Articulation is probably the area that most people think of when they think of "speech therapy". Articulation services are needed when a student has a hard time producing sounds, which makes it hard for teachers or peers to understand them. An articulation disorder focuses on the errors of individual sounds. It's only an articulation  disorder when the sounds that are mispronounced are no longer age-appropriate. Sounds my be replaced with another sound, distorted, or omitted. Articulation therapy focuses on working on the difficult to produce sounds and building on the complexity of those sounds (e.g., sounds in isolation--> sounds in syllables --> sounds in words --> sounds in phrases --> sounds in sentences). Here are some common articulation errors:

• Saying "white" for light

• Saying "tar" for car

• Saying "cool" for school

A phonological disorder focuses on predictable and rule-based errors.  Phonological development refers to the sound patterns we make as we learn new types of sounds. Certain phonological patterns can considered age-appropriate depending on a child's age. Phonological therapy focuses on determining if the student can first acknowledge the difference between the sound/pattern errors produced vs. the true target sounds/patterns.  Here are some of the common phonological patterns we work on:

• Gliding: Producing /w/ for all /r/ and/or /l/ sounds (e.g., "wing" for ring)

• Final Consonant Deletion: Leaving off final sounds in words (e.g., "pi" for pig)

• Fronting: Replacing back sounds (e.g., /k, g/) with front sounds (e.g., /t, d/) (e.g., "tite" for kite, "doe" for go)

• Cluster Reduction: Leaving out a consonant sound from a consonant cluster (e.g., "cool" for school, "bock" for block)

• Stopping: Shortening or "stopping" sounds that should be held out longer (e.g., "clat" for class, "pan" for fan)

Language disorders often refer to a student's ability to communicate their wants and needs to their communication partners (expressive language) and/or their ability to understand other people's wants and needs from them (receptive language). Pragmatic language refers to the social language skills that we use in  our daily interaction with others. Language therapy may incorporate or target use of various forms of communication (e.g., verbal communication, nonverbal communication, with an AAC device). Here are some examples of goals of each type of language therapy:

• • Expressive Language:

    • Describing  objects

    • Producing grammatically appropriate sentences

    • Labeling various items around them in their everyday setting

  • Receptive Language:

    • Following directions

    • Answering wh-questions/story comprehension questions

    • Making inferences

  • Pragmatic Language:

    • Identifying social problems and providing appropriate solutions

    • Maintaining topic of conversation

    • Communicating emotions appropriately

Fluency therapy is used for students that stutter. We typically utilize fluency shaping techniques or stuttering modification techniques to increase a student's "smooth" speech. Some types of stuttering include repetitions (repeating sounds/parts of words/words/phrases), prolongations (holding out a sound), blocks (a long pause between words), or interjections (inserting words such as like or um into speech). Here are some strategies we utilize in speech therapy:

• Pacing Board (tapping out circles on a paper to help control the student's rate of speech. Aka slow the student's speech down)

• Easy Onset (take a deep breath and slowly let the breath out while you initiate the speech slowly)

• Behavior modification (decreasing extraneous movements when speaking)

• Load the Boat (Waiting a few seconds before responding)