SLPs: Practical Therapy Techniques for Persistent and Resistant Speech Sound Errors Presented by Terri Farnham Outstanding Speech-Language Pathologist and National Presenter

Specifically Designed for Speech-Language Pathologists Serving Students in Grades PreK-12

Practical Ideas and Strategies

As an SLP, are you challenged by students who have unmistakable and persistent speech sound errors well into the later elementary years and beyond? While these children may have only one or two sounds in error, these few errors are anything but “simple and easy” to remediate. Distorted S and Z sounds, particularly lateral distortions, are frustratingly resistant to therapy, as are distorted Rs. In this seminar, outstanding speech-language pathologist and national presenter TERESA FARNHAM shares a variety of highly effective strategies to help reduce frustration and increase success in therapy with your most challenging speech sound cases, in part by reducing the number of “challenging cases” as early and rapidly as possible. Learn how to facilitate correct sound production through use of meaning and concurrent task sequencing across multiple levels of difficulty. Discover free and/or inexpensive electronic tools that can accelerate your students’ progress by teaching them to independently monitor their sound production. Receive a wealth of information and techniques to support student success and enhance the effectiveness of therapy, even for “R” distortions and other challenging speech sound errors. Learn how to decrease your caseload by moving children to correct conversational speech sound production quickly, making your students feel more successful simply because they are! You’ll leave with an array of new ideas to strengthen your speech sound therapy program.

Ten Key Benefits of Attending

1. Maximize Your Students’ Productivity While Minimizing Their Time in Treatment for Persistent Articulation Errors
   Utilize proven methods to facilitate a correct “R,” “L,” “S,” “Z,” “Sh,” “Ch,” “J,” and R- and L-controlled vowels at all levels of difficulty
2. Strategically Apply Your Phonetic Knowledge to Elicit Correct Sound Production
   Provide effective cognitive-linguistic links to enable your students to use their current understanding and use of speech sounds to produce new, correct speech sounds
3. Promote Rapid Speech Sound Mastery Among Your Students
   Developmental norms for acquisition of speech sounds have changed with new research … Find out what this means for your practice, and use this information to accelerate your students’ progress
4. Manage Stubborn Articulation Cases More Effectively
   Learn proven methods to remediate your most challenging cases involving “R,” frontal lisp or lateral lisp … Reduce therapy time, increase students’ rate of progress, decrease out-of-class time and feel more in control of your schedule
5. Use Multiple Levels of Difficulty Throughout the Therapy Process to Enhance Student Acquisition and Carryover of Target Sounds
   Ensure success by incorporating varying levels of difficulty to keep students engaged, challenged and successful from the start
6. Apply Carefully Selected Implementation Models to Diminish Articulation Errors Before They Become “Articulation Problems”
   Apply Carefully Selected Implementation Models to Diminish Articulation Errors Before They Become “Articulation Problems”
7. Plan for Dismissal from R (or Any Other Sound) Therapy From the Very First Day
   Utilize intervention techniques, electronic tools, and targeted linguistic elicitation strategies to rapidly move your student from “oo” to “R” in practice and in conversation
8. Teach Your Students to More Accurately Evaluate Their Own Sound Production
   Learn about tools available at little or no cost that provide visual feedback, so your students can quickly learn to self-monitor accurately, resulting in more rapid carry-over of sounds to conversation
9. Use the Power of Communication and Word Meanings to Spark Your Students’ Desire to Excel
   Every child is motivated to communicate … Capitalize on this motivation to enhance your students’ production and use of target sounds using meaning to inspire engagement at every step of the therapy process
10. Receive a Detailed Articulation Therapy Digital Resource Manual
    You will receive an extensive Articulation Therapy Digital Resource Manual, filled with therapy tools and materials, strategies, and scores of elicitation techniques for “R,” “L,” “S,” “Z,” “CH,” “J,” and R- and L-controlled vowels … Gain new word lists, sentence elicitation and practice ideas, and materials that use meaning to reinforce correct production, plus much more

