Articulation Therapy Tools

Time for me to share some of my favorite self-created articulation therapy tools!  I have many tools that I have created over the years and will be sharing more soon, but here are some starters.  These two visuals are permanent fixtures in the speech therapy room!

First, I want to share the Speech Target.  Here it is.

In my recent Pinterest and Blog browsing, I have seen similar "rubric" styles for articulation therapy, and I think it's a great idea.  The idea of using a rubric in articulation therapy came to me a couple of years ago after attending a training that focused on language therapy.  I found that I needed a way to give some positive feedback to my students in articulation therapy that were really "stuck" at becoming stimulable for their target sounds.  (The most trouble, as always, has been that R sound!)  I knew that my students were working their tails off with their oral motor exercises, traditional drill practice in therapy, and consistenly completing homework activities.  I could "hear" changes in their speech even if their targets were not completely accurate, so, the Speech Target was born.  Of course, the first one was scribbled on a piece of paper (as many great ideas begin).  But it didn't take long for my students to understand the purpose of the target and to feel their improvements.  Eventually, they were able to accurately discriminate their own speech on the target with little guidance from me.  Sound production was no longer "right" or "wrong" in speech, instead they were getting "closer to the bull's eye"! Now, the Speech Target permanently hangs on my white board and I refer to it frequently in therapy.  Occasionally, I even have the students rate each other on the target to maintain attention of all group members and give them some friendly feedback from their peers. 

Here is the other Articulation Rating Scale I found on Pinterest thanks to the folks at Peadia Staff.  This one was created by speech/language pathologist, Dala, and can be seen on her blog here: Testy Yet Trying.

The other tool that I refer to often in my speech room is the "Good Speech Posture" poster:

Most of my students in articulation therapy focus on some level of oral motor exercises at the beginning and throughout each speech session.  As many SLPs know, lots of our kids with articulation disorders have trouble with isolating their "speech helpers" from each other.  For example, many kids working on tongue tip elevation may be able to achieve this only when they raise or tilt their entire head.  Many times the entire head or body will move in the direciton of the tongue and the same goes for the jaw.  So, I have worked really hard to teach my kids the importance of good posture and moving their speech helpers independently from the rest of their body.  While this is the target for many of my students, there are some students who need the added body movements in order to achieve their phoneme production, but this is a nice tool to have around, especially for my wiggly speech students! 

I hope you can find these tools useful in your speech room!

     ~Orlanda