There are many areas for challenges for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. No two people have the same communicative challenges. Some children with autism spectrum disorder have echolalia. Echolalia At one time the thought was Echolalia was a behavior to eliminate but we have a…

What are pragmatic language skills? Pragmatic language refers to the social language skills that we use in our daily interactions with others. This includes what we say, how we say it, our non-verbal communication (eye contact, facial expressions, body language, etc.) and how appropriate our interactions are in a given situation.

Not all of our communication is verbal. When we examine a child’s speech and language skills we need to include observations and descriptions of how the child is communicating non-verbally. Eye Gaze: A child might look at something they want and then back to the…

The concept of language is a difficult one. According to Bloom and Lahey, language can be defined as “a knowledge of a code for representing ideas about the world through a conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication”. Language is hard to describe but if…

Parent-teacher conferences can bring new referrals as parents wonder if their child has a speech or language disorder that may be impacting their school work. Giving them some information on normal development and ways they can help their child is sometimes all that is needed.…

  Kindergarten speech and language screenings are part of the educational requirement. I typically do these the first week of school giving me a chance to meet each of the new students. The purpose of the screening is to pick up any student that might…

This has been a FABULOUS summer integrating gamification, technology, and active learning during a graduate course at Providence college on Language Disorders. Regretfully this is the last summer as the program it was part of has at this point been discontinued. It has been a…

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is read on the beach.  When that reading transforms my thinking or my practice of teaching I feel doubly gifted. Edrenaline Rush by John Meehan is one such book. This may end up being a series as…

Assessment drives instruction. Evaluation data helps to drive the instruction of a student. When we take baseline we get a direction for our teaching.  Prior to seeing a new student/client, we read through their records to develop a picture and to make a group of…

My mother is from Kinvara, County Galway, Ireland.   As children,  we would go there for summers to live on my grandparent’s farm. They lived in a thatched cottage with chickens in the front yard and calves in the back of the house.  My mother is…