Evaluations
Speech TLC conducts evaluations in the child’s natural environment (home, school, library) which maximizes their comfort and performance. Using standardized tests, oral language samples, and written language samples, the clinician pinpoints the areas of receptive or expressive weakness and develops goals specific to the individual child. When evaluating persons with Autism, a dynamic assessment (a method that seeks to identify an individual’s skills as well as learning potential) might be used instead of standardized testing instruments. Evaluations are conducted in the following areas:
- Articulation – including Apraxia and Phonological Disorders
- Voice
- Fluency
- Receptive Language (oral)
- Expressive Language (oral and written)
Speech Therapy
Speech therapy helps children to speak more clearly by eradicating misarticulations, reducing dysfluencies (stuttering), or improving vocal health to diminish vocal nodules.
- Articulation Disorders – Speech sound misarticulations
- Phonological disorders – a type of articulation disorder that involves patterns of sound errors such as omitting sounds from the beginning or end of words, moving sounds made in the back of the mouth to the front, cluster reduction, or deleting syllables from words.
- Childhood Apraxia of Speech – a motor speech disorder where the child knows what he wants to say and the brain sends the signal, but the articulators have difficulty coordinating the necessary movements.
- Fluency Disorders (Stuttering) – speech sound repetitions, word repetitions, or blocks impeding the flow of communication.
- Voice Disorders (Vocal nodules) – calluses on the vocal folds caused by vocal abuse.
Language Therapy
Language therapy helps students to better understand (receptive language) spoken and written language as well as to communicate effectively (expressive language). Specific strategies and therapy techniques are employed depending on the child’s unique areas of weakness.
- Semantic Weaknesses (Word meanings, multiple meaning words, understanding text, inferencing)
- Morphological Weaknesses (Grammar)
- Syntactical Weaknesses (Word order within sentences)
- Pragmatic Weaknesses (Social skills including initiating and maintaining conversations, non-verbal language, eye contact, facial expressions, communicating feelings)
- Auditory Processing Weaknesses (Processing language in oral directions or note taking as well as screening out background noise)
Reading Tutoring
Have you noticed that your child has a hard time sounding out words, reading smoothly, or understanding what he has read? Is your child diagnosed with a reading learning disability or dyslexia? If so, our reading tutoring can improve all areas of reading.
- SPIRE Reading Program – Systematic, sequential, phonetic reading program based on Orton Gillingham method
- Phonological Awareness Activities – Rhyming, segmenting, blending, syllabication, and phoneme manipulation
- Kansas University Learning Strategies – Reading Comprehension Strategies: Paraphrasing –Main idea and details, Self-Questioning – Asking questions and locating the answers within the text, Visual Imagery- Making pictures in your mind while reading, Inferencing- Digging deep and using clues to make meaning of text.
- LINCS Vocabulary Strategy – vocabulary card strategy
Writing Tutoring
Writing tutoring improves a student’s ability to communicate effectively through written expression. Our tutoring moves students along the continuum of sentence writing through multi-paragraph essays. The University of Kansas Writing Strategies, considered the gold standard to teaching writing, remediate writing difficulties and focus on independence. Students memorize graphic organizers and “unpack” the correct organizer depending on type of writing assignment.
- Fundamentals in Sentence Writing – students learn to write simple sentences with one or two subjects and one or two verbs; focus on action verbs, helping verbs, prepositions, and varying vocabulary.
- Proficiency in Sentence Writing – students master compound and complex sentences by memorizing coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
- Paragraph Writing Strategy – clients utilize a memorized graphic organizer prior to writing an 8 sentence paragraph containing a topic sentence, 6 detail sentences, and a concluding sentence; Types of Paragraphs: Narrative, Step-by-Step, Descriptive, Expository, Compare/Contrast.
- Theme Writing Strategy (5 paragraph essay) – students memorize a graphic organizer that helps them prewrite a thesis statement, introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and concluding paragraph. The overall focus of this strategy is independence in writing, preparing the student for high school and college writing assignments.