If youβve ever looked at the Cycles Approach and thought, βI know this could be helpful, but Iβm still trying to make sense of how a cycle actually works,β youβre not alone. The Cycles Approach is different from other phonological interventions, and it is often used with children who are highly unintelligible and have many phonological patterns. This page brings together Cycles Approach resources, therapy materials and practical supports to help you visualise the process, plan your targets and implement this approach with more confidence.
Purchase the Cycles Approach Handbook, a comprehensive, step-by-step intervention guide written for SLPs. The handbook is over 140 pages long and contains the “intervention manual” and clips to watch so you know HOW to implement the approach. Currently, over 390 reviews!
ReadΒ for an in-depth review; we highly recommend reading the Cycles Approach chapter from the Interventions from Speech Sound Disorders in ChildrenΒ textΒ (Williams, McLeod & McCauley, 2021).
Read the text Evaluating and Enhancing Children’s Phonological Systems by Barbara Hodson.
Watch this short 6-minute video to visualise what the Cycles Approach can look like in therapy. Rebecca walks through how one cycle may target multiple phonological patterns – such as final consonant deletion, s-cluster reduction, fronting and gliding – across 10 to 15 weeks, with different sounds and word targets selected each week.
The key thing to remember is that the cycles approach is not about mastering one sound or pattern before moving on. Instead, you work on a pattern for a set period of time, move to the next pattern, and then come back to it in a later cycle if needed. At the end of each cycle, you reassess and use that information to plan what comes next. Children also need to be stimulable for the sounds you choose, so stimulability checks are an important part of target selection.
We create fun print and digital therapy materials in our Cycles Approach range. The packets can be purchased as individual sounds or bundled together. You will find printable homework sheets, games, activities, listening lists and Boom Cards.Β
Materials for primary and secondary patterns include
Register for Barbara Hodson’s three-hour course titled “Evaluating and Enhancing Children’s Phonological Systems”. This is available on the ASHA Learning Center.
Purchase the Cycles Intervention card decks authored by Amy Graham and published with Bjorem Speech Publications.
We include short clips and a 30-minute therapy session in the Cycles Approach Handbook.
