By Christine Ristuccia, SLP Conversations with hundreds of clinicians that work with all grade levels of articulation students confirm that remediating the /r/ phoneme can be one of the most frustrating of all of the speech-language pathology tasks.Why? Because in traditional articulation intervention, evaluation and treatment procedures for /r/ do not consider all the allophones of /r/.  All of the vocalic /r/s (e.g., ar, er, or) are grouped...

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...

It is progress report time.  How will you report progress to teachers, parents and administrators?  The first and easiest way I find to do this is to keep daily progress notes for each student.  When I do this, the notes and percentages are right in front of me.  How do I keep progress for vocalic /r/?   I use the baseline results page found in the Entire World of R book of Elicitation Techniques and in the Entire World of R Advanced...

  Say it Right began 2013 with early detection/intervention month.  Research has shown that the speech-language intervention initiated at a younger age necessitates fewer treatment units than if initiated in later years the less  time is required to master speech and language goals.  (Jacoby, et al, 2002).  It is important to begin intervention for /r/ no later than 7. 5 years because the majority of the 32 /r/ sounds have been acquired...

I am often asked what the ideal age is to begin intervention for /r. I would love to give you a definite answer, however it really depends upon the child. Life is not like that! Some kids may be ready at age 5 years and others when they are 8 years. I always like to follow my approach about facilitating /r/ rather than teaching it. If you administer the EWR screening and find a correct production then the child is ready for intervention. If not...