In grad school my professor called me the “fluency queen” but not because I was so great at it or anything. It was because I ended up with SO many fluency clients throughout my clinicals. Needless to say, God knew I needed the practice in grad school because my caseload of fluency clients did not diminish when I started working. I’ve had multiple fluency clients each of my 10 years of working. There have been lots of trial and error and research and sleepless nights, but fluency has slowly become one of my favorite populations to work with.
The lack of practical fluency materials is what inspired me to create many of my products. I want them to be thorough and something you can start using NOW. I make them for my real-life students with their own real-life issues, so hopefully you, in turn, can bring them into your real-life speech rooms. This is precisely what led me to create my fluency binders.
I’ve got one for school-age and one for preschool. Inside each of them are tons of practical pages for your students to complete and improve their fluency skills. They also give those of you who might not be as “practiced” in working with fluency clients a good starting point.
Let’s take a little peek inside my newest binder – for preschoolers! It’s geared for ages 3-6 and has tons of research-based techniques for you to use with your littles.
It comes with informational pages for the therapist as well as sample goals. A part of working with young children who stutter is helping parents to better understand fluency and teaching them to possibly change their environment. Now, I’m the first to admit that it’s not the easiest task to do that in the school setting. I’m lucky to get parents to even answer my phone calls half the time. 🙂 Hopefully, though, these handouts will help you get your foot in the door. The binder contains 10 pages of parent and teacher education sheets that includes letters, questionnaire, fluency trackers, and tips.
This binder also addresses feelings, emotions, and attitudes about their stuttering. Some preschoolers are aware that they stutter and some have no idea. Some kids are concerned about it and others couldn’t care less. There are activities and modeling suggestions for both types of kids. It’s important that you choose which pages work specifically for your individual clients, so I wanted you to have a variety.
The packet contains pages for teaching 3 different strategies: slow rate, light contact, and pausing. You can practice any of these strategies in a hierarchy of complexity from the word-conversation levels as well. In addition, the binder allows for practicing fluency strategies while working on preschool language concepts, so it’s great for those kids who struggle with both areas of communication.
All pages are black and white, so it’s printer-friendly and ready to go. Most pages are worksheet-like or cut/paste activities, so it’s very interactive for them. Students can bring home their binders and review what they’ve been learning with parents, which also allows for parents to reinforce the skills at home.
You can grab this handy dandy Interactive Binder for Preschoolers at my TPT store HERE!
What do you think? What are some of your favorite resources for fluency?
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