Michelle Andrews: [00:00:00] Hey there. I’m Michelle Andrews. And I’m your host for the pep talk podcast. episode is all about using five minute articulation therapy , a school-based SLP and how this will make your life easier. If you are a school SLP who is stretched too thin, trying to manage and make adequate progress with articulation group therapy.

is for you. We are about to open your world by teaching you all about this simple yet effective approach.

This episode is featuring Stacey Richey as speech language pathologist from Utah with over a decade of experience in the schools,

She graduated from Brigham Young University with her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree. Her thesis was about autism engagement with the use of robots. Sounds very interesting. I’d like to learn more about that at another time. She has supervised several CFYs and grad students over the. when she’s not doing five minute articulation.

Kids, she loves using themes in literacy and therapy. Some of her hobbies [00:01:00] include jigsaw puzzles, baking, watching movies, and playing sports.

Michelle Andrews: has gone to countless professional development courses articulation develop loads of experience and has firsthand seeing the benefits of using five minute articulation therapy.

And. If you’re listening along while you’re driving a car, doing the dishes on a run. This episode is transcribed for you to refer back to easily. you don’t have to worry about taking notes. A transcription of the entire episode is provided in a link in the show notes.

 First, we need to go over some formalities for the course, by going over our financial disclosures. My financial disclosures include, I have a teachers pay teachers, boom, learning, and teach with medley store all under pep talk, LLC. I am also the founder and manager of pet talk and the pep talk podcast teach with medley is also a sponsor for this podcast.

My nonfinancial disclosures include, I have a stock participation plan with teach with medley. Now, here are the learner [00:02:00] objectives for this course, you will be able to identify benefits for using five minute articulation therapy in the schools, you will be able to list characteristics that signal that a child is a good candidate for the five minute articulation therapy .

will be able to explain how to write IEP goals for the five minute articulation therapy. Okay. Let’s get started. episode of the pep talk podcast is going to change your life. just kidding. Well, honestly, in mind, I don’t know about you, but I am ready to find a way to see school speech therapy students times throughout the week.

And one-on-one sounds too good to be true, but it really can happen. Stacey is going to walk us through how to implement five minute articulation therapy as a school SLP. I am so excited to get started without further ado. I’m happy to welcome Stacey Richey to the podcast. Hi there.

Stacey Richey: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to talk about the five minute

Michelle Andrews: me too. This is very important [00:03:00] information to spread out to the SLP world. let me tell you guys a little bit about Stacey. She grew up in Southern California and moved to Utah to go to college where she has stayed ever since she has been an SLP in Utah’s public schools for the past 10 and a half years, she’s worked in two different districts at five different schools.

Her caseload has ranged from 45 to 92 students. Wow. You heard that you heard that right now. I need to, I can’t even imagine. So she knows how hard it can be to see and plan for all, all of your students. So. All right. Stacey Richey’s financial disclosures include, she has a teachers pay teachers store called Stacey Richey SLP.

nonfinancial disclosures include, , she has an Instagram page for her speech therapy ideas called Stacey Richey SLP. Um, she is not an affiliate , with five minute kids. She is just a huge fan. All right. So Stacey, I introduced [00:04:00] you for a bit. Why don’t you tell me a little bit more about.

Track 1: Okay. I have been married to my husband for the past 11 years and we have a five-year-old little girl. I have worked with preschool special education units. I’ve had small group, kindergarten classes and autism units at my school. I love treating articulation and phonological disorders and early language skills.

So if I could just pick a couple of areas, that is definitely my jam and I love being an SLP.

Michelle Andrews: that’s awesome. me too. You got to love it. You really got to love it, especially in the schools. You gotta live it.

Track 1: Oh,

Michelle Andrews: all

right. Tell me how you began acquiring all of your knowledge on this five minute articulation therapy.

Track 1: Well, it was kind of handed to me. I’ll start off with that because when I did my school externship, my supervisor was using it. And so I basically walked into starting to use that therapy process. And I also have been to [00:05:00] district trainings from other therapists who use the same approach. I’ve read through the research from the five minute kids.

It’s a company that’s actually trademarked and I’ve read through their research and the benefits for this service delivery model. Um, we’ll include the link at the end and the last 10 years I’ve implemented this approach in my school. So I have used it firsthand with a huge range of kids.

Like you said earlier, I’ve had my caseload at 45 students, which was when I was part-time to 92 students when I was a CFO. So I’ve worked with a huge caseload, so I know how hard it can be to try and see all those kids little and see them. One-on-one

Michelle Andrews: great. You have so much experience and so much experience also using this model. That’s going to be so helpful. That’s awesome. right. Let’s jump right in and let’s, um, let’s go over what it means to do five minute articulation therapy. Tell us what that.

Stacey Richey: I personally call this [00:06:00] approach five minute Arctic kids, but you may have actually heard it as some other names. There are some other names like blast kids and speedy speech is another trademark company that also uses this similar therapy model. And this approach, the five minute articulation approach is basically like, it sounds instead of seeing students for 20 minutes, once or twice a week, you see them one-on-one for five to seven minutes to work on just those targets.

Track 1: Articulation sounds. , students are seen in shorter increments several days a week. So if you’re seeing a kid for five. You’d see them three to five times a week. So they’d get 15 to 25 minutes of speech in that, in that same week. And I say five to seven minutes, because if a student has only one articulation error type, , the research shows that they really only need 30 to 40 minutes a month.

If you use this spread out five minutes across the month speech method. But if a student has more than one articular or want to see them for at least 45 to 60 minutes a month, and to fit that in, you may have to see [00:07:00] them in like seven minute increments instead of just five.

 If you are only in a school two times a week, which I have had that happen before, you can increase that time a few minutes for each session, or you could see a student two times a day for five minutes each.

