**All students must meet the Minnesota Criteria in order to qualify for Speech and/or Language services.

**Speech and Language therapy are part of the special education program in the public schools.
         >All students who qualify for services and the team determines this is appropriate, will be placed on an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

School SLP's work on:

Language:  Increasing language in the areas of vocabulary, comprehension, sharing information with logic and sequence, problem solving and social communication.

Speech: Sound development and production

Voice: Voice disorders

Stuttering: Therapy and counseling to manage speech fluency

Hearing Loss: Therapy to assist students in language and speech development

Language is the socially shared code or convention system that indicates ideas through symbols and rules that govern combinations of these symbols.
Types: -verbal communication
- signs
- symbols
- pictures
- gestures



Language Development - begins at birth, develops through exposure
- during the first 6 years of school, language matures from concrete problem solving to requiring sensory input to abstract thought.



What is a language disorder? - Any language deviation that calls attention to itself, interferes with communication and/or creates maladjustment.
- Children who have language disorders do not know how to organize, sort, label and categorize words. They learn each word as a separate entity, instead of grouping it with other similar words that allows for easier recall.