PRANAAH

Develop Reading and Writing Abilities

 

Within a speech therapist’s direct scope of practice is to address literacy (aka reading, writing, and spelling). One might think a general tutor is all that is needed to support these skills, however when a child is struggling in their development across the reading and writing continuum, a speech therapist is specially and specifically trained to identify where the breakdown is happening and to approach instruction with systematic, evidence-based methodologies. With 4-6 year olds, a speech pathologist helps with development of phonological awareness skills and the sounds of our language (all pre-reading essentials). Children learn that words are made up of individual sounds, and these individual sounds correspond to different graphemes, or written letters. Learning these building blocks prepares a child to begin reading, and over time, spelling. Once children learn how to read, they must be proficient in their fluency, or pace of reading, and in their comprehension of what they’ve read since reading becomes the avenue for all future learning. Speech therapists also help to teach writing: from the building blocks of how to create logical, correct, and complete sentences to formulation and organization of one’s thoughts at a much higher-level for a variety of different types of writing (summaries, narratives, informational, opinion, literary-based, etc.). They teach a systematic way to approach the writing process and create a plan for success. Again, these skills don’t always develop easily for children along the way; speech therapy can help to bridge gaps across these critical skill areas. It is important to ask for a speech therapist who has experience treating the above areas; it is one of our specialty areas at All About Speech & Language!