More info on The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone! I asked Lynn, the developer of the Speech EZ program a few

questions privately regarding testimonies -parent vs professional costs and have

information to share here. There is a discount to parents. It's important to

know that the site for this app is not yet complete.

Below have a private video of a therapy session where Lynn, the developer of the

Speech EZ program is using her technique. It's much easier to understand what

she meant by hand movements in watching this as I had thought from reading the

description it was more of a sign language. The parent of the child in the

video has given permission for me to share the following private video here in

this private group.

The quote from the parent of the child in the following video is:

" This is showing Noah's progress in 12 sessions! The first part was his second

time seeing Lynn and the last portion in the green shirt was his 14th session...

I love Lynn! :-)

Thanks, Raquel, Mom to Noah. "

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/855fa1577fe4f2142921c44aa5a78cc4/video/650928\

01

Email any questions here and I'll get the answers.

Below is info from the developer and unlike the video above, the following can

be shared if one wished.

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The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program

April 9th, 2011

Villanova University

Radnor, PA

0.7 ASHA CEUs

Presenter: Lynn Carahaly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Speech-EZ.com

Workshop Description

The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program is a structured program specifically designed to

improve speech intelligibility for children with apraxia of speech and severe

developmental phonological disorders. The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program uses

multisensory strategies that incorporate visual, auditory, proprioceptive,

gestural and tactile input in order to teach the child the correct movement

sequences for speech.

Implementation of specific techniques construct well defined and functioning

neurological pathways that are the roadmap for proper motor planning,

articulatory sequencing, and timed execution of speech patterns for intelligible

speech. Teaching the child how to form the correct movement gestures equips the

child's motor planning system to better predict and prepare the articulators to

execute the correct target positions for speech intelligibility. Speech-EZ® Hand

Cues are an important part of the initial phases of the program. The child

learns specific hand gestures that represent various speech sounds and support

motor planning.

Numerous studies prove that gesture plays a role in speech production, cognitive

activity, lexical retrieval, fluency, and learning. Gesturing helps speakers to

organize spatial information for verbalization, playing a role in

conceptualizing the verbal message. A child using gestures and symbolic hand

cues during speech production has enhanced access to items in their mental

representation of sounds and movement planning for speech. Movement helps

movement.

Gestures and symbolic hand cues allow the therapist or parent to offer a minimal

cue encouraging the child to retrieve and plan for the sound and motor plan on

their own, ultimately building a stronger neural network for motor speech

productions.

Gestures and hand cues are used to boost activation and organization for the

learning, retrieval, planning and execution process for motor speech movement.

Gestures themselves are a movement. Having the child perform the symbolic

gestures while they are producing speech, allows the child to be actively

involved in the movement

process. The movement in the form of a symbolic gesture assists the child in

retrieval of the sound and retrieval of the motor plan involved.

Learning speech sounds with an accompanying gesture is believed to produce more

robust retention connections as well as better retrieval skills in phonological

awareness tasks. Symbolic hand cues are a foundational tool to build and enhance

phonological and phonemic awareness. The hand cues are visual representations of

phonemes or speech sounds. It is because of this parallel, that symbolic

gestures facilitate phonemic awareness development as the brain accumulates

prior experience with visual stimuli representing speech sounds. Essentially,

these neurological pathways have already begun to develop.

Included

Each participant will receive The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program comprehensive

program manual. In addition, those participants seeking Practitioner

Certification in The Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program method will receive three hours

of extended mentorship/support with program developer Lynn Carahaly. To qualify

for Speech-EZ®practitioner certification status, participants must pass a

written examination and work with at least one child with CAS using The

Speech-EZ® Apraxia Program method under the mentorship program. Upon completion

of the certification requirements, participants qualify as a Speech-EZ®

Certified Practitioner, and may be listed as such on the Speech-EZ.com website.

We will be providing a continental breakfast and buffet lunch for all attendees.

Fees

Professional registration fee: $450.00

Parent registration fee: $250.00

Additional Parent (bring your husband!): $50.00

Feedback from parents who have participated in the Speech-EZ workshop

Lynn, ...you know I am your #1 fan and will always be! You have changed my

life, Brady's life and my family's life. You have given us hope that we really

never had until 5 months ago. You love Brady. He loves you. You have given him

a voice...i can never repay you for what you have done for him! Before you I

felt pretty helpless and sad and confused. Since you have entered our life, you

have made such a huge difference and have created so much fun in our family.

Brady loves to use his words now, and he tries every day to be understood…and

guess what, we can now understand him most

of the time!

Troy was very impressed with your presentation, Lynn. He understands apraxia

and brady much more now thanks to your workshop. Everyone I talked to today,

parents, raved about what you shared and feel so lucky that they attended. You

gave a lot of hope to a lot of parents today. I cannot express how thankful we

are to have found you Lynn, and to have found a program that actually is

allowing my son to talk for the first time.

Darcy Day

" Today is the perfect day to enhance someone's life. "

This one is from a parent of a child with Down syndrome that has an active blog.

She posts about her son's speech progress and this is a small clip of her

experience with the Speech-EZ work shop. She recently sent us a video clip of

his progress; she gave me permission to forward to you as well. He is sooo cute!

Today I went to an all day seminar with Lynn Carahaly, founder of The Speech EZ

Apraxia Program. Wow!!! What amazing information. Typically when I attend a

seminar, by lunch time I am beginning to shut down and I am mentally spent by

mid afternoon. Today, I literally couldn't get enough!

8:00 - 5:30 and I was still hanging around to talk to people!

Hi Lynn,

So far, Karlynn has caught on very quickly. She understands that the gestures

are for specific sounds.In fact, I caught her one day mimicking gestures to her

baby doll and saying the sounds! I learned so much during your conference and

think I have a much better understanding of her challenge than even her Birth to

Three specialists and the special ed school. They seem to think that Karlynn's

speech is just delayed although I really think her struggle is the apraxia. I am

convinced that I am the one to administer this specialized therapy because they

seem to be convinced of their methods. I know that this program is working to

help elicit sounds from her just from the little that I have taught her based on

the conference manual. ( I would rather have the sounds than signs). When I take

out your manual- Karlynn starts gesturing to me and saying the correct sounds!

I am thrilled because she has such a small unintelligible vocabulary but this is

a start! she used to say " Buh " for " bus " . I taught her the sound for 's " and

then she started saying " BUH---S " (2 syllables). I have also noticed that I can

get Karlynn to say many many words using the gestures to prompt her. I am so

excited to hear her little voice and thank God that He led me to your program so

I can teach her how to communicate with words so she can share even more of her

wisdom.Keep up the good work, Lynn!

Sincerly,

Lynn,

I wanted to thank you for yesterday's presentation. I really took home alot and

realized I have been disrupting the prosody of words when I try to teach Brock

how to say certain words. I am also going to get back to the basics and go over

the hand cues again and start teaching him his letters. We came home last night

and had a very productive speech therapy session. He is really able to say so

much, I know the sentences will come with time. I am so thankful that this is

your passion. We really appreciate you!

Bell

More Info

For more information about The Speech-EZ Apraxia Program and the upcoming

training workshop at the Villanova Conference Center in Pennsylvania, go to

www.Speech-EZ.com. You can Register online. Space is limited to 45 participants

for this specialized training. Both professionals and parents are welcome to

attend!

Warm regards,

Lynn Carahaly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist

Director/Owner of Foundations Developmental House and Listening Ears

O: 480-219-3953

F: 480-219-4203

www.listening-ears.com

www.fdhkids.com

lynn@...

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