Speech & Language Therapy

What types of speech and language disorders affect school-age children?*

Children may experience one or more of the following disorders:

Speech sound disorders - (difficulty pronouncing sounds)
Language disorders - (difficulty understanding what they hear as well as expressing themselves with words)
Cognitive-communication disorders - (difficulty with thinking skills including perception, memory, awareness, reasoning, judgment, intellect and imagination)
Stuttering (fluency) disorders - (interruption of the flow of speech that may include hesitations, repetitions, prolongations of sounds or words)
Voice disorders - (quality of voice that may include hoarseness, nasality, volume (too loud or soft)

Do speech-language disorders affect learning?
Speech and language skills are essential to academic success and learning. Language is the basis of communication. Reading, writing, gesturing, listening, and speaking are all forms of language. Learning takes place through the process of communication. The ability to communicate with peers and adults in the educational setting is essential for a student to succeed in school.

Source: American Speech and Hearing Website.
For detailed information, visit asha.org

Little Stories Lite is an app for iPad with carefully crafted stories that target speech, language and literacy. Each of these little story gems comes in a package—a package bursting with supporting curriculum and beautiful, full-color illustrations.

Farm Academy is a fun and colorful iPad and iPhone app that was created by a certified speech and language pathologist for younger children (18 months–3 years or up). It targets both receptive and expressive language skills and is based on language development research.

Sentence Maker is an exciting interactive game that helps your child rapidly learn to make and complete their own sentences all with just the touch of their finger.

An exceptionally high-quality, interactive game designed by Speech and Language Therapists/Pathologists to help children learn listening and language skills.

PRONOUNS WITH SPLINGO will help teach the understanding and expressive use of a wide range of pronouns.

“Between the Lines” app series by Hamaguchi apps focuses on targeting aspects of social language including tone of voice and non-verbal body language, perspective taking as well as idiom interpretation.

Super Duper Inc. offers a number of free apps that are fun, user friendly ways of practicing a variety of skills:

This educational app from Super Duper Publications helps children learn how to correctly ask and answer WHO-WHAT-WHEN-WHERE-WHY questions with four entertaining learning games for each WH set of cards. This app has a Spanish version as well.

This colorful, educational vocabulary App for the iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch®, has all 52 illustrated picture cards (plus audio of each card text) from the Let's Name... Things Fun Deck. Select the cards you want students to see, and have them name items to practice vocabulary, categorizing, and thinking skills. The prompts include statements like, “Let’s name… things that live in the ocean” and “Let’s name… things you’d take on a trip.”

Create fantastic stories, document exciting adventures, generate invaluable picture schedules, and much more with Super StoryMaker! Educators and parents will love Super StoryMaker because it gives children opportunities to practice important skills such as reading, sequencing, vocabulary, sentence-building, following directions, grammar, storytelling, communication, and more!

Online Speech Therapy Websites for Engaging Practice and Enrichment Activities:
StoryPlace.org: StoryPlace.org is a website offers a number of online stories and interactive activities for preschoolers and elementary-aged students. Each theme includes an online story, online activity, printable “take-home” activities and suggestions for parents. A booklist that corresponds to each theme is also offered. Stories are in English and Spanish.

FunwithSpot.com: is a website for preschoolers and young children. Children familiar with the Spot book series will love the fun language-based games. There are also parent and teacher resources.

FunBrain.com: This website offers a number of free online games for kids. Games touch upon a variety of topics, including vocabulary, grammar, reading, math and some that are just for fun! Check out Plural Girls, Grammar Gorillas or click on the reading tab for some great language activities.

Scholastic.com: Scholastic.com’s Family Playground is a great website for preschool and school-age children and their parents. This website includes a variety of games and activities for children related to popular characters and children’s books such as Clifford, Magic School Bus, Walter Wick, and I Spy.

Articulation Games (by Tracy Gefroh Boyd): This is a great site where children can play a variety of games to practice a variety of speech sounds.

The Tongue Twister Database: A fun collection of tongue twisters to practice speech sounds and giggle at the same time!

PBSkids.org: Between the Lions You may have seen this television show. PBS Kids’ Between the Lions website offers many language games and literacy activities for preschool and elementary-aged children. It includes stories both watch and listen to, many vocabulary and phonemic awareness (pre-literacy) activities, video clips from the show and helpful information for parents.

Do2Learn.com is a website that offers various language, speech games and learning activities that address facial expressions, emotions, sequencing, vocabulary, synonyms, antonyms, songs and rhymes.

Epic! https://www.getepic.com Epic is a digital library with thousands of books! They are offering a free 30-day subscription to families. (Check with your child’s therapist to see if they can send you an invitation for an extended free subscription through June 30, 2020).

Vooks https://www.vooks.com/parent-resources : Vooks is offering a FREE 30-day subscription to families to have access to their library of hundreds of books. Think Netflix for books! The books are literally brought to life with animated illustrations, read-a-long text, and narration!