Hi there, Shannon!
For such a short question, there’s a surprising amount to unpack here. Let me try to help as best as I can. I’m a bit unclear if your student has some sort of speech delay in addition to apraxia, or if perhaps the diagnosis of apraxia is providing more information regarding the speech delay (which is a much broader term). I am going to assume that by apraxia we are referring to childhood apraxia of speech (also known as verbal apraxia), and not a different type of apraxia (e.g. ideational apraxia, conceptual apraxia, etc). Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) impacts the coordination of the “directions” the brain provides the muscles involved in speaking and how those muscles actually move. In other words, the child knows what they want to say and how they want to say it, but their mouth doesn’t move how they want it to.
Unlike some other speech and/or phonological deficits, a child with CAS should not have difficulty with speech perception (i.e. they shouldn't have difficulty telling the difference in similar-sounding phonemes or words). Thus, teaching letter-sound correspondences should be done in the same way any student is taught. I'm inferring by the grade, however, that this student has had a hard time learning these correspondences. My first question is if it is really a matter of difficulty learning the corresponding sounds, or is it moreso a difficulty of the student demonstrating this knowledge, as they may not have the consistent motor planning necessary to articulate the sounds they are attempting to. This actually relates heavily to last week’s column about the difference in participating in receptive or expressive letter-naming tasks. This is just as applicable to learning/demonstrating letter sounds as it is to names.
Regarding the unasked question of how to determine if a student with apraxia is learning a correspondence, this would be twofold. First, consult with their speech-language pathologist (SLP) in order to better understand what sounds and/or word forms the child is able to consistently and accurately produce. Next, assess any sounds/word forms that are too complex for the student to orally produce at this time by expecting them to point to or write letters, rather than produce sounds. For example, if your student can't reliably produce /sh/, and you are wondering if they have learned the correspondence for this digraph, you would ask them to write the letters (and the teacher models /sh/), rather than naming the sound when shown this digraph. This essentially means performing an auditory drill instead of a visual drill.
If your student is having significant difficulty discriminating between similar phonemes, I would question if their profile isn't more consistent with a phonological processing deficit, rather than (or in addition to) apraxia, but I am by NO MEANS trying to provide an armchair diagnosis. Please consult with their (or refer to a) speech-language pathologist for further insight on their speech and phonological profile.
I hope this helps!
