Cycles Approach: Picking Targets

It can be tricky when looking at a GFTA-3 protocol with 65 errors to know exactly what sounds or patterns to target first. The Cycles Approach could be just the answer you’re looking for. This approach is meant to be used for children with phonologically based speech sound disorders who are highly unintelligible, omit most sounds, have few substitutions, and a limited consonant sound repertoire. The main point of the Cycles Approach is to target one phonological sound pattern for a short amount of time before moving on to another pattern and eventually “cycling” back through the patterns. Barbra Hodson, the founder of this approach, created a “primary set” of sound targets:

1.Syllable deletion

2.Final/Initial Consonant Deletion

3./s/ clusters

4.Fronting/Backing

5.Liquids

For this approach to be successful, target words must be ones that the child is stimulable for, in order to get as many accurate productions within a session as possible. The exception to Hodson’s rule of stimulability is when targeting liquids at the end of each cycle. When targeting /l/ and /r/, approximations are the main goal if the child is not yet stimulable for those sounds. First, you’ll pick your first target process from the list of “primary targets”. Then, you’ll pick 2 target phonemes and 4-5 stimulable target words containing those phonemes. These 4-5 words will be targeted repeatedly for 60 minutes within one week.

Bella Barrett M.S., CF-SLP

References:

Clark, C. (2024, February 15). Cycles approach for speech therapy: Steps and therapy plan. Speech And Language Kids. https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/how-to-use-the-cycles-approach-for-speech-therapy/