I was overwhelmed by the large response I received asking to participate in my live webinar! For that reason, I decided to offer many opportunities to participate. I will offer live webinars on Oct. 6, 7, 11, 20, 22, Nov. 2 and Jan. 3.

Here is some general information:

Free Webinar-Using the SATPAC Program and Approach to Remediate the /s/ and /r/ Sounds.

Stephen Sacks will present this webinar showing an effective and efficient way to systematically remediate these sounds. Six peer-reviewed studies have shown the effectiveness of the SATPAC Program and Approach with most students averaging around 5 hours of direct therapy to be remediated.

Webinars will be limited to 500 participants. Register here: https://satpac.com/sacks-workshops/s-and-r-live-webinars/

All times listed are Pacific. SATPAC Speech is an ASHA CEU provider.

Contact steve@satpac.com if your larger district (at least 100 participants) is interested in having a private webinar on a date that works for you. I could also do a 6 hour webinar if preferred.

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

(Note: If you took the 6-hour webinar “The SATPAC Approach: An Effective and Efficient Way to Remediate Speech Sound Disorders (ABAE 2060 or 2061)”, or the 3-hour webinar “/r/ and /s/ Remediation Using the SATPAC Approach” (ABAE 1551 or 1661) you would not be eligible for this free webinar unless you are in a different CEU reporting period.)

The picture is my granddaughter Abby at 2 1/2.

I just received an email from an SLP who works in a district with 17 SLPs. I wrote in a previous newsletter that I would do a free 3-hour webinar on remediating the /s/ and /r/ sounds using the SATPAC Program and Approach but I need at least 50 SLPs to do this. This would be for ASHA CEUs as SATPAC Speech is an ASHA CEU provider.

Contact steve@satpac.com if you or your district are interested in joining with her district for a webinar.
Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

The picture is my granddaughter Abby at 27 months enjoying one of the finer things in life–a chocolate chip cookie at a farmers market!

As I wrote in my last newsletter, SATPAC is undergoing big changes. We have started a $20 annual subscription and permanently lowered the purchase price to $100 (https://app.satpac.com/#/register). The reason is that my goal is (and has always been), to have this program widely used by SLPs and this should make it easier for this to happen.

I’ve retired after 41 years of school therapy so I’m putting a lot more energy into SATPAC. If you work in a district with 50+ SLPs (or would like to partner with a district to be around 50 SLPs), and are interested, I will do a free 3-hour live webinar for your group. It will be on my approach and how to remediate the /s/ and /r/ sounds effectively and efficiently. SATPAC Speech is an ASHA CEU provider.

My research partner Peter Flipsen Jr. and I have just submitted a research paper where 7/10 kids in the study were remediated for their /s/ or /r/ sounds in just under 5 hours average time.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

Contact steve@satpac.com or (559) 438-4426 if you are interested in me presenting webinars for your school district or organization.

The picture is my granddaughter Abby at 27 months enjoying one of the finer things in life–a chocolate chip cookie at a farmers market!

Here is my story:

In the mid-1990s, I was sitting in my speech room after a day of therapy. I thought to myself that as a profession, we are really missing great opportunities in terms of remediating speech sound disorders. I realized as the Articulation Mentor for my district, that our ultimate goal for our students is conversational competence. But most of what I was seeing was SLPs using single word picture cards with target sounds on them with no apparent rhyme or reason in their presentation to the students. I also noticed that in almost every case, the practice was much slower than normal conversation. After that day, I vowed that I would try to improve the way we, as a profession, remediate speech sound disorders by developing a very systematic program that incorporated the elements of conversational speech (i.e., coarticulation, normal rate and natural prosody) along with some best practices (facilitating contexts, nonwords, and lots and lots of repetitions to develop correct motor patterns).

Shortly thereafter, I developed the SATPAC Program and spent close to 7 years refining it to ensure its viability for use by SLPs. After commercially releasing SATPAC, I took to the road and presented workshops and spoke at various conferences and conventions, a practice I continue to this day.

Since 2013, my colleague Peter Flipsen, Jr. and I have 5 peer-reviewed studies showing that in many cases (particularly with the /r/ and /s/ sounds), remediation can occur in around 5 hours of therapy using this very systematic approach.

Despite the success of the program with students, I haven’t achieved my ultimate goal. In a profession with over 150,000 SLPs, only a few thousand are SATPAC users. However, the overwhelmingly positive response from SATPAC owners and unsolicited emails about what a terrific program SATPAC is has strengthened my resolve.