So you see them like once before lunch for five minutes and then once in the afternoon for five minutes. And so I’ve seen kids sometimes I see them for five minutes, sometimes for seven, sometimes for 10. It really depends on the student and my scheduling

Michelle Andrews: is great. This is mind blowing for me. Like when I first came across you and, , I’ve been learning all you have to say about this approach. I actually have not heard of this before, and it’s not something that I learned in grad school. It’s I guess you’ve said it’s been around for a while, right?

Track 1: I think almost, years. Yeah. It’s been around

Michelle Andrews: so I, as soon as I heard about it, I just thought, wow. I need to help spread the word. Like if I don’t know about this and I even worked at the for a year, there’s plenty of other SLPs out there that must not know about this [00:08:00] and we need, uh, we need to spread the word because this is gonna, this is just life changing.

I feel like because seeing kids one-on-one is just so much more beneficial than those groups where you’re spending half the time dealing with everyone’s different behaviors or accommodations or needs, or even getting all five first graders into your closet. Like, it’s just, it’s just hard. So this, this is awesome.

I’m so excited about this. So let’s talk about some more of those benefits. So what, what are some benefits of doing speech therapy this way in the schools?

Track 1: Oh, my goodness. There are so, so many benefits to doing it this way. Like we’ve mentioned already sessions are one-on-one. So that means no mixed group therapy. I mean,

Michelle Andrews: Hallelujah.

Yes.

Track 1: group therapy is hard sometimes. And with this therapy model, Tons of trials. Like I easily get over a hundred words in five minutes, several times a week.

And I don’t know about you, but when I have mixed group speech for 20 minutes, I’m [00:09:00] lucky if they get 50 sometimes, and this is multiple times for the week, a hundred practices, each time it’s less time out of class. That’s another huge benefit. According to the five minute kids research, they showed that students who participated in traditional therapy needed 63 hours in therapy.

But students who use the five minute Arctic model only needed seven hours of therapy. I mean, that’s what, 50, 55, 56 hours, less of therapy time. So, so much less time spent outside of the classroom doing therapy. And that’s kind of the point, right. Is to keep them in their classes as much

Michelle Andrews: incredible. Yeah.

Track 1: Um, another really great benefit is it’s easier to make a therapy session. So if you’re gone for a day, you can just add on another couple minutes to each of their sessions the next few days and make up those five minutes really easily.

Michelle Andrews: Yeah, that’s , incredible making obsessions like that so easily. Like you have, you know, maybe you have an ARD [00:10:00] meeting or, you know, you’re sick.

 , that’s so helpful. .

Track 1: Another huge benefit is I literally don’t have to plan sessions for my students, so I don’t need a lot of games and activities, and I don’t have a lot of space in my therapy room anyway. And so if. By a whole bunch of activities to try and maintain and carry through the hallway. Like, it just is so much easier for me.

Uh, students know that they’re there to work hard. So I rarely have behavior issues. They know they come out, they work hard. They go right back in the, the biggest behavior issue I might have is they won’t stop talking because they want to stay out of class longer. love the flexible scheduling, uh, with flexible scheduling. I schedule like a chunk of time. So if I have three kids, I might schedule a 20 minute chunk of time. I’ll go to pull one kid. And if they’re working on a math test, I’ll go work with one of the other kids in that group. And then the next one, and then kind of cycle back to that first one so that they’re not missing those [00:11:00] important things but they’re still getting their speech time and I don’t have to make it up later. Some of the other huge benefits. I know, I, I feel like there’s so many benefits. I can’t stop talking about them, but students generalize sounds in the conversation so much faster this way. And so they are off your caseload faster.

yay, less, less kids on your, on your caseload? Uh, another benefit I love is teachers see me working out in the hallway all the time with kids, and I feel like it makes me more approachable.

I’m not locked off of my closet across the school, doing my own theme. They see me. And there are times when they’ll be like, Hey, can you come listen to this kid when you have a minute? And so it’s just kind of that friendly reminder. And it also reminds those students and those teachers to focus on their sounds more often to focus on them daily.

And that helps with generalization. And I know this was several benefits, but this is just a few of them. There are so many others that we

Michelle Andrews: right. , seeing you more times during the week. I mean, that’s, [00:12:00] that’s just so huge. Um, we’re recording this and early September and I know all in the SLP world, everyone’s talking about.

Dealing with creating their schedules for the new school year. And I just can’t help, but think, oh, I wish everyone knew about this. Like this sounds like it could just make your life so much easier and scheduling. And then also how you said about, um, you don’t have to have a lot of therapy materials. I think that’s what takes up a lot of time in groups.

 You really need more motivation when you have more kids and your speech therapy room. , picking out games and activities and spending so much time creating all these motivating tools, which are great to have, but, that can just take up a lot of time that could really be used towards just making progress.

this is really awesome.

Track 1: mentioned the research behind this method. Can you go a little more into detail about that?

stacey: Sure. So there have been several studies done on the five Minute Articulation Therapy Method and the researchers behind the Five Minute Kids, [00:13:00] the actual company that I’ve mentioned , Previously, and in their had students in two groups. So one group had five minute one on one therapy nine times a month, they had seven of 30 minutes a month in groups. And they determined that students can have a range of sessions depending on the number of sounds and error. so I’ll share just those recommendations with you just so you don’t have to look ’em up. Uh, if they have a mild They should have about 40 to 60 minutes a month, which is about eight to 12 sessions, or two to three sessions a week.

And if they have a moderate it’s 60 to 80 minutes a month, which is about 12 to 16 that month, or about three to four sessions a week. And then if they have a more severe. Speech then you’ll want to do more like 80 to a hundred minutes a month, which is [00:14:00] 16 to 20 sessions a month, or four to five sessions a week.

And they determined in this study in five minutes, students can name 117 pictures and. I, I read through the article and I wasn’t really sure, I think these were different pictures or words because when I have students repeat the same word multiple times, I get even more trials than that in five minutes, which I will get into later.

They, in five minutes, students can repeat 157 words or repeat 125 phrase. or create 35 That’s so many productions in such a short amount of time. And I also looked, there’s another study that I found that determined that a dose of at least 50 trials per target per session is recommended. And that individual therapy sessions, at least twice a week, benefit school-aged children with speech sound disorders.

