I currently have four students with a stuttering disorder on my caseload. One is in first grade, and the others are in second and third. They each have speech on their own this year. One-on-one therapy, for all four! All of the kids are in different classes, and that is just how the schedule worked out. It is really nice having 30minutes every week for each of them, plus I think they like having the undivided attention. The older three have been working on a project for a few weeks to learn about speech helpers. The idea is that when they can name and understand what part of their body is affected by a stuttering moment, it aides in teaching them how to use fluency enhancing strategies. This is our first unit of the year, and we will move onto strategies next week. As described in previous posts, Halloween crafts during therapy is in full swing in the speech room. My fluency kids made a cadaver to add to the scary decorations. The cadaver, of course, was a means to an end to teach about speech helpers. I combined a lot of ideas from a lot of sources. I have a few documents to share with you as well through Google Docs. Here are the steps to the project! We started with the mouth. I found this version here. I enlarged it to show the detail and allow room for the marshmallow teeth and balloon tongue. I bought pink balloons and the students filled them with marshmallows for the tongue. The marshmallows gave it a soft and squishy texture, sorta like a real tongue. Next, after the student cut out the mouth, I cut a slit in the paper to attach the tongue with tape on the back. Next, marshmallow teeth were added, and a few eaten. I mean really, I couldn't expect them to just glue them! This is where I saw this idea, although there are many different versions on Pinterest. An old lipstick was used to enhance the lips. This lipstick will never touch my lips again and forever live with my fluency supplies! With the inside of the mouth done, it was time to make a side-view of the cadaver. I found this paper version here. More lipstick and marshmallows, as well as a pink balloon, were used for the additional body parts. The nose is made a plastic pencil sharpener that I had in my prize box. I think I got them from Target. The students cut out the lungs, that I found here, and glued them to the chart. Bubble wrap was added next, to represent the alveoli, which were painted pink with watercolors. Here is where I got that idea. I was surprised that the watercolors stayed on so well. I attached the bubble wrap with a stapler. Rolled up pink paper was used for the trachea and bronchi. The vocal folds/cords is a dry tortellini glued to the top of the airway. Now for brains! They are ramen noodles painted pink, and then hot-glued onto the page. Easy and realistic. The final step was adding labels to each speech helper, as well as the description of how we speak. I got help with this from here and here. I have a copy of my version of the labels and "How we Speak" statement for you: here and here. Here is the cadaver in all of it's gross glory! This was a lot of work, both for me and the students. I spent a lot of time collecting items, formulating my ideas, trouble shooting, and creating parts of the project. But, it was worth it! I am so proud of these kiddos.
Fluency (or stuttering) therapy is an area that many SLPs feel under-prepared to serve. While you may have had an excellent professor on the subject in grad school, it tends to be a lower incidence
This blog post goes into detail about teaching fluency strategies in speech therapy to help students overcome their stuttering barriers.
Teach and practice the fluency shaping technique, Easy Onset, with confidence! This product includes: training on how to teach the method, 30 colorful stimulus pictures and 60 stimulus picture cards that can be used for various games, including 'go fish' and 'memory match.'
creating communicators fluency information.
…
Use this FREE tool to take concrete numerical data on your student's fluency from a language sample. This form is best used to monitor progress over the course of your student's therapeutic services or to compare fluency across a variety of contexts (e.g. in front of peers, during a reading task, in...
15 fun and easy fluency practice activities to get your K-1 students reading at a just-right pace, with accuracy and expression!
