Teaching Clients Strategies to Succeed
Over the course of my career, I have worked with clients of all ages, in both school and private practice settings. During therapy sessions, I focus on developing students’ cognitive-linguistic skills by providing explicit strategies to use during tasks that tax spoken and/or written language. As a consultant, I work with schools and educators to adopt a critical lens on their instructional language and implement best practices related to language, reading, writing, and executive function skills.
Language Therapy
Students with language impairments often have difficulty understanding and/or using vocabulary and grammar. As a result, they may have difficulty communicating effectively, and completing academic tasks.
Executive Function Coaching
Executive function skills include: response inhibition, working memory, emotional control, attention, organization, planning, task- initiation, time management, self-monitoring, goal-directed persistence, and flexibility. Students who have weak executive function skills likely struggle to manage their time, take notes, study, and keep classroom materials and assignments organized.
Reading Intervention
Students who struggle to read may experience difficulty decoding (applying the knowledge of letter-sound relationships and letter patterns to correctly pronounce written words), encoding (spelling), and/or comprehending the text.
Writing Intervention
Writing is hard! Students who have weaknesses in language, reading, and/or executive function skills will have that much more difficulty learning to write grammatically correct sentences, and cohesive paragraphs, and essays.
Social Skills
Students with social communication difficulties often have difficulty initiating and sustaining conversations, taking perspectives, thinking flexibly, understanding hidden rules in social situations, and understanding nuanced language in social situations.
Professional Development and Consultative Services
I specialize in providing professional development opportunities to schools and teachers who are interested in learning more about best instructional practices related to language, reading and writing, and executive function skills.
Kristen Vieregg 