Do you already have a strategy for teaching your speech therapy students the personal pronouns he, she, and they?
During my CFY, I did a language evaluation for a child who was probably 3 or 4. I don’t remember much about that evaluation, but I do remember that this child struggled with using pronouns. The mother of this child (who used she/her pronouns) was worried because her child used the male pronoun “he” when talking about her.
I understand that fear. Pronouns are tiny words that hold so much meaning and identity. However, I am not going to dive into that complex topic today.
Instead, let’s dive into how to strategically teach pronouns to our students who struggle with this skill.
*Disclaimer: I will only talk about teaching pronouns in the traditional sense. This sensitive and complex topic should be taught based on the student’s individual and family needs.
As with all language skills, there are a myriad of foundational skills students must learn before they can use pronouns correctly.
- Understanding (“receptively”) vocabulary “boy/man/male” and “girl/woman/female”
- Understanding (“receptively”) the concept of “more than one”
- Being able to then “expressively” use these terms correctly
- Being provided multiple different practice opportunities to generalize these skills in daily life. Ideally, these practice opportunities should be scaffolded from “easy” to “hard” to help our speech therapy students feel the most successful.
That means we, as SLPs, have many foundational skills we must strategically teach before our students can use personal pronouns correctly.
In my experience, drill and kill don’t work for pronouns. They need to be taught strategically-which is why I created a pronoun teaching guide. Rather than using a drill-based method, I use a scaffolded approach to teach and practice these complex skills!
Here is how I strategically teach pronouns in my speech therapy room!
1.) I start by teaching the sight words he, she, and they. I want my students to be able to recognize them by sight because it allows me to use these words as a visual cue later on in the teaching process. I typically begin formally teaching pronouns to my speech kiddos who are in Kindergarten. So, I have found that this also pairs perfectly with the skills they are developing in the classroom.

2.) Next, I teach “the rules” for pronouns. Since I usually begin by teaching pronouns in their traditional forms, that means I explain she = girl, he = boy, and they = more than one person. I chose this method because this is what applies to the majority of the population. If my students are already struggling with this skill, adding nuances and extra rules could cause them to flounder. Again, use your best judgement for your students. If your student would benefit from learning nontraditional “rules” for pronouns, by all means, teach it!
3.) After that, we begin to practice using pronouns. I start with tasks that I consider to be “easier”. For example, they are heavily based in comprehension of the skill rather than using the skill.
Here is how I scaffold my lessons:
- Identifying sight words
- “He” and “she” sorting (pictures only)
- “He” and “she” sorting (written names only)
- “He,” “she,” and “they” sorting (pictures only)
- “He,” “she,” and “they” sorting (written names, no pictures)
- Changing nouns to pronouns
- Building Scavenger hunt (making sentences about people in real life)
- Pronoun Reading Passage (students identify pronouns in a short story)
What about speech therapy homework for pronouns??
I am so glad you asked! I have a strategy for providing homework as well!
In my teaching strategy for personal pronouns, I have made a “teaching” page and a corresponding “homework” page. We do the teaching page together in speech. The homework page mirrors the teaching page so students can confidently practice the skills we learned at home. Easy peasy!
If you don’t already have a strategy for teaching personal pronouns in speech therapy, you no longer have to struggle. This teaching guide does all the hard work for you!