Homework

Homework is essential for successful speech remediation. As Pam Marshalla wrote in her book “Carryover Techniques”, In building any skill or change in behavior, rehearsal, practice and drill are absolutely necessary. Is it possible to develop excellence in sports, music, cooking or modifying speech without rehearsal, practice and drill?

I did some figuring and discovered that if a student is receiving speech services in a group of three for 30 minutes, once a week, the student is getting speech for .5% of his waking hours. The odds are that the other 99.5% of the time, the student is using his speech incorrectly. Just a few minutes of practice a few days a week can make a big difference in shifting this 99.5 percent from incorrect to correct speech.

How should we deal with students who do not do their homework? I frequently have this problem. The way I operate is that I give homework but don’t ask that it be returned. The reason for this is that I’ve learned over the years that it’ s not worth hassling with because most kids do not return their homework. I don’t want to waste time coercing them with things like sticker charts. I simply go by the students’ progress. If they are not progressing after 3-4 sessions, I call their parents. Often, the parents are not getting the homework. I stress for example, that I send a homework paper every Tuesday so check in the backpack for that. SATPAC lists can be emailed through a feature on the lists which is another way to deal with that problem.

I’ve presented many workshops where I’m asked what if they don’t do their homework due to various things like the parents being too busy with work or not understanding what to do. Those are legitimate concerns but my experience has been that there is always someone the student can practice with. At school there are classroom aides, parent volunteers, super star students from other classes, etc. At home there might be siblings, aunts, uncles or friends.

One of the keys to successful homework is to send home only what the student can do accurately. So in SATPAC, if we are working on list 2 in therapy, the student is practicing list 1 at home. I recently got an email from an SLP who is using an innovative method for her students’ speech homework. It is called Google Classroom which her district uses. She records the SATPAC lists and her students are able to access them at home and repeat the nonsense words after her.

So make sure you give homework and you will notice how much of a difference it makes in speeding up the remediation process!

Stephen Sacks
SATPAC Speech

I am available to present for professional develop both live and via live webinars. Contact me steve@satpac.com for more information.

My upcoming workshops are in Tucson January 19 and in Tempe January 20 and 21. I just added the Saturday, January 20 workshop due to demand. There is also a May 6 workshop in Anaheim. 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 new SATPAC website for details. Here is the link: https://satpac.com/workshops/webinar

The are two 3 hr. webinars (Using the SATPAC Approach with Highly Unintelligible Middle School Students and The 7 Stages of Phoneme Development) available for viewing. As always, you can earn ASHA CEUs. Each webinar is $49 or $79 for both.

Wishing you all a happy holiday season and for a more peaceful loving world!