Get Ready to Read & Learn
Reading and writing start with speech and language. Our school readiness program helps your child build the pre-literacy skills they need before kindergarten.
What Is Pre-Literacy Speech Therapy?
Before children learn to read, they need a set of spoken-language skills to build on. They need to hear that words are made of smaller sounds, know enough words to understand what they read, and be able to follow and tell a story. These are pre-literacy skills, and supporting them is part of a speech-language pathologist's work.
Pre-literacy therapy works on those skills directly. It is aimed at children in the year or two before kindergarten and in the early primary grades, and at children whose speech or language difficulties may make learning to read harder. It is not tutoring and does not replace what your child's teacher does. It targets the language underneath reading.
Building Blocks of Literacy
Phonological Awareness
The ability to hear and play with sounds. Rhyming, clapping syllables, and identifying the first sound in a word ("Baby starts with B!").
Narrative Skills
Being able to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. This helps with reading comprehension and writing as they grow.
Print Awareness
Understanding how books work, knowing that letters represent sounds, and recognizing their own name in print.
Signs Your Child May Benefit
- Finds rhyming games hard, or doesn’t enjoy them
- Can’t yet tell you the first sound in a familiar word, like the “m” in “mom”
- Mixes up letter names and sounds, or has trouble remembering them
- Struggles to retell a short story, or to explain what happened at school in order
- Has trouble following two- or three-step instructions
- Had a speech or language delay earlier on, even if they have caught up in conversation
- Has a parent or sibling who found reading or spelling hard
One sign on its own is not a reason to worry. If several of these sound familiar, or your child's teacher has raised a concern, an assessment can show where your child's skills are right now.
How the Assessment Works
The assessment happens at home, through games and picture books rather than tests at a desk. The SLP looks at:
- Phonological awareness: rhyming, clapping syllables, and finding and blending the sounds in words.
- Vocabulary and understanding: the words your child knows and how well they follow spoken instructions.
- Storytelling: retelling a short story in order and telling one of their own.
- Speech sounds: how clearly your child speaks, since sound errors can show up later in spelling.
You are also asked about your child's early development and anything the school has noticed. Afterwards, the SLP goes over the results with you, explains what they mean for classroom learning, and recommends whether therapy is needed.
More Than Just Speech Therapy
School Readiness
You are here. Pre-literacy skills.
Building Reading Confidence
Assess Skills
We check phonological awareness and narrative skills.
Fun Activities
We play rhyming games and sound scavenger hunts.
School Success
Your child enters school feeling ready to learn.
What Therapy Looks Like at Home
Sessions look like play. A scavenger hunt around the house for things that start with “b”. Clapping out the syllables in family members' names. Reading a picture book, acting the story out with toys, then retelling it in order: first, next, last.
Goals are specific to your child and build on each other. Children usually start with bigger units of sound, like rhymes and syllables, then move to the individual sounds in words. Storytelling starts with simple sequences and grows into stories with a character, a problem, and an ending.
How You Can Help at Home
You don't need teaching experience to help. The SLP shows you short activities that fit into reading time and daily routines, like pausing before the rhyming word in a familiar book so your child can fill it in, or asking “what happened first?” after a trip to the park.
Reading together often, and talking about the pictures and the story as you go, supports the same skills worked on in sessions. If your child's teacher has raised concerns, share them with the SLP so the goals line up with what is happening in class.
Common Questions
Is this tutoring?
No. We focus on the language skills that underlie reading, not memorizing letters or sight words.
What age is best?
We typically see children ages 4-7 for this program, perfect for the year before (or during) Kindergarten/Grade 1.
My child knows their ABCs. Is this needed?
Knowing letter names is a good start. Being able to hear and play with the sounds in words (phonological awareness) is a separate skill, and it is closely linked to how easily children learn to read.
My child is already in grade 1. Is it too late?
No. These skills are worked on in the early grades too. The assessment shows where your child is now, and therapy starts from there.
How often are sessions?
It depends on your child's goals and your family's schedule. Frequency is agreed on with you after the assessment.
Is this the same as a learning disability assessment?
No. An SLP assesses speech and language, including the language skills that support reading and spelling. In Ontario, a learning disability is diagnosed through a psychoeducational assessment by a psychologist or psychological associate. If the SLP sees signs that a further assessment could be useful, they will tell you and explain why.
Professional Credentials
Why Start Early?
Research shows that oral language skills in kindergarten are a strong predictor of reading success in later grades. If a child enters school with a strong vocabulary and sound awareness, learning to read becomes much easier.
We turn "instruction" into play. Scavenger hunts for sounds, story-acting, and rhyming games make learning feel like fun, not schoolwork.
School Readiness Support in Your Area
In-home support for early literacy in: