How The Brain Thinks About Numbers

Working with math students at ALP involves a lot of exploration of numbers related to a student’s concrete understanding. For example…

Parental Concerns About Social Skills

Parents often voice concerns about their child’s social skills. One mother described her 7-year-old son as very out-going and social, but he only plays with children several years younger than he is. One father watched his daughter try to socialize with other girls at church but described her interactions as “immature and inappropriate” for her age…

Are We Speech Therapists?

From time to time, people contact ALP asking if we are speech therapists or speech/language pathologists. The simple answer is that we are not.

However, our treatments overlap this field in specific ways. To more fully explain, let’s take a look at speech and language disorders.

Personal Triumph for a Student

When Eilis Leptien began coming to ALP, she hated spelling in school. After 12 weeks of treatment to improve her orthographic processing andphonemic awareness, she doesn’t quite have the same opinion on the subject…

Summary of Findings from the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education

In 2001, President Bush ordered the creation of the President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education. The Commission held hearings and meetings throughout the nation and listened to the concerns and comments from parents, teachers, principals, education officials and the public…

How we do it – recognizing and correcting reading errors

I skim down the word list, looking for something that fits the challenge level of the student I’m working with. It needs to be complex, which means two consonants before and/or after the vowel sound.

How we do it – spelling

“How would you spell the word plate?”

Joe grabs his pencil and starts working. I nudge the pencil with my hand. “What’s the word?”

He huffs a little. “Pate.”

“Oh, we’re not matching on that word. Let me say it again and you say it back. Plate.”

How we do it: Handwriting

It’s spelling time at ALP, and I’ve just given Sam his paper, pencil and eraser.

“Here’s your word – spot.”

Sam grabs his pencil and makes a mark on the paper. I stop him by covering the paper with my hand.