Remedial Academic Support

Learning takes place through the process of communication and is critical to cognitive development. Learning, reading, writing, gesturing, listening and speaking are all forms of language, which must be learnt in order to communicate ones ideas to another. The ability to participate in active and interactive communication with peers and adults in the educational setting is essential for a child to succeed in school.

Parents are often right to be worried when their children experience difficulties learning in kindergarten and/or school. While there are many reasons for academic failure, for children who have communication difficulties, this learning process becomes even more challenging and the academic gap between the child and their peers increases. This is something that is said to affect at least 1 in 10 children.

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Who does Remedial Academic Support benefit?

In Care Speech and Language Therapy Centre, all the children we work with experience speech and/or language difficulties and these limitations in their ability to understand (Receptive Language Skills) or to verbally communicate (Expressive Language Skills) often affects their ability to receive information, process information and to communicate information which are essential parts of academic acquisition.

Children with communication disorders frequently perform at a poor or insufficient academic level, struggle with reading, have difficulty understanding and expressing language, misunderstand social cues, avoid attending school, show poor judgement, and have difficulty with tests. Difficulty in learning to listen, speak, read, or write can result from problems in language development. Problems can occur in the production, comprehension, and awareness of language at the sound, syllable, word, sentence, and discourse levels. Individuals with reading and writing problems also may experience difficulties in using language strategically to communicate, think, and learn.

Such learning difficulties can be supported by accurately identifying problem areas and assisting the development of these problem areas. Early detection is essential to reduce the academic gap between the child and their peers and to avoid low self-esteem developing within the child in the face of repeated failure.

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Remedial Academic Supports

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In Care Speech and Language Therapy Centre, once the children we work with begin to communicate better with the support of their Speech-Language Therapy sessions, we then assist them to expand their language skills and apply this to their process of academic acquisition as well. Our specialty focuses on the areas of Kindergarten Readiness and on School Readiness, preparing our young clients to better access the curriculum. Our individualized Reading Programmes have also helped many children in learning to read when other approaches have failed.

A child's readiness for kindergarten will impact upon their ability to learn and also to interact with their classmates. A study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics has provided evidence that kindergarten readiness also contributes to a child’s success later in their school lives, more than it was previously believed.

Kindergarten Readiness - Typical areas of support are Academic Vocabulary, Identifying Letters, Visual Discrimination, Phonemic Awareness, Comprehension and Interpretation and Mathematical Knowledge.

School Readiness - Typical areas of support are higher levels of Academic Vocabulary, Identifying Letters, Visual Discrimination, Phonemic Awareness, Comprehension and Interpretation, Mathematical Knowledge, as well as, Spelling ability and Handwriting.

Reading Programmes - Our reading programmes are individualized for each and every child and we have an excellent success rate. Overall children are :

(1) Pre-literate (not reading as yet), where the focus would be to identify the readiness for reading and phonological awareness deficits that place them at risk for possible reading difficulties.

(2) Developing Reading Skills (reading below their expected reading levels for their chronological age), where the focus would be to identify deficits in the areas of alphabet (knowledge and uses), conventions (print rules), and meaning (the construction of meaning from print).

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Programme Structure

Just like it is for Speech-Language Therapy, to begin Remedial Academic Support sessions, the process begins with an initial assessment to establish a baseline of ability. Once areas that require support have been identified, an individualized therapy programme is designed to support the development in those targeted areas.

Treatment sessions are typically facilitated by a qualified Remedial Academic Support Teacher, on a one-to-one basis and targeted work is consequently supported at home by parents/caregivers. Treatment sessions are delivered either in-person or via tele-therapy (online) as appropriate.

If the child is already in school, ideally it would be beneficial to the child if we also collaborated with the child's teachers and with the school to maximize the effectiveness of our support.

Treatment always begins with an initial evaluation, the findings of which determines the ares which require support, the type of support and the frequency of support for each individual client.