Traditional Van Riper Articulation Approach

Description:

The Van Riper approach is often considered the traditional approach for treating specific articulation speech sound errors. This approach will allow you to work on one sound at a time. Children who need this approach struggle with saying specific speech sounds. This can impact their ability to be understood by adults and peers, participate in classroom activities, and demonstrate learned knowledge to their teachers. It can also impact reading and writing skills.

Task Analysis (How To):

Now comes the fun part! Here’s where we break this larger skill down into manageable, bite-size pieces. Here’s how to break this skill down for therapy:

Sound in Isolation: Student will produce the target sound in isolation (by itself, not in a word or with other sounds)
Sound in Syllables: Student will produce the target sound in non-sense syllables
Sound in Words: Student will produce the target sound in all positions of single words (beginning of the word, middle of the word, and end of the word)
Sound in Phrases: Student will produce the target sound in all word positions of 2-3 word phrases
Sound in Sentences: Student will produce the target sound in all word positions of simple sentences
Sound in Structured Conversation: Student will produce the target sound in all word positions of structured conversational tasks, such as answering an open-ended question or describing a short sequence of events
Sound in Unstructured Conversation: Student will produce the target sound in all word positions of unstructured conversation throughout multiple enviornments

Activities:

Now for some practical strategies and activities that you can do in therapy for each of these steps. Click on the task analysis level to drop down the list of activities:

1. Sound in Isolation

Here are some resources for helping your clients produce the target sound in isolation.

Tips for Eliciting Speech Sounds in Isolation

Click Here to Watch the Webinar Recording on Speech Sounds in Isolation

Speech Sound Warm-Up:
Works on sound stimulability! Work on the sounds in isolation or write a vowel in the middle and have the child pair the consonants with the vowel.

2. Sound in Syllables

Try these great resources for helping your clients pair the target sound with vowels to make nonsense syllables.

Sound Syllable Spiders
These cute little spiders will help your clients practice pairing consonants with different vowels

What to Do When a Child Can’t Move Past Isolation

3. Sound in Single Words

Now it’s time to put those sounds into words! Check out these resources to help you do just that:

Articulation Worksheets:
One for every sound! Single words that contain the sound in all word positions. Use these in therapy or send them home for homework!

4. Sound in Short Phrases

Now we’re start putting those words into short 2-3 word phrases. These resources should help with that:

Phrase Generator for Speech Therapy

This quick cheat sheet will give your clients some predictable phrases to insert their words into.

Articulation Worksheets:
One for every sound! Single words that contain the sound in all word positions. Use these in therapy or send them home for homework!

5. Sound in Sentences

Is your client ready for sentences? Time to use those words to build sentences. I like to have my students try to come up with the sentences themselves. Bonus points if they can get two words with their target sound into one sentence!

Articulation Worksheets:
One for every sound! Single words that contain the sound in all word positions. Use these in therapy or send them home for homework!

6. Sound in Structured Conversations

Ok! Your client is able to use the target sound in sentences, great!! Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he will automatically be ready for saying it correctly all of the time in conversation! Let’s try some of these simple structured conversation prompts to practice the sound in a more complex environment:

Sounds in Structured Conversation Pack

Reading Activities:

This is also a great time to have your client practice the new skill during reading activities. Here are a few resources to help you with that:

7. Sound in Unstructured Conversations

Now comes the hard part, getting them to do it the rest of the time!

Click Here to Watch the Carry-Over Webinar Recording

Tips for Encouraging Speech Sounds in Conversation

Speech Sound Carry-Over Challenge

Troubleshooting:

What do you do if these things don’t work the way they’re supposed to? Well, nothing’s ever easy, is it? Try these great troubleshooting tips that some of our other members have found helpful. Click the problem to drop down the link to the solution.

What if the Child has Attention Problems?

Check out this full hour-long presentation on how to work on speech sounds when a child has limited attention skills, including children with autism!

What if the child adds extra sounds to words (epenthesis)?

Sometimes we get extra sounds thrown in there. This may happen as a result of the child trying to produce the new, correct sound while still holding on to the old, incorrect sound. Here are two videos on how to handle it:

What if the child has restricted oral movement due to medical problems?

Sometimes medical problems can cause a child to not be able to move their mouth as well as we need them to. Here are some ideas for working on sounds in this population:

What if the Child Also has Phonological Errors?

If you have a child with both phonological and articulation errors, that’s ok! Here’s some advice on how to work on both:

When is it ok to give up on articulation therapy?

Sometimes we have to consider whether we’ve come as far as we’re going to come. Here is a video to help you decide when you’ve reached that point:

How to Teach Voicing

Teaching a child to turn on his voice for a voiced sound can be tricky. Here are some cues that can help you!