I think we [00:15:00] all kind of know that, right? Individual sessions are always better. groups if you can manage it, but just always the way it goes.

Track 1: Right, right. That’s awesome. , there’s research to back it up, those one-on-one sessions a few times a week. Makes such a huge difference. I bet kids are able to focus better. They get a hundred percent of your attention. you’re not splitting your attention between all the other kids in the group and it’s short and sweet and then they’re back to class.

Uh, I love it

stacey: Exactly right

Track 1: And I bet teachers love it as well. , what are some of the reasons teachers they love it?

stacey: Teachers love having these short interruptions. Like the kids are literally gone for five minutes. It’s, it’s really not that long. And what I try to do is I just kind of poke my head in and try and flag the kid down without making a big disruption or anything like that. And another reason I love using it [00:16:00] with regards to the teachers is that I am demonstrating what I would love for the teacher to do in their classroom.

Essentially I’m modeling that I would love if they practice with their student for just a few short minutes every single day. So when I give them try to emphasize that I tell them to only do a few minutes a day, like three to five. they can do.

If they can only do 20 words. Awesome. Rather than trying to do like a huge 20 minute And by doing this, I feel like it helps the teachers not feel quite so overwhelmed when I give them just one more thing to do, right? Teachers are so busy and this seems so much more manageable than like a 20 minute.

that, I mean, that would be a huge ask for them to sit one on one for 20 minutes with a kid. And I’ve had teachers who use a classroom aid or a parent volunteer to help these kids practice their speech, and it makes a huge difference how these students progress with their speech goals.

Track 1: Yeah. That makes it so much easier for [00:17:00] teachers and they’re not missing a ton of class. That’s awesome.

Okay. Stacey, how do I know that this approaches for.

stacey: That is a really good question. There are kind of five themes I would kind of ask yourself. So the first one, are your students not generalizing their speech sounds very quickly? you have to work that conversation level for months and months and it’s just not happening? question to ask yourself.

Do you have a huge caseload with a ton of speech, sound error? And even if you don’t have. A ton of speech sound errors. It’s still, I don’t know, I still really like this one. Um, a third question you could ask yourself. Do you dislike mixed groups? they drive you crazy ? Um, do you have very little time to plan or prep therapy?

And if you’ve answered, I guess that’s only four questions I can count , if you answered yes to these questions, then I would suggest trying the five minute arctic therapy method.

Track 1: That’s so helpful, Stacey. I love that. one thing that you’re talking about the conversation level, [00:18:00] and that is the exact issue that I have fallen into a lot in speech therapy. When I get to the conversation level, there seems to be this plateau sometimes, and I think. This very well could be the answer to that, or at least worth a try to, to see the kids more often and see if that can help jumpstart them off of that plateau , and to make more

stacey: Yeah that’s exactly right. That’s a really great way to look at it.

Track 1: let’s talk about some of the cons of group therapy.

 I have my opinions on group therapy, but, um, , what do you mean by if you dislike group therapy?

stacey: So let me start this off with a low caveat. So there, I do feel like there’s definitely a time and a place for group therapy. if kids are working on generalization, sometimes this allows them to practice with their peers. Like you could have them in a more natural environment playing a game or something.

Uh, if students are self-conscious about working one on one, they might enjoy being in a group better. [00:19:00] Scheduling. I know this isn’t an ideal reason to have to do groups, but it does happen sometimes. I can’t work out the five minute kids and I do have to do some of these mixed groups. And then obviously if you’ve got like concepts that you can’t target in five minutes or fluency, just sometimes those other areas you really can’t do in five minute sessions.

So you do kind of need to do a mixed group. But there are so many reasons why don’t like mixed group therapy. Sometimes it is really hard to keep some of those kids engaged, and because of that I often have more problems when I’m not specifically working with that student. You know, during that little downtime between students when they get to practice, it often takes a few minutes to get everyone together for this session to start.

And that of takes away from therapy time, and I don’t always get as many trials or productions as I’d want and less individualized attention. It’s not one on one, so it’s a lot less [00:20:00] individualized attention. And for me, I always feel like I actually have to have like a good plan handy so that I can keep the kids engaged and remember to target all of their goals.

Cuz sometimes it’s really hard to remember some of their goals, but to me the biggest is it’s more time out of class. a bigger chunk of. that they’re missing that instruction or they’re missing that time to work on that project, that’s a lot harder for them to make up.

Track 1: That, makes it hard to really be able to catch up on all the things that they’ve missed.

Michelle Andrews: Students are good candidates for this type of speech therapy and who is not.

Track 1: So I’ll start with the students who are good candidates, students who have like one to two speech error sound types. And so I just, I say sound types because if they’re working on sh and J you know, those palatal sounds, I would count that as one error type, rather than three errors. And if they’re working on like and vocalists are, I would count that as one [00:21:00] speech airtight.

So if they have one to two speech sound error types, students at the syllable level and up, so like words, sentences conversation, they’re really awesome for doing this approach. For me personally, I have done kids at the isolation level, even with the R sound. But if you are a less experienced SLP or not comfortable with working on that R sound for only five minutes, then don’t do it.

You know, don’t do it with those kids, do it with somebody else. for me, I love doing spending some time on isolation in the five minute therapy approach because the kids don’t get discouraged. They know they’re only out there to practice and try it for five minutes. And then we’ll try again tomorrow.

You know, it’s, it’s not just 20 minutes of trying and trying and trying and lots and lots of failures. It’s just a couple minutes. And then if they do get that sound, they get that extra practice the next day. And so they’re less likely to you to lose it. When I had those kids who would get that sound, you know, at the end of the therapy session.

[00:22:00] And then we had a week before they’d come back half the time they lose it, we’d start all over again. So I love having this daily practice, even though it’s just a couple of minutes because it’s just easy. To help them maintain that sound. So it’s really up to you. If you wanted to start at that isolation level with some of these high minute kids,

Michelle Andrews: I love what you said about those kids that can get discouraged, like say you had a 30 minute group session where they were really struggling.

