Apraxia & Literacy

Sheridan loves to read. Loves his letters, loves his books. He asks us to read books to him more times in a day than I can count. He pulls out books to read on his own - he can often be found sitting in the middle of books spread out around him on the floor (he knows the stories and retells them to read them).

And research shows that children with Apraxia of Speech typically struggle (a lot) with reading and writing.

So, we foster Sheridan's love for all things reading any chance we get. He's hungry for it. So why not give him plenty of opportunities?

This is a quick video of a recent speech session where his SLP uses his Kauffman cards with sight words to form a simple sentence ("I have..."). We're also using "I see" and "I want." We will slowly expand the use of sight words to help him with both reading and expanding his sentence usage (lately he's been doing great stringing up to six words together, e.g., "Daddy, I want more water please."). I should note here that Sheridan has a decent number of sight words, but in speech we're focusing on those necessary for building sentences.

What's interesting to me, I noticed when I looked at a couple of these videos that Sheridan has more speech errors on these Kauffman cards when used in a sentence, than when he does them as simple flashcards. In other words, he can say the words more clearly and more consistently when he does them individually, than when compared to using them in a longer string of words. Which in a way makes sense, given that the more a child with Apraxia says, the more errors you tend to see. And if you haven't seen previous videos go here to get some background on Apraxia and Sheridan's progress.

Check out Sheridan rockin' the sight words, sentences, and Kauffman cards. I love that speaking voice of his!