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Kids learn to become better readers with all their senses

Kids learn to become better readers with all their senses
Posted at 11:16 PM, May 20, 2017
and last updated 2018-06-19 15:01:02-04

We continue celebrating 'Better Speech and Hearing Month' at News Channel 25 by featuring a way children are becoming better readers.

Mason Meline is becoming a better reader and communicator by using nearly all his senses.

"Because it will help me figure out what's happening," Mason said.

By seeing, hearing and even touching the story, Mason is now able to understand and retell it. He uses a string with balls on it to keep track of the narrative as he tells the story to his therapist after she reads it to him.

"We work on giving them some organization and structure to be able to retell that story," said Susan Sherman, speech pathologist. "It helps implant this narrative structure within them when they're having a multi-sensory approach to help with learning."

He's learned all this at the Baylor Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic.

"Our son is eight and he has autism and he entered the Baylor program awhile ago and entered being a non-reader and now he's reading. He can read almost anything," said Shelley Meline, Mason's mother.

It's progress, Sherman said, comes from their partnership with his parents and it's success, Meline said, comes from God.

"When they work with us and incorporate the same concepts, the same visuals, the same vocabulary words, the progress is far above what it would be if they see us two times a week," Sherman said.

"One of my favorite Bible verses is Jeremiah 29:11 which says the Lord your God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future and I truly believe that the Lord is doing that through the program at Baylor," Meline said.

Sherman said graduate students serve at the clinic as part of their training in speech pathology. For more information on the program, you can visit the clinic's website.

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