Role of the SLP at Windsor SS Catherine Chapman Speech Language Pathologist I’m here to give you a quick overview of my role at Windsor SS. I’m employed by DET which then assigns me an allocation of schools. Windsor is one of my schools and I’ve been lucky to have been servicing Windsor for 10 years.

The Population SLPS work with in schools SLPs have a profession-specific role within the educational team in determining educational needs and programming for students with special needs in communication . (Guidelines for Speech-Language Therapy Services) The key student outcome areas for SLP services are language, speech, voice and fluency. (Speech-Language Pathology Service Delivery Pack) While teachers focus on teaching and learning, SLPs maximise students’ access, participation and educational outcomes by looking at the students’ underlying capacity to communicate in order to achieve competencies in interpersonal communication, literacy, numeracy and other KLAs.

What is communication? Communication is made up of… Speech Language Gestures Signs Facial Expression Tone of Voice Speech Co-ordination of breath, voice, lip, tongue and jaw movements to make sounds. Language The ability to understand and convey messages. Receptive Language The ability to understand language. Following directions Understanding questions Understanding what words mean Understanding stories Expressive Language The ability to use language. Giving directions Asking questions Using words Putting words together into sentences Using correct grammar

Oral language skills are an early predictor of reading comprehension Decoding and spelling Martha Cummings, Ph.D. CCC-S Speech Pathology Australia National Conference Alice Springs 2002 Phonics Phonological Awareness This graph emphasis the importance of oral language. In order to achieve good reading comprehension, you need to have these foundation steps already established. So if you have a student who has poor reading comprehension, it may be that they are missing some of the critical steps. So SLPs can help students develop skills in oral language and phonological awareness. That’s why early intervention targeting these early skills are so important to literacy. It’s important to identify those with oral language difficulties and target that area early because it will result in poor reading comprehension. So how do we do this? Oral Language Auditory Processing

Whole School Approach (RTI) To meet the learning needs of all students, the department has a commitment to a whole school approach. A whole school approach directs support to different levels of need in response to student achievement data. Differentiated teaching involves building the capacity of class teachers to use explicit oral language teaching strategies to support students’ communication skills. For example students having reduced vocabulary skill, difficulty with story structure Focused teaching looks at more targeted interventions for communication skills and may include small group instruction. Again vocabulary difficulties, grammatical difficulties, inferencing At the intensive teaching level the SLP works either directly with the student or provides specific programs and support to others to implement these programs. Generally for more severe speech and fluency.

How do children learn to develop their language skills? Language Repetition: rhymes, songs, games, stories Books Encouragement to talk in a variety of situations with a variety of people Opportunities to use and practice language Play and Imagination What can you do? Inquiry Based Activities Good language models Interactive Environment Purpose and Expectation to Communicate Language Experiences