You’ve finally reached that milestone where your student consistently uses their speech sound in sentences – yay! But as soon as the student talks to you in conversation, they immediately revert back to using their error sound, forgetting they just said it perfectly a second ago. I feel you. We’ve all been there. Let’s get them to use their sound in connected speech and conversation by developing crucial self-monitoring skills. Here are my 5 favorite tips for supporting self-monitoring skills during speech therapy sessions for your articulation students.
What is self-monitoring?
Self-monitoring is the ability to monitor our own speech productions. We all do that to some degree, and we will self-correct if we misspeak. Self-monitoring is your student’s first step to identify errors in their speech and then apply strategies to correct it on their own. Although we provide corrective feedback to our students during sessions, we need to instill a sense of ownership in our kids to help them generalize their speech sounds to conversation and carryover those skills outside the therapy room. I’ve compiled a short list of tips that you can use to help your articulation students self-monitor. This is a basic overview of a few ideas that can grow your student’s sense of independence and ownership of their speech outcomes.
1. Teach Auditory Discrimination
To start, make sure your students can hear the difference between the error sound and the correct production, otherwise known as auditory discrimination. This is a fundamental skill when working on a speech sound. I like to start by having them identify the error in my own speech. I intentionally make correct and incorrect productions. Make sure the incorrect production is the same speech error your student makes. You can run a few trials to ensure that the student can consistently discriminate between the correct production and error sound.
2. Encourage Them to Monitor Your Speech
Once you know that your students can reliably discriminate target sounds, have them continue to monitor your speech throughout the session. Make it interactive and engaging by incorporating occasional errors in your speech while practicing.
For example, if you’re playing a board game during your session, on your turn, model the speech sound by deliberately making the error sound instead. You can pause briefly to make sure the student noticed. If they miss the error, ask them to pay attention to your speech and do it again. When they successfully identify the mistake, encourage them to tell you how you could correct it. This shift allows the student to take on the role of the teacher and is a great way for the student to review how to make the speech sound. My younger students especially love this role reversal moment!
3. Use the “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Sideways” System
It can be tricky and time consuming to stop and have a conversation about whether a speech production was correct (mine or my student’s). As we know, efficiency is key, especially when you have a large caseload. So, you need to find an efficient system for speech monitoring that you can use throughout your session. In my case, I get my students to give me a “thumbs up” to indicate a correct production and a “thumbs sideways” for a production that wasn’t quite right. What about “thumbs down”? I avoid “thumbs down” as it can be associated with negative emotions. I use wording like “not quite right” rather than “wrong” to help increase my student’s self-esteem and keep them from feeling defeated.
You can use this system when doing auditory discrimination tasks and carry it throughout the rest of the session as the student gives you a “thumbs up” or “thumbs sideways” for your productions, and for their own! This is one of my favorite ways to support self-monitoring. I learned this tip from my clinical supervisor in my first placement, and I use it in my sessions to this day!
4. Encourage Self-Assessment from the Beginning
As you guide your students on their self-monitoring journey, it’s crucial to start encouraging self-assessment early in the process. During an activity, take a moment to check in with your student about the speech production they just made. Ask them, “how did that sound?” and they can quickly give you a “thumbs up” or “thumbs sideways” to tell you how they perceived their speech production. When the student can identify their own errors consistently, they are in a good place to start self-correction. Initially, some students may be unsure about whether their productions were correct. Continue to encourage them to listen for how they’re making the speech sound and soon enough, they will accurately monitor their own productions and often feel really proud of themselves in doing so! Remember to consistently reinforce their attempts at self-monitoring.
You don’t have to wait until you’re working at sentence level or in connected speech. You can start encouraging students to self-monitor their productions right away at the sound or word level. The earlier they can self-correct, the faster they can generalize their speech targets.
5. Highlight Sounds to Promote Independent Monitoring
Another tip for supporting self-monitoring skills for articulation students is teaching them how to focus their attention effectively. When they can attend to their sound, they can monitor the production of that sound. Using visual aids are a great way to draw attention to particular sounds, especially when reading.
I often encourage highlighting the target sound within a reading task. This is simple to do and signals to the student where the speech sound is in the word and in the sentence. As their skills progress, gradually remove the highlighted speech sounds. This gradual transition serves as a bridge towards self-monitoring and applying these skills independently.
The image above is a fun tongue twister for the /s/ sound I designed for my students. It’s perfect as an in-person or digital activity. Keep your eye on The Speech Boat TPT store for this upcoming activity!
We discussed 5 tips for supporting self-monitoring skills in articulation students. If you use any of these tips, let me know how it goes! You can email me at [email protected], I’d love to hear about it!
Until next time!
Hosnia
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