Fonología y Lenguaje: Estrategias para la Comunicación, Habla y Articulación (FLECHA) is designed for Spanish-speaking students in grades PK-3 who have speech sound disorders. The program focuses on improving speech sound production at the word, phrase, and sentence levels. FLECHA is designed to support round-robin group articulation practice, and home practice with activities featuring a curated set of targets.

Key Features

Preschool through Third Grade (PreK-3)
Extensive collection of target words, organized by target sound and position
- Word, phrase, and sentence-level contexts
- Activities are curated to include 3 different sets of 25 words for the target sound placement
  - Allows for multiple students to practice their targets with separate sets of words within the same group session
  - Provides convenient home practice assignments

Structure

Organization

FLECHA is a collection of articulation activities, organized predominantly by sound, position (i.e., initial, medial, final, or all), and context (i.e., words, phrases, sentences).

Upon entering the FLECHA program page, you’ll find 3 collections, each containing a mixture of sound and sound blends specific to that group.

After selection of the sound group, you’ll find collections of individual sounds/sound blends. Activities in ARROW have a FLECHA ( 🎯) to differentiate them from ARROW, WOW and HIPPOS.

Each sound, blend, or blend group is further organized by position: initial, medial, final, and all (contains combination of all positions within a word). Each position is further divided into units for word, phrases, or sentence levels.

Selection of a unit (dark blue) folder will take you to the Activities page - allowing you to select an individual activity to assign to your student. Each activity is a maximum of 25 total words, with one, two and 3+ syllable words presented in a random order. There are three activities per context, indicated by an A, B and C.

Stimuli

Each word in FLECHA is paired with illustrations. These visuals help students engage in the activities.

Application

Goal Overview

ARROW can be used to target all sounds and blends (e.g., r, s, str), positions (i.e., initial, medial, final, all positions) and contexts (i.e., word, phrase, sentence)

Methodology of Skill Instruction

There are a total of 3 sets of Skill Instruction across all activities, specifically one per sound group.

How to Use the Skill Instruction:

Read the written placement cues for tips if the student is struggling with placement
Look at the images to visualize the placement of sounds
Use the example words to practice, and to discuss where the sound might appear in words

Usage Scenarios

Therapy or MTSS Use: Individuals or Groups

Educators can use FLECHA to support either individual students or groups of students with speech sound disorders. The program's structure allows for tailored, round-robin sessions that address specific student needs effectively.

Home Practice

FLECHA can also be used at home to provide additional practice. Educators can assign word lists for students to practice outside of therapy, thus extending their ability to practice words, phrases or sentences outside of school hours.

Evidence

Evidence	Expression in Program
The multiple phonemic approach targets more than one sound each session as some sounds may require practice at the syllable level while other sounds may be practiced in phrases or sentences (McCabe & Bradley, 1975).	All sounds and positions are included, each containing multiple levels of contextual complexity (i.e., single words, phrases, and sentences).
The four-stage model of speech sound learning includes elicitation (producing the sound in isolation or in syllables), stabilization (producing the sound in syllables, words, or phrases), generalization (producing the sound in untrained words/contexts), and maintenance (retention over time) (Williams, A. Lynn, Sharynne McLeod, and Rebecca J. McCauley., 2010).	All targets have multiple levels of context - single word, phrase, and sentence.
It can take between 1,900 and 2,300 trials to reach the stabilization phase for a target sound (Preston et al., 2017).	Many words are included for each target sound, allowing for multiple trials during therapy.
Following the principles of motor learning for sounds that are minimally stimulable, frequent, immediate knowledge of performance feedback (e.g., detailed feedback about movements) contributes to acquisition and learning (Williams, A. Lynn, Sharynne McLeod, and Rebecca J. McCauley., 2010).	Feedback focuses on the motor movements needed to accurately produce target sounds.

Evidence-based Program Use

Target more than one speech sound or sound position per session as appropriate for your student.
Practice a wide variety of target words to reduce repetition while working toward sound stabilization
Aim for the student to produce as many trials with a target sound as possible to reach the stabilization phase