First, I focus the child’s attention on our goal of intentional improvement in movement (i.e., “We will work on moving our lips, jaw, and tongue so it will be easier to talk.). We may start with a warm-up to improve the child’s attention and effort toward the movement we are focusing on (“Feel the movement. Move big/little arms, tight lips, …”). Because the goal is to improve movement accuracy, I will provide the level of cueing necessary and fade those cues as quickly as possible in a very specific way that involves principles of motor learning. For my very young or severe clients, I aim for at least 60 trials per 30-minute session at least twice weekly to allow for motor learning to occur and generalize. Therapy stimuli are carefully chosen and move in and out of practice based on probe testing done every other session. I prioritize keeping the patient engaged and avoiding excessive frustration as best as possible. Sometimes I have to incorporate a reward schedule for extremely young, unmotivated, and/or severely apraxic patients; in other words, they do a set number of trials before earning a quick reward (e.g., a windup toy or throw a ball). With more than 24 years of experience, I use a variety of techniques in my skill repertoire to help kids learn the movements necessary for speech - sound card pictures, PROMPT, oral motor tools to shape volitional movements from more automatic (e.g., round lips onto a straw or blow bubbles then fade the cue quickly once I can get imitation of lip rounding to produce “oo”), and DTTC cueing hierarchy for facilitating motor learning for speech.