About this activity
Twelve words ending in an unstressed er: teacher, water, hammer, ladder, dinner, butter, finger, spider, tiger, zipper, letter, summer. This is the vocalic /r/ shape that dominates most caseloads — it appears at the end of an enormous number of words, and it is unstressed, which makes it quiet and easy to reduce.
How to use it in a session
Split the word and work the second syllable alone. Teach-er and but-ter give the student the target on its own, which is easier than producing it at the end of a word where attention has already gone elsewhere. Once the isolated er is good, rejoin it. Six minutes covers the twelve, which makes this a focused block rather than a whole session.
What to listen for
Listen for the er reducing to a plain vowel. Butt-uh rather than butter is the characteristic pattern, and it is a reduction rather than a substitution — the r-colouring has simply gone. Watch whether the first syllable is accurate: if the student is accurate on teach and inaccurate on -er, the target is isolated cleanly, which is the best case for planning.
Carrying it home
Water, dinner, letter and summer come up daily. Asking a family to listen for the end of one word gives them a concrete target, and er words are frequent enough that one arrives within a minute.
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Third through sixth, for the most common vocalic /r/ context.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all twelve cards play with no account.
- Why is the er context so common in therapy?
- Because it appears at the end of an enormous number of English words and it is unstressed, which makes it quiet and easy to drop — a combination that produces a very audible error across a lot of speech.