, I can really think of this one sweet little boy that I’m thinking of that just, I think he was in tears. Even this one session, he just couldn’t get it. And it was 30 minutes long and there’s other kids in the group, you know, maybe making him feel self conscious about it. And I just wish I could’ve just gone.

I wish I could go back in time and do this approach with him because I think it would really, really help him. That’s minutes is a long time to just be pretty beat up about not being able to do something, but just five minutes. It’s okay. We’ll try it tomorrow. That just sounds like , such a great way to go about it.

 Okay. So let’s talk about those, [00:23:00] those kiddos that are not great candidates for this particular.

Track 1: the biggest one who would not be a good candidate are students who struggle with transitions because it is just come out, work in the hallway and then go right back in. So if they struggle with those transitions, I would definitely not try this approach with them. Uh, students who may be shy, who take a little while to warm up, if they’re brand new to your caseload, you know, if you spend five minutes trying to get them to talk, that’s, that’s not really gonna work. another group of students who might not be the best to work with this approach is students who are working on sounds and the isolation, but who needs like a lot of hands-on support, especially like in their mouth. Cause I don’t know if you really want to be carrying bite blocks and tongue depressors and stuff out in the hallway with some gloves and only work for like a minute or two. And if you’re a brand new SLP and you’re not as comfortable with working on the R in isolation, I, I wouldn’t choose those as good candidates for you either. And then if you are also like in private practice, although you could tailor your [00:24:00] sessions to be just 15 minutes instead of, you know, 45 or an hour, It doesn’t make sense to me to have the parents come drive their kid, to come see you for five minutes to then drive home.

So I probably wouldn’t use this approach if you were

Michelle Andrews: yeah, I was thinking about that. I’ve most of my SLP life working in a private practice and yeah, it seems like that would be a little bit of a hassle unless they live like really close by or, or something okay. can you use this model for other goals besides articles?

Track 1: So I use it for articulation kids. I use it for phonological process kids, and you can also use it for some language kids. I’ve dropped some of their therapy time to be 10 minute chunks one-on-one and especially those who need lots of practice, like with some of those grammar skills who just kind of need a little bit of extra daily practice for that.

 Um, sometimes working with kids who are just kind of working on naming categories and things like that. Kids who might get a little fatigued with working for [00:25:00] 20 minutes, who, or who forget sometimes day to day, what they’ve learned, they have, um, like they just regress quicker.

I love using those students with this kind of method too, because they get that extra practice and they get, , that extra support one-on-one and it’s not as taxing on them for as long of a period of time.

Michelle Andrews: awesome. Yeah. Sounds like such a great model for them. Okay. So you mentioned you don’t have to gather up a lot of materials. There’s not a lot of planning, but how, how do you think about planning for these sessions? Can you give some examples of what a week might look like?

Track 1: you bet. So I have a slightly different articulation plan as I do for like my phonological students, but they’re very similar. So I’ll just start with my articulation students. For planning my sessions. I really don’t. I wing it a lot. Um, I do have a general idea of a plan, but I always try to follow the students lead.

So first I always [00:26:00] ask them how they’re doing what they did yesterday. And I might write down some of the words that they tell me in their conversation and I’ll ask them, are there any particular words you want to practice? Cause sometimes they come out and they’re like, we were practicing ratios today in math.

And I can’t say the art ratio, you know, can we practice that? And so I like to pick those functional words and the words that they’re using in conversation and it helps them. It helps them feel a part of

therapy. Uh, and it’s just, I love having them help choose their words. It’s it’s their therapy for them.

 , so then we choose one word and we practice it 20 times and this helps the students create habits in their motor learning. Instead of doing 20 different words, I. I mean, it’s not that hard to come up with a handful of words to practice 20 times. And if the word is produced with greater than 80% accuracy, I then have the student put it in a silly sentence.

And sometimes I have students who don’t love coming up with [00:27:00] sentences on their own. I don’t know if they’re self-conscious or they just don’t know what I’m asking, but I love having them come up with a sentence because first of all, it’s more meaningful to them. It’s in how they would say it. And second, sometimes they’re hilarious.

So, I mean, it’s even inter entertaining for me to have them come up with silly sentences. So we choose a word and practice it, and then we put it in a sentence. And then after those two steps, then we choose another word and same thing practice at 20 times and then put it in a sentence. And at the end of each session, I always end practicing with success.

So they practice their best word. Sometimes I’ll ask them, what do you think your best word was today? And they can practice it. And if it really wasn’t, then I kind of, you know, try to sway them over to a word that was a little bit better for them. . So they practice that word at the end.

And another way is I’ve also tell them how hard they worked and how many arts. They said that day. Some of these kids thrive on trying to beat their score from the day [00:28:00] before. And so if you say you did 50 today, and the next day they did 60, they get so excited because they beat their score from yesterday.

And it’s a win-win for you because they’re practicing even more. So it’s, it’s awesome. , So that’s just kind of a general outline for every single time I work with an articulation students. So that, that’s what we do every single day. I see them. , I also have like a list of high-frequency words or maybe my iPad and my therapy bag, but we often just come up with words off the top of our heads, words that are meaningful to the student or things that we just see in the hallway.

You know, they can talk about the art project that they have on their wall and other things like that. For the phonological process students, it’s a little different. It does take a little more prep work, not, not a ton, but a little bit. So if I’m practicing with phonological students, they practice the same sound all week.

So if I’m working on final consonant deletion using like a modified cycles approach, I would work on the final [00:29:00] P all week long. And then the final M the next week, or if I’m doing the minimal pairs approach for final consonant deletion, I would use the same set of word pairs for that entire week. So I would use the final K minimal pairs words for that whole week.

Michelle Andrews: , I love that. They’re actually getting practice all throughout the week instead of just that like one chunk of time, the 30 minutes, because those types of approaches are meant to be spread out like that.

