The R Sound Therapy & Home Practice Workbook

If you treat R, you know how it goes. A student gets one good R in the room, then loses it in the hallway. Or they can say a clean initial R, but a little W sneaks in right behind it. Home practice is often a sheet of words that no one knows how to use. And the tongue is hidden, so it is hard to explain what it should be doing. This workbook is for speech-language pathologists, and for school clinicians who want a clear framework for R. It also works for those who send practice home with families. It is not a pile of word lists. It is eight exercises you work through as you plan. Each has a prompt to answer, an explanation of why it matters, a filled-in example, and the mistakes to avoid. You will learn to explain and cue lateral bracing, which means a wide tongue with the back sides lifted to the bracing spots inside the back teeth. You will choose facilitative contexts, such as the /i/ "EE" in words like "years," "she reads," and "here he is," so the sounds around the R make it easier. You will plan how to fix the sneaky W after R using the added H trick. You will also build a therapy-and-home layout. In it, the student practices with you on one side of the page and with a caregiver on the other. Last, you will set up quick drills and data collection so a short session still gives you plenty of trials. Meredith Avren is an SLP who calls herself an R sound specialist and enthusiast. She shares these techniques on her YouTube channel and Instagram. She also wrote a book on facilitative contexts for the R sound. This workbook turns what she shows in her videos and Reels into practice you can use right away.