Language Therapy and Leadership for Pediatric Clinicians
The other day I got a great question from a read and wanted to do a special case study Q & A. In this particular case, the SLP is supporting a 10-year old bilingual student in a private clinic. The student presents with disorganized syntax and various grammatical errors. They’ve worked on things like verb…
A lot of kids with language processing issues struggle to answer “wh” questions.It can be a challenge to figure out how to help. The problem is that most “wh” question activities just focus on asking kids questions over and over again without teaching them the skills that are causing the breakdown in the first place….
Why isn’t there a language therapy curriculum? When I ask SLPs what would help them feel more confident, a lot of times they say that they wish there was a standard “curriculum” they could use for language therapy. When I was first practicing as an SLP, I wished for something like this. I was jumping…
SLPs can play SUCH and important role in building literacy skills… Since SLPs have a background in language, they’re well-equipped to help kids build the decoding skills kids need to be strong readers and spellers. But sometimes knowing how to provide support can be a little confusing! A great place to start is by teaching…
As an SLP I spend a fair amount of time doing research on strategies for building language and literacy skills. But back when I was in elementary school, I didn’t catch on to reading right away. I had what I like to refer to as the Catholic school version of Response to Intervention. I still…
Recently, I asked my readers if they ever felt like the procedures, rules, and other “administrative red tape” at their facilities got in the way of providing quality services. A lot of people felt like people without expertise in communication had more influence than they should… Or that the SLPs didn’t have enough say in…
How do I know if these therapy materials are “evidence-based”? That’s a question I get a lot. There’s a lot of pressure on clinicians to prove that what they’re doing is based on research…but there are so many products to sift through. A lot of times it’s hard to tell if the product was made…
I get asked all the time, “What’s the best language screener”? Usually people want some kind of a formal test, because that’s what most speech pathologists been trained to do. But if you want to accurately identify kids who might need a full case study evaluation…that type of thinking might result in overidentifying or worse…underidentifying…
What resources can I share with parents to build vocab at home? It’s a great question and it comes up a lot. Unfortunately, it usually comes in the form of “What app can I use to build my child’s vocabulary”? My response is usually that the best way to build your child’s vocabulary is not…
Building spelling skills can have a huge impact on overall language processing and vocabulary growth, which falls perfectly in line with your expertise. Vocabulary is one of the biggest predictors of success or failure in school because of it’s impact on overall comprehension and language processing (Nagy & Scott, 2000; Nippold, 2017). But most people…