Speech and Language Therapy:

Much more than pronunciation practice

Theresa Sterling
Contributor

Matthew McCloskey pulls two chairs close to the large Clear Touch screen in his therapy room at Jefferson Somerset Academy in Monticello. The interactive screen, along with McCloskey’s animated facial expressions and body language, piques the interest of students who come to him weekly for speech and language services, facing challenges when expressing themselves in class and with friends and family.

“I’m so glad E. and I were able to work one on one today,” says McCloskey. “Sometimes he feels shy in front of others, and today he was able to practice and engage without thinking about others in the room.” (For privacy purposes only the student’s initial is used.)

McCloskey, full time Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) at Somerset, walked a visitor through services provided for students who struggle with a wide range of communication challenges. Because he serves students in all grades at the school—Pre-K through 12—he adapts activities to student ability and grade level. In addition to traditional speech sound drills, McCloskey uses activities such as board games, digital hide-and-seek or interactive coloring sheets.
For younger students, he incorporates play-based routines in his therapy room. Very young students, for example, might dig in a sandbox to describe textures, narrate actions or follow directions on finding a buried treasure.

For older students, he might engage students in “video modeling” exercises where students watch short clips from television shows then analyze interactions between characters. Older students are asked to identify communication breakdowns then walk through steps for repairing the breakdown. McCloskey is always focused on shepherding students toward critical thinking processes and higher-level vocabulary and communication strategies, and no treatment plan looks the same. Each student receiving speech/language services at Somerset has an individualized plan that addresses their unique challenges.

McCloskey provided this snapshot of therapeutic services provided for students along with brief descriptions:
• Articulation – speech sound production
• Fluency – i.e., for stuttering
• Voice and resonance – respiration and phonation while speaking
• Receptive and expressive language
• Hearing – addressing the impact on speech and language
• Cognitive aspects of communication – attention, memory, sequencing, problem-solving, executive functioning
• Social aspects of communication – challenging behavior, ineffective social skills, lack of communication opportunities
• Communication modalities – oral, manual, augmentative and alternative communication techniques; assistive technologies

Though these are all used in treatment plans for Somerset students, the most common intervention McCloskey provides for students is reading. There are, he says, great speech and language opportunities on every page of a good book and several challenges can be addressed through reading, from academic to social and emotional difficulties.

“Reading is a huge part of what goes on in speech and language therapy. We might highlight the speech sounds we’re working on. We might practice fluency-shaping strategies to help us through a moment of dysfluent speech, or practice sequencing events in a story,” says McCloskey. “We might get the opportunity to discuss thoughts and feeling of characters.”

McCloskey entered the SLP profession in 2018 after completing graduate school at the Florida State University. He worked in private practice in the Tampa Bay area first, then joined Somerset in 2019. Though he always had a passion for education and working with young people, he credits an uncle who was a speech and language pathologist in South Florida for over 30 years with encouraging him to enter the field, and he is happy to have landed in the PreK-12 setting.

Speech and language goals are tailored for each student and are specific and quantifiable. For example, a speech goal may state, “To increase speech intelligibility, the student will produce the sound in the initial word position with 80% accuracy given faded multi-sensory cues.” A language goal may state, “To increase receptive language skills, the student will answer reading comprehension questions from a clinician-read short story with 80% accuracy given faded multisensory cues.”
A Somerset, such targeted communication services, along with general education classroom and ESOL strategies, small group reading intervention and exceptional student education supports, provide the comprehensive service safety net many students need to be successful in school and in life.
“Communication is important because we use these skills daily to connect with the people in our lives and to form relationships, and without communication skills it’s tough to form those relationships,” McCloskey says. “We need speech and language skills to use and understand humor, to read Instagram posts, and to call your mom at the end of a long day and tell her you love her.”