 Having more time, throughout the week.

Track 1: and they’re definitely made for that home practice too. So if you have students who can’t do some of that home practice or their parents aren’t around to do it, it’s great because they’re getting, they’re still getting that practice.

Michelle Andrews: Okay. So, so you mentioned that there’s not a lot of stuff that you bring to sessions, but, what about those kids that just do need a little bit more motivation? What are some activities that do bring in for motivation?

Track 1: There are several different things you could do. I have brought out a 50 and 100 [00:30:00] trials worksheets with little, you can bring out like a dice with little motivators, with little mini objects, or you could have them put it in a dry erase sleeve and use a dry erase marker. You could play a quick game of go fish.

You could play. I spy with either a picture scene or books or just items in the hallway. Like I said, we just talk about the art and stuff on the hallway. You could have the student bring out their spelling or vocabulary lists for the week and have them practice writing out those sounds and saying them as they, as they practice them, if students are on the reading level, you could bring some short stories or articles where they can highlight their sound.

Um, and then they can practice reading it. You could do one minute time to trials to go along with those kids who love numbers and love seeing themselves get better. I have a list of words to see how many they can say correctly in a minute. But for me, if they make a mistake, I make them stop. I, they, they don’t get to keep going.

That’s [00:31:00] their score for the day. So if they said 20 words and they made a mistake, but it’s only been 30 seconds, they only got 20 for the day. And so the students love to try and beat their scores from the previous day. Uh, one last game you could do, especially with some of those younger kids who might need some of those more visual practices is you could have some flashcards and lay out like three to five words and then take one of them away and ask the student which one is missing and then have them practice that word 10 to 20 times.

So you can make it a little bit more interesting that way by just playing little games or like a little memory game, things

Michelle Andrews: that’s awesome. We are joking about what I’m about to say earlier, before we recorded, but this almost makes me. Go back to the school. I did my CFY year in the schools and went to private practice. But oh man, this, this is so great. I feel like , I, I could be confident. I could be a confident school with Sophie, you know, easier said than done, but this sounds so amazing to me.

[00:32:00] Okay. So what about homework? Do you send homework? How, , what do you send home for homework? Tell me how that works.

Track 1: so I don’t know about you, but when I have a huge caseload and tons of students trying to implement homework is so hard to keep up with. Like, it’s incredibly hard to keep up with, but there are a few things that I do that I’ve done in the past and the current things that I like to do. So with those 50 and 100 trials, Arctic worksheets, you could write a few words at the top and send that home and have them practice at home.

You could put it in that dry erase sleeve and then sent home the same worksheet. Like you could use it more than once. It’s awesome. Uh, another activity is you could send home an activity at the beginning of the week, like on Monday and then check back on Friday. So you’d only have to check for a folder once a week.

Instead of several times I have two favorite activities. So my favorite homework activity is I choose one target word from the day. You guys might not even think this is homework, but I choose one [00:33:00] target word for the day. And I tell the student that that is their word that they have to say correctly all day long.

So I try to choose things like their brother’s name or a pet name or something that has their target sound. So every time they say that name, they’re supposed to remember to use their good speech sound. So it helps facilitate that generalization. And it’s just one word so they can totally remember it.

And it’s something memorable and easy to use it at home. . other favorite activity is I will text parents like one to three target words that their kid produced the best to put on their fridge for practice.

And I tell the parents every time your student walks by the fridge or goes to get a drink, they need to choose one word to practice 20 times. So if they walk by that fridge five times, they’ve practiced their word a hundred times already that day. And it’s simple. It’s easy to facilitate at home. They just put it on the fridge.

So it’s a great reminder and it’s something that parents could easily implement. They don’t have to sit down and have this 20 minute [00:34:00] speech therapy practice at home. It’s Hey, you walked by the fridge. Let’s practice this word 20 times, and then you’re on your way. If you like the idea of texting though, but you don’t want your parents to have your personal phone number, which I totally get.

Cause I, I don’t, I have a Google voice number that I use to message parents and you can get the app and like message from your phone even, but it goes through your email rather than through your phone number. Um, or you could

Michelle Andrews: that was my question. When you said that I was like text parents. Interesting. I’d do a lot of parents that texted, but, uh, from my personal number, but yeah, that’s, that’s cool. I didn’t know. You could get a Google voice number like that. Super convenient. So speaking of parents, how do parents typically feel about this?

Sounds like some might love it right off the bat and then some might need a little bit more time to understand or to figure out what exactly it is.

Track 1: the years. I have had a few parents that are a little hesitant, especially when I started at a new school. Uh, like you said, when you introduced me, I’ve been at like five different [00:35:00] schools. And so coming in gung ho and just, Hey, I want to change all your service time. Like, that’s kind of a bit much for parents sometimes, if you have been at your school for a while and have good rapport with some of the parents, I would start with a handful of them that you think might be open to trying this method.

And what I do is I often tell parents the benefits of this model. It’s I tell them it’s one-on-one therapy, which parents love right off the bat, because I tell them I do the best I can, but I have to see two or three kids, you know? So one-on-one, this is the way I can do one-on-one therapy kids miss less class time.

And so they have less classwork to make up. And the biggest one is kids generalize the conversation faster. So their, how to speech faster, which is what most of these parents want. The speech fixed. Right? And so I usually explain it to them that it’s like lifting weights. So rather than practicing once a week for a ton of time, it’s better to build up those muscles by practicing every day for just a couple minutes.

And the [00:36:00] last thing I usually tell them is we can try it for six weeks and I usually give them a date. Um, we can try it for six weeks and if their student isn’t making enough progress, we can change back to the other therapy schedule or increase the number of days. I work with the student. And in the 10 years that I’ve done this model, I have never had a parent come back and ask me to change it back because the kids have made so much more progress with this method than they did the old therapy way. So my biggest suggestion though, is to just start small, pick a handful of students who are like at the sentence, reading conversation level and start with them. And then as they get released from the caseload, add some new students. So you don’t have to just up and do your whole Arctic caseload start small.

