Language and Literacy Connections: Intervention for School-Age Children and Adolescents - Second Edition

Geraldine P. Wallach, Alaine Ocampo

Details: 351 pages, B&W, Softcover, 7" x 10"

ISBN13: 978-1-63550-730-0

Publication Date: September 2025

This Text Unravels the Connections Between LANGUAGE & LITERACY!

Language and Literacy Connections: Intervention for School-Age Children and Adolescents, Second Edition takes readers on a path of knowledge steeped in principles and practical applications. Integrating language learning, disorders, and literacy together in a coherent and cohesive narrative, it covers the challenges facing school-age students from early elementary levels through high school. Using past and current research from speech-language pathology (SLP) and reading and literacy arenas, the authors present transcripts, cases, and detailed intervention sessions to provide a template for daily practice. The text provides some answers to one of the most complex, yet basic, questions: “Why am I doing this?” 

The text has four major goals: (1) to encourage readers to evaluate past and current clinical and educational practices in language intervention at school-age levels; (2) to present intervention goals and activities that are theoretically-sound but may require further research scrutiny; (3) to explore aspects of curriculum-relevant language intervention for students with language learning disabilities; (4) to provide guidelines for school-based practitioners that clarify how professionals with diverse backgrounds and roles share responsibility in language, literacy, and academic programming. With its strong focus on language and language disorders, this text serves as a valuable resource for teachers and other specialists who collaborate with school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to support students with language learning disabilities (LLD).

New to the Second Edition

• A new chapter, “Application Activities to Stretch Your Knowledge,” includes problems with possible answers and rationales that review significant concepts in language and literacy with a focus on adolescents
• A road map to scenarios and reports and key information at the beginning of the text 
• Application activities in Chapter 10 with icons that highlight easy access to key information and connections with understanding the “Whys”

Key Features

• Questions at the beginning of each chapter that reflect concerns of SLPs and their teams
• Projects and assignments that supplement and review the material
• Examples of teaching modules with practical lesson plans that integrate the role of SLPs in Interprofessional Practices (IPP) while explicitly addressing the curriculum across a variety of subject areas

Praise for the First Edition

"Readers will enjoy the clear structure to each chapter of this book, beginning with a summary statement and key questions that the reader should consider as they are moving through the content of the chapter and ending with reflective discussion points and projects. These encourage the reader to actively engage with and apply the content from the chapter in practice. This is highly useful for university students but also for experienced clinicians, lending itself well to being completed during clinical supervision or as part of a journal club. The authors’ focus on clinician self-reflection is clear throughout the book and multiple checklists for self-reflection are provided to help clinicians effectively evaluate their current practice.  ...Overall, this is a must have book for university students, experienced clinicians who are new to working with students from Years 3-4 upwards with concomitant language and literacy difficulties, or those who are working towards integrating more written language into their intervention.
...It is a thought provoking read as it respectfully challenges long held, popular intervention practises due to the lack of robust research evidence or relevance in helping students to successfully access the school curriculum and helps guide clinicians towards alternatives. Readers can expect a comprehensive guide to the evidence base for this population and many practical examples of goals, intervention approaches, road maps for intervention and session scripts, so that it will quickly become a book that the reader reaches for regularly when setting goals and planning intervention for their caseloads in the future.”
–Shelley Hornberger, CCC-SLP, CertMRCSLT in Child Language Teaching and Therapy journal (February 2022)

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