Services
Children ages birth to 14 can be seen either at home or at school.
Evaluation/Assessment:
Keren Zahavi currently offers both informal assessments and formal evaluations. During an informal assessment/screening the therapist speaks with the parent about the child’s present functioning and observes the child in their natural setting. A formal evaluation includes a written report and standardized scoring of assessment tools. The report includes the child’s level of functioning based on the assessments, parent interview and clinical observation and will provide information and a recommendation as to whether or not services are necessary.
Speech/Articulation Therapy:
Speech sound disorder is a term referring to any combination of difficulties with perception, motor production and/or the phonological representation of sounds and speech segments. Children with speech sound disorder may substitute, omit, add or change various speech sounds or speech patterns making it difficult for listeners to understand what is being said. Speech or Articulation therapy is tailored to meet your child’s individual needs and help them produce or shape speech sounds accurately. Speech therapy may include exercises and games which will help the child correctly produce the sounds and syllables.
Language Therapy:
Language disorders can be either receptive or expressive. Receptive language disorders refer to your child’s difficulty understanding or processing language. Expressive language disorders refers to the child’s difficulty putting words together, a limited vocabulary, or the child’s inability to form cohesive stories, express his/her feelings and thoughts through communication. Language therapy programs are developed to help your child communicate more effectively with family members, teachers and peers.
Pragmatic Language Therapy/Social Skills Training:
Pragmatic language, often known as “social skills,” refers to the verbal and non-verbal rules that dictate our social interactions. Often times, children who demonstrate difficulty with pragmatic language will have difficulty sharing, using appropriate eye contact, initiating and maintaining conversations, have a limited variety of language and have trouble joining peers in structured play activities. Some children struggle to understand emotions, feelings and perspective taking and pretend play which may negatively affect their interactions and relationships with peers. Pragmatic/Social Skills therapy programs are developed for each child and treatment is held within the classroom, as a “push-in” therapy session, to ensure that the child is receiving support in their most natural social setting.
P.R.O.M.P.T. Therapy:
PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. Keren Zahavi is PROMPT trained and can help manually cue articulators (jaw, face and lips) to show the child how a speech sound is produced.
Bilingual Speech Therapy:
As a bilingual speech-language pathologist who works with the pediatric population, therapy can be provided to children who have speech and language impairments in both English and Hebrew. The type of therapy activities and the language in which therapy is conducted is determined by each child’s individual needs.
Learning Language and Loving It:
Keren is a Hanen Certified Speech-Language Pathologist who offers workshops and trainings in the Learning Language and Loving It Program. This program was designed to provide early childhood educators with practical strategies for helping all children in the classroom build language and social skills, no matter what their learning and communication styles are, and even if they have special needs.
According to the Hanen Center: “The Learning Language and Loving It Program provides you with practical, research-based strategies for:
Promoting every child’s language development using natural everyday activities, routines and play
- Becoming attuned to children’s interests so you can follow their lead, which is known to foster language development
- Adjusting the way you talk to help children develop more advanced language skills
- Promoting interaction among the children themselves
- Facilitating language-learning in pretend play
- Fostering emergent literacy skills”