As Speech Pathologists, we’re often told by our clients in our first few sessions that they didn’t realize there were so many things we could help with! While we might be the first profession that people think of when they need help with stuttering or they have a child who hasn’t said their first words yet, far fewer realise that we can help with literacy difficulties impacting children in the classroom.
In Australia large numbers of children are not reaching the standards of reading competency. The 2019 NAPLAN data revealed that nearly 25% of year 9 students were at, or below the minimum standard for reading. These students need support to enable them to reach their full academic potential.
That’s where Speech Pathologists come in – to help address and improve literacy skills in a safe, supportive, and evidence-based way. Keep on reading to find out more.
What Are Literacy Skills?
Literacy at the most basic level involves the ability to read and write. These skills can be further broken down into decoding and understanding written text, encoding words from speech to print, and forming simple words and phrases all the way through to writing extended written text.
Both reading and writing are skills that do not come naturally to us – in that, if we weren’t taught these skills, we wouldn’t pick them up naturally. In our Speech Pathology world, we refer to reading and writing as ‘biologically secondary’ skills – you can find out more about this concept over on Professor Pamela Snow’s website here.
Spelling is another type of literacy skill that involves recording spoken words into their written form. But, it’s not as simple as it looks! There are several skills that children need to become competent in to master spelling. This includes phonemic awareness, knowledge about letters and corresponding links between letters and sounds, knowledge about segmentation and blending, morphemic awareness and stored or lexical knowledge about the spelling of specific words (i.e. irregular word spellings, like ‘yacht’).
How Can Speech Pathologists Help with Literacy Skills?
Speech Pathologists have many tools at their disposal to address literacy difficulties in children of all ages. There is plenty of good research into different therapies that can help to improve reading, writing and spelling.
When you go to see a Speech Pathologist for support to improve literacy skills, they will begin by doing a thorough assessment of your child’s abilities. With permission, they may be in touch with your child’s classroom teacher and ask for examples of their schoolwork so that they can choose the best therapy for them.
Literacy-based speech pathology intervention may include some of the following:
- Word-level intervention
- Orthographic mapping
- Decoding
- Grapheme-phoneme correspondence
- Phonics
When you see a Speech Pathologist for therapy to target literacy skills, your treating Speech Pathologist may discuss a variety of strategies that you can use at home to support your child’s language and literacy development. This may include different approaches to reading books at home (using the books you already have available to you).
If you are wondering whether your child may need support for their literacy skills, you can make an appointment with a Speech Pathologist near you. It’s a good idea to look into these things early so that your child can get the support they need to engage in classroom activities and thrive at school.