About the author

Polly Woodfine

Polly qualified as a speech and language therapist in the UK, and is currently practicing as a Highly Specialist speech and language therapist for the NHS in mainstream schools within the London area, UK. She also enjoyed a four year period practicing in Western Australia between 2006 and 2010. She has worked state and private clinical practices.

Polly has significant experience working with children of all ages who present with a wide variety of speech, language and literacy difficulties. For example, children with speech / articulation disorders / delays, literacy difficulties, word finding problems, autism, dyspraxia and specific difficulties that impair the learning of language. Her work has been based in the clinic, home and school settings.  

During her time working as a speech and language therapist, she has become particularly interested in how children learn vocabulary and how children with speech and language difficulties can be taught to learn vocabulary in an effective way to promote the development of effective oral language and literacy skills. This lead to the development of the Word Whizzer! tool for use by parents, teachers and speech therapists, which introduced an approach to word learning, based on current research, like no other tool currently available in the market. The Word Whizzer!:

• Remediates word finding difficulties and receptive vocabulary problems
• Can be used by children without speech and language difficulties to develop their awareness of the vocabulary storage process to promote oral language and literacy development
• Can be used in any environment, by any individual. For example, in groups or on an individual basis; in the clinic setting by a speech and language therapist; at home by parents; in the classroom by teachers as a daily routine for introducing new vocabulary
• Is an exciting tool to motivate children to develop their knowledge and use of vocabulary.

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