The CHanging Articulation with Minimal Pairs Program (CHAMP) is designed for students in grades PK-1, who present with a speech sound disorder characterized by consistent use of phonological processes or pattern-based errors.

CHAMP leverages minimal pairs to highlight meaning differences while targeting phoneme production. Minimal Pairs are words that only differ by one sound. This difference in a single phoneme is enough to change the meaning of the word. The minimal pairs represent contrasting phonemic features including place of articulation (e.g., velar/alveolar as in dough vs. go), manner of articulation (e.g., fricative/plosive as in bin vs. fin), or voicing (e.g., voiceless/voiced consonants as in sink vs. zinc).

The CHAMP program is divided into two approaches, the Meaningful approach, and the Perceptual approach. The Meaningful approach is suited for students who are stimulable for the target sound and emphasizes the social consequence of substituting the non-target word. The Perceptual approach includes a higher focus on speech perception and is suited for children who are not stimulable for the target sound. Both approaches contain a sequence of auditory perception, auditory discrimination, and verbal production activities that provide students with various opportunities to practice target sounds.

The CHAMP program is designed after the minimal pairs approach, one of the oldest and most widely used approaches for phonological disorder intervention (Williams, et al., 2021).

The goal of the minimal pairs approach is to remediate students’ phonological disorders through the use of the natural speech patterns that children are born with that assist them in the production of words. These patterns are typically suppressed over time and intelligibility is naturally improved (Stampe, 1969, p. 443). Intervention based on this tenet of natural phonology targets the suppression of the phonological processes present in the student’s speech (Weiner, 1981). This approach aims to change an entire class of sounds, versus targeting the articulation of individual sounds across word positions, thereby expediting speech intelligibility gains (Williams, et al., 2021). The specific speech skills taught include phonemes and/or word shapes (e.g., CVC vs. CCVC) associated with specific phonological processes or pattern-based errors (e.g., velar fronting, gliding of liquids, cluster reduction, final consonant deletion) in real words (Williams, et al., 2021).

CHAMP contains two approaches outlined in minimal pair intervention: the meaningful approach and the perceptual approach. With these approaches, the educator has the opportunity to remediate the student’s phonological deficits according to their needs and in an evidence-based manner. The meaningful approach is designed for those students that are stimulable for the target sound, whereas the perceptual approach is designed for students who present with poor stimulability and difficulty perceiving the target sound. Teaching speech perception as a part of the minimal pairs approach can facilitate stimulability, as children with phonological impairments have poor perceptual representation of words (Munson, Baylis, Krause, & Yim, 2010). By adding a series of perception-based activities, CHAMP helps students to hear the difference between contrasting phonemes, which is the first step to extinguishing phonological processes.