Group Therapy

Group therapy teaches individuals to interact with peers while expanding vocabulary, grammar, and social skills. We have a range of ongoing therapy groups for:

• Preschoolers

• Children in mainstream education

• Children in special education

• Teenagers in mainstream education

• Teenagers in special education and

• Young adults

Each individual is assessed at the initial consultation before the most suitable group therapy can be recommended to ensure that client needs can be met.

* Assessment is required prior to placement.

Children are placed according to language abilities rather than chronological ages.

Find out more:

• Language Disorder VS Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

• Autism and Language Disorder

Chatterbugs™

For children spontaneously speaking in phrases and short sentences.
Each session lasts 1 hour with an update towards the end of each session.

Yak Attack™

For children spontaneously speaking in sentences who can be off-topic or use
words inappropriately. Each session lasts 1 hour with an update towards the end of each session.

Chit Chat Mania™

For children accessing mainstream curriculum; including children attending
Pathlight School and those without formal diagnoses. Each session lasts 1.5 hours. Updates take place at the end of each term.

Group Therapy Approach

Therapy evolves as scientists study how the brain learns. A large part of our work involves keeping caregivers and individuals who work with us up-to-date about the latest research in language learning.

Group therapy involves play, games, discussion, stories, role play and more. This allows language to be experienced. For therapy to be effective, language needs to be practised across five domains and four modalities at word, sentence and paragraph levels (Gleason,’05).

Groups for young adults predominantly work on higher level social skills.

Gleason, J.B (2005). The Development of Language ( 6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

The five domains of language are:

Phonology : Ability to identify and distinguish phonemes (e.g. “b” vs “d”) while listening (i.e. phonological awareness).

Semantics : An understanding of word meanings (i.e. vocabulary) and combinations of words.

Morphology : Use of grammatical rules to govern how the smallest meaningful units of language (e.g. -ful, -ing, -s) are used.

Syntax : An understanding of sentence structures (i.e. person+ action+ object) and how words can be combined to form sentences (e.g. The girl is eating a banana).

Pragmatics : Understanding the rules associated with the use of language in conversation and broader social situations. This is also known as social skills.