If your child qualifies for speech services, they will have an IEP (Individualized Education Program) that outlines the details of the services they will receive. In a school-based setting, speech services are FREE for any student who qualifies. 

On your child's IEP, the number of speech minutes dedicated to your child each month is detailed. The school SLP will coordinate with your child's teacher to schedule regular times for your child to participate in speech therapy, ensuring that the allotted speech therapy time is met by the end of each month. If a student is absent or does not attend speech therapy due to a school function, the school SLP assigned to your student will attempt to make up those minutes.

Students who are only working on articulation goals are usually assigned 60-80 minutes monthly depending on the number of sounds they need to work on. Children who are working on language goals or both language and speech goals are typically assigned 80-120 minutes monthly.

K-6th Grade:

• Pull-Out Services: This is the primary model used for K-6th grade students. It involves taking students out of their regular classroom for one-on-one or small group therapy sessions in a designated speech therapy room. This allows for focused, individualized attention and intervention.

Pre-K:

• Push-In Services: For some pre-K students, the SLP works directly in the classroom, integrating speech and language goals into the general education curriculum. This model helps young children generalize their skills in a naturalistic setting.

• Pull-Out Services: Pre-K students who are working on specific articulation goals, such as producing particular sounds correctly, often participate in pull-out services. These sessions provide a more controlled environment for practicing specific skills.

• Speech by Appointment: For 3 and 4-year-olds, and qualifying pre-K students whose home school is Thunder Ridge, speech therapy can be provided by appointment. The SLP will coordinate a scheduled time with parents to bring their child to speech therapy appointments each week. 

At the end of each term, the SLP will complete a quarterly progress report for your child. This report includes information about your child's progress on each of the goals listed in their IEP. You can learn about your child's progress on each goal by referring to this printout, which will be sent home with your child after the end of each term.

Speech is how we say sounds and words. 

• Children may say some sounds the wrong way as they learn to talk. They learn some sounds earlier, like P or M. Other sounds take longer to learn, like R or TH. A child who does not say sounds by the expected ages may have a speech sound disorder. You may hear the terms "articulation disorder" and "phonological disorder" to describe speech sound disorders like this.

Treatment for Speech Sound Disorders

• Learning the correct way to make sounds

• Learning to tell when sounds are right or wrong

• Learning to produce the sound in isolation, syllables, words, sentences, reading, and conversation 

Language is the words we use to share ideas and get what we want. A child with a language disorder may have difficulty:

• understanding

• talking

• reading

• writing

Treatment for Language Disorders

• Addressing receptive (understanding) and expressive (speaking) language skills, including vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure.

• Practicing narrative retell skills of age-appropriate books.

• Helping your child communicate in other ways (when needed). This may include using simple gestures, sign language, picture boards, or tablets that say words out loud. This is known as augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC.

Social communication disorder (SCD) is characterized by persistent difficulties with the use of verbal and nonverbal language for social purposes. 

• Primary difficulties may be in social interaction, social understanding, pragmatics, language processing, or any combination of the above (Adams, 2005).

Treatment for Social Communication Disorders

• Giving your child strategies and skills that help them use words to tell others what they think, feel, and know. 

• Teaching students pragmatic language skills, such as turn-taking, understanding non-verbal cues, and maintaining conversations.

Children who stutter may have more disfluencies in verbal speech than typical. They may repeat parts of words (repetitions), stretch a sound out for a long time (prolongations), or have a hard time getting a word out (blocks).

• Stuttering is more than just disfluencies. Stuttering also may include tension and negative feelings about talking. It may interfere with how you talk to others. You may want to hide your stuttering. So, you may avoid certain words or situations.

Treatment For Preschool Children Who Stutter

• Direct strategies are tools that help your child change how they speak.

• Indirect strategies are ways to help make it easier for your child to talk. These strategies can include slowing down your own speech and asking fewer questions. 

You are an important part of your child's treatment. The SLP can help you learn more about how to respond when your child stutters and what to do to improve how your child feels about talking.

Treatment For Older Children Who Stutter

• For older children, treatment focuses on managing stuttering. An SLP will help them feel less tense and speak more freely in school and in different social settings. 

• The SLP will also help the person face speaking situations that make them fearful or anxious. This might include ordering at a restaurant or presenting projects in class.