Boost Education

About Us

BoostEd is based on the Hibiscus Coast. It was established in 2017 by two speech-language therapists with more than 50 years’ joint experience in teaching, speech therapy and special education.

Tanya Collett and Sara Spurr recognised that all children would benefit from having advanced skills in thinking, listening, focussing, processing, and social-emotional learning.

BoostEd is designed to fill this gap, providing a combination of well researched programmes that include auditory processing strategies, social-emotional learning, and the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment programme.

BoostEd’s aim is to improve meta-cognition, and to boost self-esteem and confidence in learning. The expectation is that the techniques and skills that the children learn, will flow on into their daily learning and general life experiences.

All our BoostEd facilitators are friendly and highly qualified speech and language therapists and teachers. They are always striving to keep up to date with developments in the field of learning and cognition.

How we assist children

In today’s world with information at everyone’s fingertips, children need to know how to think, process and evaluate information more than ever before.

At BoostEd our goal is to help children to reach their fullest social and academic potential through the use of a thoughtfully assimilated package of resources and strategies.

Mediated learning is at the heart of the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment programme and is a big part of BoostEd.

Mediated learning is where the teacher moves from being a provider of knowledge to a learning facilitator, enabling students to acquire “new skills, behaviour patterns, awareness, and a set of strategies that can then potentially be generalized to new experiences and stimuli” within the world around them.

Another component of BoostEd is our comprehensive evidence-based social-emotional learning system. Using this programme, we can screen, assess and remediate key behaviours and social-emotional skills, including: communication, responsibility, assertion, co-operation, empathy, engagement, and self-control. The five competencies that we aim to achieve with our students are responsible decision making, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship skills.

Auditory processing training is also provided by BoostEd. Auditory processing is defined as what we do with what we hear.

A child with an auditory processing problem usually has good hearing, but they have difficulty effectively using the information they hear. Auditory processing issues are addressed through a variety of group activities that target auditory attention, phonological skills, auditory memory, auditory comprehension, and auditory reasoning.

We work with small groups of similarly aged children within the school environment for a minimum of 2 sessions per week. Session lengths depend on the age and abilities of the child but are typically between 45 and 60 minutes. The intention is that the techniques that they learn will flow on into their daily learning and general life experiences. We are also available for individual speech therapy consultations, by appointment.

Our physical environment

We work within schools during school hours, with small withdrawal groups. The programme is currently being run with primary school students on the Hibiscus Coast.

Atmosphere

BoostEd promotes a positive and safe environment where every member feels valued and keen to contribute.

If you wish to find out more about the BoostEd programme, and potentially setting up a group within your school or preschool, please contact one of our facilitators.

Services

  • Speech and language therapy
  • Auditory processing
  • Meta-cognition
  • Learning and attention
  • Social and emotional learning
  • Self-confidence and self-esteem
  • Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment

This is a mobile service.

Services

  • Speech and language therapy
  • Auditory processing
  • Meta-cognition
  • Learning and attention
  • Social and emotional learning
  • Self-confidence and self-esteem
  • Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment

https://kidslink.co.nz/why-are-good-communication-skills-important/