There are several programs and practices out there to address fluency. Most involve some types of strategies or fluency enhancing behaviors (FEBs) to teach those who stutter how to manage their fluency. I use these strategies daily with my fluency kiddos and have found them to work very well. I try to spend time practicing […]
…
Stuttering Assessment: How to do a Fluency Evaluation Stuttering, the most common fluency disorder, is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by specific types of disfluencies, including repetitions of sounds, syllables, and monosyllabic words (e.g., “Look at the b-b-baby,” “Let’s go out-out-out”); prolongations of consonants when it isn’t for emphasis (e.g., “Ssssssssometimes we stay home”);
Check this post out for some simple ideas to implement in therapy with young stuttering clients. Post includes The Speech Guy and Speech Roads Stuttering therapy with kids is so tricky! There is this balance between teaching awareness of the stutter and lowering emotional reactivity to the stutter that I am still working on mastering. It is different for each child and you really have to get a feel for how they will react. I only had 3 stuttering kids on my caseload this past year and they were as different as different can be. I tried doing the therapy in a group and it worked out okay but man it was tricky since they had such individual strengths and weaknesses, planning their sessions was a bear! Here are a few little lessons that really worked for all 3 of them (they were all 6-7 years old). The Speech Guy Two of my three stuttering kids had started to develop fairly severe secondary behaviors during stuttering moments. These are behaviors that happen as the child tries to get past the stuttering moment and can include funny facial and/or body movements to try to help them out of the stutter. Examples include eye twitches, loss of eye contact, slapping the leg, rocking the head forward, clicking the mouth, arrested breath, avoding words that are hard to say and a lot more. It honestly freaked me out when I evaluated them because I had no idea how to work with stuttering, especially stuttering that was severe enough to present with secondary behaviors. My supervisor at the district suggested I talk about the different parts that we use for speech and how they affect our talking. We found this Speech Guy on therapsimplicity.com. It was an awesome starting point for these kids and a fun activity to send home. We talked about each of the parts and how we use them for speech (mouth, nose, eyes, ears, voicebox, lungs) and the funny things that happen sometimes when we get "stuck" (raising eye brows, wiggling nose, tensing mouth, arrested breath, etc). The kids got to color their speech guy and the parts and take them home and tell their parents about them. Speech Roads My stuttering kids are fairly young and I was trying to come up with a good way for them to listen and evaluate stuttering behaviors. I drew these little "speech roads" during our lesson when I was trying to describe different types of "bumpy" speech to them. They really latched on to the road and we ended up using them a lot in our sessions. I cut them apart and had the kids hold up the speech road (smooth, bumpy or road block) that matched how the person was talking. Once they could identify what speech road I was using I had them listen to themselves and evaluate their own speech. I made copies that they could take home and practice evaluating theirs and other's speech.
Fluency (Stuttering) Therapy is an area that I have heard many colleagues report that they are not comfortable treating for a wide variety of reasons.
Eight fluency techniques/strategies are described and categorized. This chart includes fluency shaping techniques, stuttering modification techniques, and avoidance reduction techniques. A must-have for any SLP who has clients who stutter of any age. ...
Dollar store fluency finds for stuttering therapy? Yes, please! Who doesn’t love finding inexpensive therapy materials at the dollar store? I have several students on my caseload working on fluency enhancing techniques and it always helps to have visuals during therapy. If you haven’t heard, I have been periscoping about my trips to the Dollar […]
Hi all! I'm excited to write about a resource I started using/making graphics for last school year, but finally felt it was ready to share on the blog: The Fluency Toolbox for Stuttering You can find it in my TpT store here, and here's how I use it: I use the toolbox as a visual when I teach fluency strategies to my students. We aren't curing stuttering, but we are giving them a toolbox full of strategies that they can learn to use and apply to improve their fluency. When we learn a strategy, we add the tool to the box. At the beginning of each session, we choose a tool (or a combination of tools) that we are going to focus on for the day. The tool sits in front of them and serves as a nice visual reminder of what we're working on during activities. To give the kids ownership of their toolbox and express their fluency style, they can choose a toolbox in red, green, purple, pink, blue, or yellow! There are several strategies out there to target fluency. The strategies I included in the packet are some of the most commonly used across many different intervention programs (Healey & Scott, 1995).The strategies included and described in this toolbox are: cancellations pull-outs full breath stretchy beginning natural pauses rate control slow smooth & easy speech breath and speech together language planning talk in short sentences easy onsets & easy beginnings (same strategy just different lingo) light contacts continuous voicing preparatory sets & fake stuttering A printer-friendly black and white version is also included. The kids can easily color their own tools! Toolbox Assembly: Cut out the toolboxes Cut an opening on the solid black line to create the opening: Staple the toolbox onto an 8.5x11 sheet of paper Trim around the toolbox, removing the extra white paper Cut out the tools & add them to the toolbox as they are taught And that's it! Also included is an entire set of blank tools in my TpT product so clinicians can add any other additional strategies! And there you have it! What tools have you found helpful with your students? I would love to hear! Thanks for checking in! Mrs. Ludwig Reference: Healey, C. & Scott, L. (1995). Strategies for Treating Elementary School-Age Children Who Stutter: And Integrative Approach. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 26, 151-161.
