Speech Sound Cues to Use in Speech Therapy
Write down and save this list of 10 cues for speech-sound disorders to use in your speech therapy sessions and that are engaging for young students!
Different Cues for Different Students
Do you ever find yourself wishing for a one-size-fits-all speech therapy activity or speech sound cue?
I sometimes daydream about what it would be like to be a chef at a popular restaurant. While a chef might have spent years perfecting his/her signature dish, once they have it exactly as they want it, they make it the same way every time. A set list of ingredients is added in a specific order, to get perfection!
Oh, that would be nice! As a speech therapist, I would like a recipe sometimes but in our field, we know that one-size-fits-all DOES NOT EXIST!
That is a wonderful thing about being a Speech Pathologist but, it is also what is so challenging about doing speech therapy with kids.
When it comes to working with students with speech sound disorders, what works for a student with articulation needs, may not work for your phonology kiddo, and probably doesn’t work for a child with apraxia of speech. Not to mention that within those classifications, no two cues work the same for different kids.
That said, we should have multiple cues ready to go in our bag of tricks when working with students.
10 cues for Speech Sound Disorders:
Using cues in therapy is essential to our student’s success. Speech therapy with our students may require us to try all of these cues before we find the individual one that works for them.
Also, remember to circle back to cues even if they didn’t work the first time you presented them. As our students make progress and grow, they are often ready for a different cue that may have been unsuccessful at first.
1. Speech Sound Cue Cards
Using speech sound cue cards is an integral part of therapy for all kids with speech sound disorders. Why? Because cue cards make sounds tangible and give students an anchor or hook to increase their understanding.
Color coding on cue cards are great for additional placement cues. And adding a plus sign (+) shows if the sound is voiced.
Speech sound cue cards give both semantic and placement cues to students.
Each phoneme has a name. This is a semantic cue for students.
Each phoneme card has a mouth placement image on the back to cue. This is the placement cue.
2. Mouth Model
Use a mouth model for speech therapy sound cues. Retroflexed R versus bunched R cues for articulation therapy.
Having a mouth model has been a game changer in therapy. A mouth model works especially well for palatal and back sounds like K, G, SH, CH, J, and R. Using your hand, along with markers on the teeth students can better visualize what they need to be doing.
You can get a mouth model just like this one on Amazon HERE (affiliate link).
3. Mouth Position Cue Cards
Similar to Speech Sound Cue cards discussed in #1, these mouth position cue cards are real-life photos of the phonemes. These are great for students to:
see on a sound wall,
use in therapy,
have at home,
and have in the classroom as a visual cue for carry-over.
4. Animal Sound Cues
Kids love using animals in therapy. Using both miniature animal figurines and picture cues work well for the same reason that speech sound cue cards work. It gives something kids can easily identify with and relate to.
Here are some examples:
Kick the back of your tongue like a donkey kicks its hind legs.
Lift your tongue tall like a long giraffe neck.
Spread your legs wide like a frog’s legs.
5. Tap Lights
Tap lights are great for working on phonological awareness skills and identifying where a student hears a sound. Use them when a student is first starting therapy and you are building awareness of sounds or if a student isn’t stimulable yet, but you want to keep exposing them to a target.
The click of the tap light and the light itself provide both auditory and visual cues for where the sound is in a word. Paring the lights with red-yellow-green is another visual cue for a sequence they are familiar with.
Purchase similar lights on Amazon HERE (affiliate link). (The lights pictured here were purchased at the dollar store.)
6. Magna Tiles
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE using these in therapy for consonant cluster reduction! These are my go-to when working on 2-consonant and 3-consonant blends. Click them together to visually represent the sounds. Remove one when your student deletes them. They are magnetic so don’t forget to use them on your whiteboard, too!
A great set of Magna Tiles like the ones shown here can be purchased on Amazon HERE (affiliate link).
WATCH A VIDEO OF THEM IN USE HERE
7. Legos and Lego Tape
Lego tape is great for attaching to small boards to use in groups. They have so many uses!
Use legos for tactile and visual cues for a sound position in words.
Stack legos for blend awareness.
Two different lengths of lego taped together help indicate stops versus fricatives (phonemes that are short versus phonemes that are long).
Legos are also great for getting lots of trials and repetitions during therapy. A student can get one for each production and they can build during therapy.
8. Playdough
Playdough works great with a mouth model. Students can create their own tongues to work on placement. Long and short pieces also work well with playdough, if you don’t have lego tape. When students have trouble with a P, B, M, and SP and SM blends, roll a ball of playdough and have them push it between their fingers or hands as their lips press together during production. I love how Playdough provides great hands-on cueing.
READ ABOUT MORE WAYS TO USE PLAYDOUGH IN THERAPY BY PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH
9. Personal Mirrors
Most speech therapists know about using a mirror, but did you know that you can step up your mirror game? Make personal mirrors that stand by purchasing reflective mirror self-adhesive sheets and attaching them to a picture frame. This will stand the mirror up for students.
10. Linking Cubes
This is another favorite to use for phonemic and phonological awareness tasks. These work great, like Legos and Magna tiles. Remember, use two when working on blending. And don’t forget that cubes can indicate the number of syllables in multi and polysyllabic words. Grab linking cubes HERE on Amazon (affiliate link).
Which one of these cues will you start using with your students? Comment below!
