Patterned activities can be used as a vehicle to teach the expression of object labels.

To target expression, the roles in the patterned activity could be switched.  That is, after many sessions wherein the child is assuming the role of puter, in the middle of the activity, the adult could take the child’s hands and guide the child to switch seats.  In the new seat, the child would now be in the role of giver and talker.  That is, the child would be expected to hand the item to the adult and to label it as the adult takes it.  If the child does not label it automatically, the adult could hold onto his hand and even offer the first sound of the word.  If the child has difficulty assuming the responsibility of talking, the roles could be switched back.  If the child does well, then after one or two more sessions, the child could be placed in the talking role first.  This process could be used across multiple words.  With successful labeling of the objects when done individually, two objects could be combined within the giver/puter activity so that the child would have to switch between the two labels.  Overtime, the bin for the giver/puter activity could have a mixture of multiple objects so that the child would have the responsibility to switch among objects when in the speaking role.