speech and language teaching concepts for Don't Wake the Dragon in speech therapy​
Frequent Speech Sounds:

/sh/ initial
/g/ medial
/dr/ initial

Themes:

dragons

Book Details:
Diverse Characters: N/A
Age Recommendation: Early Childhood, Elementary

Don’t Wake the Dragon

By Bianca Schulze

Don’t Wake the Dragon is a fantastic and interactive bedtime story featuring a sound-asleep dragon who under no circumstances is to be woken up! Children are tasked with checking in on the sleeping dragon as the castle cook drops his pots and pans and when the knights throw a loud birthday party. It isn’t until the whole kingdom settles down that the dragon wakes up. What is the kingdom to do? Designed to be read aloud and interacted with, parents will take pleasure in the playful text as much as children will enjoy gently rocking the book from side to side as they sing the dragon a lullaby. When the story finally comes to an end, and the gentle lullaby is repeated, the dragon (and the child!) is encouraged to drift off to sleep.

This fun and interactive dragons-themed book can be used in speech therapy to address sequencing and predicting. It is also great for targeting following directions and understanding text features. Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using Don’t Wake the Dragon in speech therapy below: 

Key Teaching Concepts

Narrative Structure:

complete episode

Narrative Concepts:

vocabulary
point-of-view
text features
following directions
predicting
illustration study
problem solving
sequencing
figurative language
adverbs

Sequencing:

order of what almost woke the dragon (the breeze blowing the door shut, cooks in the kitchen, the knights celebrating)

Vocabulary:

rascally, stroke, gently, entire, breeze, noisy, lullabies, check

Figurative Language:

onomatopoeias

Grammar:

point-of-view
adverbs

Text Features:

large text and ALL CAPS
small text
exclamation points
change in text
”PLEEEEASE” to emphasize the request

Inferencing:

Why do you think we shouldn’t wake the dragon?

Predicting:

Do you think the dragon is still sleeping?
Do you think the knights will be quiet now?
What do you think will happen?
What do you think will happen if we sing her lullabies?

Problem Solving:

They don’t won’t to wake the dragon, BUT there are all sorts of noises and disturbances that threaten to wake her. Readers will join by following the directions given to help reduce the noise and keep the dragon asleep.

Iyou are interested in using Don’t Wake the Dragon and other Dogs, Dinosaurs, and Dragon- themed books in speech therapy, then check out these print-&-go cheat sheets. Perfect for when you don’t need a full book companion.