Services / Virtual Services

Services

Virtual Services

Get the GKTC experience from home. We can connect with you and your nonspeaking family member to provide instruction. Distance does not need to be a barrier.
Secondary-Services_VIrtual_r1
Layer 29

What's Available

What to Expect During Your Visit

GKTC offers a structured virtual experience. Start off with a Foundations Zoom to learn about S2C and how it can benefit your family. Follow up with our Technique Zoom, where you’ll learn how to implement the method. Now you're ready to practice at home. But don’t worry, you’re not all alone; we offer weekly or as-needed consults for continued support.

Foundations Zoom

This zoom call will introduce you to S2C and the science behind it. We will explain why we use the term nonspeaking, the brain-body disconnect, the motor system, and speech versus language. You will start to understand how S2C will benefit your family.

Technique Zoom

Once you understand the foundations of S2C, you will learn how to implement it with your loved one. We'll go over all of the steps you will need to take to practice this at home.

Ongoing Consultation

Since you’ve got the basics, now take the lead with support from one of our S2C Practitioners while you work through the hierarchy of boards and questions. Get real-time feedback as you improve skills on the letter boards.

Virtual groups

How exciting you’re on the letter boards! Now don’t forget to check in with our office and Facebook page to see what groups we’re offering. These give your speller a chance to connect with their peers and provide the social interaction that every person craves!

Take me to groups!

FAQs

Spelling to Communicate teaches individuals with motor challenges the purposeful motor skills necessary to point to letters to spell as an alternative means of communication (AAC). The goal is to achieve synchrony between the brain and body. Skilled and rigorously trained communication partners teach purposeful motor skills using a hierarchy of verbal and gestural prompts. As motor skills improve through consistent practice, students progress from pointing to letters on letterboards to spell to typing on a keyboard. Accordingly, communication moves from concrete to abstract as motor skills progress.

Growing Kids Therapy Center is an independent Spelling to Communicate practice and though we are part of the larger I-ASC S2C network, we are not formally affiliated with any other practice or practitioners. If you prefer to be seen by someone in your local area, we recommend contacting the International Association for Spelling as Communication (I-ASC), which is the nonprofit organization that offers training and registration of S2C practitioners all over the world. That said, if you do travel to visit GKTC, we are very happy to work with your existing S2C Practitioner or try to connect you with a colleague near you.

We offer a series of three virtual video sessions, delivered via Zoom, during which one of our practitioners will teach you the methodology of S2C so you can begin working with your student at home. The first session, “Foundations,” teaches the premises upon which S2C is built. The second, “Technique,” teaches how to use the boards, how to use a lesson, how to prompt motor skills, and more. Then, several weeks after completing these two, you will be asked to submit a video of you working with your speller. Your third Zoom will coach you on your skills based on what our practitioner sees in your video. If you’re interested in beginning, please fill out our intake form so that we can contact you when an appointment becomes available. In the third session, you and the practitioner can discuss options for continued services to best support you and your speller.