I’ve heard somewhere that you need over 10,000 correct repetitions before a sound can be generalized. Someday I’m going to put this to the test-and try a 24 hour speech marathon with a kid. I’d get shirts and sponsors and protein bars like I’m running a real marathon. Although the training for it would probably kill me.
Most of my clients are masters of distraction, so I love it when I get an activity where I can “trick” them into more repetitions.
Last week I was playing LiveLoveSpeech’s TH and Attributes Superheros game. I love the graphics on this and how you can used it to focus on articulation AND attributes.
I had put the TH cards in a Spiderman bucket I got for the Biscuit one year for Easter. Everything seems more fun when you are pulling cards out of a superhero head.
A lot of TPT products (mine included) have extra BONUS cards (ex. lose a turn/lost your cards/take an extra turn)
One time I was playing a Speech Room New’s Ice Cream Truck Conditional Directions game with a client. He kept getting the “Sun melted your Snack cards” which meant he had to put all of his cards away. He was cracking up. The next session we had, he was asking if we could play the game again and then told me he had been playing it with his brother at dinner every night. He didn’t have any of the cards. I wish I could’ve been a fly on his wall to see how he “played” this game at home.
Sometimes I will use a few of the BONUS cards and set the rest aside so that we can get a rhythm going with the game. Today I threw all of LiveLoveSpeech’s BONUS take an extra turn cards into the Spiderman bucket. Take an extra turn cards are brilliant. Especially in one on one settings. As long as you make sure you don’t get them.
There are cute little shield cards with numbers on them that come with this game and we put those face down on the table. On their turn they turned over a card and had a number written on it. That was the number of cards they they had to pull from the Spiderman bucket.
The first draw was 5 and ended up with 3 take another turn cards. He ended up picking take another turn cards almost every turn. I pretended to be very upset-and complained about how it wasn’t fair that he was getting ALL of the turns and I didn’t get any turns. I talked about how I was really good at saying the TH sound and that if he wasn’t such a good card picker I’d be winning.
He was SO excited to be beating me that he completely forgot about the fact that he was saying his speech sounds (but he didn’t forget SO much that he was saying them incorrectly.) Have you ever tricked a kiddo into doing more than they would like?
Sometimes they try to distract me from the lesson by saying they want a turn to be teacher…I “give in” but when they start teaching, I guide them into really teaching by making them explain the concept, or how to say the sound. I pretend I either don’t understand or will purposely explain it wrong…they spend so much time teaching me and ultimately getting their practice, they don’t realize what hit them…gives me great information as to how well they understand…a great meta activity.
Jo-That is awesome! What a great way to work on skills and see how your students are processing the whole activity.