WCSLA and our approved sponsor, MSHA, present our 2024-2025 Workshop Series

Executive function skills refer to the brain functions we use to manage our attention, our emotions and our behavior in pursuit of our goals.  Young children rely on these skills to follow a sequence of instructions for daily tasks while older children need these skills to “break a task down” into a sequence of steps and organize a timeline as the demands for independent learning increases.  When children enter the academic arena, successful task execution requires students to be aware of task demands and set goals. Then they must access forethought and hindsight to think in an organized way and to sustain their focus on the relevant features of the task at hand.  As students mature they learn how to organize their time, space, materials and develop the reasoning skills to consider multiple possible solutions to problems, recognize the “gray” in situations, and manage both expected and unexpected changes in plans, routines, rules and novel situations. Students must fluidly shift between changing task demands and carry out multiple complex steps to achieve expected goals.

This 5-hour presentation is an advanced level course for SLPs on how oral structure and oral function impact articulation, language, voice, swallowing, feeding, cognition, sleep, and general health. Traditional thinking about oral motor will be compared to current understanding of skeletal muscle motor learning and neuroplasticity. Special considerations will be made for treating OMDs in the school setting.

Speech sound disorders often comprise a majority of SLPs’ caseloads, but many aspects of assessment and intervention are often neglected or misunderstood. This full-day presentation will cover key components of a thorough assessment for the differential diagnosis of SSDs and important factors to consider when deciding among particular intervention approaches. Specific interventions, including phonological and phonetic approaches for articulation distortions, will be covered, as well as strategies for elicitation and generalization.