I now realize that the price of the program has been an obstacle at $199, and even currently at $100—which was my response to the pandemic—it is still too expensive for many SLPs.

In response to this realization, I decided that SATPAC will now be available for the subscription price of $20 annually. Since my goal is to change the way we as a profession remediate speech sound disorders, I am optimistic that this will get the program into widespread use. I’m confident SLPs will experience the beauty and power of the program, as well as the success that I have had these past 26 years. And I need your help! Please share this information with your colleagues and SLP Coordinators.

If you already own the program, nothing has changed. This subscription price is for new SATPAC users. And I will continue to sell the program for $100 permanently for those who want to purchase. Either way, you will receive a free 6-hour ASHA CEU webinar that includes the SATPAC approach, rationale for using it and how to navigate through the program so you understand how to use this powerful tool.

For more information, check out the SATPAC website https://app.satpac.com/#/register or contact me steve@satpac.com if you have any questions.
Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

Contact steve@satpac.com or (559)438-4426 if you are interested in me presenting to your school district or organization.

Recently, I’ve had a number of referrals from SLPs with difficult cases that they have not been able to remediate which I’ve handled over ZOOM. Contact me if you are interested.

If you are wondering about the photo, that is my granddaughter Abby who just turned 2 years old!

Welcome to 2021! I hope you stay healthy and we will be able to start resuming more of a normal life in the near future. (Here is my granddaughter Abby at 20 months).

One of the first major workshops I presented well over 10 years ago was in South Dakota. One of the participants has kept in touch over the years and recently showed me a system that she had developed. It is called ArticClick and is on the Teachers pay Teachers website: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Search:ArticClick

Over the years as I’ve done workshops on my SATPAC Program and approach, I’ve gotten feedback after the workshops how attendees have creatively customized the program to be more effective with their students. One email I will never forget was from a very creative SLP who was involved in drama. He took the nonwords from the SATPAC Practice Phase lists and created a Stars Wars type play with planets, universes, starships, names, etc. all utilizing words like BEETSEET, MITSEET and BEETSID. I could imagine the students saying things like “Captain BEETSEET, the CHATSEETS from planet BEETSAICH are attacking!

I have always said in my workshops that the SATPAC program is just another tool in your toolkit (although a very powerful one!) and to make it your own. So getting back to ArticClick, I can see the beauty of this program to improve self-monitoring which leads to faster and more consistent generalization to conversational speech. I was also stunned by how inexpensive it is. Here is a visual and description from the creator Kandice Hoffman:

Are you striving to get your speech students to transfer correct production into conversational speech? Carry-over takes time and training. ArticClick helps you teach the skill of self-monitoring, an essential step in carryover.

ArticClick was designed to work one on one, in small groups or as homework. We talk about the importance of speech homework; this was to help fill the gap!

ArticClick targets the sounds /k, g, f, v, dz, ch, sh, l, r, s, z/ and /l, r, s blends/; these can be purchased in packs (like /k, g/) or all the sounds in one bundle.

A progress tracker is also included for those students motivated by a visual progression through each level.

Anyway, check it out and let me know if you find this helpful because I’m certain it is!

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

Contact steve@satpac.com or (559)438-4426 if you are interested in me presenting webinars for your school district or organization.

The SATPAC Program (which includes a 6 hour webinar for ASHA CEUs) is still half price ($100). Here is the link: https://satpac.com/purchase/ Use the coupon code: SATPAC Half Price

About a year and a half ago, I got a call on my answering machine from a mom in Colorado. We corresponded by email and it turned out she had a 20 year old son in college who had significant problems with the /r/ sound despite years of speech therapy. Another SLP who had worked with him suggested she contact me.

I thought that this would be interesting for a couple of reasons. First it would be a real challenge based upon his age and the fact that it was teletherapy which I had never done.

When the student, who I will call “Z” and I first talked, he was about 25% accurate in conversation with most errors postvocalic. We began using the SATPAC Program and Approach. We discussed in length what is needed to make a correct, consistent /r/ sound. We started with the SATPAC facilitating context word, EERGA because the EE keeps the tongue wide and stabilized on the back molars and the /g/ sound after the /r/ moves the tongue (dorsum) up and back which due to coarticulation, facilitates correct /r/ production.

