How One School Beat the Odds with PresenceLearning, Response to Intervention

Learning to communicate is one of the most empowering skills a student develops in early education. When students have the ability to ask questions, explain answers, and have conversations with fellow classmates, they greatly expand learning opportunities both in and outside of the classroom. Communication can help facilitate critical thinking and problem solving skills, and is a valuable part of a student’s learning experience.

While most children begin to acquire speech and language skills before they enter kindergarten, there are many children who enter grade school without the developed communication skills needed to succeed in the classroom.

Speech therapy has been proven to help students improve in speech and language, especially when the problem is addressed early. When Dr. Sean. A. Cianfarano began his position as superintendent of Lone Pine Unified School District (LPUSD), he had recently discovered that his own son was going to need speech therapy services while in school.

Since implementing PresenceLearning, LPUSD has seen a tremendous growth in students’ speech acquisition, fluency rates, reading comprehension, and Accelerated Reader scores.

Dr. Cianfarano learned that LPUSD used PresenceLearning’s online speech therapy to help students improve their communication skills. After Cianfarano met with PresenceLearning, he developed a plan that would improve both his son’s speech and the speech of other students at LPUSD. That meeting influenced Cianfarano to keep PresenceLearning’s online speech therapy program in his schools.

“I didn’t want students just going in and doing speech services. I wanted PresenceLearning to focus on how we could use speech services in conjunction with response to intervention and early literacy to really supercharge what we are doing with our kids,” says Cianfarano. “PresenceLearning has flown out here and worked with us to have a game plan so we can increase overall student achievement by design. It is so much more than online speech.”

Since implementing PresenceLearning, LPUSD has seen a tremendous growth in students’ speech acquisition, fluency rates, reading comprehension, and Accelerated Reader scores. Part of what has made PresenceLearning such an effective learning tool for students struggling with communication and literacy skills is the approach Dr. Cianfarano’s team of highly effective educators has taken towards early intervention and early literacy.