Here's a Fun Motivator to Help with Articulation Goals for Speech Therapy

Using speech-to-text technology can be a big motivator for some students to achieve their articulation goals for speech therapy

As an SLP who works with elementary-aged kids with speech sound disorders (SSDs), it can sometimes be hard to get my students to realize that putting in the effort to correct their articulation errors is worth their while.

And I get it. Children can't always see the connections between their SSDs and the things that may go along with them, such as spelling issues, difficulty being understood, and -- even worse -- being negatively judged by peers and even their teachers because of them (study here).

Using speech-to-text has been a huge motivator for some of my speech therapy students and it has helped them to reach their articulation goals! Speech-to-text is an increasingly common type of technology where we can speak into a device (cell phone, tablet, laptop, etc.) while it transcribes our oral language into text. Most (all) smartphones have the option of hitting the microphone and talking into the device while it transcribes what we say. Google Docs also has this function.

I'll give students -- who have been as young as 5 and as old as 9 -- a list of either words or pictures (depending on their reading level), all of which contain the sounds we are targeting in speech therapy, and ask them to recite them while using speech-to-text. They are always delighted (as am I!) when the word they intended to say is transcribed correctly!

You can make things as simple or complex as you'd like: single words, long word lists, sentences, minimal pairs, etc. I actually prefer single words for this task, because then the speech-to-text technology can't try to make an educated guess about what the word was, based on context.

Even young kids can see the power of speaking clearly enough that Alexa or Siri can understand their speech! And the immediate feedback this activity provides can be so helpful for students.

Have you tried this activity? Let me know how it went in the comments!

LEVEL UP YOUR SPEECH THERAPY ACTIVITIES WITH STORYWHYS

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Have you heard? StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.

Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.

And get your FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the free download page.

Enjoy!