Speech and Language

The Speech and Language Department services all the children in the Elementary and Middle Schools. The therapist presents a therapy program with specific goals, which is designed to meet the individual language needs of the student. Therapists attempt to develop various speech and language skills at different levels. These skills include the following:

Vocabulary Skills

• Expand knowledge of words
• Retrieve specific vocabulary
• Use context cues to gain new vocabulary
• Associate and categorize vocabulary
• Decode vocabulary within sentences

Semantic (meaning) interpretation

• Interpret vocabulary to gain meaning of statement(s)
• Integrate meaning of several sentences
• Generate understanding of a topic
• Retain topic interpretation and related inferences
• Understand various grammatical and syntactical formats

Memory Skills

• Depict facts in statements
• Store, associate and retrieve long range facts
• Improve sequential memory of facts
• Enhance sequential language

Linguistic Formulation of Language

• Generate correct grammar and syntax
• Encode various sentence structures
• Produce sequential linguistic information
• Maintain semantic (meaning) clarity in verbal statements
• Target the correct words to use

Pragmatic Skills

• Initiate, maintain and terminate conversation
• Request explanations/help when confused
• Maintain good eye-contact
• Establish good listening skills
• Participate in conversations

Reading Skills

• Enhance phonemic awareness
• Identify rhyming words
• Strengthen segmenting and blending of syllables
• Reinforce sound symbol relationship
• Analyze sounds and syllables
• Develop factual, integrative and inferential comprehension

The above reflects some of the objectives that therapy activities are directed toward.