Z had a lot of difficulty being consistent at first with jaw position, so he used 3 infant tongue depressors taped together as bite blocks to keep the jaw stable and the mouth slightly open. Eventually, he did stabilize the jaw and we slowly went through the lists. He got stuck on List 4 which is the first list that transitions from the EER to all the various R-vowel sounds. Like many /r/ students, he had particular difficulty with the OR and OOR sounds. I had to stress over and over that all vocalic /r/ sounds are diphthongs of ER. So, OR is really O (with the lips rounded) and then back into a big smile for the ER. It should be noted that that is not the normal position for the correct ER. That is, a normal ER keeps the lips slightly rounded. However, my experience is that at this stage of therapy, if the student does not keep the big smile/wide tongue, then they lose contact with the lateral margins of the tongue against the back molars and lose the palatal constriction necessary to make a correct /r/ sound.

It was really slow going for a couple of months, but Z practiced diligently and eventually got it. We continued with Lists 5 and 6, then with transfer/generalization beginning with phrases and sentences where he used a tally counter whenever he said the /r/ sound. This was particularly difficult as he often was not aware when he said the /r/ sound. With practice he improved and became accurate identifying when he said /r/. Finally, he used the tally counter in conversation and then we moved to normal conversation without it.

His homework at this point was to read using the tally counter or to have real or imagined conversation with someone again using the tally counter. He was asked to record his practice and listen to make sure he was getting all his /r/ sounds. I asked him to do 100 /r/ sounds a day, but he often did not do homework daily but more typically 3-5 times a week.

After about a year, we basically stopped the therapy as he was around 80% accurate in conversations with me. I checked in with him at first every 2 weeks for 2-3 months, then a month, then two months. His conversation ranged from a low of 67% accurate to the last two times when he was at 92% accurate. I dismissed him after not seeing him for two months and seeing that he was able to maintain his accuracy at 92%.

So here are a few of my thoughts. First is that due to brain plasticity, it becomes more difficult after the age of around 8 1/2 to remediate speech sounds. This was one of the most difficult cases I ever worked on. I know that when you have had millions of incorrect productions, correcting that becomes a real challenge and that it takes thousands of correct productions to make that change. The fact that the SATPAC Program is so systematic and encourages lots and lots of repetitions, made this change possible.

Also, motivation is huge, and Z was motivated. Although he never did as much homework as I asked him to do, he did stick with it and did not give up, even thought there was real slow going on List 4 for a couple of months when he did not make hardly any progress.

Third, buy-in in therapy is really important. I’m often asked if kids will stick with SATPAC because the truth is, it is probably the most boring program in our profession. However, in the 25 years I’ve been using the program, I’ve only had a few kids object to doing the program. The reason is that kids who have struggled with their speech realize that what they are doing is working which is exciting and motivating and leads to success as was the case with Z.

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

Contact steve@satpac.com if you are interested in me presenting webinars for your school district or organization.

The SATPAC Program (which includes a 6 hour webinar for ASHA CEUs) is still half price ($100). Here is the link: https://satpac.com/purchase/

At the end of last year, I wrote my reflections on the year. I finished it with:

So, I still like what I’m doing and will be going for 40 years beginning in August!

Needless to say, this year has been like no other in the last 40 years. When schools shut down in California in March, it became very clear that my school district had a big problem. I work for a district that has one Preschool through 8th grade school in a low SES primarily farm worker town about 30 minutes from my city.

What happened with my district is particularly relevant to the Black Lives Matter movement happening in our country. According to the Pew Research Center in a survey conducted last year, Black and Hispanic adults are significantly less likely to own a computer or have high speed internet in their homes.

In my district, the plan was to switch to online learning or sending packets of work home on a weekly basis. It turns out that virtually none of my families had the internet so until 3 or 4 weeks ago, my therapy involved sending papers home to practice and calling and/or texting parents to check in with them. It turned out that some parents didn’t take calls and didn’t have their phones set up for messages. Others didn’t respond. It was difficult to know if my students were doing anything speech or language related.

Then about 3-4 weeks ago, some hot spots were set up so students would have internet access and Chromebooks and tablets were sent home. At this point, other problems surfaced. Many students were incapable of checking their emails and clicking on the link for our meetings. Many parents had no clue how to do anything on the computer. Parents were told they could get set up by going to the school and getting help but not all of them did that.

For the students I could work with, the internet that we used was adequate but not the best. A big problem was that many of these kids come from large families and the students did not have a quiet place to work with me. It was not uncommon to have younger siblings making lots of noise, parents cooking and talking, radios going in the background, etc.

On the plus side, it was nice to reconnect with my students and give them some feedback about their speech/language issues. By our last session, I felt like with consistent sessions, my students would make progress.

