By Christine Ristuccia, M.S. CCC-SLP Administration of a speech screening does not take long, yet it is a critical first step in being able to successfully overcome speech disorders with your students. I initially qualify my students for speech services and then re-administer the single word screening approximately every five sessions to assess their progress and current performance levels. Here is how you can administer speech screenings in 10...

By Christine Ristuccia, M.S. CCC-SLP The importance of completing a comprehensive screening with students is having a solid understanding of their present ability level. When it comes down to articulation screening especially, I like to do a single word screening about every three sessions since the work we do in intervention can alter students’ ability and progress. Conducting a screening and finding the correctly produced word allows me...

I have been blogging about prevocalic/r/ intervention in regards to gliding or w/r substitution  Example:   rain vs. Wayne   In intervention for /r/, I teach students that if a /w/ is produced instead of an/r/ as in Wayne vs. rain that the listeners would most likely get confused and think that they are referring to a boy named ‘Wayne versus rain like the weather.  I worked recently with a first grade student who used the Entire World of...

The school year is nearing-5 weeks left!   I have begun to accelerate my students especially my 5th graders.  I have found the following technique to be quite effective and has lead to generalization of other /r/ allophones that had been misproduced.   I re-administered the Entire World of R Advanced Screening tool.  Afterward, I made two lists: 1).  All correctly produced /r/ words from the 4 /r/ categories\ prevocalic /r/, initial /r/...

Since prevocalic /r/ misproductions are often characterized by gliding or w/r substitution that is an issue that should cease at around age five. Many times it remains an issue beyond the preschool years.  I have seen many SLP’s administer intervention for prevocalic /r/ by instructing students produce an er in front of the prevocalic /r/ sound as in the words red, becomes errrr red.  Unfortunately, this becomes habitual for students and...

I am often asked the question of what to do when you have a student who had a phonological disorder and the only sound left is /r/.  Do you dismiss or continue intervention to work on /r/? As I posted earlier if a student substitutes w/r as in wed for red that is considered to be gliding which is age appropriate until age five.  After that, it is considered to be a disorder or needs to be addressed in intervention.  Most students can work on...