November 3, 2026 · 2:31 · Practice · Session planning · Making the shift
Organizing Blocked Practice
Blocked practice is not reps for reps' sake: each attempt gets multisensory cueing and feedback, a hard target gets a short block, and a target that is going well can run to 20 or 25 productions.
Full transcript
Hi, it's Nicole from NYU Motor Speech Lab. Let's talk blocked practice. We know that part of making the shift to pediatric motor speech therapy is organizing your therapy sessions around blocked practice, and this is one of the things that initially feels a little strange.
What a block is
Blocked practice, as we know, is repeating the target word repetitively. What's happening in that moment is the therapist is cueing the child and the child is attempting the production. The therapist is then giving feedback to the child, so they can work on their production to try to get it closer to the target.
Not reps for reps' sake
One of the things I want you to be thinking about when you're doing this type of work is that we're not just doing blocks for the sake of doing repetitive practice. There's a reason why we're working on the target over and over again, and that's to use that multisensory cueing. If you're sitting in a block and you're just having them repeat after you, and there's no conscious practice, that's not really helpful. You want to be able to give them the feedback.
How long a block should be
The other thing is thinking about how you're organizing your blocks. Remember, if this is a really challenging target, you're not going to be able to get a lot of practice, because it's hard and the child's going to shut down on you. You don't want to continuously practice the target incorrectly, because we know that's negative practice, and we don't really want that. So it's really quite all right to have a challenging target and only practice it, say, five times, and then stop.
Conversely, if you're sitting in a target that they're doing fairly well with, and you're able to move up and down the hierarchy, you don't want to be in that target for 50 repetitions either. That's just too much. You want to get them to the furthest they could possibly go, with the least amount of cueing, and on a positive note. Maybe that's at the higher end of the range, like 20 or 25 productions, depending on where you're at, and then stop. Take a little break and move on to another block.
If you think about it, this is also what we know as variable practice: when you have blocks of different lengths. I hope that's helpful.
