For years, I have been seeing a variation of the following questions from SLPs on social media on a weekly if not daily basis:
- “My student has slow processing/working memory and did poorly on the (insert standardized test here), what goals should I target?”
- “Do you have sample language/literacy goals for students who have the following subtest scores on the (insert standardized test here)?”
- “What goals should I create for my student who has the following subtest scores on the (insert standardized test here)?”
Let me be frank, these questions show a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the purpose of standardized tests, the knowledge of developmental norms for students of various ages, as well as how to effectively tailor and prioritize language intervention to the students’ needs.
So today, I wanted to address this subject from an evidence-based lens in order to assist SLPs with effective intervention planning with the consideration of testing results but not actually based on subtest results. So what do I mean by this seemingly confusing statement? Before I begin let us briefly discuss several highly common standardized assessment subtests:
Continue reading Dear SLPs, Don’t Base Your Language Intervention on Subtests Results
Today I am reviewing a newly released (2019) kit (instructional guide and cards) from the Learning By Design, Inc. entitled Wordtivities: 
How many parents and professionals have experienced the following scenario? The child in question is 
Those of you familiar with my blog, know that a number of my posts take on a form of extended responses to posts and comments on social media which deal with certain questionable speech pathology trends and ongoing issues (e.g., controversial diagnostic labels, questionable recommendations, non-evidence based practices, etc.). So, today, I’d like to talk about sweeping general recommendations as pertaining to literacy interventions. 
I frequently see numerous posts on Facebook that ask group members, “What are your activities/goals for a particular age group (e.g., preschool, middle school, high school, etc.) or a particular disorder (e.g., Down Syndrome)? After seeing these posts appear over and over again in a variety of groups, I decided to write my own post on this topic, explaining why asking such broad questions will not result in optimal therapeutic interventions for the clients in question. 
Many of my students with Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) 
Because the children I assess, often require supplementary reading instruction services, many parents frequently ask me how they can best determine if a reading specialist has the right experience to help their child learn how to read. So today’s blog post describes what type of knowledge reading specialists ought to possess and what type of questions parents (and other professionals) can ask them in order to determine their approaches to treating literacy-related difficulties of struggling learners. 
Despite significant advances in the fields of education and speech pathology, many harmful myths pertaining to multilingualism continue to persist. One particularly infuriating and patently incorrect recommendation to parents is the advice to stop speaking the birth language with their bilingual children with language disorders. 