Home Work

Are you practising speech therapy the ‘right way’ at home?

We promise we don’t give you speech homework to make you even busier! The Early Start Speech Pathology  team are bookworms at heart and regularly keep up to date with what the research has to say about the best ways to create successful communicators.

For those Owls who are working on their speech sounds, here are some important points to make sure that home practice is the most effective it can be.

 

  1. It is better to practice 5 minutes every day than one 30-minute block. Just like learning any new skill (riding a bike, playing an instrument, reading), it is better to do a little bit of practice every day so that your child can remember build upon their skills. If the scheduling of speech homework is tricky to fit into your schedule, your Early Start speech pathologist can provide a weekly homework schedule for you or think of creative ways to reach your 5 minutes of practice a day.
  2. It is essential to give your child some feedback on their speech sounds during practice. Feedback about a child’s sound tells them what they are doing right (or incorrectly) so that they can learn and master their sounds. You don’t have to give feedback all the time, but just make sure that you say specific things to your child so that they know what they are doing that is successful. Your speech pathologist at Early Start can write down or help you practice what to say and how to say it if you’re a little unsure.
  3. Don’t correct your child’s sounds all the time. Keep your feedback for practice time otherwise your child could start to become a bit more self-conscious or upset about their sounds and not want to talk. They ARE trying hard, but they don’t always remember what they should say and do to be accurate, especially if they have switched off and are playing. Remember that learning a new speech sound is like learning to read – and we don’t expect our children to pick up a book and read straight away!

Make sure you check out our previous post about two favourite and FREE apps for speech and articulation therapy and add it your schedule.