes we make soup after we get the food, or sometimes we buy it with the play cash register, and that’s got several steps just in that activity after we select the food. Or we can take the food on a picnic with stuffed animals. See my picnic fun video for how to do that.
You might be thinking, these are all great, but what do I do with a child who is barely engaging in cause and effect, who can’t do something that’s organized? Believe me, I’ve had clients who didn’t have the attention to engage in any of these activities when they started therapy. In these cases, I double down on getting intentional communication and joint interaction. I start building symbolic play skills and whatever simple cause and effect activity they can engage in, I try to extend. For example, if they will roll a ball back and forth, will they get the ball from under a blanket in order to roll it back and forth? If they love chasing bubbles, can you extend it so that when the bubbles are gone, they will indicate that you need to put the wand back in the container.
I think task-oriented movement is a really helpful framework with these clients because it gives us a direction to go with them. I’ve created a task-oriented movement activity planning checklist. That’s a mouthful. So as you’re planning activities, you can do a quick check to see if it meets all the criteria.
It may be that some of your favorite activities only need a few tweaks. And bingo, you’ve got yourself a task-oriented movement activity. I also have the all-purpose checklist for reflecting and recording. You can get both of these checklists on my free resource library. Go to thespeechumbrella.com/free to sign up for the library.
Today’s takeaway is all about the power of executive function because when you start making inroads with executive function, some speech and language issues really began to take care of themselves. Thanks for listening and watching today and see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Speech Umbrella. We invite you to sign up for the free resource library at thespeechumbrella.com. You’ll get access to some of Denise’s best tracking tools, mindfulness activities, and other great resources to take your therapy to the next level. All this is for free at thespeechumbrella.com. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories.
I am a therapist and entrepreneur, clinic owner, published author, and creator of speech therapy materials.
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