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5 Tips for Articulation Carryover in the Classroom

written by Kylie Grace Davis August 3, 2017

As school based speech-language pathologists, our end goal for articulation treatment focuses on helping students use clear speech in the general education classroom. Ultimately, this carryover of skills during classroom activities affects our students’ academic success.

As the start of the school year draws near—or has already arrived of some of us—I offer five tips on articulation carryover that I always share with teachers and other faculty. These easy approaches will help teachers—and also families—support generalization of articulation skills:

1. Model clear articulation: The more the student hears a sound correctly, the more likely they’ll say it correctly. Look for opportunities to model target sounds, especially during small group activities. When modeling for a student, say the sound clearly and naturally.
2. Focus on speech sounds: Emphasize the sound a letter makes rather than the letter itself. For example, remind a student to say the “shh” sound, rather the “s” “h” sound.
3. Give specific feedback: Give students’ specific feedback for saying sounds correctly. For example, “Wow! I heard TWO sounds when you said the word “spot!” I heard “ssssss” and “puh”! Avoid criticizing a student for saying a sound incorrectly in front of other students. Speaking with confidence is important and providing too much negative feedback—especially in a large group—can make them overly self-conscious.
4. Ask for repetition: Asking a student to repeat teaches them that speaking clearly is important without putting them on the spot to say a specific sound correctly. For example: “I didn’t understand, can you say that again?” “What you have to say is important, can you repeat that?” If you still can’t understand the student, encourage them to use a communication strategy like saying the word in a sentence to give context or writing it down. Honor the communication even if articulation is incorrect.
5. Highlight target sounds: Underline or highlight the target sound in advance for read aloud or homework activities to reinforce the student’s awareness of the sound in context. This is also a great carryover activity for older students to complete independently.

Everyone at some point needs to work on clear articulation and speaking. It takes practice for children and adults to use precise language in academic and professional settings.

Kylie Grace Davis, MS, CCC-SLP, is a school based SLP in southwestern Colorado. Her previous clinical experience includes skilled rehabilitation services, mobile modified barium swallow studies and tracheostomy management in long-term acute care hospitals in Denver. kylie.davis@mcsd.org

Tricks to Help Speech Lessons Carryover into Daily Life

Pam Marshalla listed some functional ways to promote carryover in children and adolescents, including use of:

• Fill-in sentences or fill-in stories to stimulate spontaneity.
• Idioms to stimulate spontaneity.
• Negative practice to help break the incorrect speech habit.
• Nonsense syllables and words to strengthen the carryover process.
• Over practice to cause a hyper-awareness of the goals of therapy.
• Rapid-fire questions and answers to promote naturalness.
• Reading aloud as a step between word productions and conversational speech.
• Rhyming to capture a client’s attention and encourage practice outside of therapy.
• Riddles because they cause a client to combine practice material with creative thinking.
• Shortening productions to encourage naturalness.
• Singing to help children remember their speech work and to encourages effortless practice.
• Spelling out errors to help the client think about what she is saying and how she is saying it.
• Story-telling and re-telling to cause stimulate spontaneity and to cause a breakthrough in carryover.
• Tongue twisters to teach children how to control their articulation.

More on promoting carryover in speech-language treatment can be found on Pam Marshalla’s website.

Many of these techniques are useful for adults as well as children. Here are some additional carryover ideas for adults:

• Create a script to practice at a favorite restaurant.
• Use the carryover phrases and substitute other items at a counter deli or a department store.
• Make a to-do list (or grocery list) each day. Practice writing and reading.
• Talk about the programs you will watch.
• Use carryover phrases for conversation, such as, “Hi. How are______?” “What is____?” “I’m _____.” “Who is____?”
• Use a calendar and an 8 by 10 dry-erase board to practice drawing,writing and gesturing.
• Use your smart pad, apps, whiteboard, AAC, text-to-speech, and speech-to-text to send emails and do alphabet board, speech tutor and naming practice.
• Play your favorite brain games daily. They will help you with focus, learning, word-finding and memory.

If you encourage your clients to engage in games and functional activities daily, the overall quality of your clients’ understanding and speech production will improve because you are encouraging the growth of new neural connections. Your clients are naturally acquiring and using the new skills in their daily lives because they are using them. Becoming more functional can be the most motivating effect of carryover.

Betsy C. Schreiber, MMS, CCC-SLP, is a clinical supervisor at Ladge Speech and Hearing Clinic at LIU/Post on Long Island, and a partner at Hope 4 Speech Associates, P.C. She is an affiliate of ASHA Special Interest Groups 2, Neurophysiology and Neurogenic Speech and Language Disorders, and 18, Telepractice.