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**A school-based speech-language pathologist (SLP) is a highly trained licensed professional who evaluates and treats children who have difficulty with speech  and/or language. Although people often think of speech and language as the same thing, the terms actually have very different meanings. If your child has trouble with speech, he/she struggles with the “how-to” of talking- the coordination of the muscles and movements necessary to produce speech. If your child has trouble with language, he/she struggles with understanding what he/she hears or sees. Your child may struggle to find the right words and/or organize those words in a meaningful way to communicate a message or hold a conversation. This information was adapted from the Super Duper Publications handout 162

Hello parents and guardians!  This outline is intended to provide for you an overview of the skills that are addressed with students who have speech and/or language delays.  While some student’s only goal is to correctly produce specific sounds, other students may be working on a whole host of more complex goals. Please refer to your child’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for the school year to determine which goals your child’s therapy will address. Included on the IEP is the service level your child will be receiving per 6 day cycle.

Below you will find the areas that are addressed in the therapy setting:

Speech Intelligibility to include: oral motor control and coordination; auditory discrimination; sound production from isolation through a hierarchy to conversational speech

Receptive Language to include: listening comprehension; understanding age-appropriate vocabulary, concepts, WH questions, cause/effect, figurative language, association, categorization and grammar

Expressive Language to include: the ability to express age-appropriate vocabulary, concepts, figurative language, defining/describing, syntax, story production; increasing mean length of utterance

Fluency to include: relaxation; decreasing rate of speaking; identifying normal speaking and breathing; identifying secondary characteristics (situations/stressors); use of strategies and techniques

Phonological Awareness to include: auditory discrimination; rhyming; segmenting/blending/adding/deleting of phonemes in words

 Auditory Processing to include: following directions; recall; identifying relevant/irrelevant information; memory strategies

Pragmatics (the social use of language) to include: turn-taking; eye contact; attention span; use of appropriate gestures/facial expressions; topic initiation/maintenance/transition/ending; asking for clarification

**To keep you abreast of your child’s improvement in the therapy setting, quarterly progress notes will be sent home .

In an attempt to improve your child's speech and language skills and promote carryover outside the therapy setting, I have included some helpful, at-home resources that will be useful for improving communication!