Language to Literacy Program

Does your child...

  • Have difficulty paying attention and listening?
  • Have difficulty asking for help, repetition, or expressing when he/she does not understand something?
  • Have difficulty following directions or remembering information?
  • Have difficulty staying organized? Is his/her desk messy? Does he/she forget homework assignments and books? Does his/her homework get done, but not make it to the teacher?
  • Have difficulty understanding syllables and sounds in words and understanding what letters correspond to each sound?
  • Have a poor vocabulary or difficuty remembering the meaning of new words?
  • Have a diagnosis of a receptive language disorder, expressive language disorder, or a central auditory processing disorder?
  • Have difficulty pronouncing words, understanding what he/she has read, and/or spelling? Buffalo Hearing & Speech Center's Language to Literacy Program may be able to help.

The program is available to students 6 - 16 years of age who have language/literacy deficits. We believe that poor reading skills are based in language problems and that the following skills are critical to successful reading and success in and outside of the classroom:

  1. Auditory Processing - what you do with what you hear
  2. Phonological Awareness and Phonics -hearing, identifying, manipulating and spelling the sounds of spoken language
  3. Receptive and Expressive Language -understanding and using vocabulary, grammar and concepts

Language to Literacy Phase I

Children begin establishing the building blocks for successful literacy in early infancy. Somewhere along the way, our students missed some of these skills. We take a "Back to the Basics" approach, teaching basic skills in a hierarchical way. We must go back, before we go forward!

Goals of Phase I Include:

  1. Establishing/improving organization skills
  2. Equipping students with compensatory strategies for improved attention, listening and memory
  3. Teaching students to be self-advocates and use resources
  4. Improving phonological awareness and phonics skills
  5. Improving language skills - building vocabulary and understanding of concepts
  6. Reading, writing, and word attack skill enhancement

Language to Literacy Phase II

In Phase II of the Language to Literacy Program we pick up right where we left off and continue to move through our back to basics hierarchy. Phase II continues to address all of the previous goals and we focus on improving decoding and spelling skills and establishing specific strategies for improved reading comprehension. We take pride in our program's pre-written, evidence-based curriculum, extensive staff training, and parent education and participation via in-services, weekly meetings, and daily homework. Each class is staffed with two licensed speech-language pathologists and one classroom aide for every 6-8 students. Results of post-testing from past Language to Literacy programs have shown significant improvements on standardized tests, and more importantly, reports of functional improvements in the classroom and at home from parents, teachers and students. Winter, summer, and fall sessions are available.

 

For a scholarship application click here.