R Made Simple | Therapy Program
Nancy Geruntino –
Creator of R Made Simple.
As an SLP who has worked in the public schools for many years, I saw students remaining in therapy for multiple years because they were unable to master production of the R sound. This was frustrating to both the student and the treating SLP. Because of this I began searching for an approach that would be successful remediating distortions and substitutions related to the production of R, and an approach that would decrease the amount of time students spend on therapy. Using the R Made Simple methodology, I saw students making progress more quickly. The time spent in therapy decreased and students’ production of R was natural and automatic. It is my hope that this tool will support SLPs with demanding caseloads by providing a systematic method of instruction for R, practice sheets, progress monitoring tools, and language activities.
Traditional 'R' Approaches
Generally, SLPs are taught that the production of R is difficult because there are so many different contexts that slightly alter the movements and placements of the articulators for production of R. For example, programs that have been available for teaching R refer to many contexts or allophones (variations of a sound or phoneme). These include production of:
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Prevocalic R as in the word ‘rain’
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Stressed vocalic R as in the word ‘bird’
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Unstressed vocalic R as in the word ‘water’
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Blends as in the word ‘bring’
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Diphthong as in the word ‘far’
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Diphthong as in the word ‘bear’
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Diphthong as in the word ‘dear’
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Diphthong as in the word ‘more’
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Diphthong as in the word ‘fire’
It is easy to see why teaching all these different contexts to students is time consuming, confusing and frustrating!
R Made Simple reduces the number of contexts that need to be taught, giving students the ability and the confidence to produce any R sound in any context.
The 'R' Made Simple Approach
R Made Simple introduces students to the Up, Down, & Slide Alphabet. This method is easy to teach, fun to learn, and most importantly it reduces the number of contexts that need to be taught! Students learn to analyze words for the sound that precedes the R, and identify that sound as an Up sound, a Down sound, or a Slide sound – regardless of spelling. Each sound category has a corresponding tongue position that students learn and use to successfully execute the production of R.
It is as SIMPLE as 1... 2... 3...
1. Identify the sound that comes before the R – Up, Down or Slide.
2. Plan the movement between the 2 sounds.
3. Execute the production!
With R Made Simple, students learn to categorize all R sounds into one of just 3 categories - UPs, DOWNs or SLIDEs.
Nancy L. Geruntino, MA, SLP
Meet The Author
Nancy L. Geruntino, MA, SLP, has been a practicing speech-language pathologist for over 30 years providing services in private practice, clinics, and public school settings. For the past 12 years, Nancy has been developing and perfecting a new intervention technique for ‘R’ remediation. Years of observing children failing when traditional therapies were used to remediate ‘R’ provided the motivation for Nancy to develop an ‘R’ remediation program that addresses all ‘R’ sounds in all contexts.
Through the creation of the Up, Down, & Slide Alphabet, this program can help speech-language pathologists teach students and clients how to categorize ‘R’ sounds into one of these categories to improve tongue motor planning and the pronunciation of ‘R’ to overcome barriers related to pronunciation, spelling, and dialect. Nancy is the recipient of many school district awards including one for creating a speech improvement program for kindergarten students. She is also the author of 14 children's books. Nancy hopes that wide implementation of her program during the early school years will eliminate 'R' problems in middle school and high school.