Vocalic /r/ Flashcards (ar, or, air, ear)
R-controlled vowels beyond er: ar, or, air and ear words.
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Work one context at a time. Ar and or are made with the tongue quite far back and the lips rounded for or; air and ear are made further forward, and a student can have one group and not the other. Do ar first, which is usually the most accessible. Six minutes covers the twelve, so this works well as a focused block inside a longer session.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentShow the card and wait 3 seconds for the student to say it.Log as correct
- Visual cuePoint to your mouth, or show the mouth picture for /r/, before the student tries again.Log as cued
- Verbal modelSay the word; the student says it right after you.Log as cued
- Placement cueSides of your tongue up against your top back teeth, tip either lifted and pulled back or pointed down with the tongue bunched up. Lips slightly rounded, and the tip never touches the roof.Log as cued
Adjust it
Drop to syllables ('ra' and 'ree'), or use fewer cards.
Put each word in a short carrier phrase with no /r/ in it or mix in /r/ words from another position.
Matching IEP goal
Given picture cards, Student will produce /r/ in vocalic contexts in single words in 8 of 10 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than a visual cue.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Twelve words across four vocalic contexts: car, star, barn and corn for ar; door, four, fork and horse for or; bear, chair and hair for air; deer for ear. Four contexts with three examples each, which is enough to tell whether a difficulty is general or specific to one vowel shape.
What to listen for
Listen for the vowel quality rather than for a separate /r/. In car the vowel and the /r/ are one gesture, and a student producing cah-r has split them. Watch bear, chair and hair, where the air context often produces a plain vowel — a student who says beh for bear is missing the r-colouring entirely rather than distorting it.
Carrying it home
Car, door, chair and corn are ordinary words. Asking a family to listen for one gives them something concrete, and vocalic /r/ is frequent enough that it will come up within minutes.
What's in this activity
- car
- star
- door
- four
- bear
- chair
- deer
- hair
- corn
- fork
- barn
- horse
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Third through sixth, for students working vocalic /r/ beyond the er context.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all twelve cards play with no account.
- Why work the contexts separately?
- Because they behave differently. Ar and or are further back with different lip shapes than air and ear, so a student can be accurate on one group and not the other.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.