Please check out a day in the life of a Summit Speech School students:
The preschool program at Summit Speech School is for children three to approximately five years of age. The school provides a listening and spoken language intensive program with a curriculum especially designed for children with hearing loss. Classrooms and therapy rooms are acoustically treated with observation rooms attached. Our students have the opportunity to interact with hearing peers from neighboring schools throughout the year.
Our staff uses intensive small group language/listening activities in order to significantly close the gap between listening age and chronological age. The school’s speech language pathologists, classroom teachers and teaching assistants work as a team to track the children’s vocabulary, listening skills, speech, syntax, and discourse skills. Children alternate between small group listening and spoken language lessons and larger group content specific lessons. Along with building strong advocacy skills, our preschool staff fosters their social, emotional and cognitive skills as well. It is our goal to ensure our students are successful when they enter kindergarten and beyond.
Family Involvement
Moving into preschool, our families continue to be an integral part of our program, partnering with us every step of the way. We encourage all of our families to attend workshops, observe and participate with their child during speech and teacher of the deaf sessions and participate in school activities. Our families remain involved through our class DoJo system where we send home frequent videos and communications. We also provide support and guidance to families as their child transitions into kindergarten.
To learn more, please call 908-508-0011 or email lsmith@summitspeech.org
Program Highlights
- Our 210 day program includes a 30 day extended school year program
- Students have daily access to our Educational Audiologist
- We are an Approved Private School by the NJ Department of Education
- State of the Art Facility: All classrooms and therapy rooms are acoustically treated, have universal access to DM systems and have observation booths with one way access.
- Our average class size is 5-7 students
- When students are in their intensive listening and spoken language sessions with a teacher of the deaf, they are working on typical preschool development utilizing the NJ DOE approved Highscope curriculum. Listening and spoken language training is embedded into the use of the Highscope curriculum.
- Our staff to student ratio is less than 3:1; staff includes the following:
- 3 Teachers, Dual NJ DOE Certified as a Teacher of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing and Preschool Teacher
- 3 Speech and Language Pathologists providing speech and language services to every student!
- At least one paraprofessional in each of our three classrooms
- All staff receive ongoing training and have expertise in the delivery of Listening and Spoken Language Services
- We have a Full-time Nurse and provide Occupational/Physical Therapy Services