Doing a quality evaluation when you’re assessing things like language can be a challenge because there isn’t one “magic bullet” test that gives us what we need. What is even more challenging is when you get a referral to evaluate a client that speaks two or more languages; especially when they’re languages you don’t speak. …
Category: Language Development
EP 64: Are kids ready to work on complex sentences in early elementary school?
In episode 64 of “Are they 18 yet?”®, I share a Q & A from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations members’ group about working on complex sentences with students in early elementary school. Part of the framework I teach focuses on building skills like morphology (e.g., knowledge of word parts like prefixes & suffixes) as…
EP 63: Navigating dyslexia and working memory goals
In episode 63 of “Are they 18 yet?”®, I share a Q & A from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations members’ group about dyslexia diagnosis and treatment, as well as working memory goals. I get a lot of questions about who is qualified to diagnose and treat dyslexia; especially when it comes to the SLP’s…
EP 61: Building word-retrieval and independent word learning in K-12 kids
I get a ton of questions about how to support kids who have weak word-retrieval, so I wanted to share a powerful technique you can use to address this. When kids have poor word-finding skills, it’s often because they’re not engaging in the internal dialogue needed to pay attention to important features of words and…
EP 052: Making sense of developmental milestones
Recently, the Center for Disease control updated the early developmental milestones, and there’s been a lot of debate about what this means. In a lot of my SLP professional groups, there have been questions about whether this will allow kids to fall through the cracks. I’ve also heard the concern that developmental milestones in general…
EP 046: How to support language processing and comprehension in school-age kids (part 2)
In this episode, I continue the discussion about language processing and how to support it. I continue the discussion of difficult sentence types, and dive in to one very challenging syntax skill that tends to cause processing problems. Working on this skill can not only improve language comprehension, but it can also help kids more…
EP 045: How to support language processing and comprehension in school-age kids (part 1)
Language skills are essential to a child’s ability to succeed in school and life. But when processing language is a struggle there can be a global impact across a child’s entire day. Language comprehension issues can be such as challenge for therapists, parents and teachers because they’re difficult to spot. Often they look like a…
EP 015: Building communication skills in nonverbal children and late talkers (with Rebecca Robbins)
In this episode, I sit down with Rebecca Robbins, a pediatric speech-language pathologist who specializes in working with young children with autism, apraxia, and other conditions that impact communication. You’ll find this conversation extremely helpful if you’re a parent of a toddler and you want to know how to interact with them in a way…