Therapists and educators supporting K-12 literacy have a lot of diagnoses and labels to navigate, and some of them are controversial. In some debates, the diagnosis itself is in question; Central Auditory Processing Disorder being one example. With hyperlexia, some people suggest that there is a certain way hyperlexic people need to learn to read;…
Tag: language processing
EP 70: How to make syntax instruction useful for the real world
Schools often get criticized for not teaching enough “real world” skills to kids, and there’s a lot of truth to that statement. Most of the therapists I work with are worried that what they do in therapy isn’t functional enough to transfer to day-to-day skills; and this is a legitimate concern. A lot of the…
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 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 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 044: Building vocabulary skills in Kindergarten through high school
Vocabulary growth is one of the biggest predictors of language growth and academic success. That’s why in this episode, I talk about what speech pathologists, parents, and teachers can do to help kids build strong vocabulary skills across elementary school through high school. Specifically, I share: ✅Why it’s hard to pinpoint what language and vocabulary…
EP 043: Supporting reading comprehension: What parents and professionals need to know
Reading comprehension is one of the most important skills for academic success. It’s a skill that can help us to continue to learn new information throughout our lives. On the other hand, kids who struggle to understand what they read are at a disadvantage when it comes to getting in school and beyond. When I…