Looking after the Dog

Interactive Whiteboards in classrooms are a popular tool nowadays, and many of the resources available to support their use are wonderful for students with speech and language issues.  Looking after the Dog is a nice interactive featured on a whiteboard resource site from the UK--I think I will be revisiting the site to explore further.  The activity can be a little repetitive (and alarming--this dog frequently needs to go to the vet to get a big shot!) but I have tried it with kids and they loved it.

Language Lens:

• The activity is a perfect context for sentence construction with when and because- We know the dog is thirsty because he is drooling!
• This would lend itself to open-ended questions before the activity to elicit language (What do we know about dogs?  How do we take care of dogs?) and some dramatic play with a stuffed animal dog after the activity.
• Social thinking instruction on the theme of "guessing someone's plan" would go well with this activity- we need to read the dog's body language to respond appropriately.