Marisha

Writing Speech Therapy Goals for Syntax

November 5, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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Welcome to another episode of the SLP Now podcast! We’re continuing the series where we do a deep dive on all things GOALS, and I’m bringing some of the best in our field to join me and share their expertise.

Today, Marisha Mets discusses Setting Goals for Syntax Mastery

In this episode, Marisha dives into the significance of syntax in language development, particularly in early education. She discusses how understanding and using complex sentences and clauses can enhance comprehension and communication skills in students. The conversation highlights the importance of targeting syntax in teaching strategies, the challenges students face with comprehension, and the need for setting specific goals to support language development. Marisha also emphasizes the role of classroom observations and resources available for educators to effectively teach syntax.

Takeaways from This Episode

Syntax is crucial for comprehension and communication.
Even young children begin using complex sentences.
Identifying syntax issues can help address comprehension problems.
Classroom observations are essential for understanding student needs.
Setting specific goals for syntax can enhance learning outcomes.
Complex sentences are necessary for expressing complex ideas.
Resources are available to support teaching syntax effectively.
Understanding clauses is vital for narrative and expository skills.
Passive voice comprehension is important in school materials.
Targeting syntax can improve overall language skills in students.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Syntax in Education

02:40 – The Importance of Syntax for Comprehension

05:16 – Developmental Expectations for Syntax

08:17 – Targeting Syntax in Early Education

10:42 – Setting Goals for Syntax Improvement

Links and Additional Resources

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Because we analyzed all the books, identified the targets, and created unit plan pages that suggest activities based on the skills you’re targeting and your students’ needs. This is the one stop shop for all your literacy-based therapy needs, including resources for virtual field trips and visuals to help those concepts stick.

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

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Transcript

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Marisha (00:00)

Hey, it's Marisha and I cannot wait to continue our goal series. This is the last solo episode that I'll be recording for a little while. And we are going to dive into syntax. So here we go. And I know a lot of you might be thinking, don't hit pause just yet. If you're working with preschool, early elementary,

This might still be an impactful area to work on with some students. It's not just an area for older students. And we'll talk a little bit about kind of the norms and what this would look like. And I have come to really, really love this area as like an intervention. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. So like we've done in previous episodes,

I wanna chat a little bit about why we might even target syntax. And like I said, this is relevant even with preschool, kindergarten, early elementary kiddos. So I love this quote from Balthazar and Scott, 2023. Again, I'll link to the articles and citations in the show notes. You can find the syntax.

the resources for this episode at slpnow.com slash 199. But again, the quote from Balthazar and Scott, 2023. So they say, inability to comprehend key sentences in a text will undermine finding the main idea, drawing conclusions, making inferences, or answering many comprehension questions. So, whoa, okay, let's break that down. So syntax, if teachers are,

reporting that students are having difficulty identifying the main idea, like summarizing, making inferences, answering comprehension questions. Those could all be related to syntax. Well, OK. And this could also be true. Like if we're hearing that students are struggling with following directions, syntax could also be an issue. And then Balthazar and Scott also say,

Students are expected to engage in oral discussion of topics and issues where complex ideas require complex sentences to explain, elaborate, and debate. producing compound complex sentences is necessary to express those complex ideas and to understand complex ideas too. So the name of this article is Sentences Are Key.

And sentences really are key. Syntax is a huge component of a lot of the skills in areas that we might see students struggling with. So it might look like they're having difficulty summarizing or making inferences or with comprehension, but maybe syntax is really like that core component that they need support with. I just.

Love that kind of stuff. some skills that we might target include compound and complex sentences, comprehension of clauses, like relative clauses, adverbial clauses, et cetera, et cetera, or production of those clauses. And then we might also look at passive voice. So.