Michelle Andrews: That’s great. Those are great, tips to be able to explain that to the parents. So how do you write this in the student’s IEP? How do you write their goals?

Track 1: that’s a great question. I basically write their goals the same as I would if I were seeing them as a traditional therapy model. And I know I don’t want to get into whether or not this is a [00:37:00] goal that you would want to implement at your school. Cause I know everybody has different opinions on how they would write their own goals, but this is just kind of how I write it is the student will verbally produce the R and R blends in all positions of words in four out of five opportunities.

After a model in the classroom or speech therapy setting across two consecutive data collections. However though, depending on your district, you may need to change how you write the service delivery. So your goals might not change, but your service delivery might, the APS in my district are written as service time per month.

So I would write it as 40 minutes a month or whatever the time is. but if you write by the number of sessions, you could say X number of five to 10 minute individual sessions, monthly or X number of five to 10 minute individual sessions per quarter, just depending on your district and what their policies

And as for billing Medicaid for this different, for this five minute articulation approach, you would want to check with your district. Our district [00:38:00] only bills Medicaid. One time a month for all of the services provided. So for us, it doesn’t matter if you do five minutes a day, but if you are a private contractor working in the schools, you will definitely want to check with your company and see how they are billing

Michelle Andrews: great to know. Yeah. Okay. So say you inherit an entire caseload of group therapy, or you want to start changing your caseload to include more of these types of sessions. Do you need to wait until the next annual review or what is the best way to make this change?

Track 1: I can’t emphasize this enough, but start small. Don’t try to jump in and do them all at once because it will be overwhelming. And the kids probably won’t fit very well into your schedule because you are so used to having those 20 minute or 30 minute chunks. It just it’ll be difficult to fit them in, but there are a couple of ways to make those changes.

So if the student’s annual review is due soon, like in the next month or two, I would just wait and make the changes at the IEP or pull it forward a little bit and do it. Then if the annual review is [00:39:00] not due, anytime soon, you could call the parents to amend the service time and the IEP, or you could hold an entire IEP meeting.

I would hesitate on just holding another IEP meeting, because if you’re trying to change several students at the same time, all of their IDPs are now going to be due at the same time at the beginning of next school year, which will be overwhelming. I did that one. how I know.

Michelle Andrews: that would be

lot

Track 1: That’s thing you could try is have students in groups of two for like 10 minutes and see how that works. Try just switching up that therapy time just a little bit without dropping it quite so much and changing to that five minute

Michelle Andrews: right. I love the flexibility there. , especially if you aren’t new to the school and you kind of know the kids already, it sounds like you could really have flexibility of like, these two could, that are working on the same goal and they’re both very talkative. They both could work on this very well together or just know this one needs to be one-on-one for this model.

Track 1: Can So just to [00:40:00] summarize all of this, I know this is so much information, but I, if you can’t tell, I love the syrupy approach and could literally talk about it all day long. I, this therapy model has so many benefits and it’s so helpful for me as an SLP. I can’t stress that enough. It has made my life as an SOP so much easier.

I feel like the kids don’t feel as stressed about coming to speech. And we got to get of this all done in 20 minutes. They just come out, we kind of relaxed and talk in the hallway and then they go back to the class like it’s as short as a bathroom break. It’s awesome. Students generalize their sounds more quickly.

So they’re off my caseload, faster, which again, 92 students, that was what I wanted was all of my kids off my caseload, as fast as I could barely any therapy prep time needed. I don’t know about you, but I am so busy and I just have so much to do. And so much paperwork that as sad as it is, I barely have any time to prep for therapy.

So it’s really. Really nice to just be able to just know, I just [00:41:00] grabbed my bag and I go, I love this approach because it helps build great rapport with students, especially those who need one-on-one time with adults who might not be getting it at home, or they need a little bit more attention in their class.

And they’re not really getting it from their teacher because their classes are huge too. It’s just, it’s so great for a lot of those students as well. And also just, if you’re unsure about this therapy approach, again, start small, don’t jump in with all of them because I promise you it will be really overwhelming.

I tried to do that once when I switched to school, tried to switch them all because they had so much service time and it was, it was a lot, it was overwhelming. Start with students who are already at the sentence and reading level. And as they graduate from speech, schedule a new student in their place, just have them take turns. Change, the students’ therapy time as their annual reviews are due, then you don’t have to do a whole bunch of extra paperwork like right now. And if you want to learn more from the company that created the five minute therapy program and the research behind it, you can check out their [00:42:00] website at the number five, five men, kids.com.

And again, I’m not an affiliate with them. I’m just a huge fan, their therapy

Michelle Andrews: Yeah. And I’ll have links to that too, in the show notes for you guys. Okay. Oh, I wanted to say if you had to prep for 90 kids, if you spent one minute about each one, that’s an hour and a half. So I mean, it can, it can get to spending a lot of time prepping.

So if you have kids that you can use this therapy model on and just already have, a go-to system of, we’re going to say this word and not have to spend hours and hours planning, that really saves you time, valuable time. I remember seeing on your Instagram, you had an Instagram real talking about how some of your kids have really opened up to you during these one-on-one sessions. Tell me about that.

Track 1: I have had several opportunities where that has come up, where I’ll see a couple of siblings and a couple of them were acting out in class and the oldest one I’d be talking to him and he [00:43:00] tell me that his parents were getting divorced, which made so much more sense for these other kids and their behaviors.

, I love that. How I build up these rapport with these students, that they feel comfortable enough to tell me when these things are going on in their lives. I’ve had a couple, tell me about how they were being bullied out at recess. And I’d asked them, have you told your teacher? And they said no, like, and so I was able to help make their teacher aware of what was going on.

And especially when I don’t know about you, but if my students are getting made fun of, for their speech, I go running in like guns, ablazing. I am like, you are not going to make fun of my student. They are trying their best and you cannot do that. So whenever I hear that they’re getting bullied, like my heart just aches for them.

