Decision Time for Stuttering Therapy

fluency cover with outline

I have so much fun with my fluency students and love watching them make progress in the therapy room, but, boy do I wish I could spend more time with them!

If I could just perch on their shoulder and help guide or encourage them throughout the day, I feel I’d get a chance to see….well, how they handle their day.

I’ve also been feeling like the education portion of my therapy needs a little boost too. Oh, sure we’ll go through the websites and discuss myths, causes, famous people, but it seems so informational and not always attached very well to their everyday experiences–the kind of connections that really make facts stick.

And because I most often see students in individual therapy and stuttering isn’t as common a struggle as, let’s say, articulation disorders (not to mention a lot of people who stutter go to great pains to hide it), my student’s don’t usually have an opportunity to meet or interact with another person who stutters.

So…how about a book of fiction that:

  • has a narrator that struggles with stuttering
  • incorporates facts as a matter of course
  • provides the reader opportunities to get themselves in and out of sticky situations
  • gives opportunities to discuss or face fears in a slightly detached way
  • can be read aloud during therapy so we can practice fluency techniques

That’s exactly the kind of thing I need! My therapy sessions would be planned for several weeks and we could target all of our goals and feel like we really made some strides in real life in the safety of our own therapy room. And I’m thinking we might just uncover some of their fears that haven’t yet been shared….

Decision Time for Fluency is a choose-your-own-speech-adventure written on an early third grade reading level. (I plan to use this primarily with students that can read themselves, but I might occasionally use this as a read aloud for younger students.) Chapters are relatively short and include facts and common feelings and end with a choice that often centers around a speaking opportunity–there are no right or wrong answers just different consequences for each decision and, don’t worry, everyone ends up with a happy ending! Once you’ve finished, go back and read it again, making different decisions to see what else could have been.

I want students to really identify with the narrator, so there are two versions included–one with a female and one with a male narrator and neither is ever named.

Curious as to how this really looks? Click here to view all the product details and to preview chapter one!

 

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This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. barb

    This looks really interesting. I think my student is too young for it but I’ll be looking for it next year when he is in third grade!

    1. admin

      Thanks for taking a look, Barb! Have a great school year 🙂 Kim

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The views expressed in this blog are my own and are intended to inspire other speech-language pathologists in their own practice. If you are a parent, teacher or other educator, these ideas are not intended to take the place of treatment by a certified clinician. Read full disclaimer here.