SPEECH and LANGUAGE THERAPY
Diamond Path's speech-language program serves children from kindergarten through fifth grade. Once a student has been identified as qualifying for this service through a formal assessment process, an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is written. The IEP contains goals and objectives that are written for one calendar year. At the end of each calendar year, the IEP goals and objectives are reviewed at an Annual Team Review (ATR) meeting with parents, the classroom teacher, the speech pathologist, and any other special education teacher that provides service to the student. Based on student progress, decisions are made regarding continued service or service discontinuation. Speech/Language services are offered within five different categories:
- Articulation - Children develop speech sounds at different ages. Children qualify for articulation service when their speech skills are different from those of their same age peers and when they meet entrance test criteria.
- Phonemic Awareness - Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear the individual sounds that make up words. Research findings are in agreement that phonemic awareness is a key factor in successfully learning to read and spell. One has to be able to attend to the sounds in the context of a word and be able to hear the sounds, know their positions, and understand the role they play in a word. Activities include developing awareness of rhyme, word play, awareness of syllables, and identifying and blending sounds. Phonemic awareness is not phonics, but the two are dependent on each other. Phonemic awareness focuses on the sound units (phonemes) that form spoken words and it needs to be developed in order to benefit from phonics. Phonics associates sounds with written symbols (letters). Together the two help students develop reading and spelling skills.
- Language - Children may be identified as language impaired if they have extreme language difficulty receptively (understanding) or expressively (speaking), in areas such as vocabulary, concepts, comprehension, or grammar. These children may have trouble understanding or remembering verbal directions or stories. They may have word finding difficulties while speaking, use immature grammar, or unusual or simple sentence structure. They may have difficulty talking about stories or responding to questions about happenings in their lives or activities at school.
- Fluency - Symptoms of a fluency problem can involve one or more of several atypical speech patterns involving sounds, syllables, words, or phrases. Such patterns include repetitions, prolongations, additions, or word blocks. These patterns can be accompanied by tense facial muscles or inappropriate body movements. It is typical for most young children to use simple repetitions between the ages of 3 to approximately 6.
- Voice - The most common voice disorder in school-aged children involves inappropriate voice use which can result in the growth of callous-like vocal nodules on the vocal folds. Inappropriate voice use can include excessive and loud speaking, shouting, or making loud “throat noises.” These voice habits can result in a hoarse, raspy sounding voice.
The goal of speech language services is to help students develop appropriate speech and language skills that will enable students to attain their academic potential.
The Diamond Path speech-language pathologists, have the Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech Language Hearing Association as well as Minnesota teaching licensure. For more information, or to talk to one of our specialists, please call the Diamond Path office.