1st grader in speech therapy. Expert advice?
My daughter is 6 1/2 and gets speech services through the school district. She has a frontal and lateral lisp and her IEP is written for t, s, l, r, digraphs, and blends. (In sum, she speaks like Sylvester and Tweety all rolled into one.) Two questions for which I'd like professional advice:
1. Her t, s, and digraphs improved drastically after ear surgery. But her speech teacher will not even start working on the lateral lisp until she turns 8. So progress has leveled off at this point. What can I do at home to keep up the momentum?
2. Her spelling is terrible!!! Our school uses "kid spelling;" children are taught to sound out words then an adult puts the correct spelling above it. So she writes the way she speaks. How can I help her, particularly with l and r which the school will not address for another year and a half?
The reason your daughter's speech therapist is holding off on the l and r is that your daughter is not matured physically to be able to make those sounds. I am not a speech teacher, just a special education teacher who's students receive speech therapy. Your best bet is to ask the speech teacher why she can't work with your daughter on those sounds and have her give you the explaination. When I switched from teaching elementary to high school and my students weren't receiving the support from the speech teacher I thought they needed, I asked him and he told me that after the age of 14, direct speech therapy produces little to no results because the pathways in the brain are "locked".
If your daughter were mine, I would help her with the "l" sound by having her place the tip of her tongue between her teeth and push air out like she is trying to growl. The "r" is harder because she has to have enough control of her tongue to flatten the middle of it and curl up the sides.
For the spelling, I would ask that it be put in her IEP that she is taught phonics - Zoophonics is fun for the kids and REALLY works because it combines visual (see the letter), audio (hear the name and sound of the letter), verbal (say the name of the letter and the sound it makes) and kinesthetic (a physical movement to cue the sound) to teach the sounds - and that "kid spelling" is not allowed for her. Obviously she had hearing problems when she was learning the sounds of letters, now corrected by surgery, so she has to unlearn (hard to do) that while learning the correct sounds. It will just be harder if the teachers keep letting her reinforce the incorrect sounds by using "kid spelling".
Keep pushing the school, ask questions if you don't understand the reason for something and don't give up the fight!!!
