Speech Language Therapy: Promoting Rapid Change for Children with Severe Phonological Disorders (Grades PreK-6) Presented by Terri Farnham Outstanding Speech-Language Pathologist and National Presenter

Specifically Designed for Speech-Language Pathologists Serving Students in Grades PreK-6

Practical Ideas and Strategies

In this seminar, outstanding presenter and experienced speech-language pathologist TERESA FARNHAM will equip you with practical assessment and treatment tools, strategies and ideas to help you facilitate rapid change in the phonological systems of the preschool and school age children with whom you work. Teresa will help you develop new strategies with the goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your phonologic therapy. You will learn how to select phonemic targets based on students’ actual phonological knowledge, as well as how to use maximal oppositions in pairs in treatment, yielding improved generalization across the child’s entire phonologic system in a relatively short time. Teresa is the author of Speech Language Therapy: Promoting Rapid Change for Children with Severe Phonological Disorder, the extensive digital resource handbook you will receive at the seminar. You will leave with a toolbox filled with practical strategies you can implement the very next day to more effectively assess, intervene and facilitate rapid phonological growth in children with various severe speech sound disorders.

Ten Key Benefits of Attending

1. The Phonological Therapy Interventions Every SLP Can Use to Transform Their Caseload
   Learn powerful ways to provide efficient, productive and effective intervention for severe speech sound disorders that can reduce the amount of time children spend in therapy, reducing your caseload demands … Help children make global gains across all phonemic categories, rapidly raising their level of intelligibility
2. Rapidly Improve Speech Sound Production Across the Child’s Entire Phonologic System
   Learn current, evidence-based strategies for selecting phonemic targets based on students’ actual phonological knowledge, as well as how to use maximal oppositions in pairs in treatment … Differentiate and tailor therapy materials to individual students’ needs and see results across the child’s sound system, not just on target phonemes
3. Maximize Literacy Skill Development Through Your Therapy
   Simultaneously accelerate foundational literacy skill acquisition, phonological awareness and speech intelligibility … Powerful, ready-to-use strategies to help children make rapid phonological progress, enabling success in all areas of their lives
4. Propel Students’ Learning of Phonology and Language
   Discover the key ingredients of powerful and effective therapy plans that guide students toward independence, and entice them to practice repeatedly while learning to take the lead in therapy activities
5. Learn Timesaving Ways to Streamline Assessment and Evaluation
   Effective, efficient strategies to analyze a child’s phonologic knowledge through single word and conversational samples … Learn to analyze and apply assessment results to facilitate rapid, global improvement and significantly reduce students’ time in therapy
6. Goal-Writing Ideas Every SLP Should Know
   Discover the best ways to write parent-friendly goals that are quick and easy to measure, while also clear to everyone with knowledge of the child
7. Select the Most Effective Phoneme Targets
   Retool your approach to selecting phoneme targets using a highly-effective and evidence-based approach … Provide your students with as much information about the sound system as possible to expedite improvement in intelligibility
8. Document Student Progress Efficiently and Effectively
   Maintain the flow of your therapy sessions as you track all levels of sound production from isolation to conversation
9. Heighten Students’ Engagement in Their Own Therapy
   Powerful, fun, therapy-tested strategies to increase students’ response rate, even in group settings … Numerous, evidence-based techniques that strongly engage students in their own speech sound learning
10. Receive an Extensive Phonological Therapy Digital Handbook and Special Online Access
    Receive a digital resource handbook with detailed information for implementing this approach to rapid improvement in speech sounds, and special online access to forms, materials and links that will be updated on an ongoing basis

