Treating "Resistant To Treatment" Articulation Errors
Invited Speaker: Julie Hoffmann, M.A., CCC-SLP

Julie Hoffmann has been a practicing Speech-Language Pathologist for 22 Years. She has spent 16 of those years as a faculty member at Saint Louis University. Julie has taught courses in Clinical Instruction, Phonological & Articulation Development & Disorders, and Phonetics. She is a graduate of Truman State University and currently a Ph.D. student at Saint Louis University. Julie has a private practice in Columbia, Illinois specializing in speech disorders, specifically Childhood Apraxia of Speech. She frequently presents locally, statewide, and for other state conventions on the topics of Childhood Apraxia of Speech and Assessment & Treatment of Phonological and Articulation Disorders.

As practicing speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working with children with speech disorders, we want to know and use the most effective and efficient treatment procedures to help our clients, whether they are three years old or 16 years old. We want to have a full repertoire of techniques and methods to pull from, as some children require more than the typical stimulation for producing new sounds. Management of our articulation cases is a priority, especially for children with persistent speech errors. Sometimes, no matter what we do as SLPs, we cannot seem to make headway with some children with frontal or lateral lisps or children with vocalic ‘R’ problems unless we "pull out all the stops" with therapy strategies. Depending on the individual client, producing certain sounds may be very difficult. For instance, sometimes one client can achieve /k/ with very little stimulation and another client may require numerous sessions and tongue manipulations to even imitate the /k/ in isolation. How do we take on a new perspective in our attempts to help this child change his/her speech? How do we help children become intelligible in spontaneous speech when they have certain issues, such as persistent sound errors, rate, timing, phonation, resonation and/or prosody issues that interfere with clear speech intelligibility? We want our clients to be able to self-monitor and transfer skills learned in therapy to all situations. This workshop will address cuing in-depth, including cognitive, tactile, visual and auditory cuing. The use of compensatory sounds, close approximations of sounds and compensatory placements can be helpful stepping stones to correct sound usage. A variety of typical as well as atypical therapy methods to facilitate consonants and vowels will be presented. Valuable materials, games, pictures and websites will be reviewed. Videotape of clients progressing through work on difficult target sounds will be shown as examples to the treatments discussed in this workshop.

Learning Objectives
The participant will be able to: List several articulation treatment techniques that can be used with several types of disordered sounds, especially "R" and "S." Identify detailed examples of cuing methods to effectively assist clients with articulation disorders. Describe compensatory strategies to help children shape correct sound productions. Describe ways to help children improve speech intelligibility and self-monitoring for transfer of skills learned in therapy.

The Roots of Literacy: Play and Language
Invited Speaker: Carol Westby, Ph.D.

Dr. Carol Westby began her professional career in New York where she initiated the development of the Play Scale. In New Mexico, she has written and implemented grant projects to support personnel preparation, clinical service, and research. She is a Fellow of the American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and holds Specialty Recognition in Child Language. She has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Geneva College and the University of Iowa’s Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, the ASHA Award for Contributions to Multicultural Affairs, and the Honors of ASHA. She has been a visiting professor at Flinders University in South Australia where she worked on a language/literacy curriculum, and at Brigham Young University where she has consulted on an emergent literacy program and the development of an assessment and intervention protocol for students with ADHD. Recently, she has been the co-director of Project PLAY (Play and Language Attunement with Young Children), a program to support development of infants/toddlers. Dr. Westby has published and presented nationally and internationally on play assessment and development, language-literacy relationships, narrative development and facilitation, assessment and facilitation of written language, and issues in assessment and intervention with culturally/ linguistically diverse populations.

Learning to read and write does not begin when children enter kindergarten, it begins in infancy. Literacy should be a natural extension of a child’s language and cognitive development. How can literacy be promoted in developmentally appropriate ways to young children from diverse backgrounds and children with disabilities? Literacy involves more than the ability to decode print. To comprehend, children must be able to build mental models of the texts that they listen to or read. Building mental models requires an understanding of the interrelationships among people, objects and events in the world. Play provides a way for all children to develop and demonstrate an understanding of their world that is essential for both social and academic skills. In this workshop, attention will be given to the ways that autism, language learning disabilities and ADHD influence early language, play and literacy development. This program will present current play theory and explain the relationships of play to children’s language, social-emotional skills, self-regulation and literacy from infancy through early elementary school. Through play, educators can promote children’s social understanding; stimulate meaningful language use and nurture children’s ability to interpret and respond appropriately to the needs, desires and roles of others, and to use this knowledge to infer the behaviors and thoughts of others narrative texts.

Learning Objectives
The participant will be able to: Explain the development and interrelationships of cognition, play, language, social/emotional skills, and literacy. Evaluate child’s play/language skills. Use play to promote the cognitive, language, and social-emotional skills that underlie children’s effective social interactions and literacy comprehension.