Hi, I'm Lori Riggs speech pathologist with the National Association
for Child Development and I'm going to take you through the Speech Therapy for
Apraxia app and hopefully give you a better idea of how you can use it more
effectively. It is a called Speech Therapy for Apraxia, because as you move
through the different levels it's really focused on motor planning for speech. But
certainly this could be useful for individuals with whom you are just
working on straight articulation, as well. So if you are teaching new phonemes or
you're working on a particular sound at the syllable level then this is great,
because it does give you just CV syllables and you can choose what speech
sounds you're working on. So for articulation practice also for vowel
differentiation, so if you are targeting vowel sounds then
this is a great thing to use. I'm going to go through the levels and so what
I'm talking about today really is more geared towards how you would go through
it with an individual with apraxia. It can be used with either children or
adults. It's equally appropriate either way. So the first thing that you'll need
to do is select the group of consonants that you'll be working with.
he different groups are organized roughly in a developmental way so that
the sounds that typically develop earlier are towards the beginning and
then as you move down it's the later developing sounds. Also, they are arranged
according to place of articulation, so bilabial sounds would be together
alveolar sounds together. Again, there are some slight exceptions just so that
this works. You'll choose the group that you're working on. Let's choose a
B, P, and M so we will go with the bilabial sounds. For an individual
with apraxia you would want to choose sounds that they can
already produce. So we're assuming that they can produce bilabial sounds so that
we really are just working on motor planning rather than actual new
articulation for new sounds. Once you have chosen a consonant group then
you're going to choose the level that you'll be working on. I would suggest
that any time you're choosing a new consonant group you go ahead and start
at level one and move through the levels in order. If you are coming back to it
and you have you know been working on a particular group then you can choose any
level that you wish. You don't always have to start at one but each time you
start a new consonant group I would just start with level one. For level one each
syllable is presented individually. You will have a CV syllable with the
consonant being something within that group. In this case we're starting
with pie, but not every syllable that's presented now is going to start with P,
it could start with B, it could start with M. If you touch the picture *pie* then
you'll get the auditory cue. You can have them hear it, you can provide a
model yourself, but then have them produce the syllable as well. The
focus is still on production, but you'll have to provide that feedback and let
them know whether that was correct or what they need to do to change it or
just what. You can just swipe the screen to move on to the next syllable
and you can continue going through until you have exhausted all the syllables in
that consonant group. Once they have mastered level one for that consonant
group then you can go on to level two. For level two you'll have three
repetitions of this same syllable so it requires that the
third production is just as clear as the first production and again you'll have
to provide that feedback. So *pie pie pie* you can go through and have them touch
each picture so that they get the auditory cue or you can turn the
audio off. You don't have to have the auditory component if you want to
provide the model or if you for some reason don't want to have the auditory
input. They'll go through produce three in a row of the same syllable and
again when you feel that they've mastered that level then you can move on
to level three. For level three again its repetitions of the same syllable, but
this time it's five so a little bit more difficult than level two. You'll just
go through have them repeat the same syllable five times and you can go
through as many different examples of that as you wish. For level four there
are four repetitions of the same syllable but then for the fifth syllable
it changes to a syllable that starts with the same consonant as the first one
but the vowel changes. In this case we have me and then in the end it changes
to mow. *Me-me-me-me mow* so at this level on one screen it
will be a consistent consonant sound. Now when you go to another screen you may
have a different consonant than the first screen, but within this screen it's
going to be consistent. *Puh, Puh, Puh,Puh, Pay*
and then you would have them repeat that production. Okay, moving on to level five
now you still have a combination of two syllables and they start with the same
consonant sound but now you're alternating every other one. So in this
case *BEE BAA BEE BAA BEE* so it requires that they make that subtle difference with
the change in the vowel for every other production and again you can go through
as many screens as you feel like you need to. When they have mastered that
level for level six you have the same consonant sound for each production and
there are still five syllables in a row, but now it's going to be a random
arrangement so rather than every other one now it's just a combination of
syllables in a random pattern, but they all are going to start with the same
consonant sound. For level seven now we have a random combination of
syllables but all of the syllables are still within the same consonant group so
it's no longer a consistent consonant, but it is within that consonant group so
in this case there's a combination of B syllables and P syllables.
*bay, buh, pah, pah, bay* Incidentally, I'm running through all
of this just so that you see what the different levels are, but in one sitting
with one individual you will probably only work on one level in a sitting.
If you do it more than once in a day and you feel that they've mastered
that level you might go ahead and move on to another level, but you're not going
to go through all eight levels with a consonant group in one sitting. It's just
too much. Okay, level eight
requires that you choose to consonant groups because now you're going to have
a combination of syllables from two different groups so I will combine the
P,B, and M group with F and V so now it's really going to be a random combination.
*VAY, PAY, VAH, VO,VO* so you never really know what's coming up, but it's
always going to be a combination from the two groups that you chose. I hope
that has helped. Be watching out for new speech apps to come from NACD and
let us know if you have any questions or comments and be sure to like us on
Facebook. Thank you.