Summer Speech Therapy: High School
Summer is one of my favorite times to work on speech therapy with high school students. High school students who struggle with reading, writing, and planning can make wonderful progress during the summer - so don’t miss out!
Why Summer Speech Therapy is Great for High Schoolers
Summer is so great for speech-language therapy sessions because there is so much more time to go deep on reading and writing skills. Summer speech sessions allow us not only to maintain skills that might be lost during during a summer without reading and writing, it also allows students to gain skills that will help them next year and beyond.
In summer, there’s less pressure to have an end product completed by the end of the session.
There’s time to practice writing
Because I often work with high school students who struggle with writing AND planning ahead, students sometimes come into a session full of worries and anxiety. Their essay needs to be DONE- like, yesterday. Because the student is in a state of urgency because they are already behind, it can be harder for them to slow down and use their strategies because they are panicking. Once I’ve been working with a student long enough, we can plan ahead for big projects and papers but sometimes a teacher doesn’t give a lot of notice or an assignment falls through the cracks.
In the summer, (unless your teenager is in summer school) we don’t have this problem. We can work on the skills necessary for writing essays and planning ahead for big projects without a deadline looming. In summer, students can build their confidence and independence in writing essays by developing the ability to read and interpret a prompt accurately, to write outlines, to add transitions between paragraphs, to develop a system for editing that works for them, and so much more.
There’s time to practice reading comprehension
I love working on reading comprehension in the summer because we can get down to the nitty-gritty without worrying about how the student needs to get through 50 pages before their quiz tomorrow. Due to the fact that we can go slower, we are able to dig deep and look up new vocabulary words and practice how to remember them, break apart complex sentences that are difficult to read, and visualize what we are reading.
Reading and self-awareness go hand-in-hand in Mindful Speech sessions. By checking comprehension throughout, students learn to tell (1) when they understand what they are reading, (2) when they don’t understand what they are reading, and (3) when they can use a strategy (looking back in the text, visualizing, breaking apart words and sentences). When high school students work on these skills in the summer, they benefit from the ability to slow down and take reading one step at a time.
High school students can avoid the summer setback and make gains to catch up with peers with summer speech therapy
Also known as the summer slide, academic slide, or summer learning loss, the summer setback can be really hard for students who already struggle with reading and writing.
According to a review of the literature cited by Brookings in their article on the summer slide, student achievement scores declined by one month’s worth of learning and the extent of the loss was larger at higher grade levels. This means that high school students may be particularly vulnerable to losing skills they worked so hard to achieve during the year.
By working on reading and writing skills during the summer, students can avoid losing skills and instead make gains in order to catch up with their classmates.
What can high-school students work on in speech therapy during the summer?
Okay, so students can make gains during the summer… But what can you actually work on when my child doesn’t have any schoolwork to complete?!
The short answer is anything they need help with!
Reading
Summer can be a wonderful time for your teenager to actually develop a love for reading because we can 1) make reading a whole lot easier and 2) focus on topics that your teenager is actually interested in!
Does your teen like fantasy video games? Maybe we can read a fantasy book together!
Does your high-schooler like sports? We can read articles about sports to practice reading comprehension skills!
Some other things your teen can do during summer speech sessions:
Read books that your teen actually enjoys
Read books assignment for summer reading
Read books that your teen will read in their classes next year.
Work on skills important for reading, like
how to read words efficiently,
reading complex sentences,
visualizing what they read,
summarizing what they read,
looking back in the text,
building vocabulary skills
Writing
One of the most important messages that I try to get across to my students is that their voice matters. What they say matters. They deserve to share their opinions and perspectives so let’s make it easier for them this summer.
During summer speech sessions, your teen can:
get a jump start on the essays they have to write for college applications
build skills to write essays more efficiently during the school year, like
analyzing the prompt and extracting the most important details
creating outlines that work for them specifically
actually using an outline to write their essays
writing a variety of sentence types to make their writing more effective and sophisticated
using grade-appropriate vocabulary
spelling accurately
accurately using punctuation
Executive Functioning: Planning, Time Management, Attention, etc
Summer allows most of us to slooooow down a little bit. This is great for my high school students who struggle with executive functioning (with or without ADHD) because it allows us to freeze the moment and build self-awareness around what is difficult. Students who rush through reading and answering questions are encouraged to take a breath, gather their thoughts, and make a plan.
During summer speech sessions, your teen can practice EF skills by:
developing a summer schedule for themselves without the outside structure of school and accountability from teachers
practicing independence while working toward summer goals that they choose
practicing mindfulness and meditation to help teens slow down and develop self-awareness. Being able to take a breath and center themselves might make all the difference once it comes time for tests again in the fall!
Hi, I’m Hollis, the owner of Mindful Speech.
I’m a speech-language pathologist licensed in Illinois and Colorado.
I specialize in providing speech therapy to help children, teens, and young adults to improve language, reading, writing, and executive functioning skills. Now offering in-person sessions in Chicago!
Learn more about me on my About Hollis page.