Are you familiar with Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center’s APPLE a Day program? For the next few weeks on our blog, we are going to break down this program and talk 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.
Print Knowledge
Now that you are familiar with the program, let’s talk about the first “P” in our APPLE a Day Program. This stands for Print Knowledge. So what is Print Knowledge and why is it important? Print knowledge is the ability to understand how letters and symbols are organized, the sounds that letters represent, and the rules that come with print.
As children learn about letters, they also learn about how putting letters and sounds together form words. Additionally, they learn how we read from left to right. These skills are all a part of print knowledge! Through our APPLE a Day program, we focus on laying the foundation of these skills and helping children become familiar and comfortable with the letters of the alphabet.
Print Knowledge sets the stage for reading and writing development and is linked to later achievement in spelling, reading, and reading comprehension. Reading and writing are crucial for communication, which is why our Speech-Language Pathologists stress the importance of print knowledge. Reading and writing are also part of our everyday lives, and these skills start with recognizing and naming letters!
Our Speech-Language Pathologists will make learning letters fun and incorporate a variety of strategies to help your child increase their print knowledge and get ready to learn to how to read and write!
To see how our Speech-Language Pathologists target print knowledge 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.