Speech Therapy -> Phonology -> Syllable Shapes / Consonant-Vowel Combinations

Syllable Shapes / Consonant-Vowel Combinations

Children with apraxia have difficulty putting sounds together rather than producing specific sounds in isolation. Goals should be focused on shapes of words such as, CV (e.g., “me”), VC (e.g., “up), CVC (e.g., “hat”), VCV (e.g., “okay”), CVCV (e.g., “bunny”), CVCVCV (e.g., “potato”) rather than specific sounds to teach the movements needed to put sounds together without segmenting the word or omitting/substituting sounds.

Reference links

  • Reading Longer Words: Insights Into Multisyllabic Word Reading 2
    pubs.asha.org     Author: Lindsay Heggie and Lesly Wade-Woolley - Students with persistent reading difficulties are often especially challenged by multisyllabic words; they tend to have neither a systematic approach for reading these words nor the confidence to persevere (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003; Carlisle & Katz, 2006; Moats, 1998). This challenge is magnified by the fact that the vast majority of English words are multisyllabic and constitute an increasingly large proportion of the words in elementary school texts beginning as early as grade 3 (Hiebert, Martin, & Menon, 2005; Kerns et al., 2016). Multisyllabic words are more difficult to read simply because they are long, posing challenges for working memory capacity. In addition, syllable boundaries, word stress, vowel pronunciation ambiguities, less predictable grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and morphological complexity all contribute to long words' difficulty. Research suggests that explicit instruction in both syllabification and morphological knowledge improve poor readers' multisyllabic word reading accuracy; several examples of instructional programs involving one or both of these elements are provided.

Activity List(s)

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Goal Bank

  • Whitney will develop and expand imitation skills, moving from imitation of motor patterns to imitation of vocal patterns and speech sounds with 90% accuracy across 3 sessions as measured by clinician data and observation to increase overall expressive language skills and speech intelligibility. 2
  • Rick will produce /p/ in all positions spontaneously in words, phrases and sentences with 90% accuracy across 3 therapy sessions to increase intelligibility. 2
  • Marline will correctly imitate, then spontaneously produce the /r/ phoneme (including blends) in all word positions in words, phrases, sentences, and finally conversation with 80% accuracy over 3 consecutive sessions in order to improve intelligibility. 3

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