SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY
Speech and language challenges for which the Childhood Language Center provide therapy include:
- Receptive and expressive language skills (the ability to understand spoken and written language and to express one’s thoughts and feelings using spoken and written language)
- Articulation (pronunciation)
- Pragmatic language (appropriate use of language in social settings)
- Voice therapy
WRITING CLASSES
The center offers creative writing classes for students in 5th and 6th grades. The children are given the opportunity to create their own poems, see some of their poems published in classroom anthologies, and publicly share their work by reading them out loud during their final class parties to which their parents are invited. The classes are designed to accommodate children with speech and language challenges.
Children currently receiving services at the center, as well as those on the wait list, are given priority for enrolling in the classes before they are opened up to the general public. Many speech and language skills are covered including vocabulary building, clear enunciation, identifying rhyme patterns, reading fluency, as well as understanding more academic aspects of language including similes, metaphors, and idiomatic expressions. The children also learn about famous authors. Classes are ten weeks long every fall and spring.
SPEECH & LANGUAGE EVALUATIONS
In an effort to expand collaboration across the center’s organizations, all speech and language evaluations connected to San Francisco-Burlingame RiteCare Childhood Language Center are being done at and by San Francisco State University. The evaluations are performed by graduate students under the supervision of professors, but our director occasionally acts as part of the evaluation team. Children may be placed on the center’s waitlist for speech and language services while they are still in the process of receiving a formal evaluation. If you are interested in an evaluation, please contact Jim Cartwright at 415.664.4647.
PARENT TRAINING
The center encourages open communication with parents whose children attend the center. Parents may sit in on sessions and/or set up consultation appointments to discuss how to implement home programs and support their child’s communicative growth.
Please contact the San Francisco-Burlingame RiteCare Childhood Language Center for more information. Services may have changed due to current conditions under COVID-19.