Lateral /s/

Ideas for working on Lateral /s/

Lateral /s/ is my pet peeve! I find it the most difficult and daunting of all the articulation goals and when I look around I am not alone! Again and again I see SLP's posting how difficult they find it! 

I had a student who was able to read the entire white board story (above) without a lateral s lisp and once he was back in class I could hear it... ugghh!!!

Now I assure you I am not inventing anything new here, just showing you some posts and info that I hope will help you (& I) on your lateral /s/ journey!

 For Parents you can hand out this handy document from Super Duper to inform parents the difference between a frontal and lateral lisp! You might even want to give it to the students teacher(s).

Exploding T- Have your child make the /t/ sound quickly over and over again and then get the child to hold the last /t/ sounds to make it into the /s/ sound. I love Speech and Language Kids video- great explanation! 




Using a straw between the front teeth- have the child practice the previous example 2 with a straw in their mouth- and working toward making the the /s/ sound while blowing the air through the straw.
  (Thank you Pam Marshalla- click on the picture for information.)

 

Sara Mathis-Hardigan has an entire pinterest board dedicated to this sound- check it out!

Another straw technique- now I don't know who started it but an SLP once told me about getting straw and having the child practice blowing a cotton ball across a table. Then the child eventually works up to blowing the cotton ball across the table while saying the /s/ sound.

On TPT I found these cool products- the first is a freebie from Aloha Speech!  She targets in the final position- similar to the t-s idea. :)

 

And this paid product from A scoop of Speech!