About this activity
Twelve tracking tasks: read for one minute and tally each bumpy moment; talk for one minute and tally again; rate the turn one to five for smoothness and separately for effort; which technique did you use; chart today's tally next to last week's; did the tally match how it felt, and why or why not. That last question is the one that makes this more than a data sheet.
How to use it in a session
Have the student do the tallying. A count kept by the clinician is data; a count kept by the student is self-monitoring, and the second is the actual target. Keep the smoothness and effort ratings separate — they come apart often, and a turn that sounded fluent and took enormous effort is important information that a single rating hides. Fifteen minutes covers a reading sample, a conversation sample and the ratings.
What to listen for
Watch the gap between the tally and the feeling. Students frequently rate a turn as bad when the count was low, and that mismatch is usually about effort or anticipation rather than about disfluency — which changes what you work on. Notice the four-week review task, where a student sees their own pattern; that is often more persuasive than anything a clinician says.
Carrying it home
The in-class self-report item is the one to send home. Asking a student to notice rather than count is realistic, and noticing is the skill that carries over.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Third through eighth, where students can tally and reflect on their own speech.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all twelve tasks are free to use here.
- Why rate effort separately from smoothness?
- Because they come apart. Speech can sound fluent and cost a great deal of effort, and a student who is working very hard to sound smooth is not in a sustainable place even though the count looks good.