About this activity
Twenty-five /r/ words sorted by position: rain, rabbit, red, ring, road, rope and rug for initial; carrot, parrot, arrow, cherry and orange for medial; car, star, door, chair and bear for vocalic; green, grass, bread, train and dress for the blends. Bingo is the excuse, and the reason it works is that a board of twenty-five squares buys you far more repetitions than a card deck of the same length.
How to use it in a session
Do not mix positions on the first pass. Vocalic /r/ is a different articulatory problem from initial /r/, and a child who has car and door will not necessarily have rain — call from one position group at a time until you know where the student is. Once you are calling freely, ask for the word in a carrier phrase before the student covers the square, which turns each square into three or four productions instead of one. Fifteen minutes is a full board with the phrase level included.
What to listen for
Listen for position effects. /r/ is among the last English consonants to stabilise, and vocalic /r/ in car and star is often the variant that persists into secondary school, while initial /r/ in rain and red frequently comes first — though the order varies between children. The blends are a separate question again: green and bread can be correct while the singleton is not, because the preceding consonant does some of the tongue's work. Note which position the student is accurate in, because that is where stimulability lives and where the next target comes from.
Carrying it home
Send home only the position the student is currently accurate on. A family listening for rain and rug at breakfast is doing useful work; a family correcting every /r/ in the day is doing damage to both the sound and the mealtime. Five minutes of listening beats an hour of catching.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- First through fifth. /r/ is a late-developing sound, and remains an active target well past the point where other sounds have settled.
- Do I need an account?
- No — the board plays free with no login and no card. An account adds assignment and goal scoring.
- Should I work on all /r/ positions at once?
- Usually not. Find the position the student can already produce with a model and build from there; mixing positions early tends to produce a lot of practice at a level the student cannot yet reach.