5-Minute Speech Therapy Sessions: How Long Should Speech Therapy Sessions Be?

What if I told you there was a way for your clients to make faster progress with less time in therapy?  I’m guessing you’d be all about it, right?  Well, the 5-minute model has shown itself again and again to be exactly the solution we need.  By seeing children 2-5 times per week for only five minutes each, we see faster gains on articulation, phonology, and other drill-and-practice skills.  Read on to find out how this works!

How Do 5-Minute Speech Therapy Sessions Work?

Instead of seeing your clients in a group for 30 minutes, you see each child individually for 5 minutes.  I like to pull the students right outside their classroom and do it in the hallway so we reduce the travel time (and I can get more clients seen in less time).  I set a timer for 5 minutes and we drill, drill drill.  No games, no fluff, nothing to prep.  Just me, the child, and our artic cards.  Once the timer goes off, I send them back to class.  Then, repeat!  5-minute speech therapy sessions are usually conducted 2-5 times per week.

5-Minute Speech Sessions Course

5-Minute Speech Therapy Course

Make Faster Progress in Less Time

Are 5-Minute Sessions Research Based?

Yes!  This model has been studied multiple times with amazing results.  Studies show that children learn faster with distributed practice vs. mass practice and results of a meta analysis showed that high intensity interventions (2-3 sessions per week of 70+ trials) were most effective for children with speech sound disorders.

The 5-Minute Kids program conducted a study which showed that children receiving nine 5-minute sessions were dismissed in about half the time of children receiving seven 30-minute sessions per month.

5 Minute Speech Therapy Results

How Many Repetitions/Trials Can you Get in 5 Minute Speech Therapy Sessions?

Learning a new skill is all about repetition.  The more times a child practices the new skill, the faster he/she will learn it.  But can we can get the same number of trials/repetitions (or more) in a 5-minute individual session as we can in a 30-minute group session?  Check out this recording of a 5-minute /r/ session that I did while I counted my reps:

@carrie_clark_slp Faster progress in less time with 5 minute speech therapy sessions! Watch to see how many repetitions (reps) of /r/ practice I can cram into 5 minutes. The shorter time means I don’t have to play games and do other activities to keep kids interested. We can hit the skill hard then get them back to class. #speechtherapy #speechlanguagepathologist #slpsoftiktok #slplife #speechdelay #articulationtherapy #schoolslp ♬ original sound - Carrie Clark SLP

How to Run your 5-Minute Therapy Sessions

  1. Schedule in a block of time to see your 5-minute kids: You can probably see 4-5 kids during a 30-minute block, depending on how far apart their classrooms are.
  2. Pull each client to the back of the classroom or right outside their door.  This eliminates the travel time and minimizes transition time
  3. Set a 5-Minute Timer
  4. Do Reps for 5 Minutes: Challenge the client to see how many reps he can get in 5 minutes (use a sports clicker if it motivates him). Provide prompts and cues to help establish the skill or get to the next level. Articulation Station Hive is a great app for prompting artic/phono. For language, I keep photo albums of stock photos on my tablet for prompts.
  5. When the Timer Goes Off, Send the Client Back: If you have another client in that classroom, you can have the first child tag in the second.
  6. Repeat! 5 Minutes per week isn’t going to cut it. Most of these programs and studies recommend between 2-5 weekly sessions, depending on the severity of each client.

What if the Child Starts to Lose Interest?

The nice thing about 5-minute sessions is that it’s not a long session so most of the time, you can keep a child working for that amount of time.  But sometimes, they start to get squirrely or start to have trouble focusing by the end.  Here are a few tips for helping with that:

  • Show them the timer and challenge them to see how many more reps they can get in before the timer goes off
  • Use a sports counter/clicker to count how many reps they get.  Let them be the one to click it for every rep and see if they can get a “speech high score”
  • Strike a Pose! Have the child hold a pose while saying the next few words.  Some of my favorites are standing on one foot (and then the other, gotta even it out), downward dog yoga pose, holding a plank/push-up position, and between your legs (bend over and say them backwards through your legs).
  • Walking Sessions: Take a walk around the school.  Try to time it so you make it back to their door around the 5-minute mark.  This is especially helpful for children at the carry-over or generalization phase where you can just practice their sounds in conversation.

How to Handle Distractions During 5-Minute Sessions:

I know the hallway isn’t the quietest place around.  Here are some tips for doing 5-minute sessions in a noisy, busy school.

5-Minute Therapy Course:

Need some more help getting started with 5-minute sessions?  Check out our full course here:

5-Minute Speech Sessions Course

5-Minute Speech Therapy Course

Make Faster Progress in Less Time

Carrie Clark, Speech-Language Pathologist

About the Author: Carrie Clark, MA CCC-SLP

Hi, I’m Carrie! I’m a speech-language pathologist from Columbia, Missouri, USA. I’ve worked with children and teenagers of all ages in schools, preschools, and even my own private practice. I love digging through the research on speech and language topics and breaking it down into step-by-step plans for my followers.

Fun Fact: I didn’t realize that I had ADHD until I was an adult.  It all clicked when I read that people with ADHD are motivated by things that are challenging, novel, or highly interesting.  If a task doesn’t fall into one of those three categories, we have a hard time getting it done.  I’ve subconsciously accommodated for this my whole life by setting challenges for myself or doing mundane tasks in novel ways, like doing my homework in a (dry) bathtub instead of at the kitchen table.  Understanding how our brains work can be incredibly empowering and I love helping children understand these things as well!

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