Moor House School
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 Therapy: Speech & Language

SALT Intervention Packages

Therapy Provision

  • Highly intensive SLT packages including both direct, group and classroom based input, integrated into the learning environment through joint planning and delivery.
  • A team of 13 fulltime equivalent Speech and Language Therapists as well as a Speech and Language Therapy Assistant. SLT caseloads range from 6 to a maximum of 10 pupils.
  • Speech and Language Therapy Provision includes:
    • KS2 pupils receive direct, one to one input up to 5 times per week as well as group therapy weekly for social skills. SLT also provides support in class for 5 English lessons per week and 4 maths lessons. Weekly spelling groups and sound awareness groups are also run jointly with Teaching staff.
    • KS3 pupils receive direct, one to one input up to 3 times per week. They also receive specialist weekly therapy groups run jointly with a SLT and an STA to ensure carryover into the classroom. Pupils also receive 2 hours of life skills training including social skills group therapy every week, which is planned and jointly run with teaching and residential staff. Pupils receive spelling groups and comprehension monitoring groups weekly in class.

    • KS4 pupils receive 1 one to one session per week with the SLT. They also receive 7 hours of life skills training weekly, planned and delivered jointly with teaching staff. The SLT's also plan and deliver English lessons with the Teaching staff. Curriculum support is also available as and when required.

      KS4 pupils receive 1 or two individual sessions per week with the SLT. If appropriate they may also receive a paired session.

      They also receive specialist weekly one hour therapy groups.

      As part of the weekly Work Related learning day the pupils receive 5 hours of life skills/social interaction skills training weekly, planned and delivered with teaching staff. The SLTs also plan and deliver English lessons with the Teaching staff. Curriculum support is also provided for Maths and the Option subjects.

      Therapists are very much involved in the Transition to post 16 not only in the preparation of the pupils but also in advice for parents and in the facilitation of suitable support packages for leavers.

      The SLT Department is resourced with highly sophisticated equipment e.g. SNORS, including laryngograph and nasal anemometry, and Electropalatography (EPG). We also have highly specialist AAC equipment according to individual pupil's needs e.g. dynamo's

Curriculum Provision

The speech and language therapist plans regularly with the teacher and special support assistant to identify class and individual objectives. The therapists provides support in the following areas:

  • English lessons We have a designated Research and Development Coordinator to lead on the research strategy within the Therapy Department.
  • Literacy and phonological awareness support.
  • Personal and Social Education - identifying class and individual needs and delivering the lesson with the teacher
  • Maths
  • Advising on the content of the language element in other areas of the curriculum, as well as strategies to support differentiation within the curriculum. Providing direct support when required.

Additional Specialist Skills in the Therapy Department

  • The Therapy department has a wide range of experience in carrying out therapy evaluations e.g. intervention studies into clinical effectiveness, which have been published and presented at conferences nationally.
  • We have a designated Research and Development Coordinator to lead on the research strategy within the Therapy Department.
  • Current studies include:
    • Researching the effect of Omega 3 on attention and concentration in the classroom
    • Researching the effectiveness of Shape coding in teaching grammar to SLI pupils 
  • We review the effectiveness of therapy termly using a system of outcome measures which then informs our practice
  • We have a clinical database which allows us to analyse progress of pupils longitudinally which we can use to ensure provision is being effective

Specialist Resources

Electropalatoagraphy (EPG)

SNORS+ is a computer system used to provide visual feedback during therapy. A plate is worn in the mouth that measures contact between the tongue and palate. Tiny electrodes show on the computer screen the location of the contact within the mouth. This helps pupils to know where to move their tongue in order to make the correct placement for speech sounds. For further information contact the school.

 

 

Signing and Symbol Use

Moor House School aims to provide a holistic approach to meet the pupils' needs. All communication is accepted and valued. This environment embraces current technology, where this supports and complements a pupil's development.

Augmentative communication systems are any means by which a pupil's own speech and language skills are supplemented. They can also be used to support a pupil's understanding, by providing the pupil with a more permanent visual representation of language.

