Therapy Activity

Agent vs receivers

Last Updated: 15 August 2023

Appropriate Population: 

  • School-age 8-10 years old
  • Verbal
  • Able to attend tabletop/structured activities. 

 

Goal: 

  • Understand and use the passive voice appropriately. 

 

Steps:

  1. Use the child’s interests to gather pictures of agents vs receivers. Pictures could be anything that motivates the child. for example a character, a lunchbox, an animal. The only criteria is that you want only one thing in each picture.
  2. Print these pictures out and cut them up. Or have them digitally on a screen so that you can manipulate the order they are in.
  3. Practice making different active sentences with the pictures. Put two next to each other. Aim for multiple different sentences for each set of two pictures.  E.g “the boy took the ball” “the boy threw the ball” “the boy hit the ball” Have the child make up their own.  If they struggle to come up with a verb you can give them one to use in a sentence.
  4. Once they are comfortable making active sentences, flip the order of the cards. Give the child examples of passive sentences. (flipping around the active sentences you had previously done). E.g “ the boy was hit by the ball” ”the ball was taken by the ball”” the ball was thrown by the boy” Give the child the active sentence and see if they can flip it (vith the visual support to make a passive sentence).

 

Step up: 

  • Set up pictures and have the child create multiple passive sentences in a row.
  • Give the child an active sentence and see if they can repeat back the passive version to you without visual support. 

 

Step down:

  • Repeat steps three and four. 
  • In case the child is having difficulty structuring the three elements (sender, receiver, action). You might consider using additional pictures to represent the verb. These pictures would stay fixed and the other pictures can move around them. Find supplied pdf (some of these examples will not work with all of your pictures).

 

Resources:

  • Set of pictures to represent agent and receiver. ( find online yourself)
  • Set of pictures to represent action (optional). See attached pdf. 

 

Nicole
Fora's Speech Pathology team

Nicole

Fora's Speech Pathology team

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