Question
In my school setting, we experience a lot of pressure to provide all speech services integrated in the classroom for preschool children. Are we justified in arguing for pull out therapy for CAS?
Answer
Yes, absolutely. Many of the children that I work with have been in speech therapy since the age of 3. When they are integrated into the classroom and receive speech services in a classroom-type setting, minimal progress is seen in the area of motor speech skill acquisition. These children often remain highly unintelligible as a result. So pulling these children out for direct services is justified.
I recommend one-on-one therapy, about 10 to 15 minutes each day that you're providing services in the preschool classroom. I also suggest working on correct production of a functional core set of vocabulary words and/or phrases (ensuring correct production of vowels, consonants, and prosody). Directly targeting speech in this way will more likely lead to increases in speech production skill acquisition, as well as increase overall speech intelligibility.
Kimberly A. Farinella, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is an Associate Clinical Professor and Clinic Director at Northern Arizona University, and has a research appointment at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include speech motor control and speech disorders of neurogenic origin.