Whew, those are a lot of things. And I will link to some different resources about compound and complex sentences and clauses and passive voice because we don't have time to break those all down in this episode. But I wanted to touch on just some of the developmental expectations because I know that I presented on

Syntax at the summit and I heard a lot of chatter about well, that's a course for older students It doesn't apply to me But it's it's you'll see when we go through the research. It's really interesting to see At what ages these skills start to come into play? so Let's look at some of that data. So when it comes to production of compound or complex sentences and clauses

So Owens et al. 2024 looked at conversational language samples for 196 children ages 5 through 10, and they found that five-year-olds used an average of 1.25 subordinate clauses and 2.05 coordinate clauses. So even five-year-olds are starting to produce clauses in compound and complex sentences.

this number continues to increase with age. then page seven of their article has a really nice table. So again, this is Owens et al 2024. And I'll link to it in the show notes at slpnow.com slash 199. But if we are, even when we're working with five year olds, if we see that they're not using any compound sentences, if they're only speaking in simple sentences,

that might be an indicator that we want to target syntax with those students. And that could look like producing, we could write a goal around producing compound or complex sentences. And again, if we think back to what Balthazar and Scott said, the quotations I shared at the beginning, like this is a key skill. Like this will impact.

So many of the discussions happening in the classroom and the stories that kiddos are telling, they require a lot of complex ideas and students really need those to be able to express themselves, but also to understand all of these concepts that are being taught. And so it is a really integral component even from the early school age years. And like I said, I consider this as a goal if I'm not seeing any compound or complex sentences, they're not using.

any types of clauses and I would see that in a language sample. So this is why it's important to grab a good language sample. And then some other things we might see if students are struggling to express themselves in the classroom. So this might be like they're only writing simple sentences or they're only communicating in simple sentences in the classroom. If they're having difficulty with

classroom discussions or math word problems. Like these are all types of things that we might see. And that's why it's important to use classroom observation, parent teacher report or examples, et cetera, et to get that full picture and not just maybe a subtest of a formal assessment to help us decide our goals. Something else we can do or something, another area we can look at.

is comprehension of clauses. So students might be using simpler sentences, but they might also struggle to comprehend different types of clauses. So when we are looking at narratives and expository texts, we see a lot of temporal and causal, or causal conjunctions and

a lot of adverbial clauses to this is how we connect ideas and we'll see those a lot in directions as well. And so looking at those types of clauses and looking at the comprehension of those types of clauses can be really impactful, especially if we're seeing students struggle in those types of areas. And just another quote from Scott and Balthazar 2010.

They state that relative clauses occur regularly in narrative and expository text throughout the school years. And so again, just more rationale for why we might want to look at that. And if you're like, okay, so how am I going to look at comprehension of clauses? We have some activities in SLP Now membership. If you're a member, you can just search for, we have a syntax section that

has all of the clause resources. But if you're not a member, you can sign up for a trial. I'll include a link in the show notes as well. Or you can just go to slpnow.com. But your trial includes some free downloads if you want to check out some of those resources too. then so we want to look at comprehension of clauses if we're hearing about any of those types of.

challenges in our parent teacher report or in our observations during assessment, etc. The last area that I wanted to touch on was comprehension of passive voice and

They found, so Owens 2016 found that approximately half of five year old children accurately comprehend reversible passive sentences and 90 % of children between the ages of seven and a half. So this is a skill that many like kindergartners are coming in with. And especially as we get into like second and third grade, the majority of vast majority of children.

should be comprehending those reversible passes. And it's a skill that develops early in the school-age years. And it might be worth targeting if students are really struggling with comprehension or following directions because those, yeah, that is coming up. That might be part of the element because there is quite a bit of

passive voice in the books and the articles that students are encountering throughout the school day. And again, if I'm noticing in parent-teacher report, classroom observations, work samples, if I'm noticing that difficulty with comprehension, I might do a quick probe or dynamic assessment to look at comprehension of clauses and or passive voice.

to decide if that might be a worthwhile area to target. And again, we have resources for, we also have resources for passive voice inside the SLP Now membership if you're looking for a quick way to start looking at some of this. so given that information, some goals that we could write are like if we're looking at the comprehension side of things, students will answer questions about

sentences or paragraphs that have those target skills, whether it's passive voice, temporal conjunctions, causal conjunctions, relative clauses, three or more clauses. There's a lot of different ways that we can set that up. and again, check out the show notes, slpnow.com slash one 89 for a written overview of this. And so we just touch on comprehension.

We can also write goals for production where students will produce sentences using passive voice, temporal, causal conjunctions, relative clauses. And we can write goals for, like if they produce, if we collect a language sample and they produce like zero subordinate clauses and zero coordinate clauses, we could write a goal for that as well. That's a little bit higher level.

