Increasing Language Skills of Students from Low-Income Backgrounds: Practical Strategies for Professionals

Unique to the profession of speech-language pathology, the second edition of this book is an invaluable resource for clinicians, teachers, and university professors. This practical, easy-to-read text is ideal for speech-language pathologists, general and special educators, and others who serve children in poverty. The author, a university professor and part-time itinerant speech-language pathologist in the schools, balances research and "Monday morning" practical strategies for professionals who want to help low- socioeconomic status (SES) students from preschool through high school succeed in school and, eventually, in society. There are some helpful new features in the second edition of this book. Chapter highlights at the end of each chapter provide synopses of the chapters' contents that can serve as reviews/refreshers of the material covered. The claims made in every chapter are supported by many new research studies. The book is grounded in principles of evidence-based practice; suggestions for increasing the language and academic skills of low-SES students are based in research from a variety of disciplines such as social science, speech-language pathology, neuroscience, and education. New case studies of actual clients the author has worked with provide opportunities for readers to apply information to clinical cases. Because the Great Recession has rendered so many more families homeless, there is much more information about serving homeless students, including mitigating the effects of chaos through increasing executive functioning skills. Because the author works directly with homeless people on the streets, she includes a broad-based (hands-on and research) perspective about meeting the unique needs of this population. The second edition of the book contains new information about using Response to Intervention (RtI) to serve low-SES students in general education classroom settings. Updated technology recommendations (e.g.,