Many of your children will have speech targets for specific sounds that they find tricky to say. Your child’s target(s) and therapy will very much depend on their age.
Please refer to the targets that you were sent from the Speech and Language Service for more information.
Speech sounds develop gradually over time. Some sounds don’t fully mature for many years. If you want to support your child with their speech and language development then please only focus on the sounds identified by the Speech Therapist.
Sound Awareness.
For younger children (i.e. those in Nursery and at the start of Reception), therapy may involve ‘modelling’ the correct sound back to your child. This means that if they say a sound incorrectly then you just repeat the word back to them with the correct sound. At this stage you don’t need to ask your child to repeat the word again. The aim is to get them used to hearing the correct sound in the word.
There are other types of sound awareness activities that you can do with your child depending on their targets. The following website has a list of games and activities that you can play with your child.
Simply scroll down and select the Phonological awareness tab.
Sound Discrimination.
Some of your children will have targets that involve ‘sound discrimination’. This is where a child needs help to be able to hear the difference between two sounds (or possibly more). Quite often the targets will tell you which sounds your child needs to discriminate between, for example /t/ and /d/ or /k/ and /g/.
Worcestershire Speech and Language Therapy have published three videos on their YouTube channel to demonstrate sound discrimination activities:
Sounds in isolation:
Sounds at the beginning of CV words:
Sounds at the start of words:
Activities for auditory discrimination can be found on this website:
https://speechandlanguage.info/parents/activities/parent-portal-speech-activities
Sound Articulation.
Some children may find it difficult to say (or articulate) certain sounds. Sometimes children can articulate a sound on its own but they might not be able to say it in a word.
The following video demonstrates how to make the different consonant speech sounds.
Cued articulation is a visual way of helping children understand how to make a sound. The following videos help to explain how cued articulation works and they also show the different gestures for each sound.
Stages of Speech Therapy.
It’s important to follow certain stages when teaching a child how to say a sound. You shouldn’t move on to the next stage until the child is ready.
To begin with, a child needs to be able to say the sound on its own or in ‘isolation’. Once the child is secure with this then they can move on to pairing the sound with a vowel sound (a, e, i, o and u). The vowel sound can go before or after the target sound – it all depends on what targets the Speech Therapist has set. Children might need to insert a gap between the vowel sound and the target sound (e.g. s – a or a -s ) before they’re able to fluently blend the two sounds together (‘sa’ or ‘as’). The video below explains this in further detail and offers ideas and suggestions of different games that you can play to support this process.
Once the child is able to pair their target sound with a vowel, we then move on to saying the sound at word level. Again, the target sound may be at the start, end or middle of the words (please refer to the Speech and Language targets that you were sent for more information about the word position of your child’s target sound). These positions are sometimes called initial, final and medial. Some children find it difficult to say their sound in any position, whereas others can say the sound in one position but not others. It’s important to start off with simple words (or pictures) which are easier for young children to say.
When a child is able to say their sound at word level, you can then move on to saying the words in a short phrase and then a longer sentence. This process becomes progressively harder for the child. It’s important to reassure them that they’re doing well and give them lots of praise for trying.
Don’t worry if your child only says their target sound during practise sessions. This is completely normal. One of the final stages of speech therapy is for a child to use their target sound in their everyday talking. This is sometimes called ‘generalisation.’ The Leeds Community Health Care website have uploaded a pdf full of suggestions to help your child generalise their target sound:
Click on the ‘Speech’ drop down menu in the Toolkit Section then select ‘ Generalistion of Speech Sounds’.
The following website has lots of resources that can help your child practise these sounds as well as advice and information to help you:
https://mommyspeechtherapy.com/
If you look on the ‘Free Download’ section you will find worksheets for each sound moving from word level through to story level.
Each worksheet contains pictures that can be cut up and used as part of a game. Alternatively, you could ask your child to tell you one of their ‘special’ words or, if they’re ready, ask them to put one of the words in a short phrase or sentence.
It’s important to practise the target sound for a few minutes each day. If your child has more than one target sound then just focus on one. This would normally be the sound that they find the easiest to say.
Please don’t correct your child every time they make a mistake in their everyday talking – the aim is to build up their confidence, not to make them self conscious about their speech. If you can incorporate the sounds into a game and make it fun then even better! Give your child lots of praise when they try to say their target sound.
For some children, correcting certain habits of speech can be a lengthy process so don’t worry if your child remains on one stage of speech therapy for a long time.
If you have any questions about your child’s speech and language then please don’t hesitate to contact their class teacher.
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