Guest Post - Literacy Speaks!

Today I am bringing you another guest post from our friend Arielle! Arielle has written for Let's Talk SLP before and has made some fabulous free activities for us. Today she is writing about a program called Literacy Speaks!, and she also includes two free downloads! Thanks, Arielle!

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Hey everyone! My name is Arielle and I have been blessed to have been a guest poster before on Let’s Talk Speech-Language Pathology and was thrilled to be asked to post again! This time instead of my following directions activities I’m excited to talk about a recent professional development I attended that made an impact on how I treat articulation.

Last month I went to an all-day presentation by Keli Richmond, MS, CCC-SLP who co-authored a program called Literacy Speaks! I have a few students that are really struggling in class with their reading due to how severe their articulation is. With the push towards Common Core and the high expectations in the classroom I knew I needed to start adding in more literacy practice with our articulation practice but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it in a structured, evidence-based way.

One of the biggest “a duh” moments for me at the conference was when Keli talked about using letters and words first, before pictures for articulation therapy! She used the example of a student who substitutes /t/ for /k/. She said that the student, no matter how many times they may have heard the correct model, when they see an image of a car they have already associated it with “tar” not “car”. It made sense because there are always those kids that no matter how many times you’ve worked on producing /k/ and working it into words, within the next breath they are right back to “tar” when they look at the picture!

One of the other fantastic things about the approach is that it works phonological awareness tasks in with the treatment! The cards are set up to routinely expose the kids to individual phonemes, segmentation and blending. The hierarchy used is similar, in some regards, to traditional articulation treatment in that it starts with isolation, moves to words, sentences and reading. However, there is another hierarchy within the word level. Keli also stated that she does not use more than 8-10 words for each sound in each position and just uses those cards over and over.

For isolation you start with the individual phoneme by itself. The program cards are just basic letter cards, with lower case on one side and upper case on the other side. So using these two cards she would introduce the sound /k/.

To start, ask the student, “Do you remember what sound K makes?” Do you remember what sound C makes”

You will work on this until they are able to answer your question with at least 80% accuracy. 

“What sound does K make?”

Once they are 80% accurate for the individual phoneme you start using the cards that look something like this:

And you would say, “Where’s a K?” or “Point to the letter K.”

Then you ask, “What sound does it make?”

After they produce the sound in isolation, you say, “Now can you say /ite/?”
(this is the first tier of word level where you would work on the top part of the card)

After they say “ite” say, “Nice job, you said /kite/”

After they are able to produce the word with a pause with 80% accuracy you would move up to the next tier in word level. Start using the bottom line of the card and say,  “Can you put the letters together and say /kite/?”

If they are able to produce it correctly you turn the card over to show them the picture of the kite and say,  “Nice job, you blended and read the word “kite”

Once they are able to say the target sound in a word without a pause with 80% accuracy then you can solely start using the flip side of the cards which has the picture and the word together.  However, it was stated that you should always include the written word with the picture because the picture may change and look different but the word for that object will not. If you’re a visual learner, check out some of her videos here to see her using this approach.

Once they are 80% accurate for saying the target sound in words while looking at the picture then you start working in some sight words starting with phrases and then add in more sight words until they are able to produce a complete grammatically correct sentence with their target sound.

After the students are able to produce their target sounds in sentences there are reproducible books in the program that are very simple, repetitive and each book focuses on whichever target sound you are addressing. Keli also talked about starting each of her sessions reading from a book and if you check out her page here she lists books, activities, food items and more that go with each sound.

Whew, that was a lot of information! She covered all this and a lot more in the seminar but hopefully this gives you an idea of how you too can add literacy to your articulation therapy. If this has peaked your interest check out Keli’s event schedule to see if she is coming anywhere near you; otherwise, she is on Facebook and often posts links for free items on her page here. She, also, has graciously allowed me to share her “At a Glance” document with you. This goes through the progression she uses but is all on one page and might make more sense than my lengthy explanationJ.

On a side note, something else I appreciated with the seminar was all the evidence she cited on the handouts and she had pages of references included! You have to love when the evidence base research is already done for us!

And of course I can’t end a blog post here on Let’s Talk Speech-Language Pathology without a freebie material! So head on over to my TPT store here and pick up the free version of Love Bunnies Articulation for K and G. Valentine’s Day may be over but these love bunnies can be used anytime of the year! This activity incorporates the Literacy Speaks approach with an activity similar to one of Jenna’s from Speech Room News that my students have absolutely loved!

You can also download the Literacy Speaks! Step Progression hand out here!

Enjoy!

Arielle