“I use Visual Phonics every moment of every day that I practice at an elementary school in Fargo, North Dakota.  I use it for :

•Articulation by showing what I am hearing and what we are targeting.  It is especially helpful for deleted medial and final sounds;

•Phonological Awareness by pairing hand signs with activities involving rhyming, sound location, number of sound in words. positions of sounds in words, etc.;

•Phonics instruction by coding all sounds as the children learn to read and gradually fading this out as they become stronger readers.

•In Stuttering I use it as a cue to terminate a block and use the /h/ as a gentle, relaxed cue for initiation of speech. This works for voice, as well.

•Language- it is useful for first sound cuing in word finding and vocabulary learning.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg!”

Faith, SLP & Visual Phonics Trainer, Fargo, North Dakota

As an SLP, I have always integrated visual cues with target sounds in articulation therapy.  I was excited to learn a set system of visual symbols to strengthen my therapy techniques.  Because I believe that articulation and reading are strongly correlated, I also thought VP would be an asset for inclusion in the general education classrooms.

I was anxious to get started using VP right away, yet my congested schedule left no room for implementation with students outside of my caseload.  Therefore, I met with my principal and briefed him on the workshop.  I proposed that I would work with “at risk” 1st graders to increase their reading abilities in place of my daily 30 minute lunch duty.  The next day my lunch duty was covered, and I started the screening process to find the lowest students out of four 1st grade classrooms.  In a few days, we had our “Secret Code Club” formed.  It consisted of five students who had not yet mastered letter names or sounds.  Two out of the five missed 21 out of 52 letter names (upper & lower case) and 31 of the sounds.

In only a few short months, they had learned their letters and sounds.  By February, the “Secret Code Club” was moving on to blending CVC words.

Shortly after implementing VP with the 1st graders, I was hooked on the concept!  I then started working with “at risks” kindergartners 10 to 15 minutes at the end of each day.  Many quickly caught up to the 1st graders.  Both teachers and parents reported that they had noticed an increase in the students’ self confidence.  They were using their signs to spell and sound out words during independent class work and homework.

“See The Sound” links the abstract to the concrete which results in learning.

I have also had successful results after implementing VP with a severe emotional behavior disordered student and a 3 year old speech impaired student.  The results that I have witnessed this year have been amazing – “See The Sound” has truly had a positive impact on the students’ academic and emotional growth.”

Pat, SLP & Visual Phonics Trainer, Georgia

“The SLP’s in the Southeast Polk school district were invited by the district to learn Visual Phonics with their teachers.  This has been a great tool for us to use with our teachers.  It provided a common language and strategy for us to use and helped us support each other as a team. General education teachers along with special education teachers were trained and continue to use it.  As SLP’s we have used it primarily with students that have articulation goals.  It is used to cue sounds during skill building phases but it is also used in the classroom by teachers for generalization of sounds when students have reached that level of attainment. We have also used it as a cue/strategy for students with word finding goals.  Teachers are able to cue the students using visual phonics rather than a verbal initial sound cue prompt.  We were very fortunate to have this opportunity and it has been very positive for us as SLP’s.”     Mia, SLP, Iowa

Thanks for a great workshop!! I am using all I learned to change lives!  The little guy I often talked about with apraxia is starting to read and spell.  I am tracking data!   I will send you the data as we go.  It is so awesome!!  At times, I could cry…this is really working for him!  All children with apraxia need this!!  This kid is one of the most severe apraxic kids I have ever seen and he is making nice gains!  I am so excited for him.  The special ed teacher is coming around to this idea. It is so simple to use…with a 50+ kid caseload sometimes I feel so inadequate to meet my kids needs, but this works and fast.  Thanks for teaching us something so valuable!!

Karen, SLP, Illinois

In the past, I have taught hand cues to show placement of sounds for children with articulation difficulties. These hand cues acted as a visual cue to pronounce an individual sound. But with my more severe students, these hand cues were not highly successful, possibly because they were so intertwined with the visual letter and they had already learned the letter sound the wrong way.

Now my students have a visual cue (hand shape) to represent a sound, not a letter . . . and they have a written symbol to associate with the sound, plus the hand shapes give kinesthetic and visual inputs to re-shape the auditory perceptual-motor memory associations.  New pathways are created by the association of the hand shapes & written symbols to correct production of sound.     Nancy, SLP, Iowa

I was first introduced to Visual Phonics while in graduate school for speech-language pathology. I working with a child whose speech was characterized by phonological processing and one of the clinical supervisors used the Visual Phonics hand shapes to facilitate sound production. The child responded so well to the Visual Phonics hand shape cues that I made it a priority to attend a training after I was done with graduate school.

Once I had completed the training, it was an immediate game changer for how I provided speech therapy to all of my students. I noticed how much faster my students were making changes in their speech once I started using VP.  Visual Phonics is just a much more gentle, nonverbal cue to my students with articulation disorders and phonological disorders to produce the targeted sounds accurately

For my students who are deaf or moderately to severely hearing impaired, using Visual Phonics has opened the door for them to access intelligible speech for the first time in their lives.  Their reading teacher and interpreters have mentioned repeatedly that our students use Visual Phonics constantly to help decode when reading and that they have made significant gains since embracing it.

If there’s one tool that I couldn’t function without when working with kids with phonological processing disorders, articulation disorders or hearing impairment, it would be Visual Phonics.      Sue, SLP, Iowa