Reading and Spelling Skills for Children
Our speech pathology services
Why speech therapists can help your child with reading and spelling
Learning to read and write starts long before your child starts school. The building blocks of literacy start with sound awareness, which is why speech therapists can play a key role with helping children who are having trouble learning to read and spell.
Our preschool screening can often identify early on children who are at risk for reading and spelling difficulties. If your child is in primary school or even high school, it’s never too late to make a difference and reduce the ‘chore’.
Are you worried that your child is falling through the cracks? Or concerned that your child lacks confidence in spelling? Our proven approach can help boost your child’s reading and spelling skills.
As anyone who’s set foot in a classroom in the early years knows, there’s a huge range of abilities between kids of the same age. So it can be hard to know if your child needs support or if they will catch up in their own time. But some warning signs to watch for include:
- Reluctance to read or write
- Struggling to remember letters, sounds and words
- Reading is effortful
- Regularly guessing words when reading or spelling
- Difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words when reading or spelling
- Trouble distinguishing between similar sounding words
- Difficulty saying longer words such as “astronomer” and “quadrilateral.”
Our therapy approach
North Shore Speech Therapy is a leader in the assessment and treatment of literacy difficulties, including Dyslexia and Specific Learning Disorder. When you come to us, we’ll start with a diagnostic literacy assessment that gives you an easy-to-understand overview of your child’s strengths and areas where additional support is needed.
Our therapists can use a holistic approach to diagnose Dyslexia or determine if another issue is impacting your child’s reading.
We use our evidence-based intervention program, Speak and Spell, developed by our owner, Lauren Reinhardt. This is a synthetic phonics-based program uses the most recent research on phonological (sound) awareness and letter-sound development. It includes targeted support for skills beyond the foundations for reading and spelling, including syllable types, spelling rules and morphographs.
Our emphasis on treating literacy difficulties sets North Shore Speech Therapy apart from other practices. All therapists receive comprehensive training with regular sessions on the latest research to boost clinical skills.
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