“Wait a minute, I’ll just look that up and tell yooooou… sorry, I just need to find where I put it. Umm, okay, let me Google it! Alright, ‘Final consonant deletion elimination’. Come on Google – sorry, my computer’s really slow. Oh! Here it is, I’ll just click here, huh, wait for it to load… There we go! Okay, so I would expect that Emma would have stopped dropping the ends of her words off at approximately three to three-and-a-half- years of age”.
Phew! That was exhausting just typing the monologue that used to happen to me just so that I could find the chart that I needed to reference an age of acquisition. But I made some New Years iPad Resolutions to be more efficient and am just loving having my favourite charts and checklists at immediate access. You guys need to get on the same page.
Before I share what I have – let’s think storage. For free PDFs, iBooks is the way to go. If you want to draw on PDFs and highlight things, Notability has had me covered for the last 6 years.
Elimination of Phonological Processes: I use two tables for different
reasons. The Playing with Words 365 chart (featured) is fab as I like how the phonological processes are broken down into different types of processes (such as substitution, syllable structures etc.) There is an extra layer of analysis for me and it’s so quick to circle and highlight what a child is doing. For a simple parent friendly version you can’t go pass Caroline Bowen’s, particularly as it is organized by age of elimination (I just screenshot the table and upload).
Typical Speech Development: This is the #1 most used reference on my iPad and it’s by an amazing Australian researcher, Dr Sharynne McLeod. It is a compilation of data on typical speech development organised by children’s ages and referencing too many articles to count. This takes the agony out of deciding which set of speech norms you reference as they are all compiled together and references TONS much information including: DDK rates, consonant sounds acquired, consonant clusters acquired, vowels, intelligibility, phonetic inventory and present/declining phonological processes to expect and phonological awareness. Great for complex speech, I use Notability to highlight what the child CAN say or do and use it as a visual way to show parents what I would expect for their age. I love taking a screenshot of this page and then ‘redoing’ this after a stint of therapy to compare growth and progress.
Audiogram of Familiar Sounds: There are a lot of parent friendly charts that plot the frequency, hearing level and speech sounds on one easy page. This is a must-have reference, particularly when working with younger kids who have ear infections or hearing loss – I pull up this chart and see if I can find any correlation between the type of articulation errors and their hearing loss. Download the free version that I use from the John Tracy Clinic or just search on Google images ‘audiogram for speech’ and take your pic.
Speech Sounds Development Chart: Take the time to search this Aussie website for it has some top notch charts and checklists for all different areas of communication. Their speech sounds development chart and checklists are great to use for screeners, or even guide your questions for a speech evaluation. On Notability I can check the boxes and email to myself/save as a PDF so it’s great for on the go.
Articulation Visuals: These visuals from Bruce Myhre are just what I need sometimes when I’m trying to figure out how to choose the right vowel for the right consonant or understand what is going on in my student’s mouths. He currently has visuals for points of articulation for consonants, vowels and articulatory anatomy. I have shown these to my kids before to try to get them to understand where their tongue placement should be and it’s been a big hit… I secretly would love to blow these up!
Follow my Pinterest board Checklists & Charts for SLPs for the whole collection and happy downloading, uploading and getting visual with speech. Comment below if there is an amazing visual that I NEED on my iPad, because let’s face it, we all have those special finds on the internet that nobody else knows about!
Yes! I want FUNCTIONAL therapy freebies!
The articulation visual has labelled k g Ng as alveolar…… perhaps should be velar?
You know Mary, I didn’t even read that! I was too busy staring at the colours and the mouth which is how I use it. Thanks for picking up, I’ll email Bruce and see if he’s aware.