Are you familiar with Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center’s APPLE a Day program? For the last few weeks on our blog, we have been breaking down this program and talking about what APPLE stands for.
APPLE is an abbreviation for Auditory Comprehension, Print Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, and Language Expansion. We offer our APPLE a Day program to children age 3-5 in small groups and whole-group within their classroom. Further, our expert Speech-Language Pathologists use evidence-based strategies to focus on the development of key skills. These skills include phonological awareness, vocabulary development, language comprehension and oral expression.
Language Expansion
This week, we are talking about the final two letters in our APPLE a Day Program: “LE”. These letters stand for Language Expansion. Through the Language Expansion portion of our program, we target the language skills that may not fall into the other categories of our program (auditory comprehension, print knowledge, and phonological awareness). It’s exactly what it sounds like- expanding your child’s language!
Skills targeted under language expansion include naming actions, describing objects, and understanding spatial concepts. These are tasks that you may not think of when you’re thinking about language skills, but they are foundational skills needed to aide your child in getting ready for kindergarten.
Through our whole group and small group approach, our Speech-Language Pathologists are able to tailor the APPLE a Day program to each child’s strengths and weaknesses. All of the skills that we teach in this program build off one another. And they target a variety of language skills that will give your child the tools they need to succeed in school.
To see how our Speech-Language Pathologists target language expansion in the classroom, please watch our short video below! In addition, you can watch more of our helpful speech-language videos on our YouTube channel and Resources for Families page.
Finally, learn more about our APPLE a Day program by visiting https://charlottespeechhearing.com/speech-language-services/community-based-services/.
Blog and video by Michelle Knoud, M.S., CCC-SLP. Michelle is a Speech-Language Pathologist at Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center.