To be ready for school, your child needs the following basic foundation:

Speech:

He has to be able to pronounce all speech sounds correctly.

Language:

Expressive language skills – He must be able to communicate a clear message to others.

Receptive language skills – He needs to understand and interpret the specific language used at the school.

Higher-order cognitive communicative skills – He has to be able to reason independently and must be creative in solving problems.

Pragmatic/social language skills – He needs to be able to communicate in a socially acceptable way, e.g. to take turns, to keep to the subject and to use acceptable vocabulary.

Auditory processing:

Attentive listening – Your child must be able to focus on one activity, e.g. the teacher’s voice in the presence of background noise.

Auditory memory – He has to remember verbal instructions and must be able to complete them independently.

Auditory discrimination – He must be able to discriminate between easily confusing sound such as /th/ > /f/.

Auditory sequencing – He has to remember sounds in words as well as the correct sequence of words in a sentence. Furthermore, he must remember the components and the sequence of instructions and must be able to complete them correctly.

Auditory closure – Sometimes a child may miss sounds in words the teacher used (maybe the sounds were muffled or there was a distraction). He must then be able to fill in (close) those sounds in the words, to properly understand the teacher’s instruction. Auditory closure is an important skill that enables the child to understand and follow verbal information in the presence of background noise and other distractions in class.

If you have any concerns or reservations about your child’s readiness for school, it is best to have a proper assessment done. If there are indeed some problem areas, they can be addressed timeously.

Contact me now for an assessment!