Rehabilitation
At Home Rehabilitation Exercises
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30- Organizational Activities
(For more extensive exercises in this area, consult the Workbook for Aphasia®, which can be found at The Speech Bin at 1-800-4-SPEECH.)
Problem solving requires that a person be able to organize their thoughts as well as the information that they have available in any given situation to work their way through it. The following activities can help someone having difficulty solving problems, practice organizing gradually more complex groups of information.
LEVEL 1 - Ask the student to tell you the alphabet, the days of the week, the months of the year. Write down 3 or 4 examples from these groups (3 or 4 numerals, or 3 or 4 days of the week, or 3 or 4 months of the year). Write them in the incorrect order, for example:
- 5, 3, 8
- Monday, Saturday, Thursday
- June, January, February
Ask the student to either tell you or write down the correct order of these.
LEVEL 2 - Write down 10 to 15 simple sentences, (3 to 4 words, subject+verb+object). Re-write the sentences on another sheet of paper so that the words in each sentence are scrambled, for example:
- The cat is hungry.
- Is hungry cat the.
Ask the student to re-order the sentences into the correct manner. Do not show the student the original, correctly written sentences unless you have already tried to give them other cues.
Clues for this kind of activity may sound like:
- “What is this sentence about?”, ‘A cat.’
- “What about the cat?”, ‘He’s hungry.’
- “Ok, now, say the full sentence.”
LEVEL 3 - Increase the length and complexity of the scrambled sentences that you give to the student, for example:
- find can’t my sweater I. (I can’t find my sweater.) *
- end street a this is dead. (This is a dead-end street.)
- Iknow she don’t I where went. (I don’t know where she went.)
*Tip: To give a clue you may capitalize the word that is supposed to start the sentence. ( ‘end street a This is dead.)
LEVEL 4 - Use items that are readily available in the student’s home such as music tapes or CD’s, books on a shelf, magazines, clothing, pantry items and/or linens. Limit the number of items to 10 to 12 at this time and the activity to perhaps 20 minutes at a time. Have the student organize these items in a variety of ways. Perhaps one way the first time and another way the next time you do this exercise and so on. Suggestions for organizational methods could begin with: Alphabetically, increasing the complexity by ranking by style or size, grouped by color, or by frequency of use.
LEVEL 5 - Ask the student to organize something in the home, such as a workbench, the kitchen cabinets, the pantry, the family library, a toy closet, or a linen closet. Organizing things in this fashion provides a sense of purpose as well as cognitive stimulation.
LEVEL 6 - Try arranging some volunteer time for the student at a local library or charity headquarters. Suggest that the student be involved in activities such as filing, organizing data on a computer, or organizing as mailing addresses.
Taken from Tasks for Home-Based Cognitive Stimulation Program, the Traumatic Brain Injury Model System at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dept. of P M & R, Birmingham, AL. © 1998-2003 University of Alabama at Birmingham