About this activity
Sixteen questions built from the reading adults actually have to do: a label reading take one tablet every 6 hours, do not exceed 4 tablets in 24 hours — what is the daily maximum; refrigerate after opening, use within 7 days — you opened it on the 3rd, by what date; a bus leaves at ten and forty past every hour, you reach the stop at 4:15. None of it is a passage with comprehension questions. All of it is text that costs money or safety when it is misread.
How to use it in a session
Bring real examples alongside these. A student's own prescription label, a real bus timetable, an actual rental listing — the board establishes the skill and the real document proves it transferred. The keep out of reach of children item is worth dwelling on, because safety wording is written in a register students often skim. Twenty minutes covers the set with discussion of the ones that go wrong.
What to listen for
Watch what the student does with a number. The dosing question requires holding two constraints at once — every six hours and no more than four — and students frequently answer from the first one alone. Notice whether they re-read: functional text is dense and rewards a second pass, and a student who answers immediately from a first skim is showing you the habit that will cost them.
Carrying it home
Hand the reading over. Let the student read the appointment card, work out when the bus goes, or check the use-by date. Families do these things quickly and correctly on the student's behalf, which is efficient and is exactly the practice that never happens.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Ninth through twelfth, aimed at transition and independent living goals rather than at reading comprehension in the academic sense.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all sixteen items play with no account and no card.
- Why is this a speech-language target?
- Because it is language comprehension applied to text, and the consequences of failure are concrete. For a transition-age student, functional literacy is often the highest-value language goal available.