And it aches that they didn’t feel like they could tell their teacher. And so it. It’s really great that they feel comfortable enough to open up to me, which I almost feel like that’s almost more important than the therapy itself is that the [00:44:00] students have someone who can help them in their lives, which in turn has changed my life.

I I’ve had a couple who’ve talked about self-harm and I mean, these are elementary school students. It’s it’s happening. It’s part of our society, which I hate to say it, but it is. And just knowing that these kids have somebody, especially these kids who might be more at risk for some of these things or have language delays and have difficulty socializing, things like that.

It just it’s really important that they have these one-on-one connections with an adult in the building that they feel

trusted and

Michelle Andrews: so special to form that bond and that relationship , with your students they feel like, oh, well, I’m going to see miss Richie , every day, this week for a few minutes, you know, this is someone that I see almost every day and we talk one-on-one and we’ve built that rapport. That’s huge.

Yeah. That can be life-changing those kids that really needed to tell someone something they’d maybe didn’t feel comfortable [00:45:00] saying of the teacher, in front of everybody, but and adult one-on-one that can be there for them. That’s so special.

Track 1: I actually, it’s funny. You should say that because I had a student who this last year moved from sixth grade to junior high and he like, literally asked me if I could come with him to junior high. So I could still him every day. And not because he needed it. Not because he needed the speech therapy, but because he wanted to talk with me everyday,

worked my heart.

Michelle Andrews: sweet

so I just love this. Obviously there’s research. There’s all these studies that have found all these benefits just therapy-wise but it sounds like there’s so many more benefits, even beyond saying your speech silence that this is huge.

 Okay. So since it’s so short, where do you work with these kids and what kind of materials do.

Track 1: I personally just see the kids out in the hallway. A lot of my teachers have little tables outside their classroom door because a lot of the kids are pulled out for interventions anyway. [00:46:00] And so I just use those tables. Sometimes I sit on the floor, I’ve known other SLPs who don’t want to sit on the floor.

So they just take like a rolling chair and just roll it down the hallway or one of those yoga balls or whatever. Um, to me, those are a little distracting, but the I’ve done the rolly chair before. I do have some kids that have been a little self-conscious about working in the hallway and sometimes I’ll find just an empty classroom or I know some SLPs that they do this five minute or tic approach, but their kids know exactly when they’re supposed to come to speech. And so they don’t have to call down to their class or anything.

They just know every day at this time I go down to speech work for five minutes and then go back.

Michelle Andrews: So sometimes they are in your therapy closet, whatever you have going on.

Track 1: Yeah, personally, I don’t do them in my classroom just because I’m so far away from everybody else. I just, I’m literally on the other side of the school. So I just go see them in the hallway. But like I said, I have a handful that are a [00:47:00] little more sensitive to it.

And so those, I would maybe pull for 10 minutes instead of five and just see them in our conference room or actually in my therapy room as for therapy materials. I honestly, I just carry this bag and it’s literally my five minute Arctic kid’s bag. It’s got maybe some wordless, like some high-frequency words or some vocabulary from that week.

If I’ve had time to collaborate with the teachers, with their. Vocabulary lists are, I might have a little whiteboard with some dry erase markers. I always have a clipboard with the data sheets, just in case I have to sit on the floor. I’ve got something to write on instead of trying to write on the carpet or on the walls, because that never works. I often have 50 and 100 trials pages. And with those I’ll have Kranz or little mini erasers, just something simple. And I always have Play-Doh I always have just this little thing of Play-Doh and it’s not necessarily for like the kids to play with, but it’s to make tongue [00:48:00] models if I need to. So if I need to make that our tongue model, I just make it out of Play-Doh or I bring my little mini mouth model.

I have a little tiny one that I got, like from the dollar store that I can use, that I can make a little tongue out of the Play-Doh and show on the roof of the mouth, what it looks like.

Michelle Andrews: those are awesome. Those are great ideas. I love the Play-Doh idea. That sounds so easy. You could just easily have that in a bag and just pull it out. That’s great.

Track 1: And if I go and open the Play-Doh and it’s dried out, that’s when I used my hands.

Michelle Andrews: happens

That’s funny.

. Okay. So now that we have ideas and different materials and activities and different ideas of how to implement this let’s review, what exactly. The five minute articulation therapy looks like, just so it’s fresh on our minds.

Track 1: sounds good. Yeah. So this approach, like I said, I call it five minute Arctic kids, but it’s also called blessed kids. It’s called speedy speech. That’s the trademark company name and there’s also a five minute [00:49:00] therapy trademark company. That’s also a big proponent of this therapy model and has done research into it.

The 500 or tick therapy model is basically like, it sounds so instead of seeing kids for that longer period of time, that 20 minutes or 30 minutes once, maybe twice a week, you see them one-on-one for a couple of days that week. So for me, when I was full-time right now, I’m having. When I was full-time and there five days a week, I would have a chunk of time where I would see these kids for three to five sessions a week.

So either every day or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, just depending on, on the scheduling. And I would schedule each of the kids for five to seven minutes, depending on, on their needs, the hand, how, how many speech sounds that they have that they’re working on or how severe some of their speech sounds are. and some of these kids who have lots of [00:50:00] therapy sounds. So if they’re like phonological, I would maybe try to see them more like four or five times a week, just because they do have a lot of those speech sounds and they do seem more severe than some of those articulation kids who maybe just have the R sound, which I know just has the R sound is a big, a big umbrella of sounds.

But, um,

just seeing these kids multiple times during the week, for as much time as you can do five minutes, seven minutes, some days I do seven because the kids on a roll and they’re doing awesome and they keep talking and keep using all their great sounds. And then the next minute I see them for free because I’m running behind.

And then the next minute, or the next day, I see them for another five or six minutes, or if I need to make up a session, I see them for 10 that day. And in scheduling these kids, I see them, I schedule at least five minutes longer than I need. So if I’ve got three kids. That I’m seeing for five [00:51:00] minutes each.

