Do you have the Bjorem Speech Sound Cues or have you been debating on buying them? This quick course will cover functional ways to use the Bjorem Speech Sound Cues in speech therapy for kids in preschool through elementary school. Join me learning more about these visual cues that make all the difference in my therapy sessions!

I frequently get asked how I manage my therapy sessions and how I get young children to cooperate so easily. This quick course will address ways to empower children through a growth mindset and how the words we use influence how they interact and cooperate. We will focus on 9 self-strategies that will help YOU help your clients move past challenges, creating a successful, low-stress therapy experience. Join me for this fun course. You will leave with WORD POWER!

A BIG part of our job as speech pathologists is parent education. For this course I have come up with 10 things that our parents and families of children with apraxia of speech need to know. From my experience working with families of children with apraxia, these are the things they do not know. You will feel empowered to empower your families and you may just learn something you can add to your apraxia toolbox too.

Conducting a thorough oral mechanism exam (OME) should be a key component of any comprehensive speech evaluation. Identifying and/or ruling out underlying structural, functional, and motoric impairments is critical and necessary for the differential diagnosis of speech sound disorders because accurate differential diagnosis is key for the selection of appropriate interventions, which in turn provides for more effective and efficient outcomes.

The cycles approach is a widely-known evidence-based approach for the remediation of moderate to severe phonological deficits among young children who are highly unintelligible (Hodson & Paden, 1983). This systematic intervention is designed to help improve overall intelligibility by targeting specific phonemes for a particular period of time rather than until a specific accuracy criterion is reached (Hodson, 2010). However, there is often confusion about what a *cycle* actually consists of, how to select and prioritize speech targets, and how therapy sessions should be carried out. There also may be hesitation among speech language pathologists who have doubts about how this approach may be effectively used in challenging therapy settings, such as over teletherapy and when children need to be seen in groups, such as in the school setting. This presentation will provide an overview of and rationale for the cycles approach and demonstrate how to effectively organize therapy sessions. Strategies for choosing appropriate target phonemes and target words, as well as videos of actual therapy sessions demonstrating implementation, will be shown.

Setting appropriate speech goals help speech language pathologists set a game plan for therapy, organize speech targets, and plan the trajectory of remediation. It is commonly understood that goals specific to speech and language should be S.M.A.R.T., specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely; however, the details we include within each of these specific domains may differ based upon the nature of the child’s particular speech sound disorder. The underlying deficit(s) contributing most to a child’s speech sound disorder will often determine how a particular goal is addressed, most frequently in terms of phonetic context and complexity of the targets, as well as the criterion with which it should be measured. For example, research has shown that once a child with a phonological deficit achieves generalization of a target sound in spontaneous speech with at least 50% accuracy, mastery of that skill will likely continue to emerge without direct intervention (Hodson & Paden, 1983; Williams, 2012). Conversely, if the child’s speech sound disorder is motoric in nature, as with articulation errors at the phonetic level, then careful selection of phonetic contexts and increased criterion levels should be considered. This presentation will focus on how S.M.A.R.T. goals may be written for children who have phonological delays and disorders, as well as motor-based articulation errors and how goal writing may differ across the five S.M.A.R.T. domains.

Have you ever started using the minimal pairs approach and then felt "stuck" when your sessions do not go to plan, and all progress stops? In this presentation, we will be addressing three common areas where SLPs experience difficulty using minimal pairs. You will leave this session being able to problem solve what you can do when your child is not stimulable for their target sound, how to help your students understand minimal pairs and options for when your child is not generalizing.

Have you ever struggled to elicit speech sounds in your therapy sessions and wondered what other 'tricks' are out there when your student is not stimulable for a sound? Combining case examples with real-life therapy videos, the presenter will explore eleven different types of production cues. Participants will learn how to individualize a range of multisensory production cues and expand their toolbox using therapy resources and materials available on the internet.

Do you ever receive feedback that speech homework just doesn't get done? Or perhaps you are looking for more realistic and achievable ways to support families with practicing speech sound goals at home? Whether you are working directly or indirectly with parents and caregivers, you will leave this session energized and confident with new strategies, practical activities, and problem-solving skills to individualize speech practice in the home environment.