Speech

Carter has been attending speech therapy through the Williamson County School System for almost one year now.  I had his annual review meeting yesterday before his scheduled Monday session.

Carter has made great progress.  He is by no means ready to "graduate" from speech but his intelligibility has improved immensely.

The middle of this page is Carter's current assessment:

"Carter is improving his use of medial and final sounds, s-blends at the word level and overall intelligibility.  Carter still presents problems in carrying over his sound production into conversational speech."

Here are Carter's current short-term goals:

• The student will improve auditory discrimination skills of target phonemes by identifying the target sound on 9/10 trials over 3 consecutive data days.
• The student will produce the following s-blends in phrases and sentences (sp, st, sm, sk) on 8/10 trials on 3 data days.
• The student will produce /s,z/ in syllables and single words on 8/10 trials on 3 data days.

Ms. Judy (Carter's speech teacher) has decided to start seeing him twice a week.  And the assistant (Ms. Vicky) that comes to his school once a week to help him with social language skills, will no longer see him.  Carter's friends have no trouble understanding him anymore and he has a normal confidence level now when talking to other people.

So now Carter goes to the elementary school on Mondays at noon and Tuesdays at 2:30 for 30 minutes each session.  I have to pick the boys up from school a few minutes early on Tuesday, but I'm so glad Carter is getting in another session.  His Monday session is just him, and on Tuesday, 15 minutes is alone and 15 minutes is with another student.

Carter is currently working on the "s" sound in the final position.  "S" is the most used sound in the English language so the most important sound for intelligibility.  Ms. Judy made Carter some really nice laminated homework sheets with velcro words to attach to them.

Carter started off with the red sheet on the left last week.  It says "Chris saw a ____".  The blank is a word with a final "s".  Carter has a lot of trouble with using a "f" sound to replace an "s" (or with just omitting it when it's in the final position).  He does a good job with single words but sentences are a lot harder.

So the red sheet has a final "s", followed by an initial "s", and then another final "s".  I was to ignore that he would say "faw" instead of "saw" and only worry about "Chris" and the interchangeable word.  Carter does not like doing anything wrong so when his homework is difficult for him, he doesn't want to practice.  Ms. Judy could tell he was struggling so we scaled back a little and are working on the two sheets on the right this week.  They say "I see ___" and "I saw ___".  And the interchangeable words are the same final "s" words.  Two final "s" position words in one sentence was just too much.  Hopefully Carter will have a little more enthusiasm with practicing this week!

Random funny thing though ... the interchangeable words that end with two s's (such as grass and boss), Carter word make two distinct "ssss" sounds for (we always exaggerate the sound when practicing).  I tried to explain that's not correct but he refuses to stop.  I get it though - he's not reading yet but is starting to understand how letters come together to make a word and having the letter twice is kind of confusing!

Carter has worked on several things this year so far.  I pulled out some of our homework to remember.  I'm not sure if Ms. Judy would say he's mastered these things, but we've certainly moved on and are tackling something much more difficult for Carter.

Carter has worked on "k" in the initial and medial positions ...

Carter did "k" and "t" sounds in the medial (and initial for t) positions in sentences ...

"G" in the initial, medial, and final positions ...

 Carter has worked on s blends.  He's done "st" and "sp" in the initial position (with "st" in sentences) ...

This was one of our more recent homework sheets.  It was to help Carter hear and realize how the initial "f" or "sp" sound sort of made these words since they have the same remaining sounds.

Overall I'm super happy with Carter's progress.  Ms. Judy says we do great with homework though I know we need to do better.  We often "cram" on the weekend.  She says that Carter is a great student.  He aims to please and works super hard.  Ms. Judy's goal is still to have Carter graduate from speech when he starts kindergarten in 1 1/2 years.