Camp To Hold Awards Ceremony At Scottish Rite Building Aug. 5

by Judy Long

Camp Success, a language and literacy summer camp benefiting Central Texas children, will hold an awards ceremony 10 a.m. Tuesday, August 5 at the Waco Scottish Rite Bodies building at 2801 W. Waco Drive. Baylor University's Communication Disorders Clinic received $29,240 from the Waco Scottish Rite Bodies to operate the special needs camp, which ran from July 7 through August 4.
Camp Success provided individual and small-group attention to enhance children's pre-literacy skills to better prepare them for school. Twenty-three children, under the guidance of 18 graduate clinicians, were served by Camp Success at the Baylor clinic this summer.
Waco Scottish Rite Bodies chairman Claude Ervin will present certificates of completion to the children, ages five to 13, in the camp. The certificates represent a significant accomplishment for the students. Dr. Michaela Ritter, professor in the department of communication science and disorders, said each child received two and a half hours of language intervention and an hour of instruction from a reading specialist each day. Students achieved as much progress in four weeks as a typical student would progress in one year.
"Students and parents are so excited about the improvement the children have made over the past month. Some parents have reported their children are asking them to read books to them for the first time ever," Ritter said.
Waco Scottish Rite and Baylor's Communication Disorders Clinic in the department of communication sciences and disorders both have a long history of helping children with language disorders and dyslexia. Today, there are 163 Scottish Rite clinics, centers and special programs for children and therapists located throughout the United States, while Baylor has graduated more than 1,200 speech-language pathologists since the department began in 1976. In turn, Baylor students have provided thousands of Central Texas children with treatment of their speech, language and hearing disorders at little or no cost to their parents.
For more information, contact Dr. David Rivers, professor of communication sciences and disorders, at 710-6370 or Ritter at 710-4745.