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Reading is a Non-Optional Life Skill 

Our goal is to go back to basics and start from a place where kids have confidence and build the underlying skills a child needs to be able to tackle the complex task of reading. Sometimes we have to go way back and start at the ground up so we have a strong foundation and we fill in those missing gaps in skills. This creates strong and confident fluent readers.

We know that a child struggling with reading can affect all aspects of their education, especially their self-esteem.  We help kids to gain confidence in their reading ability and work on the underlying reasons they are not seeing success currently.

We want kids to enjoy school and enjoy reading.

There is nothing more rewarding than hearing a child who hated reading tell me at the end of a session,
​"Can we keep reading?"

We want that feeling for every child. 

Can A Speech Pathologist Help With Reading?....

​YES! 

There is a well-established relationship between oral language and reading. Reading requires a command of language, beginning at the level of the individual sounds in words all the way to text comprehension.

What Are Some Red Flags?

• Difficulty identifying letters 
• Difficulty identifying the sounds associated with letters
• Confusion of basic sight words
• ​Guessing words based on the first letter 
• Difficulty sounding out words
  
• Monotone or robotic reading
• Unable to answer questions about what they just read
• Frequent stopping while reading

What Makes A Person A Successful Reader?

According to the research conducted in 2001 from The Center For Improvement In Early Reading, the "Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks to Teaching Children To Read" publication outlines these areas of necessary skill to be a proficient and successful reader:

1. ​Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds in spoken words. This is an auditory skill. A successful reader can use this skill to sound out words and spell words. 
   1. ​How the SLP can address deficits in this skill area: Teaching rhyming, syllabification, practice sound manipulation (i.e. adding, subtracting, matching and blending sounds), and practicing identifying sequential order of sounds (onset and rime).
2. Phonics: Understanding the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds. This is a visual and auditory skill. A successful reader can use this skill to identify words, spell and comprehend.
   1. How the SLP can address deficits in this skill area​: Teaching sounds and symbol relationships, structure of words (i.e. root, suffix, prefix, contractions, plurals), sight words, homophones, homonyms, abc order. 
3. Text Comprehension: WHY WE READ! A successful reader must be able to simultaneously decode and understand what the text is saying. 
   1. How the SLP can address deficits in this skill area​: Teach self-monitoring, organizing semantic knowledge, asking and answering questions, ​retelling, summarizing, main idea, relevant details, connection to prior knowledge, mental imagery, use of context clues, cause and effect, fact vs. opinion, inference, and compare and contrast. 
4. Vocabulary: Word meaning. A successful reader is able to identify and use vocabulary in context while reading and infer the meaning of unknown words.  
   1. ​How the SLP can address deficits in this skill area​: Teach synonyms, antonyms, multiple meaning words, prefixes, suffixes, root words, compound words, curriculum vocab, homophones, homographs, homonyms and literary devices (i.e. personification, simile, metaphor)
5. Fluency: The ability to read text with accuracy and smoothness. A good reader can read passages with express and cadence. A reader must be fluent to have good comprehension. 
   1. ​How the SLP can address deficits in this skill area​: Teaching students how to read with expression and emotion and how to use grammar as a guidepost when reading to develop rhythm. 
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