Outstanding Strategies You Can Use Immediately

• Discover how you can make a rapid difference for children with severe speech sound disorders
• Learn the latest research-based approaches for efficiently providing phonologic treatment
• Discover essential ways to use phonological assessment as the basis for efficient therapy
• Expedite your therapy by analyzing phonological testing results to effectively understand a child’s system
• Discover the relationship between phonologic knowledge and improvement in speech intelligibility
• Develop powerful implementation tools for maximal pair target words, based on targets selected during the assessment process
• Develop a clear plan for implementing evidence-based phonologic treatment in your therapy
• Help children take ownership of their own speech sounds through practical, research-based therapy routines and approaches
• Set the stage for success and support students’ literacy development through simple, yet powerful phonologic therapy activities
• Learn the best, most current therapy approaches and the tools to put them into practice
• Practice using real data to effectively analyze a child’s speech sound system and determine which phonemes are most important for him or her
• Engage and involve your students in the therapy process through high-interest activities
• Use children’s literature as a springboard for language sampling
• Write goals and objectives that move the child forward quickly, yet are easy for you to document and more effectively represent a child’s progress toward intelligible speech

A Message From Your Seminar Leader

Dear Colleague:

Children with severe speech sound disorders pose an ongoing challenge for school-based speech-language pathologists. In my school practice, I have consistently found that children who were still working on those “last few sounds” in the upper elementary grades were particularly difficult to motivate, so my personal goal became remediating each child’s speech sound errors by the end of the third grade. But, how? Could it even be done?

As I researched how to move children as quickly as possible to having intelligible speech, I learned that there is a better way than the traditional sound-by-sound method I had been taught. This new approach resulted in a practical therapy process that consistently moved children from not being understood by anyone in the classroom to having few or no speech sound errors, often in less than one school year. Parents would call me excitedly to report that Grandma could understand the child over the phone for the first time. Now, that’s satisfying!

This approach transformed my caseload: the most difficult cases were managed quickly, thoroughly and without the monotony (for both the child and speech pathologist) of multiple years of treatment of the same sounds, leaving more time in my schedule for children with severe language impairments. Imagine having a student who is unintelligible at the beginning of kindergarten, yet f inishes the year as a leader in his class! I’ve seen it happen!

Let me share what I have learned with you so that you can also experience the rewards of this kind of rapid progress. Moving children off the caseload because they have mastered our sound system is the best kind of caseload reduction there is! You will leave this seminar with a working knowledge of how to effectively assess children’s phonological knowledge, how to use the assessment information you gather to develop a comprehensive individualized therapy plan, and which critical elements need to be included in each therapy session. Plus, you will receive an extensive resource handbook that I have filled with materials, guides, and strategies you can use right away for your most difficult cases.

Sincerely,
Teresa Farnham, MA, CCC-SLP

P.S. As someone who is “in the trenches” with you, I will share practical, proven methods I have used to rapidly and successfully improve children’s phonology through videos of actual therapy sessions.

Who Should Attend

Speech-Language Pathologists serving students in grades PreK-6

Special Benefits of Attending

Extensive Resource Handbook
You will receive an extensive phonological therapy digital resource handbook giving you access to countless strategies before, during and after the seminar. The handbook includes:

• All the analysis tools used in the seminar
• Templates to help you develop individualized materials based on your students’ needs

For in-person seminars, registrants will also receive a printed copy of the resource handbook as long as their registration is received in the BER office at least 15 calendar days before the event.

Consultation Available
Teresa Farnham will be available at the seminar for consultation regarding your questions and the unique needs of your own Speech-Language program.

ASHA - CEUs

ASHA-Required Disclosure Statement for Terri Farnham:
Financial:
Presenter for the Bureau of Education & Research and receives honorarium compensation. Independent contractor for teacherspayteachers.com and receives financial compensation.
Nonfinancial:
No relevant nonfinancial relationships exist.

Semester Credit Option
Up to four graduate level professional development credits are available with an additional fee and completion of follow-up practicum activities. Details for direct enrollment with University of Massachusetts Global, a nonprofit affiliate, will be available at this program.

Meet Inservice Requirements
Participants of both the Live Online Seminar and those completing the Recorded Version online can receive a certificate of participation that may be used to verify five continuing education hours. State CEUs are available for both versions of the course. For specific details, visit www.ber.org/ceus.

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