Using See and Learn Speech Sounds

See and Learn Speech Sounds is the first step in See and Learn Speech. It is designed to help young children with Down syndrome listen to and learn speech sounds, identify the differences between sounds and to produce individual speech sounds.

See and Learn Speech Sounds introduces 41 speech sounds (phonemes) in the English language. Later steps in See and Learn Speech build on these skills to combine individual sounds in simple vowel consonant combinations and then whole words.

When to start this step

See and Learn Speech Sounds is designed for use with babies from around six months of age and preschool children.

You can use the sound cards with children of any age above six months to practise listening, discrimination and the production of sounds.

Some older children will be listening to, discriminating and producing many sounds spontaneously, but may still be unable to produce some individual speech sounds. You can use the See and Learn Speech Sounds cards to help these children learn to say these specific sounds.

Activities

See and Learn Speech Sounds includes four activities.

• Listening to Single Sounds - this activity is designed to help children become familiar with the sounds in their language and to store these sounds in their memory system. It also teaches your child to associate each sound with a picture prompt.
• Listening to Different Sounds - this activity is designed to help children hear and notice the differences between sounds (discrimination). This skill is important for speech and language development: children need to able to hear the differences between sounds to learn the meanings of similar sounding words (for example, [fat], [cat], [sat]) and to produce similar sounding words.
• Selecting Different Sounds - this activity tests your child's discrimination skills by asking them to identify a spoken sound by choosing the sound card representing the sound.
• Saying Sounds - as your child learns the sounds in speech and learns to discriminate between them they are developing some of the skills necessary to begin to produce sounds spontaneously - this activity helps them to practise producing speech sounds.

Figure 1 | Speech sounds in See and Learn Speech Sounds

Resources

See and Learn Speech Sounds provides picture cards that represent 41 speech sounds (listed above).

The pictures on the sound cards illustrate a word containing the target sound. However, they are intended to prompt the sound. When using these cards you should only say the sound - not the word. For example, say [ai] - not [hay] or "[ai] as in [hay]".

We have chosen pictures that do not appear in the early See and Learn Language and Reading steps (where they would be prompting whole words) to avoid possible confusion.

Saying speech sounds

When producing individual speech sounds, try not to over-emphasise or extend the sounds. For example, say [b] rather than [buh], and [l] rather than [luh].

If you are using the app edition, you can turn on recorded sound prompts and work through the cards to listen to examples. Alternatively, you can find examples of how to say individual phonemes online - for example, http://dselink.org/eng-phonemes

Hearing

If you know your child has a hearing loss, you should speak in a loud, clear voice and ensure that they are looking at your face.

Your child's hearing should be tested regularly in accordance with current medical care guidelines, and whenever you have reason to worry whether they are hearing properly.

Organising sessions

Location

Find a place to carry out the activities that is comfortable, quiet, well-lit and free from distractions. Toys should be out of sight or out of reach.

Sit with your child facing you so that they can see your face clearly. They could be in a baby chair, at a table or on the floor.

Timing

Choose whatever time that you feel is best for both you and your child, for example, when your child is not too tired, and when you are not likely to be interrupted.

Duration

Keep the sessions short so that you can keep your child's interest. You may start with sessions lasting just a few minutes if your child is new to this type of activity.

Gradually increase the length of each session, up to 5-10 minutes. Try to always end on a positive note. Avoid carrying on for too long and losing your child's interest.

Frequency

'Little and often' is the best principle to encourage progress. Repetition is essential for your child to make progress. Complete a short activity session as often as you can. Ideally, this will be daily.

Supporting your child's learning

Helping your child to experience success

During each session it is important that your child experiences success at every stage.

In the Listening to Single Sounds activity, your child only has to look and listen to be successful, so reward their focus and attention throughout.

When working on the Listening to Different Sounds and Selecting Different Sounds activities, you may need to prompt your child at first, and then reduce the amount of assistance you provide as they get better at this skill.

In the Saying Sounds activity, you should respond positively to all of your child's vocalisations.

Let your child know that you are listening and that what they say is important. In this way, you will be encouraging your child to continue to use their voice.

You can take turns with your child to provide a model of how to do the activities.

Encouraging speech practice throughout the day

You should use the structured activities in See and Learn Speech Sounds to complement the speech development opportunities that occur naturally throughout your child's everyday routine.

Children are learning all day, every day, so you need to take advantage of natural opportunities to support your child's speech development during their everyday activities and play. You can support your child's speech development during everyday interactions by:

• getting eye contact and your child's visual attention before talking to them
• talking to your child about what is happening, what they are seeing, and what they are experiencing throughout the day
• singing nursery rhymes and other familiar songs to your child, and then leaving a pause and waiting for your child to respond
• responding to your child's vocalisations in a positive way
• imitating your child's babble to encourage them to repeat it
• 'chatting' back and forth in a conversation, allowing both you and your child to be the speaker and the listener
• interpreting your child's attempts at making sounds/words and 'modelling' or demonstrating the correct sounds/words for them to hear. Even if your child's attempts at spoken language do not sound like true words, model back to him/her what you think your child might be saying so that he/she can hear the correct model. This will also encourage your child to continue to use his/her voice
• providing opportunities for your child to use their voice throughout the day by incorporating sounds (such as 'weee', 'uh-oh') into games and activities.

Signing

We recommend that you do not use gestures or signs to represent sounds while engaging your child in the See and Learn Speech Sounds activities. If signs for words are helpful for your child when communicating, you should continue to use them in these situations. However, when working specifically on speech production practice we recommend that you encourage your child to concentrate on looking, listening and speaking.

Your child should focus on the face of the speaker and see their mouth and lip patterns as they say the word. All children use these visual speechreading cues when learning to talk. We therefore recommend that you encourage your child to watch your face, mouth, lips and tongue (rather than your hands) and to try to imitate the speech movements.

There are touch cue/sign systems intended to help children see where in the mouth sounds are made, such as Cued Articulation and PROMPT. They may help, but there is no published evidence to guide us.

We think that these systems are too difficult to understand for babies and toddlers who are just beginning to copy sounds. Some therapists use Cued Articulation or PROMPT with older children to help them with speech sound production and we suggest that you follow your therapists guidance.

Working with groups

The instructions provide guidance for using the activities on a 'one-to-one' basis. You can easily adapt the activities to include other children by giving turns to each child engaged in an activity. However, it is important that the activity is appropriate for each individual child (see guidance above and for each activity).