Providing Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) and clinicians with creative ways to make stuttering therapy more successful and help students become the best communicators they can be.

Focus on Fluency™ is a practical, creative tool kit chock-full of resource materials and practical tools to assist Speech-Language Pathologists in executing stuttering therapy goals.

This educational speech program is based on a multidimensional theoretical basis whereby factors related to stuttering problems are considered and addressed in the treatment process (Smith, 1999). The overall goal of therapy is to learn to communicate effectively. The SLP encourages students to become confident and assertive communicators while assisting them in learning to produce speech that is moving forward with little or no tension.

Who is this stuttering therapy tool helpful for?

Focus on Fluency™ is designed to improve stuttering in students grades 2 to 8 and children ages 7 to 13. The kit includes five topic areas, not order-specific, that can incorporated into students' fluency treatment plan. These areas include:

1. Education. Provides activities to teach students about the normal process of speech, stuttering, breathing, relaxation, and visual imagery.
2. Desensitization. Involves activities that encourage the development of healthy attitudes and feelings about stuttering.
3. Basic Communication. Focuses on tools such as eye contact, wait time, pausing, and turn-taking to improve communication and speaking skills.
4. Fluency Shaping. Involves an easy, relaxed approach to help students speak more smoothly.
5. Stuttering Modification. Includes pull-out, cancellation, and fake stutters to help students change the way they stutter.

Each section of the book begins with an explanation of the topic area and why it helps.

What makes Focus on Fluency™ an effective tool to treat stuttering?

Although Focus on Fluency™ is organized and simple to follow, there is nothing simple about stuttering therapy. Not only are the ways kids stutter dynamic but so are the attitudes and feelings about the problem (Chmela & Reardon, 2001).

The tools in this kit will assist SLPs in carrying out goals for a variety of students and their individual needs. Activities and games provide assistance to clinicians in the teaching process. Some of these activities include:

• Visual prompts. To remind students of the tool(s) during various activities in their speech therapy.
• Self-charting/Partner-charting. To provide the student with opportunities to monitor his/her use of tools.
• Contract cards. That assists students with rehearsing skills in other communicative environments; students complete short assignments and discuss progress.

Learning to be an effective communicator involves exercising a combination of tools as well as determining which tools are most relevant for a particular student. Students will help the clinician understand what works for them.

This kit includes an informal decision-making guide that may help clinicians as they review assessment results and plan treatment. While an area of treatment may be relevant, not all activities within an area may be appropriate. Speech-Language Pathologists should use clinical judgment to determine relevant activities for each individual student.

The Focus on Fluency Kit includes:

• Instructional Manual with Reproducible Activities, Contract, and Charting Cards (88 pages)
• 10 card decks
• 2 Sets of Discussion Strips
• Game board with cards and playing pieces
• Magnetic board with seven magnets
• 8 visual prompt and discussion cards
• 7 manipulatives
• 3 educational posters

Meet the Author

Click here for an interview with Kristin Chmela, M.A., CCC-SLP, BRS-FD, Director of the Central Speech and Language Clinic's Chmela Fluency Center.