An educational speech pathologist understands the underpinnings of literacy development and can assess and treat your child's reading and spelling delay.
There are many reasons why children may experience slow development with learning to read and spell. It is important to determine why your child is finding literacy learning difficult so the source of the problem can be treated. Very often, more of the same work is not sufficient to help a struggling child. We need to assess what skills need strengthening so your child can improve.
The ability to read and spell requires a mixture of foundation skills including:
Auditory and visual memory - remembering what you hear and see
Knowledge of phonics - understanding that written letters make particular sounds.
Phonological awareness - identifying and working with the sound structure of spoken words such as detecting syllables and sounds.
Orthographic knowledge - learning and remembering letter sequences that make words
Language skills - having the vocabulary and sentence structure to make sense of what you read and to think of your own words for writing.
If you have concerns about your child's literacy progress, then an assessment is appropriate. Waiting to see if your child will 'just get it' one day soon may not be the best course of action. As always, early intervention with one of our speech pathologists is likely to yield a better outcome for your child as many of the foundation skills begin developing before children even start school.
We can give you advise if you are concerned about Dyslexia, a specific learning disability. Better Start of Adelaide are members of the Dyslexia Association Australia.
