Skip to main content

Tag Archive for: Executive Function

What is Speech-Language Therapy, and Who Can Benefit From It?

This article first appeared on Groves Academy’s website, and is shared with permission. Groves Academy is a grantee partner of Johnson Scholarship Foundation. 

 

“But my child talks just fine…” is often the response I get from parents when I first recommend that they have their student participate in a speech/language assessment. This is such a common misconception, but the truth is, speech is such a small part of what we focus on in speech-language therapy.

At Groves, it’s really the LANGUAGE part of speech-language therapy that our students need. We work with students from Groves Academy and from our community who are diagnosed with specific learning disorders, ADHD/Executive Functioning deficits, or often both. Our goals with students target reading comprehension, vocabulary development, sentence structure/grammar, telling narratives, writing, etc. BUT, before we can target any of those skills, we have to target executive functioning. Executive functioning is, after all, foundational to learning.

In order to learn, students need to be able to attend to the material, organize their ideas, plan ahead, manage their time, be flexible when plans need to change, and be able to reflect on their work to continue to improve. Speech-language therapy at Groves always includes an executive functioning component, as all students, even those without a diagnosed disorder, have difficulty with executive functioning because that part of the brain does not fully develop until adulthood.

Understanding language (both spoken and written) and expressing oneself are also huge keys to success in academic (and really all) environments. Language is involved in every part of a student’s day from following directions during gym class, solving word problems in math, communicating with peers at lunch and recess, writing a paper for social studies or reading the instructions for a project in art class. If a student has a hard time understanding spoken language or expressing themselves effectively, it will affect all parts of their day.

If your student experiences any of the following difficulties, it may be helpful to have them assessed by a speech-language pathologist:

Read more here. 


Meghan Miller is Director of Speech-Language Pathology at Groves Academy

JSF Awards Grant for Dual Enrollment Program

Landmark College, which enrolls neurodiverse students who learn differently (LD; including dyslexia, ADHD, autism, or executive function challenges), has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Johnson Scholarship Foundation. The five-year matching grant supports the college’s efforts to sustain and expand its online dual enrollment courses, which offer neurodivergent students uniquely engineered college courses as they prepare for the transition to higher education, and to create other college-level online programs which similarly help students during the important, often challenging high school, gap year, and year one of college periods.

“We are pleased that the Johnson Scholarship Foundation sees the value in supporting our online programs, which started in earnest nearly a decade ago, and which are particularly needed now,” said Landmark College President Dr. Peter Eden, who wrote the grant application. “These funds will allow the College to not only strengthen and grow our online programming, they also will provide scholarship support for many students heretofore underserved by traditional courses or programs, and unable to afford tuition costs.”

Landmark’s online offerings adapt the unrivaled model of comprehensive support that has made its undergraduate program on the Putney, Vermont, campus successful over the past 35 years, and integrate intentional pedagogical elements within each online course which lead to student success.

Johnson Scholarship Foundation Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Krause says the Landmark College online offerings are great examples of programs that fulfill the Foundation’s mission to serve disadvantaged people by assisting them to obtain education and employment.

“We are pleased to support this dual enrollment program at Landmark College,” Krause said.  “We believe the program will serve as the foundation for a successful higher education experience for young people with learning differences, and it will lead them to greater opportunities in education and employment.”

For more information about the Landmark College Online Programs, visit www.landmark.edu/online.