Danielle Hennessy shares about her Summer 2020 externship experience:
“This summer I had the opportunity to work at Dallas Reading and Language Services. It is a private practice that treats individuals in the pediatric population. There are some younger kids working mostly on language development, but I have been mostly working with older kids. One thing I love about this placement is that we target almost all goals through reading, which helps kids with their speech/language goals, but also helps them academically. We work on literacy while also targeting speech sounds, summarizing, answering questions, phonological awareness, etc.. During my time here, I have had the opportunity to work with quite a few clients who have dyslexia. My supervisor specializes in services for dyslexia, so it has been great learning strategies from her! I have been utilizing the Linda-Mood Bell vowel chart alongside sound sequencing to help with phonological awareness, decoding skills, and spelling. I felt that my coursework in the school-age class really helped prepare me for this setting in so many ways. We learned so much about expressive/receptive language and even some about dyslexia, which is the majority of what I see on my caseload. Typically I see 8-10 clients in a day, with the evenings definitely being busier. Because of COVID, I would say that about half of my caseload is teletherapy, but the number of clients coming back to the office has been steadily increasing. I have truly enjoyed my time here this summer, and although I was bummed to not be going to Zambia, I’m so glad I was able to have this experience.”
Thank you for sharing, Danielle!