Schneider Family Services

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Schneider Family Services

Jess Schneider, SLPD, CCC-SLP

08/24/2026

Wrapping up our grade-by-grade series with Fifth Grade! Here's the typical picture by year's end:

🗣️ **Speech:** By this age, all English consonant sounds should be fully mastered and clear in conversational speech.

💬 **Language:** Listens and draws conclusions across subjects, delivers a planned speech with eye contact and gestures, takes part in class discussions, and summarizes main points from group work.

📖 **Reading:** Reads smoothly with few mistakes, figures out new word meanings using word origins and synonyms, reads different genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry), and describes how characters and plots develop.

✍️ **Writing:** Writes for a variety of purposes, uses varied vocabulary and sentence structure, and revises and edits their own work for clarity.

08/19/2026

Fourth grade skills get more abstract! Here's what most kids can typically do by year's end:

🗣️ **Speech:** Speech sound development is complete - any lingering articulation errors at this stage should be discussed with an SLP.

💬 **Language:** Forms opinions based on what they hear, understands some figurative language (like "this classroom is a zoo!"), gives clear directions and speeches, and summarizes ideas in their own words.

📖 **Reading:** Reads grade-level books smoothly, uses context to understand new material, makes inferences (reading between the lines), and talks about an author's writing style and purpose.

✍️ **Writing:** Writes multiple paragraphs on one topic, plans writing with a beginning/middle/end, organizes around a main idea, and edits for grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

08/17/2026

Third grade is where kids really shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." Here's the typical picture by year's end:

🗣️ **Speech:** All English speech sounds should be firmly mastered. Continued errors at this age, especially on longer or more complex words, are worth mentioning to your child's SLP.

💬 **Language:** Pays attention in groups, understands grade-level information, uses school-subject vocabulary (math, science, history words), and stays engaged in group discussions.

📖 **Reading:** Understands phonics and word analysis (root words, prefixes, and suffixes, like turning "cycle" into "bicycle"), reads grade-level books with few errors, and summarizes what they've read.

✍️ **Writing:** Plans, organizes, revises, and edits their own writing, writes stories/letters/short reports with detail, and corrects most of their own spelling.

08/12/2026

Second grade brings a big jump in reading and writing! Here's what most kids can do by year's end:

🗣️ **Speech:** Articulation of all English speech sounds should be solidly in place by now.

💬 **Language:** Follows 3-4 step directions, understands direction words (here, there, before, after), uses more complex sentences, explains words and ideas, and stays on topic in conversation.

📖 **Reading:** Uses phonics to sound out unfamiliar words, recognizes many words by sight, uses picture and title clues, rereads to fix mistakes, and reads grade-level material smoothly, both silently and aloud.

✍️ **Writing:** Organizes writing with a beginning, middle, and end, uses basic punctuation and capitalization, and starts spelling by rule instead of just by sound (moving from "grl" to "girl").

08/10/2026

Next up in our Back to School series: First Grade! Here's what to expect by the end of the year:

🗣️ **Speech:** Speech sound development for the majority of the alphabet is typically complete, including trickier sounds like "th."

💬 **Language:** Follows 2-3 step directions, remembers what they hear, speaks clearly enough for anyone to understand, tells and retells stories that make sense, uses complete sentences, and asks/answers who-what-when-where-why questions.

📖 **Reading:** Sounds out words, reads about 100 common words by sight, matches spoken words to written words, and reads grade-level books.

✍️ **Writing:** Writes about their own ideas, prints clearly, spells frequently used words, and starts sentences with capital letters and ends them with periods or question marks.

08/06/2026

Kicking off our Back to School series with Kindergarten! Here's what most kids can typically do by the end of the year:

🗣️ **Speech:** Most consonant sounds are mastered by now. The "th" sound (as in *thumb*) is often still developing until around age 6- that's completely normal at this stage.

💬 **Language:** Follows 1-2 step directions, listens to and understands stories, answers simple yes/no questions, retells something that happened, and keeps a simple conversation going.

📖 **Reading:** Understands how a book works (left to right, top to bottom), notices rhyming words, identifies the first sound in a word, recognizes upper- and lowercase letters, and "reads" familiar picture books from memory.

✍️ **Writing:** Prints their first name, draws a picture and talks about it, and writes upper- and lowercase letters (they don't have to be neat yet!).

Every kiddo gets there on their own timeline - this is just a general guide. 💛

08/04/2026

It's almost that time again --- new backpacks, new teachers, and a whole new set of skills! 🍎 All month long we're breaking down what most kids can typically do by the end of each grade, from Kindergarten through 5th, across speech, language, reading, and writing.

This isn't a rigid checklist --- every child develops at their own pace. But it's a helpful snapshot for parents wondering "is this typical for my child's age?" Follow along all August as we go grade by grade!

06/23/2026

One of the questions we get most: "How do I know if my child needs speech therapy or dyslexia testing — or both?"

Great question! 💛 The two often overlap — many children with dyslexia also have phonological processing difficulties that a speech-language pathologist can address.

A comprehensive evaluation helps us understand the full picture so we can create the most effective plan for your child. There's no one-size-fits-all answer — and that's exactly why we individualize everything we do.

06/20/2026

Quick speech tip for summer! 🌞

Talking through everyday activities — cooking, grocery shopping, gardening — is one of the most powerful ways to build a child's vocabulary and language skills. You don't need flashcards or apps. Just narrate your world together.

"We're adding two cups of flour. Now we stir slowly. What do you think will happen next?"

Simple. Powerful. Free.

06/18/2026

This Father's Day weekend, we're thinking of all the dads who show up — to therapy appointments, to homework sessions, to bedtime reading that takes a little longer but matters so much. 💙

Dads who advocate for their kids, who ask questions, who say "we'll figure this out together" — you are making a bigger difference than you know.

Happy Father's Day from our family to yours. 🌿

Address

Harrisburg, SD
57032

Telephone

+16052913202

Website

http://schneiderfamilyservices.com/

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