Does your child struggle with reading and comprehension? Does your child face difficulties with expressing him/herself in writing?
These skills are obtained through literacy training. Literacy is our ability to read and write.
A Speech and Language Therapist, with the support of the family and school teachers, can help improve your child’s reading and writing skills, necessary to succeed at school and future career, and recommend tools that will help your child develop these skills.
What is the purpose of literacy?
Building a student's comprehension, writing skills and overall skills in communication is the definitive goal of literacy instruction.
Why is literacy education important?
To be able to absorb the written word in everyday life students need literacy. Just think of how often you use reading skills in your everyday life. In order to communicate successfully, keep up with the volume information, and understand the issues that are shaping our world we need to teach our kids reading and writing skills.
What is the power of literacy?
The skill to search for and comprehend information gives the reader objectivity to make choices, to advocate for ourselves and to learn about the world and our community. According to numerous studies high levels of literacy lead to greater independence and civic engagement, and people who have good reading and writing skills are powerful in society.
The Five Components of Reading
- Phonics. Phonics is the process of mapping the sounds in words to written letters (letter knowledge).
- Phonemic awareness. Children develop phonemic awareness by learning about sounds (phonemes), syllables, and words, rhyming, blending words, segmenting sounds, etc.
- Vocabulary - knowledge of the meaning of words
- Fluency - ability to read in a smooth manner
- Reading comprehension - understanding what we are reading
- Working memory - necessary to put all these skills together
These are foundation skills that play a direct role in our ability to be a successful reader. If a strong foundation of these skills isn’t built, it may lead to struggles later on with reading and writing.
Why literacy instruction is so important?
Typically, the skills above are taught in an implicit manner- meaning we teach students these skills without explaining what they are or why they are important. While some children will go on to learn these skills without explicit instruction, a shockingly large number of children need explicit instruction in order to become successful readers.
How can a Speech and Language Therapy help?
For that reason, a structured literacy approach is necessary. The approach is evidence based and includes explicit teaching of rules around reading and follows a systematic approach to build on skills for reading. This approach targets the 5 areas of reading- phonics, phonological awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
Our clinicians can help your struggling reader by identifying where their foundation is weak and targeting those skills explicitly to boost their reading and writing ability. Struggling readers, those formally diagnosed with dyslexia will all benefit from this structured, explicit instruction.