Objective: This investigation examined the effects of frequent, short, intense speech treatment sessions in the small group format on the percent accuracy of target sounds in imitative sentence tasks in kindergarten through third-grade students with mild to moderate speech sound disorders (SSDs) in the public school setting. Method: Four students with an active Individualized Education Plan (IEP) participated in this nonconcurrent multiple baseline design investigation. The dependent variable was accuracy of target sound production in sentence imitation tasks. The independent variable was speech therapy offered four times a week, 15-minutes per session across 4 weeks. Improvement was measured by the percent accuracy of target sounds in imitative sentences. Of note, Participants 2, 3, and 4 were seen for small group therapy as intended, while Participant 1 was seen in a one-in-one format due to lack of matched grade-level participants. Results: Data show that all participants who received the small group intervention increased correct productions of target sounds. The Percent Non-Overlapping Data (PND) showed that the intervention was effective for two of the four participants. However, TAU-U analysis of the data showed significant change for P2, P3, and P4 at the p<.05. Conclusion: The results of this investigation support the growing body of evidence that the use of frequent, short, intense speech treatment sessions in a small group format may be an effective service delivery model. Future research should also investigate this service delivery model’s effectiveness by considering severity level and group size.
