My child has trouble with reading comprehension. Can speech therapy help?
If you have a child who is struggling with reading comprehension, you are not alone. Reading is a crucial skill for life. We learn to read so that we can read to learn. Parents are anxious and eager to help their kids, so they hire a reading teacher or tutor. Commonly, the following goals are set: “Summarize the main idea of a passage,” or “retell the story in your own words,” or “Answer questions about a passage.” Yet the child continues to struggle, lose focus, and resent reading. They are frustrated. Here’s the problem with this approach: If your child is struggling with reading comprehension skills, simply doing more of it is not a solution. Reading comprehension is not a single skill, it is the result of various language skills. Vocabulary, grammar, syntax, complex sentences, clauses, etc; these are the skills that lead to reading comprehension. For many kids, targeting comprehension without addressing an underlying language deficit is putting the cart before the horse. If a child cannot understand a word, phrase, or sentence, how can they possibly understand a paragraph, page, or book? Addressing the root of a language deficit will naturally improve reading comprehension. A trained Speech and Language Pathologist can assess if this is the case, and then provide targeted instruction. They can treat the cause rather than the symptom. If your child continues to struggle with this area, maybe it is time to pursue Language Therapy with a qualified SLP.
Here’s an example of a speech therapy strategy. At Massery Speech Therapy, we target vocabulary using this formula: An X is a Y that Z. The “X” is the new word, “Y” is the category, and X is the most important detail about it. Here is a simple example: “A Giraffe is an animal with a long neck .” When I teach my students this framework, it not only helps them learn specific words, but teaches them how to learn words. When my students learn how to organize words in this way, they can map, store, and retain new words more successfully.
Did you know you can add speech therapy to an IEP? Click here for more info.