So that would be a total of 15 minutes. I schedule at least a 20 minute block, just so that I do have a little bit of scheduling leeway, because if you schedule minute to minute to minute, you will fall behind very quickly. So make sure to schedule in a little bit of a buffer so that you can walk from class to class so that you can call them out things

Michelle Andrews: I love that. Yeah. I, my personality, , I would get so nervous, like, um, it is. 1 0 5. I need to be seeing this person at this time. Yeah. But , going ahead and having a little bit of time in between, we’ll definitely let you relax a little bit and not being so paranoid about making each minute , running from classroom to classroom or anything like that.

That’s awesome. I really just love, I love this, this therapy model. I’m like mad that I didn’t know about This This at the school.

Track 1: like I said, my, my externship supervisor did it, so I was lucky I started off with it and saw how awesome it was.

Michelle Andrews: Yeah. The first time I ever [00:52:00] heard about this and I don’t know, maybe do I live , in a cave? I don’t know. I, feel like if I never heard about it, I’m sure people didn’t either. And so saw you on Instagram and you were talking about it. Wait, what, which is five minutes them more often in one-on-one.

, that was biggest issue with the schools is that they were group Arctic and it was just so difficult to get that one-on-one time with kids because you didn’t have one-on-one time. It was just, this is awesome.

Track 1: Yeah. And while you work with one kid, the other kids misbehaving and not practicing their

Michelle Andrews: Yep. And then you have to then turn and deal with all this and that. And then, yeah, this is great.

Track 1: So I’ve got a story. I don’t know if we’ll want to put it in the podcast or not though, but

Michelle Andrews: okay

Track 1: So I’m working out in the hallway with a student doing five and in Arctic kids. And I just hear this teacher come running down the hallway and just call my name is Stacey, Stacey. You know, this whisper.

And I was like, what? And I look, and this teacher is carrying a full grown cat down the [00:53:00] hallway. I’m not kidding. This cat had apparently crawled out of a

backpack And the

yes, a kid, brought their cat to school, had made a bed for it in their backpack. And the teacher is carrying it down the hallway.

And honestly, that was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in the hallway. We’ll drink

Michelle Andrews: Good thing you were in the hallway, you were there to help with that situation. Another benefit of this therapy. That’s

Track 1: Yeah. You’ll never know what you see if you’re out in the hallway more,

Michelle Andrews: would love to have heard that phone call to the parents.

Track 1: It did howl from the office for like half an hour while the parents can be,

Michelle Andrews: That’s really funny Oh my goodness.

. So you mentioned earlier about getting a hundred trials. , how does that work? How do you get those hundred trials?

Track 1: well, when you only choose a handful of words and practice them 20 times each, it is so easy. You literally need five words to practice [00:54:00] 20 times, and you easily have over a hundred words practice. And if you look at the research from the five minute therapy, they actually have a breakdown on how many words you can produce, which I think it was like 116 words in five minutes.

And then they had how many phrases, how many sentences, things like that. And for me, Some, some of my students are super motivated to keep going. Cause they’re like, oh, let’s reach 200. You know? And so I’ll work a little bit harder and a little bit longer that day, or they have a handful of words that they actually want to work on.

And so I want to work on all those words because they are so motivated to work on them. And so we’ll work a little longer one day and then maybe I’ll skip their session the next day, because we worked a little bit harder and it’s just, these kids get like three to 500 practices a week, practice words a week.

It’s amazing.

Michelle Andrews: from my experience working in the schools in groups, that is not how many [00:55:00] trials that we, I mean, I would try of course, but , just realistically, I think you can get so many more trials using this approach.

You said modified cycles approach. What do you mean.

Track 1: So for the modified, for a modified cycles approach, I basically take the idea of the cycles approach and how, the words that I’m using and what words I use next and going through those cycles. But to be modified, I’ll do some auditory bombardment at the beginning, but maybe not like a full minute, I might just do like 10 words for them to listen to.

And then I’ll say we’ll practice that. Uh, I think the example I gave was a final P or a final M so we’ll practice those final P words, how you choose those five words in that cycles approach. You know, it’s like five to three to seven words, right. And I just use those same words all week long. Those are their practice words that we, that we target.

 And then at the end of the week, I will see if there are [00:56:00] stimulus for the sound that we’re going to work on next week. So instead of doing auditory bombardment at the beginning and practicing and the end and doing the, the stimulus ability and more bombardment, I would just do a little bit of bombardment at the beginning, practice a little bit bombardment at the end, and then only do this stimulus ability at the end of the week to help me know what my targets are for the next week.

So that’s why I call it modified approach because we just practice that same word for the week. I’m not doing the full 60 minutes. So you’ll obviously have slightly different results than what the research shows for that, but I’ve still had a lot of success doing it this

Michelle Andrews: that’s awesome. I like that. You’re still utilizing that approach just in a modified way to meet this approach too. That’s really cool.

Track 1: I think the modified minimal Paris approach is pretty explanatory because it’s just the word Paris.

Yeah.

 

Michelle Andrews: This has been amazing. This, all this information has been so helpful. Thank you so much, Stacey, , for taking time to explain all [00:57:00] this to us

Track 1:

you’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And just, if you guys have any more questions, I would love to keep talking about this with you all day

Michelle Andrews: yes, we’ll have to have you on again. And we can just talk more about this. , is awesome. Thank you for listening. We hope you learned something today. All of the references and resources throughout this episode are listed in the show notes , and are also listed on the pep-talk podcast for SLPs website.

If you’ve been listening while you’re driving on a run, doing the dishes, , , episode is transcribed for you to refer back to easily, make sure to follow Stacey Richie on Instagram. She has so many helpful tips and tricks, especially. About the five minute articulation therapy approach and all sorts of things.

She is an SLP to follow for sure. So thank you so much, Stacey. Again. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Stacey 1: Thank you.