A range of augmentative communication systems are used at Moor House School - Signed English, Cued Articulation and Voice Output Communication Aids.
Pupils have access to these systems as: 

Tools for Interaction - to provide means of more effective communication. They enable the pupil to express needs and preferences, to make choices, to ask questions, to make friends and to express feelings and opinions.
Tools for Learning - to enable pupils to participate more actively in all school activities: to recall, predict, explain, hypothesise, enquire and imagine.

Signing can be a valuable support for pupils. Signed English is the system taught to staff at Moor House School. It is a grammatical signing system based on British Sign Language. Pupils are encouraged to learn finger spelling. Cued Articulation is used to support literacy and speech development. Minicom/Typetalk facilities are available for pupils who have difficulty in using a telephone.

Communication aids enable pupils with limited speech to communicate using electronic voice or using a written display. The school welcomes pupils who already have communication aids, and is prepared to deal with assessment requests received from local education authorities as well as attending assessments and training. Moor House School has a specialist therapist to support their use with the help of the ICT technician.

Spelling Assessment Procedure

Difficulties with learning to spell are often linked to problems with developing phonic skills. Phonics involves learning rules about the sounds that letters make and applying these rules.

In order to spell using a phonic method, a pupil needs to split words up into sounds and use sound-letter rules. E.g. To learn to spell the word "sheep" a child would say the word and split it into it's 3 sounds sh-ee-.p, then decide which letters to write for each sound. Pupils often have difficulties with both the learning of the rules and phonological awareness skills such as splitting words up.

The Spelling Assessment Procedure assesses the pupil's basic phonological awareness and phonic knowledge. It helps staff to devise a programme of intervention targeted at just the right level for each pupil. A programme can be designed which takes into account additional problems that the pupil may have such as discrimination between sounds or speech production difficulties.

For further information contact the school.

THRASS (Teaching Handwriting Reading and Spelling Skills)

THRASS is a whole-school phonics programme for teaching learners, of any age, about the building blocks of reading and spelling, that is, the 44 phonemes (speech sounds) of spoken English and the graphemes (spelling choices) of written English.

Time to Revise, Produced by Jane Mitchell (CALSC)

  • a computer program
  • for use by individual students to help them remember facts and information
  • can be used in addition to the student's current learning method, whether that is mind maps, index cards or revision notes
  • it helps to organise the reinforcement and revision of any information so that it is transferred into automatic long-term memory
  • it helps the user to recall the facts they need to know efficiently
  • it is flexible and allows input of your own material as text, pictures or sound

Units of Sound

A structured, cumulative,multi-sensory program that teaches reading,spelling and writing skills to learners of all ages from 7 years to adult. An IT resource produced by The Dyslexia institute.

Instrumental Enrichment

Moor House School operates an Instrumental Enrichment Group, the aim being to develop and improve the pupils' cognitive or thinking skills, by means of a very structured approach using pencil and paper exercises. Through these tasks the pupils are encouraged to think of what they did, how they did it (for example, plan, rules, strategies), and link those skills to everyday life situations.

Shape Coding

The "Shape Coding" system was designed to teach grammatical rules to school-aged children with SLI. It has been developed over the last 8 years mainly for use with children in Key Stages 2 and 3 (aged 7-14 years) although it has also been used with younger and older pupils. It aims to use the visual strengths of many children with SLI by using a visual coding system to represent grammatical features of English. The system includes use of colours (parts of speech), arrows (tense and aspect) and shapes (syntactic and argument structure). It has been used successfully to teach children the following aspects of grammar:

 

  • Parts of speech
  • Questions
  • Past vs present tense
  • Noun-verb agreement
  • Verb argument structure
  • Passive vs active sentences
  • Dative sentences
  • Embedded structures
  • Conjunctions

References

 

Ebbels, S. and van der Lely, H. (2001). Meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for children with severe persistent SLI. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 36(supplement), 345-350.

 

  Ebbels van der Lely 2001.pdf

 

Ebbels, S.H. (2007). Teaching grammar to school-aged children with Specific Language Impairment using Shape Coding. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 23, 67-93.

  Ebbels (2007) Shape Coding CLTT.pdf

Ebbels, S.H., van der Lely, H.K.J., and Dockrell, J.E. (2007). Intervention for verb argument structure in children with persistent SLI: a randomized control trial. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 50, 1330-1349.

 Ebbels et al