So we can have like, when given a picture, student will produce a compound sentence. Or we can look at the language sample and see if they're using compound or complex sentences in their spoken language. So there's different ways to piece that up. And it really depends on the student.

what we think is achievable within the goal period and or the IEP and just what would be the most impactful for them as well. So I hope this was a helpful overview. We'll have Mina Reeves on the podcast next week to talk about stuttering and really excited for that conversation. And I hope you have a great rest of your week.

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Writing Goals for Grammar

October 29, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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Today, Marisha discusses setting grammar goals!

In this episode, Marisha discusses the importance of grammar goals in speech-language pathology, focusing on foundational grammar skills. She emphasizes the need for effective assessment and goal-setting strategies to enhance students’ communication abilities. The conversation highlights the significance of using multiple data sources to inform grammar interventions and the importance of setting measurable and specific goals for students.

Takeaways from This Episode

The ultimate goal is for students to comprehend sentences and communicate effectively.
Grammar intervention should facilitate comprehension and use of syntax and morphology.
Multiple data sources are essential for understanding students’ strengths and needs.
Developmental expectations can guide grammar goal setting.
Specific targets should be selected based on students’ demonstrated needs.
Goals should be measurable to facilitate progress monitoring.
Using a sequence of grammar targets can help in intervention planning.
Contextualizing grammar practice makes it more meaningful for students.
Engaging students in understanding the importance of grammar can enhance motivation.
Continuity in intervention is crucial for student success.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Grammar Goals

02:28 – The Importance of Grammar in Communication

05:22 – Assessing Grammar Skills

10:20 – Setting Effective Grammar Goals

12:46 – Using Data to Inform Grammar Intervention

Links and Additional Resources

SLP Now Goal Bank
The Informed SLP’s Grammar Guide
Fey, M., Long, S., and Finestack, L. (2003). Ten principles of grammar facilitation for children with specific language impairment. American Journal of Speech‐Language Pathology, 12, 3‐15.
Guo, L.-Y. & Schneider, P. (2016). Differentiating School-Aged Children With and Without Language Impairment Using Tense and Grammaticality Measures From a Narrative Task. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Eisenberg, S. L. & Guo, L. (2017). Percent Grammatical Responses as a General Outcome Measure: Initial Validity. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple ★ Spotify ★ Google ★ Stitcher ★ Castbox or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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Marisha (00:00)

Hey there, SLP. I'm excited that you're joining me for another episode in the goals series that we're doing here on the podcast. Today we are diving into grammar goals and we're focusing on more foundational grammar skills today. And then next week we'll chat about syntax, which I think that might be a goal area that I'm most excited about!

But I love a good grammar goal too. So let's go ahead and dive right in. As always, I'd like to start off with a little bit of a rationale in terms of why we might want to target grammar with our students and what we want to be thinking about. So Fey et al have a beautiful, beautiful article. It was published in 2003. I'll include a link in the show notes at slpnow.com/198.

But it's, and they have some follow-up articles too, but the 2003 article include, is titled 10 principles of grammar facilitation for children with SLI, specific language impairment. And they have some really great strategies. They've written some follow-up articles with even more strategies. So if you're wanting to step up your grammar intervention, do check out those articles, they're phenomenal. But Fey et al. say that the basic goal of all grammatical intervention should be to help the child achieve greater facility in the comprehension and use of syntax and morphology in the service of conversation, narration, exposition, and other textual genres in both written and oral modalities. So that was a long quote.

It can be easy to get bogged down and nitpick at all the grammar and to get overwhelmed. But our ultimate goal is for students to be able to comprehend sentences and understand sentences and then be able to use grammar to communicate their thoughts and ideas. And so that is the ultimate goal behind all of any goal that we might write. And we're really wanting to help students access their curriculum.

To be able to understand and communicate effectively. And that is the ultimate goal. So let's have that as our lens as we start thinking about goals. And I love this quote by Eisenberg. She says that, is crucial. Students must have a reason for doing the things that lead them to learn and use grammar so they can read, write, and speak better. So I love getting to, because grammar is one of those areas where it isn't a lot of SLP's favorites and not a lot of students' favorites either. But it can be so impactful. And if we can talk to students about why it matters, how it can help them, and we'll get some examples as we go through, especially when it comes to syntax. my goodness, it's so cool.

