The Jowonio Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) is an active member of the educational team. She or he works closely with families, teachers, and therapists to strengthen your child’s ability to communicate within the classroom environment, as well as in the community.

Team Members

The speech and language therapy team currently consists of six Speech-Language Pathologists. Team members have graduate degrees in Communication Disorders or Speech-Language Pathology and New York State Teaching Certification for Speech and Language Disabilities or for Speech and Hearing Handicapped. Team members keep updated on current treatment, methodologies, and research by attending conferences and by subscribing to research journals.

Roles of the Speech-Language Therapist

• Continuing formal and informal assessment of the child’s communication skills with a functional orientation.
• Composition and implementation of the speech and language section of the child’s IFSP/IEP.
• Recording the child’s progress through daily progress notes, quarterly IEP updates, and yearly communication summary reports.

Areas of Intervention

• Expressive Language
• Language Comprehension
• Social Language Skills
• Articulation
• Feeding
• Development of functional communication strategies, including signing and augmentative communication

Communication

It is important that caregivers are informed of their child’s progress. Ongoing communication between caregivers and SLPs enhances the development of effective strategies, selection of appropriate focus goals, and generalization of skills across environments. Communication systems vary, and include:

• writing in notebooks.
• completion of team- or therapist-designed forms.
• email.

Whichever form school-to-home communication takes, it will typically occur on a weekly basis.

Teaming

Team participation occurs in a variety of ways:

• Attending weekly meetings with the classroom team, therapists, and support teacher.
• Attending CPSE/CSE meetings as well as other meetings with your child’s district, as appropriate.
• Assisting in supporting families through transitions between classrooms and schools.

Attending weekly meetings within the Speech Therapy department to improve our ability to meet your child’s communication needs.

Methods of Intervention

In order to meet each child’s individual needs, services are provided:

• in the classroom.
• in Pooh Corner, Jowonio’s speech therapy space.
• by leading small and large group activities within the classroom.
• by collaborating and consulting with families, the educational team, and other related services providers.
• by preparing or creating materials and manipulating the environment to facilitate communication.
• by teaching strategies that facilitate communication to other team members.

Each child will typically receive a combination of all the above methods of intervention.