I couldn’t help but contrast my experience with higher SES families where students have their own rooms, a quiet place to work as well as their own computers and excellent internet connectivity.

So while many problems exist related to the digital divide, I believe an important step that we as a nation should take for our students since we don’t know how long Covid-19 is going to be around, would be to have universal high speed internet available for all families in our country as part of public education. As education moves more and more online, all students need to have equal access to education.

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

Contact steve@satpac.com if you are interested in me presenting webinars for your school district or organization.

Like so many of you, my life has changed dramatically the past couple of weeks. I’m basically not working and not going out. I tend to do well with routine, and it has been disrupted. A large part of my purpose in life for the last 40 years has been helping children with their speech and language problems and this has stopped. From the reading I’m doing, it doesn’t sound like COVID-19 at is going to end quickly in the U.S.

So, what to do? I’ve found a couple of things helpful. First, if you have the means, donate to your local Food Bank and/or other local organizations that are dealing with this crisis. While I have been inconvenienced, many people’s lives have been devastated and they need immediate help. Second, I’ve been sharing information that I think is helpful with family and friends which also keeps me connected with people in my life. My religious community is still working to make the world a better place.

Professionally, I’m thinking about what would be helpful with SATPAC. Even though most of us are not actively working with others, I decided to sell the program for half price ($100) for the immediate future. If you have been thinking about getting the program, now would be a good opportunity to play around with it so when therapy does resume, you could hit the ground running. For those of you who don’t know, I answer all SATPAC and articulation remediation questions typically within a day so you can email me if you have any questions. To purchase the program, go to this link: (https://satpac.com/purchase/) and use the coupon code SATPAC Half Price

I’m also thinking about doing a low-cost 6-hour webinar over 2 days talking about the SATPAC Program and Approach that I’ve found so successful over the last 25 years. This will probably be near the end of April as I’m assuming, we will not be going back to work after Spring break.

Wishing you all the best and, most of all, take care!

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

I’m doing less private workshops recently and more professional development presentations to school districts. If your district is interested, contact me steve@satpac.com for details.

Because I want SLPs from all over to use and understand my program, I have a .6 CEU ASHA webinar that is basically the same as my live presentations. Go to the SATPAC website for details. Here is the link: https://satpac.com/workshops/webinar

A School Psychologist recently shared with me an interaction he had with his school SLP. She was dismissing a student who had the /r/ sound in therapy but wasn’t using it in conversation. Her rationale was that he knows how to make the sound and it’s his responsibility to use it.

This always gets me agitated when I hear this as I think it is lazy and irresponsible on the part of the SLP. Thinking more kindly, it probably wasn’t taught in their professional training and it should have been. Transferring and generalizing speech sounds takes work, skill and knowledge and is part of the therapy process.

Using the SATPAC Approach, I begin transfer with phrases that are part of the SATPAC Program and have a prevocalic and postvocalic target sound in each phrase abutting all the various possible consonant combinations. The student is given a tally counter and has to push the button whenever he says the target sound. When I first began doing this, I was shocked by how often my students did not know when they were saying their target sound. Using this technique gets them to consistently self-monitor which is necessary at first for transfer. As they get the hang of it, the rate speeds up to a normal conversational rate which should be your goal. Often the student who has learned a speech sound, does not have the motor skill to be using that sound in conversation at a normal rate. This takes time and practice. The student is given a tally counter to take home and to use with homework.

From there we go to short sentences again monitoring with the tally counter. We do longer sentences then short stories. I use the S-CAT stories by Secord and Shine which have entertaining drawings to go along with the stories. Finally, if necessary, we work on conversation. At all of these levels, the student is using a tally counter to monitor their speech and is using the tally counter at home as part of their weekly homework.

If the student is not remediated, we continue by using their classroom reading texts and discussing their stories with the student continuing to self-monitor with the tally counter and then self-monitor without it.

When they are dismissed, I will do stability checks usually after 1 month and 3 months to make sure that they have not slipped back. If they have not, they have finished therapy.

All those steps might be necessary to get to conversational competence and are part of our responsibility as SLPs!

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

P.S. In case you didn’t read January’s newsletter, that’s my granddaughter Abby in the picture.

I’m doing less private workshops recently and more professional development presentations to school districts. If your district is interested, contact me steve@satpac.com for details.

Because I want SLPs from all over to use and understand my program, I have a .6 CEU ASHA webinar that is basically the same as my live presentations. Go to the SATPAC website for details. Here is the link: https://satpac.com/workshops/webinar