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What are Articulation Worksheets?

K'Lee Banks
K'Lee Banks

Articulation worksheets are learning materials primarily used by speech therapists to help children and adults who have speech disorders learn to enunciate individual letter sounds, blends and words. Depending on the age of the individual receiving speech therapy services, articulation worksheets might contain only pictures; letters or words with pictures; or only words or letter blends, such as "bl" and "tr." Sometimes speech therapists incorporate articulation cards into speech therapy games to reinforce learning and phonological awareness simultaneously with a fun activity.

Speech therapists routinely evaluate their clients' communication needs and adjust therapy sessions accordingly. When the speech therapist identifies speech disorders that affect an individual's ability to enunciate sounds, the therapist chooses the appropriate articulation activities, which might include speech therapy games that use articulation cards or pronunciation games that use articulation worksheets. Increasing an individual's phonological awareness — the ability to recognize, identify and handle speech sounds — is the primary objective of articulation worksheets.

A speech therapist may use articulation worksheets to treat a child with an articulation disorder.
A speech therapist may use articulation worksheets to treat a child with an articulation disorder.

Articulation disorders affecting an individual's ability to pronounce words might stem from either receptive or expressive language disorders, or both. A receptive language disorder impairs an individual's ability to hear, process and understand spoken words, and an expressive language disorder restricts an individual’s ability to speak and convey words in their proper context. A lack of phonological awareness typically afflicts both receptive and expressive areas of communication. If an individual does not first recognize specific speech sounds, he or she will be unable to successfully form words to communicate with others. Articulation worksheets can address both the receptive and expressive sides of language by helping individuals first recognize and enunciate speech sounds, rather than addressing the meanings of words.

The variations of specific communication disorders are numerous, and several are relevant and appropriate in regard to the value of articulation worksheets. The most common articulation disorders affect the enunciation of sounds or words, particularly omissions, deletions, changes and additions of sounds or letters. A child who has an articulation disorder, for instance, might say "wike" for "like" or "ghetti" for "spaghetti." Articulation activities for this child may therefore include worksheets or cards that have pictures and words beginning with "l" or blends such as "bl" and "pl" to provide pronunciation practice for that sound. To address the omission or deletion of initial syllables, the speech therapist might choose a speech therapy game with multiple-syllable words, such as "banana" and "spaghetti," to help the child recognize and practice enunciation of entire words.

Discussion Comments

bluespirit

I went to speech therapy as a kid, and funny enough, I do not remember the sounds that I had to work on and neither does my family (I was the third of four children and I think my parents were lucky to keep track of most things)!

But I do remember the articulation worksheets I took home for practice. It was a great way to extend practice and I always did the home practice because it was a part of my prize contract. If I did my homework once a day for five days, I would get a small prize.

aLFredo

@Greenweaver – Also, I wanted to mention that I understand your feelings about the cost of speech therapy and the choice you made secondary to the minimal errors it sounds like your child was making.

But I also have one statement of warning to those who try at-home remediation of sounds – practice does not make perfect if practiced wrong, rather it further ingrains the incorrect sound, so please watch your children’s productions of sounds carefully while providing at-home articulation practice.

amysamp

You can find free articulation worksheets online as well. As a speech language pathologist I know this because we are always looking for new ones because some sounds take a while to remediate and we are always looking for ways to continue to make the practice of the sounds unique, fun, and motivating.

Another idea for articulation worksheets is to have one worksheet and have the child keep track of his or her progress and after a certain amount of predetermined progress or amount of times the worksheet's words are practiced, they can receive a prize and a new worksheet.

This helps children feel like they are moving forward, especially with those more difficult to remediate sounds such as the /r/ or /s/ sound.

GreenWeaver

@Latte31 -I had my son take speech therapy for articulation issues but after a while, I decided to buy some articulation software online that helped me generate articulation sheets myself. The speech therapy got expensive and it was not covered by my insurance.

I was paying this therapist $75 for a half hour twice a week. After two months, I knew the exercises and was able to help my son with his articulation problems at home. His issues were minor which is why I decided to do this myself. I don’t think I would have done this if his problems would have been really severe.

I also know that there are many free articulation worksheets available online. The S articulation worksheets are the most common.

latte31

When my daughter was five she had developed articulation problems. She had a lisp and had difficulty with the S, TH and R sounds. The speech therapist worked on the S sound first and gave articulation games that I could do with her at home.

Some of these games were matching games in which she had say the word that was on the card and find the matching one to pair it up.

The problem that my daughter was having with the S sound was that she was making her tongue protrude slightly when she was supposed to have her teeth clenched.

She also received a lot of S worksheets that allowed her to practice words with the S sound found in the beginning, middle and end. After she mastered the S sound she then began working on the TH sound.

This sound required the tongue to protrude rather than remain clenched like the S. I was really worried that she would forget the S sound once she began the articulation sheets with the TH, but she didn’t forget. After the TH sound was mastered, she focused on R articulation worksheets. She went to therapy for about five months and she really enjoyed it.

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    • A speech therapist may use articulation worksheets to treat a child with an articulation disorder.
      By: photowahn
      A speech therapist may use articulation worksheets to treat a child with an articulation disorder.