Jenga or Tumbling Towers is one of my favorite therapy games. Students of all ages from elementary through high school love it. It ...
Like most teachers, you want your students to be successful readers. But what do you do if they struggle with reading fluency? Reading fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with
Parents of children who stutter often have a hard time finding resources about stuttering. This blog post is full of stuttering resources for parents!
Why is fluency therapy so complicated? Here are several tips and tricks to help you tackle those difficult stuttering cases!
…
Use the Fluency Catch Activity to help your students increase their awareness of their stuttering and self monitoring skills. This activity can be used to target stuttering identification by having students practice “catching” moments of stuttering. When students increase their awareness and ability to self monitor, then they have the opportunity to modify stuttering. There are 5 different options to practice identifying moments of disfluency. This activity includes the following 5 “catching” activities: Dog and bones Mitt and baseballs Fishing pole and fish Jar and fireflies Net and Butterflies Just cut out the pieces and move them as you “catch” the moments of stuttering. For example, every time your student catches a moment of disfluency, then they will move a butterfly to the net. Lamination and velcro will provide more durability and allow for multiple uses. This is also a great activity to send home for homework or additional practice. Students can also practice catching their clinician or parent’s pseudo-stutters!
Marketing ploys make false claims that there's a cure to stuttering. There isn't, but you can still be a confident and successful communicator
Confession. My stuttering materials are extremely outdated! I’ve been in dire need of fresh new stuttering materials for years now. My fluency caseload is like a roller coaster! My first year I had five students who stuttered and ever since I usually have between 1-3 fluency students. Although, they represent a small portion of my ... Read More about Fluency In A Snap!
Cluttering is a speech disorder that few in the public know about. Here is an article for SLPs about how to diagnose and treat cluttering.
Finger Puppets, Flipbooks and Fluency Games…oh my! Over these past few months, I’ve been slowly updating my most popular products to make them the best they can be. I’m so excited to share the latest big update to my Fluency Finger Puppet Therapy Pack, which now includes a bonus Fluency Strategy Flipbook, Fluency Fear Rating Scale […]
Fluency is one of the foundations of a solid reading program. All of my students have fluency goals - most of which are met during guided reading groups or when reading independently - but some of the students do need more fluency practice. There are several iPad apps and activities for fluency practice that I recommend. Organizing the iPads for fluency practice First you will want to figure out how your students will be using the iPad apps and activities for fluency practice in your classroom. I would assign my students specific fluency activities that they needed to accomplish each
A summary of free digital materials for speech and language that can be used by teletherapists or brick and mortar SLPs.
A school based SLP navigating the muddy waters of low budgets, high numbers and a wide variety of student needs. These are some of my therapy ideas, tricks, tips and activities!
Looking for fluency activities? I just updated my fluency freebie. I added some short passages. If you need longer passages, I recommend visiting Reading A to Z. This is a great site with leveled passages. There are even some free books that you can download. Click HERE to get your freebie.
Fluency (or stuttering) therapy is an area that many SLPs feel under-prepared to serve. While you may have had an excellent professor on the subject in grad school, it tends to be a lower incidence
In case you missed it, I did this guest post for Kristine over at Live Love Speech a while back! Some simple DIY ideas for fluency intervention :)
A new school year means new kids, and new kids means language screenings! Check out my custom take on a classic screening guide here.
