Our Blogs

On January 23, 2013, Dr. Adam Scheller presented: Assessing Oral Language Development and Early Literacy. You may watch the recording and find the handouts here:

**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording. **

Handout: Assessing Oral Language Development and Early Literacy

Handout: Early Reading Case Study

On September 9, 2011, Nancy Castijella, Senior Product presented: Preschool Language Scales-5. You may watch the recording here:

**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**

On September 7, 2011, Dr. Kathleen Williams presented: Using Oral Language to Help Adolescent Readers and Writers. You may watch the recording here:

**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**

On Monday August 8, 2011, Sarah James presented: Build a Foundation for Treatment in the First Weeks of School. The first weeks of school can be stressful and chaotic – instead of begging for “times that might work,” this session provides clinicians with strategies that help you build a solid foundation of quality support services with your teams that impact the whole school year.

You may watch the recording here:

**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**

Dr. Gentile has provided a synopsis of his webinar, which you may download here.


Talking takes time to develop. Some children are slower at learning to make speech sounds, while other children speak clearly at a young age. Your child may use one sound instead of another, leave out sounds, add extra sounds, or say the sound differently than you might expect as they are learning to talk. The following list shows the age when most children can say different speech sounds:

By age 2 – p, b, m, d, h, n

By age 3 – f, g, k, t, w

By age 4 – kw (as in queen)

By age 5 – ch, j, l, s, sh, y, bl

By age 6 – r, v, br, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, kl, kr, pl, st, tr

By age 7 – z, sl, sp, sw, th

By age 8 – th – middle of words (as in bathtub)

Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation, Second Edition (GFTA-2). Copyright © 2000 NCS Pearson, Inc. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

“GFTA” is a trademark, in the US and/or other countries, of Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s).

The buzz isn’t new; telepractice has been around the field of speech-language pathology for more than a few years. Some of us are working in a telepractice context full-time, others “dabble,” and still others know people who use telepractice but haven’t tried it themselves. ASHA’s new Special Interest Group (SIG) on Telepractice, however, may be signaling an important shift in the way that this service delivery model is coming into more mainstream practice.

As a member of ASHA’s SIG 1, I received a recent listserv email on telepractice wondering how publishers see their role in this service delivery model. In addition to consistent calls and contacts over the last few years, we see questions and issues that prompt our thoughtful response. We do see the use of our tools, assessments in particular, in a telepractice context as something we can and should address. The demand has grown tremendously over the last years and we want to respond in good order.

The simple fact is that equating studies need to be done on each test under particular conditions to determine whether or not scores change significantly in a different delivery context. We don’t have published tools (yet) that include the telepractice context in standardization so it’s an empirical question to answer—that is, do examinees perform similarly or differently when the assessment is delivered through telepractice? In addition, a number of different physical scenarios may be considered “telepractice” (this is not an exhaustive list):

1. A physical stimulus book/easel at the examinee site (with or without a facilitator also present); the examiner gives the verbal stimulus through telepractice, but the visual stimulus is in print with the examinee.
2. A physical stimulus book/easel at the examiner site; the examiner moves the camera to show the visual (with accompanying verbal) stimuli through telepractice.
3. A digital stimulus book/easel on the computer screen; the examiner may or may not also be in view; the examinee responds verbally, by mouse click, or by touchscreen input.
4. Others?

There are many variables to consider. Of course, some tests lend themselves to telepractice better than others, so it’s really dependent on the tool and the format. A “one-size-fits-all” approach isn’t a wise option, but key strategies may be universal and maintain all the appropriate best practices we know so well about assessment in general.

Certainly, we also monitor and consider ASHA’s guidelines (as well as the draft APA Standards document that is now out for review). Our input would be to participate as appropriate in the conversations and practically extend established guidelines into individual test contexts.

What are your thoughts on the use of assessments in telepractice? Chime in below!

You can watch the recording of “Preschool Language Scales-5: Assessing Language From 0-7″ below.

You can download the slides here.

**please note that CEUs were only offered for attending the live webinar. We are unable to provide CEUs for watching the recording.**

On Thursday, March 17, 2011, Dr. Ronald Goldman presented a complementary webinar: Goldman-Fristoe 2: Research, Administration, and Interpretation. He also answered questions from listeners at the end of the event. Do you have comments or questions? Ask away in the comments below!