If you’re looking for new ways to make your speech therapy sessions more interactive and fun, barrier games might be the perfect solution. While they can seem tricky to adapt for teletherapy, with a few creative tweaks, these games can work beautifully in both in-person and virtual sessions.
What Are Barrier Games?
Barrier games are activities that two players engage in with a barrier between them, preventing them from seeing what the other is doing. The objective is for the players to have matching results.
The genius of barrier games lies in its set up. Players are prevented from seeing what the other person is doing, and this simple detail creates the perfect situation to target many speech and language skills. Players must use their language and listening skills to successfully follow and give instructions to win the game. This game format makes learning engaging and motivating for children. Barrier games are adaptable and flexible too for different age groups and skill levels.
Skills You Can Target with Barrier Games
Barrier games are incredibly versatile and can be used to support a wide range of speech and language goals, including:
- Following Directions: Students can follow multi-step or spatial directions (e.g., “Put the red block next to the blue one”).
- Understanding Concepts: Practice positional, qualitative, and descriptive concepts like under, beside, big, small, round, and green.
- Expressive Language & Articulation: Students can practice giving detailed, clear directions while incorporating target vocabulary or articulation words.
- Social-Pragmatic Skills: These games are great for practicing turn-taking, clarification requests, and communication repair in natural contexts.
Examples of Barrier Games to Try
Here are some creative ways to incorporate barrier games into your sessions—whether in-person or online:
Drawing and Coloring: Have students describe their drawings so their partner can copy them. Use identical coloring pages or drawing prompts. Teletherapy tip: Use Google Slides or Zoom’s whiteboard feature and compare results at the end!
Building with Blocks or Legos: Each person uses an identical set of blocks or Legos. One builds a structure while describing it; the other follows the directions to match it. You can also use small toys (like animals or furniture) to create matching scenes.
Guess Who: Screen-share an image of the game board and take turns asking yes/no questions to identify the chosen character. Example: “Does your person have glasses?” or “Is your person wearing a hat?”
Battleship: Players take turns guessing where the other person’s ships are on a grid (e.g., “B2,” “F5”). Teletherapy tip: Create a grid in Google Slides and place image copies of ships for easy play.
Taboo: Use free online versions of Taboo cards. Players describe the target word without using the “taboo” words. To play virtually, stop screen sharing or use a physical barrier so each player can’t see the other’s card.
Author: Christmas Pammit, SLP
