Page 16 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

Literacy-Based Speech Language Therapy Activities

with language delays often need more frequent instruction that is shorter in duration. The size and
repetitive nature of books allows us to accommodate different levels of language processing.

Flex your Language Expertise

Understanding the symbiotic relationship between reading
difficulties and communication development helps

practitioners design and implement appropriate intervention
programs for monolingual and bilingual children. Many

students who exhibit communication disorders often have
difficulties acquiring reading skills. By understanding language
development and reading skills acquisition, therapy can be
targeted to meet underlying oral language needs in

conjunction with reading fluency and comprehension
skills. Such an approach enables SLPs to apply language
expertise to struggles in reading.

One of the key goals in elementary education is teaching children to read. Acquiring reading skills is
based on two basic areas: decoding and comprehension.

Decoding

In early elementary school, instruction focuses on learning phonemes, rhyming and decoding simple
words to apply meaning. As children reach the later elementary school years, students have

developed reading fluency, the ability to decode with fluidity, and are building their syntax, semantics,
and discourse skills. Reading acquisition requires the integration of many skills, including but not
limited to, sound-symbol awareness, automaticity in word recognition, vocabulary skills, and

understanding of morphological and syntactic structures. Reading skills also transfer to writing skills
in which children apply their knowledge of sounds to write words and practice their knowledge of
morphology and syntax to formulate sentences to describe, define, and analyze. A variety of

resources show that children’s elementary reading abilities are used as predictors for future reading
abilities, high school dropout rates, and effective communication abilities (Lipka and Siegel, 2007;
Morais, Mousty, Kolinsky, Hulme and Joshi, 1998).

5
www.bilinguistics.com