I have a second-grade girl who had worked on R for a whole year and never formed a clear R.  She is eager to please and mastered L's as expected, but I couldn't help her visualize the R sound.  When I found the Bite-R, it sounded too good to be true!  But it appeared to be the very thing I was looking for - a tool to help my second-grade student visualize or at least feel what the tongue position for an R actually is.  She did her tongue lift with the Bite-R in her mouth and spit it out.  Her first R showed a "flavor of R" (I call it that because it still had some of the W sound in it) that she'd never made before!  I wondered if this really would make the difference to teaching her a clear R.  This girl is in a group with a classmate who just started speech, and is working on R.  The peer is a quick study and has not struggled much with R.  I was sad for my first student.  Well, here we are two months later, and (with verbal cues) she can consistently say the R sound - vocalic and prevocalic at the word level, and we're about to move into phrases.  (The other student is not yet to phrases, but has mastered prevocalic, and vocalic is more challenging for her.  We may see a Bite-R in her future!)  The original student has now learned to produce the R clearly and is so proud of the progress she has made.  She is confident and ready to take the steps needed to graduate from speech therapy - hopefully before 3rd grade!

 

My fourth-grade girl came into Speech Therapy for her R sound last year.  (Her two younger brothers also are in speech therapy, both working on R.)  She made immediate improvement after having used the Bite-R.  But then she had some loose teeth, so she waited awhile to return to the use of it.  Then I pulled out the Bite-R Word drill cards.  I read the back of the card to give me tips on how to shape her R into a true R. It explained how to shape the lips and teeth in order to increase tension to produce the R.  Immediately the R improved. Immediately!  The student sitting to her right, who had never used a Bite-R because she had a good pharyngeal R, stopped and stared at the original student who'd just produced a beautiful R.  She politely waited for the original student to finish, then took her turn using the technique I had just described.  She liked the feel of it so much that she said she would change the way she produces her R.  She kept that beautiful R for the remainder of the session, and I can't wait to see what she'll do with it next week!  That technique helped shape the R of the remainder of my R students that day!  It's so great to see progress like this - especially on the single most difficult sound to teach!  

 

A second-grade boy has maxed out private speech therapy and public-school speech therapy options.  I gave him the Bite-R and some specific instruction on placement, and it solidified his R.  I had the data to prove that I could reduce his speech time because he had finally been able to consistently put his mouth in the Bite-R position to produce the R.  And he's continuing to make progress every week.  

 

I'm so excited to give these students the clarity of speech that they deserve - in a fraction of the time!

                                                  Audrey G., MS, CCC-SLP, Texas

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