Free Articulation Carryover Activity

You open your laptop and start Googling “Articulation Carryover Activities”. Today you are feeling like a failure as a Speech Pathologist. Your student can make his or her speech sounds *perfectly* in the speech room. Accuracy is 80% or higher. But the moment they leave your room their accuracy disintegrates. It’s abysmal. The worst part, though, is that they have been in speech for years. Perhaps they have even been working on this particular goal for YEARS.

Then the problem compounds.

Your student grows older. Academics start to become more demanding.  He/she now needs to be in class. Perhaps your student is even ASKING to stay in class.

Everyone is frustrated.

The student is frustrated to keep coming to speech. The teacher is frustrated the student keeps missing class. The parent is frustrated that the student isn’t progressing in speech AND is missing class.

What do you do? How do you help your student(s) carry over their articulation skills into other environments?

Every situation is different. You know this. But here is what I have done in a similar situation.

My student was in upper elementary. He had been seeing me for several years. We had spent over a year targeting his speech sounds at the conversation level. In my speech room, he did great. His accuracy was consistently at 70% or higher at the conversation level. Unfortunately, his parents and teachers reported that in the classroom and at home, he was still hard to understand. They reported he would get frustrated and they would get frustrated.

I had a conference with the parents and we agreed to keep plugging along as we had been. Maybe with a bit more practice, he would start to carry over his articulation skills into other environments. 

But then he started struggling more in class. He kept asking to leave my room early because he had classwork he needed to do. He wanted to keep working on his speech, but he was feeling overwhelmed by his classwork. His teacher was getting frustrated that he kept missing class as well.

So, I conferenced with his parents again. This time when we chatted, we decided to pull back on his speech therapy time. Instead of seeing him 2x a week, now I would see him 1x a month. During these sessions, I would remind him of his strategies and help him make a plan to remember to keep carrying over his articulation skills at home and in the classroom.

But you guys know me. I needed our once-monthly session to be meaningful and strategic. I wanted to at least try and find an activity that would help him practice his speech for the entire month. So, I created this speech check-up worksheet.

Here is the beauty of this articulation carryover worksheet.

1. Directs the student to self-monitor his/her progress in different areas
2. Helps the student self-identify areas of weakness
3. Teaches the student goal-setting skills
4. Guides the student through making a plan to work on the goal
5. Encourages the student to take responsibility for carrying over speech skills
6. All you have to do is print it out and use it month after month

Here is how the activity works:

1. Here is how it works:
2. Print off the worksheet
3. The student rates how he/she is using his/her speech in different classes
4. The student discusses who they are speaking with at home and how they are doing on their speech at home
5. The student rates how they are using their speech in extracurricular activities
6. The student does the following
   1. Picks an area they want to improve
   1. Sets a goal
   1. Make a plan to help them remember to work on their goal

Super easy-peasy, right? If you have a student who needs this sort of monthly check-up, try this activity to help with articulation carryover skills! You don’t even have to make it yourself; I am just going to give mine to you!  I know you are super busy, so all you have to do is follow this link and I will email you a copy! Additionally, you will get access to emails that have my favorite SLP teaching tips and tricks and resource recommendations I think you will find helpful!

Looking for more activities to help with articulation carryover skills?

Here are some more ideas to help you target those tricky sounds in unstructured conversation!