The State of New Jersey is in the process of passing a law requiring the Department of Education to establish a working group on student literacy. The law mandates universal literacy screenings for students K – 3.
The bills are awaiting the signature of the governor.
Dr. Karen Kimberlin specializes in language and literacy and highlightes the unique role a speech and language pathologist plays in literacy: “Research shows that the language of print is dependent on the development of listening and speaking, thus we need to look at a child’s oral language skills as a precursor to reading and writing. Early screeners need to include an oral language component, not just letter-sound knowledge. SLP’s are experts in language development, both oral expression and language comprehension, both critical to the development of literacy skills.” Dr. Kimberlin states that SLP’s should collaborate with school administrators and teachers to help them understand the role of oral language and how it affects reading and writing skills.
The legislation establishes a professional literacy instruction for various teaching staff members. Speech pathologists are listed in that group. I’ve always been perplexed that professionals up to this point have separated the learning of speech/language skills from reading/writing skills. Literacy depends on our development of language from the initiation of language development in an infant to the burst of language in a 2 year old. This is the beginning of the development of language that becomes the foundation for literacy. There is no separation of articulation skills and learning sounds for reading. It’s all part of the same mechanism.
We learn to read because we learn to talk. If there’s a fault in the foundation it creates a reading/writing disorder as well. Remember it’s not just reading the words, but comprehending the meaning of those words. So watch how a child reads to you, watch for use of expression as they read (which indicates understanding the meaning behind the words(. If the child reads the word wrong or flies by a word you know they don’t know the meaning of, then stop, look it up and see how they can
understand it in context.
Then there’s the fear these children have of putting their words on paper: sounding out the words then using the right grammatical context.
It may sound complicated, but a speech pathologist can help sort things out. Always defer to a speech pathologist. We get the connection!