Stuttering is Super!

Stuttering is super!  I struggle to help my some of my students who stutter maintain their self-esteem.  I’ve been meaning to do a stuttering unit for a while because I need more therapy materials, and had to make it once I got the idea to use superheroes.  Super kids who stutter are here!

Check it out in my TPT store!

This is the picture that is used for the overall description of Easy Onsets, Pullouts and Cancellations as well as the game board for the dice game for the Silly Stutters.

This is a huge 66 page unit that addresses: Stuttering Facts and Myths, Silly Stutters, Easy Onsets, Pull-Outs and Cancellations are included.  Each section contains a brief explanation of the therapy technique and therapy objectives.   I choose a variety of different preview sheets for each section so you can get a feel for the unit as a whole.

Stuttering Facts and Myths

8 pages, 36 cards, blank cards are included.  18 fact cards and 18 myth cards.

Silly Stutters

3 pages, dice game for what kind of silly stutter to use is included and descriptions of kinds of stutters.  (Cards are the same as for Pull-Outs and Cancellations to save cutting and laminating time!)

 Above is the types of stutters page.  The dice game is more open ended because not all students do every type of stuttering and I want it to be functional for all students.

Easy Onsets

28 pages, practice in words (72 cards), phrases (54 cards) and sentences (54 cards). Game cards are also included.

Overview page, same page with different content is used to describe Pull-outs and Cancellations.

Easy onset practice in sentences.  The stars indicate a pause.  If you notice I found little super heroes that most of our kids should be able to identify with. 

Pullouts and Cancellations

Both have an overall description and cards to have for in front of students.

21 pages, 90 therapy cards, plus game cards, and a game board.

Overview page that has directions, therapy objectives and therapy tips!

Cancellations (2 kinds of cancellations are described)

The cancellations with the green stars are the Van Riper method and are described in many textbooks about stuttering.  The cancellations with the yellow stars are the kind of cancellation that is described in many commercially available therapy materials.  I included both so that the unit would be functional for therapists working with either kind of cancellation with their students.  Please use your clinical judgment in selecting which method to use and I would recommend choosing just one since they do have the same name and I didn’t want to rename one of them.

Example of cards for students to explain each stuttering technique.  Content is the same as the city scene page, pictured with Easy Onsets.  Each kind of cancellation has it's own pages in the Unit.

Example of word cards for Silly Stutters, Pull-Outs and Cancellations.  There are 90 cards in total, plus game cards, plus blank cards to add your own words!

A 2 page board game is also included to use when working on pull outs and cancellations.   Students start by drawing a word card.  When kids land on a spiky symbol (does anyone know the technical name?) they do a pull out, and when they land on a star, they do a cancellation.

Can you help the Stuttering Heroes find their friends?

 Whew!  This one took a long time to make, and I'm happy to finally be able to share it with everyone!

Grab it here in my TPT store!

Fluently

I found Fluently, which is a great app for easy onsets, when it was a free app featured on Smart Apps for Kids.  It is an app that is designed to monitor easy onsets in students speech.  It's regularly a $10 app so I feel very fortunate to have downloaded it in time.

I've been using it in therapy with 4 students who stutter for the past few weeks.   I also have been sick and have had a very hoarse voice, so my kids have been amused to see the app "alert" almost every time I open my mouth.

The app is designed to monitor easy onsets. When you are using smooth speech the button is blue and pluses slightly as you speak.  You can adjust the sensitivity with the slider bar at the bottom.

If you speak to harshly (ie ME!) or use a hard onset the button will turn read and you will have to tap the button to reset it.

I've had varying success with my students using this app.  I have a student who is about ready to move on from easy onsets and try other things, and while he was interested in the app, he didn't use it to monitor his speech.  Another one of my students who is just starting easy onsets was VERY interested in the app, and would practice and practice until he was able to keep the button blue through single words.  It should be noted that I also see him for articulation, and he doesn't do much to monitor his speech.  Both of my girls have been doing easy onsets for a few sessions, but struggle to self-monitor.  They used the app to monitor, but not as closely as my other student.

In my opinion, Fluently is a very simple app that I'm happy to add to my fluency toolbox.  My students who have less experience self monitoring their speech while producing easy onsets found the app more useful, but my student who has had to self monitor didn't use it.  I like it better for my students who aren't as far along in therapy and struggle to self monitor.  If I had bought it I would consider it well worth the price for the one student's self monitoring skills alone.

Back to School Challenge!

I saw something similar on another blog a while back, and would give credit, but I honestly don't remember where it was...  I've been meaning to have my students do a similar challenge for some time, and thought that back to school is a perfect time to get them back into the swing of things.  I'm really hoping that my challenging my students to skip past the sticker system and get a prize immediately we can get back where we were at last spring as fast as possible.

I'm going to challenge my articulation students to say their sound correctly 150 times during a speech session and reward them with a trip to the prize box when they meet the challenge.  I'm planning on giving my students several opportunities to get 150 correct productions in a single session.  During a typcial speech session, each my my articulation students has 200-250 total productions, so I'm hoping this is a reasonable goal for most of my older students.

 But, for some of my younger students and students who qualified for services at the end of last year, 150 isn't a realistic goal.  Thus, I give you the 80 correct production challenge.  As many of my students do know each other, I am going to introduce the half sheet with the challenge on it at the beginning of the school year to my new students, and then have them let me know when they are ready to attempt the challenge.

Now, I'm not going to leave my language and fluency students out.  I'm going to challenge my language students to tell me five things they did this summer and one thing they are excited about for the school year.  My school is focusing on literacy and writing, so my sheet does have fill in the blanks on it.  I usually expect my students to write 1-3 words, and of course spelling doesn't count.  The real challenge won't be in what I'm expecting them to be able to put on the paper, I'm hoping to be able to get some information about responding to questions, story telling, vocabulary use, grammar and all of that good stuff.  I'm hoping that by offering a price by completing the sheet to *my* satisfaction, I can engage some of my more reluctant students (and reward the ones that were always going to tell me!).

As of now I'm planning on doing the Language Challenge with my fluency students.  I've thought about having them tell me what they remember about stuttering from last year for the challenge, but then I remembered that I have several students who qualified last year and haven't yet started therapy...  As I've said above, my students all seem to know each other (even in a 1200 kid elementary school and across grade levels) so I'm planning on keeping things as fair as possible.  By doing the things this summer with my fluency students I hope to continue to build rapport and the safe space all of my fluency students will either be new to speech or in new groups this year.

The google docs are here:
Articulation - 150 Sound Challenge
Articulation - 80 Sound Challenge
Language Challenge


What is everyone else doing to get their kids back into therapy?