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Two Year Training

Certified Academic Language Therapist

CALT's are...

  • Clinically Diagnostic and Prescriptive – Certified Academic Language Therapists (CALT) review comprehensive evaluation reports and academic samples, then administer academic skills assessments for baseline documentation. Throughout Multisensory Structured Language therapy sessions, student performance informs diagnostic and prescriptive intervention to create a high level of accuracy, fluency, and understanding for independence in written language skills.

  • Skilled In Multisensory Structured Language – Certified Academic Language Therapists integrate visual, auditory, and motor processing with explicit understanding of the structure of the English language, which provides a solid foundation in written language skills.

  • Intensive – Certified Academic Language Therapists provide expert, skilled one-to-one or small-group intervention, with high frequency over a sustained period of time, which links explicit understanding, repeated practice and performance to develop accurate and fluent reading with comprehension.

  • Results-Driven – Certified Academic Language Therapists enable explicit understanding and application of the structure of the English language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and orthography), to create the foundation for age appropriate oral and written language, including reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension, spelling, and written expression.

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  • Eligibility – Master’s Degree

  • Class Contact Hours: (200 hours)

  • Take Flight I (two weeks) plus 4 full day seminar days

  • Take Flight II (two weeks) plus 4 full day seminar days

  • Therapy Experience: (700 teaching hours)

  • A minimum of three therapy situations

  • Begin the curriculum at least three times

  • Experience working in the advanced portion of the curriculum

  • Experience with a one-on-one situation recommended but not required

Certification Requirements

Take Flight

Take Flight: A Comprehensive Intervention for Students with Dyslexia is a two-year curriculum written by the staff of the Center for Dyslexia at Scottish Rite for Children. Take Flight builds on the success of the three previous dyslexia intervention programs developed by the staff of Scottish Rite: Alphabetic Phonics, Dyslexia Training Program and Scottish Rite for Children Literacy Program.

 

Take Flight contains the five components of effective reading instruction identified by research from the National Reading Panel.

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  • Phonemic Awareness – following established procedures for explicitly teaching the relationships between speech sound production and spelling-sound patterns

  • Phonics – providing a systematic approach for single word decoding

  • Fluency – using research-proven directed practice in repeated reading of words, phrases and passages to help students read newly encountered text more fluently

  • Vocabulary – featuring multiple word learning strategies (definitional, structural, contextual) and explicit teaching techniques with application in text

  • Reading Comprehension – teaching students to explicitly use and articulate multiple comprehension strategies (i.e., cooperative learning, story structure, question generation and answering, summarization and comprehension monitoring)

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Take Flight was designed for use by Academic Language Therapists for children with dyslexia ages 7 and older. The two-year program is designed to be taught four days per week (60 minutes per day) or five days per week (45 minutes per day). It is intended for one-on-one or small group instruction with no more than six students per class.

 

Take Flight is taught daily in the Center for Dyslexia’s lab school where students from the surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth area who are identified in our diagnostic center attend classes daily. The lab school gives the Scottish Rite staff the opportunity to learn from students with dyslexia and improve Take Flight strategies.

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