| One of my greatest challenges has been to find materials, games and activities that will enhance speech therapy and motivate my clients. I developed and produced speech therapy software because there is a specific need now for better engaging programming. Say it Best software offers children an opportunity to focus more creatively and comprehensively on a single sound or blend in the context of words phrases and sentences. This maximizes targeted practice for improving correct speech sound production. Children like a good story and my programs uniquely blend story telling with the clinical expertise that I have acquired over the more than thirty years I have been a speech and language pathologist. |
| Sometimes it’s difficult to choose what will excite your students to practice their sounds. You have many students and just so much time to figure out lesson plans. It’s also hard to carry a bag of materials from place to place if you travel in your work. If you have a laptop and my software programs, a lot of your planning and preparation concerns are addressed. One level could take about ½ an hour to get through, although this does vary depending on the severity of the child’s speech and his/her attention span. The programs are easy to run and engaging enough to maintain their interest, but not so overwhelming that the children don’t concentrate on their speech sounds. |
| The headset microphone offers a split second delay so that the child hears his/her own voice and can self-correct. Children love to hear their own voice and find this very rewarding and fun. |
| My experience has been that the kids get so involved in the story that they want to keep going and it doesn’t feel like work. They also enjoy practicing with the programs at home instead of practice sheets |
| If you need to group children for therapy, you can use these programs, but without the headphones. A program can be used for the articulation, of course, but if you also have a child in your group who stutters, he can repeat a phrase/sentence from the story using the fluency techniques you have taught him. If you have a child in your group who needs work on auditory processing, have him/her respond to the questions asked on the phrase /sentence levels. If he misses the story line, he can press the repeat button and hear it again. The programs are also great for increasing vocabulary knowledge and learning to understand the “wh” questions. |
| Say it Best programs can be used for children with verbal apraxia and paired with techniques such as cueing for the speech sounds. |
| Say it Best software is especially valuable for speech therapists who have a hard to finding articulation programs for the multiply disabled population from 13-21 that are non readers who don't have early developing sounds. |
| Say it Best software is great with a small group for social interaction skills. They can be used in different ways. The children can take turns responding to a question or each child can respond to the same question. The background pictures can be discussed and used as a spring board for conversation. For example, in Phil and Fanny at the Fair, the children can talk about what their favorite rides are a fair or amusement park. Feelings can be discussed as the characters in the various stories come across their adventures. |
| These programs add a little variety to speech therapy and have proven to be effective and fun. |
| I would welcome hearing from you. My e-mail address is contact@sayitbest.info. |
| Ela Britchkow, Speech and Language Pathologist, President of Say it Best |
