Children’s Speech Therapy Has An Impact On Education
Saturday, March 20th, 2010When people think of speech therapy, they tend to think of it as being therapy for problems like stuttering or difficulty saying words with certain letters. Speech therapy is this and more. Children’s speech therapy can make a big impact in a child’s educational career. Let us take a look at some of the reasons.
The Receptive Language Of A Child
When a person understands what is being said to him or to her that is receptive language. The person receives or understands language. Many times receptive language is more advanced that expressive language, which will be discussed momentarily.
Receptive language is extremely important for learning. If a child does not know what is being said in the classroom, does not have a good receptive vocabulary, school work will suffer and the child will not learn. A speech therapist works with the child to develop better receptive language skills through games, role play and other non-threatening methods.
The Expressive Language Of A Child
Expressive language skills or the ability to express one’s thoughts, feelings and knowledge are extremely important in the educational setting. Poorly developed expressive language skills create a barrier to student participation and create difficulty in assessing how much the student actually has learned. Expressive language deficits are seen in children with autism and other learning disabilities.
Imagine the frustration of knowing an answer but not being able to tell the teacher what the answer actually is. This happens over and over again for a child with expressive language issues. Therapy helps the child compensate for expressive language problems by teaching him or her strategies to use in the classroom and daily life.
Vocabulary Skills
Often children who come from economically depressed areas have lower vocabularies than children from more prosperous areas. Parents from the prosperous areas have exposed their child to much more of the world than parents from the depressed areas. This leads to a lower vocabulary for the children from depressed areas.
At school the speech personnel work with the teacher of the child and act as additional support to help the child learn required vocabulary for each subject.
Articulation
Articulation refers to a the ability to make speech sounds correctly. People who have poor articulation are difficult to understand for a variety of reasons. They may have a lisp, they may talk too fast, too softly or in some other way mispronounce sounds.
Problems with articulation can create huge problems for a child at school. Often these children are teased and bullied by classmates. Soon this takes a toll on self-image.
In articulation therapy the speech therapist works with the student on lip closure, tongue position and flexibility, as well as other areas. Many different techniques are used to teach articulation including sucking very thick liquid through a small straw, blowing bubbles and the like.
Children’s speech therapy is a vital part of helping a child succeed at school. The earlier therapy is started, the more successful it will be. Some speech problems are noticeable quite early in a child’s life. If they are addressed at that point, so much the better for the child when he or she reaches school age.
There is no doubting the fact that Florida speech therapy can make an immense difference in any child’s life and any adults career. We’ve got the super inside info on the best Florida speech therapy jobs available.