Outstanding Strategies You Can Use Immediately

• Reduce the amount of time children are in therapy … In most cases, long-term (more than 1-2 school years) of therapy can become a thing of the past if the right interventions are in place from the beginning
• Use meaning to motivate change for the R and L sounds … Learn when, how, and why to challenge your students to modify their production of R and L to communicate clearly and precisely
• Determine what students are doing and not doing when they produce a distorted “R” and techniques to personalize the shaping of their production into a correct “R”
• How to build oral awareness to generate consistent placement for “R,” as well “S,” “Z,” “Sh,” “Ch,” and “J”
• Learn how to solidify and generalize the new, correct “R” and other target sounds … Use therapy routines that promote generalization from the start
• Help students analyze their own “S” production using visual tools and learn to evaluate “S” and “Z” correctly at all levels of difficulty (isolation, words, sentences, conversation)
• Discover how to intervene early, directly and indirectly to reduce the number of children who have speech sound errors that require extensive therapy … Discover what speech RtI levels look like in a successful intervention program
• Master screening and periodic intervention techniques that can save hours of therapy over the long haul
• Learn language-based techniques to improve multiple speech sound errors simultaneously … Provide fast, targeted intervention for typical speech sound errors and for consonant cluster errors

A Message From Your Seminar Leader

Dear Colleague:

During my career as a school-based SLP, most years I’ve had at least one student whose speech sound errors steadfastly resisted improvement. Often, one of those errors was the difficult-to-elicit [r] sound. My turning point was the year that 20 sixth graders arrived in middle school needing therapy for [s, z, r, l or o ]. There were not enough free minutes in their day to possibly see them all on a traditional schedule! I wondered, how could so many students still need therapy for 1-2 speech sound errors at their age? What was missing in their earlier program?

This began my quest for better understanding the constituent elements of effective therapy for speech sounds. What I found surprised me. It challenged my ideas of how to conduct a therapy session, got me thinking about frequency, intensity, and dosage as factors in student success, and spurred me on to try new and adapted approaches to treating speech sounds. I made it my personal goal to not send any students with “only” speech sound errors to the middle school. And I’ve been largely successful! My goal is to have no students beyond grade 2 on my caseload who have speech sound errors as their primary communication concern. In fact, now none of my students beyond grade 2 are working on any speech sounds!

How did I accomplish that? At this seminar, I want to share with you the best of what I have found to be successful based on all my research and years of implementation experiments. Together, we will explore the variety of solutions I use to reduce or eliminate speech sound errors. The topics we’ll explore include:

• Techniques for successful elicitation of target sounds which build on the student’s current phonetic understanding
• Using meaning as a motivator of speech sound change
• The effectiveness of different therapy models for single sound errors
• Therapy routines that enhance response rates
• Use of technology (some of it FREE!) to promote better self-monitoring by students and to help each student take ownership of his or her speech production
• Intervention models that have the potential to prevent persistent speech sound errors with relatively low time investment

Join me for a day full of sharing information with colleagues from all around your region and leave with many new tools and materials that you can use right away!

Sincerely,
Teresa Farnham, MA, CCC-SLP

P.S. The articulation therapy digital resource handbook you’ll receive at my seminar is filled with new ideas and ready-to-duplicate materials you can use tomorrow!

Who Should Attend

Speech-Language Pathologists Serving Students in Grades PreK-12

Special Benefits of Attending

Extensive Resource Handbook
You will receive an extensive digital resource handbook giving you access to countless strategies. The handbook includes:

• Step-by-step speech sound elicitation treatment techniques
• Resources for activities at multiple levels of perceived difficulty (isolation, syllables, words, sentences) for you to use from the very first day of intervention
• Materials that support student use of technology supports throughout the week to achieve correct sound practice even in your absence

For in-person seminars, registrants will also receive a printed copy of the resource handbook as long as their registration is received in the BER office at least 15 calendar days before the event.

ASHA - CEUs

ASHA-Required Disclosure Statement for Terri Farnham:
Financial:
Presenter for the Bureau of Education & Research and receives honorarium compensation.
Nonfinancial:
No relevant nonfinancial relationships exist.

Semester Credit Option
Up to four graduate level professional development credits are available with an additional fee and completion of follow-up practicum activities. Details for direct enrollment with University of Massachusetts Global, a nonprofit affiliate, will be available at this program.

Meet Inservice Requirements
Participants of both the Live Online Seminar and those completing the Recorded Version online can receive a certificate of participation that may be used to verify five continuing education hours. State CEUs are available for both versions of the course. For specific details, visit www.ber.org/ceus.

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