Love It & List It: Fluency Favorites! (Linky Party)

It is that time again, time for Jenna over at Speech Room News to host her Love It & List It monthly linky party!  This month, the theme is fluency favorites!!

I have several favorites to share with you!  Some I have posted about in the past!  I purchased a book from Stutteringhelp.org website.  This book, Wendi's Magical Voice is a great book to read with your student(s).

It tells the story about a witch named Wendi that stutters.  It is great to read out loud because the character stutters throughout the story.  It forces you and your student to make themselves fake stutter (which is a strategy!  teaches students that they can have control over it).  This story can elicit so many conversations about emotions and situations.

Which products do I have available to work on fluency?

Fluency Activity Pack

Movie Ticket Talking

Speech Journal

Thumbs Up to Star Speech

or you can get all of these in one money saving BUNDLE!

When working on fluency, the counseling piece IS SO IMPORTANT!! It is important for students to learn to rate their emotions, fears, and own speech in various scenarios and situations.  How do they feel before the disfluency? During?  After?  Make charts with them and have them rate their fears and feelings.  Which part was worse for them?  The anticipation?  The actual getting stuck?  Or afterwards wondering what their communication partner thinks?  By understanding where and when they are feeling most fears and anticipations about their speech the easier it will be for you to plan sessions to work on it!  

It is also important that your students/clients are motivated to work on it.  If they aren't interested, you cannot force them!!  You may need to counsel the parents/teachers about this!  It is sometimes harder for caregivers/educators to cope than anything. 

Work with older students that stutter?  Check out this website called Stuttering is Cool.  This website has podcasts about stuttering with confidence.  It also has open-mic podcasts where you can call and leave a voicemail using a widget on the website or you can record and email a sound file.  This allows students to participate in conversations on the site!  I recommend browsing this site and sharing it with your older students.  You will be SO glad you did!  It is a great way for your students to realize they aren't alone, there are others out there that stutter and feel the same way about their speech as they do!

I hope my favorites have helped you out!!  Maybe you can add them to your therapy sessions?!!?  Check out what your other favorite SLP bloggers love to use by going to visit Speech News Room's site and check out who linked up!

Speech Journals!

One aspect of working with fluency students is to tackle the "emotions" and "counseling" piece.  I have a couple students on my caseload this year that are older students with fluency goals.  I wanted to come up with an idea that I can use throughout the year.  I decided to create "Speech Journals"!  I created this activity with TONS of flexibility for my students and for yours!  It can easily be changed and adapted to meet your students' needs.  It can also be easily adapted for older articulation students! 

Using this file:
-Print, cut in half and staple to make the “book.”

-Feel free to use the pages that are most appropriate for your student.
-Pages with “SLP response” are provided as an option if you want to write back to your student in confidence.

-Students can use this journey in beginning of a session or on own out of speech therapy.
-This book is a forum for students to express their feelings about their speech and speech journey.  Will help with the “therapeutic” portion of speech therapy.

-Blank pages with lines are provided as well as “story starters.”  
-Pages are included which can be used with younger students as well!

You can access this activity in my TpT store by clicking HERE!

Thumbs Up To Star Speech: Fluency or Pragmatic Fun!

This activity was designed for working on fluent speech.  However, it can be used also with social skills groups since it can elicit conversations.

In this file:
-Thumbs up/Thumbs down visual to help students rate own speech patterns

-Thumbs up/Thumbs down visual to help students rate own conversational skills

-Star speech:  Students will pick a star card and respond to questions/conversation starters provided.  If they pick the “thumbs up” card, they get an extra turn.  If they pick the “thumbs down” card, they lose a turn.  The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

-Reflective worksheet:  students will share and write their feelings about good and bad speech/conversational/social experiences in the appropriate thumbs.

You can access this activity in my TpT store by clicking HERE!!