Hello, I'm Amy Reno, owner of Speech Tails!

Thank you for taking time to learn more about the Speech Tails online learning program.

The goal of this program is to empower parents by giving them the flexibility and the tools to help their child to speak more clearly. There are two main components of Speech Tails online learning. There is an articulation screening portion and an online learning portion.

The goal of the articulation screening tool is to provide you with an understanding of your child's speech and articulation abilities and how your child compares to his or her peers. If a speech issue is identified, this tool will tell you which sounds your child has issues with. After taking the articulation screening, you will be provided with a detailed lesson plan containing information on goals and recommendations to best improve your child's articulation errors. The system is instructional and easy to follow.

The purpose of the online-learning portion of Speech Tails is to teach your child to speak more clearly. This program allows you to work on the sounds your child has difficulties with in the correct developmental order. There is no limit to how much you can practice within your purchased time limit. You can do back to back sessions daily or multiple times per day; you decide. The program has some built in controls so you can work on the sounds within the developmentally appropriate parameters. For example, the system will not let you work on more difficult sounds until your child has mastered the easier sounds. Each sound is a building block to the next. Your child's individualized lesson plan is a road map that facilitates learning.

Each time you log onto the website, you will be directed to your child's individualized lesson plan that will guide you through what sounds to work on throughout this process. On the individualized lesson plan you will see four components for each sound. Online videos are an important component of the Speech Tails learning system. The only tool you need is a mirror and your computer with Internet service. These videos are short, 5-7 minute speech therapy sessions. Each video session contains the following: introduction of the sound, mouth exercises to promote better movement and range of motion of the muscles of the mouth, mouth placement goals for each sound, and many target words to practice. For added entertainment, there are multiple videos for each sound that your child needs to work on. DVDs of each sound are also available for practice when the Internet is not available to you, in you car, etc.

It is important that therapy be fun for children so they want to work on their speech and carryover activities are an important avenue to this. Each sound that your child is working on will have homework activities associated with it. Examples of these activities include printouts and games.

Activities of daily living exercises are another fun way to integrate speech work into your daily life and are an important component of the online learning system. The reason for having daily living activities is for you to bring speech practice into your everyday life, thus improving speech.

Thank you, again, for taking an active role in your child's speech. By utilizing all the components of the Speech Tails online learning system, your child should begin to speak more clearly. Repetition is the key, so make it fun. The more children practice, the clearer their speech will become!