But if we talk about how it'll impact them, how it can help them and then embed the practice in really meaningful context. We've got some beautiful intervention going on. So some things that we might think about when we're writing grammar goals, we might be looking at like MLU, main clause structure, objective and possessive pronouns, regular and irregular plural nouns, subject verb agreement, regular and irregular past tense verbs, negation, question formulation, all of those types of things. And then, like I said, we'll talk about syntax in the next episode. So those are all of the types of things that we might be looking at and thinking about as we're considering grammar goals. as always, we often are required to administer formal assessments.

And we might have some subtests telling us that students need help with grammar, but we want to look at multiple data sources. So we want to look at that formal assessment data. Yes, we want to look at parent and teacher report, work samples, classroom observations, language samples. We want to take multiple pieces of data to really understand. What are the students strengths and what are their needs?

Because they might have performed poorly on a grammar subtest, not because of grammar skills, but because of executive function, for example. Or maybe it was more of a vocabulary issue or comprehension. So we don't want to just take one piece of data and use that to determine our goals. We want to look at the whole picture and use that to decide what makes the most sense.

That's what we've got there. then in terms of developmental expectations, Guo et al in 2016, again, I'll put the citation in the show notes at slpnow.com/198. But they, Guo et al, looked at language samples for 300 typically developing children.

Check out the article for specific numbers for different age ranges. But for example, six-year-olds produced an average of 90.64% of grammatically correct utterances. So they call that PGU. So 90% on average, I believe the standard deviation was like six. So the majority of kiddos were producing sentences with 80 to 96-ish or 84 to 96-ish percent accuracy, roughly. Check out the article for the specific numbers. That gives us an idea for how many errors we're expecting at that age for six-year-olds, for example.

And the number continues to increase as students get older. So that's just something to keep in mind. That gives us kind of a frame for reference if we're looking at a language sample and deciding if there might be a need for grammatical intervention, for example, especially if parent-teacher report, we're seeing this in their work samples, et cetera. So one goal or a couple avenues for goals, we could keep it very, very general. Going along with the Guo et al study, we can have a goal around students producing X percentage of grammatically correct sentences.

and using that PGU measure using a language sample, which again, check out the Guo et al article. Another way that we can approach this is the percent of grammatical responses. So PGU uses a language sample, and PGR (percentage of grammatical responses) uses pictures and prompts. And then they measure the percentage of grammatically correct responses. And again, this is Eisenberg and Guo 2017. They did the study with three year olds, but they give you the pictures and the prompts. And so that could be an interesting measure to use.

That can be like a really general goal, but we likely want to select specific targets that the students demonstrate needs for. And we like, in order to make progress towards that goal, we would have to target specific structures anyway. But that is one option in approaching our goal of writing.

Another goal would be to identify the specific targets. Whether we're working on comprehension or production. And we can decide what would be most impactful for our students. But.

We would select a target that we want the student to demonstrate comprehension or production of. So, for example, for comprehension of plural nouns, we might give the students some sentences and they have to identify the correct picture. So whether it's singular versus plural. So we might have the doc, the girl is walking the dogs. And then we have a picture of a girl walking one dog versus two dogs. And then they have to identify the correct picture.

That could be one example of a comprehension goal that we set up or for production, we just give the student those pictures and they have to produce a sentence. And that can be one level of it, or we can ask, we can expect them to produce those targets in structured activities and spontaneous speech. There's lots of ways to write these goals, but the basic formula is having a specific skill.

And then deciding how you want to measure it and describing that in the goal. And then these sample goals that I'm giving don't include, again, duration, accuracy, criterion, level of support, baseline setting, et cetera, et So we obviously want to add in elements that are required and that make for a clear, smart goal.

And like I was saying, it makes it a lot easier to write and measure the goal throughout the IEP if we're able to figure out how we want to assess this goal. So whether you're using like a rubric or a probe, just make sure that you have that ready to go to make sure that you're writing a goal that is actually measurable. And then it'll make your progress monitoring and progress reporting a million times easier if you have that ready to go. And then if you can attach anything, any of those types of resources to the IEP, that makes it even more impactful. If the student were to transfer or if they moved to a different SLP for whatever reason, then we'll have that continuity in our intervention and it'll be just beautiful stuff.

Okay, so we're wanting to think about, I'll link to the episodes on grammar intervention and how to embed that in case that makes it easier to think about goal writing too, because that context is important. But in the show notes, I'm also going to list a guide created by the Informed SLP.

It gives a suggested sequence for grammar intervention. There are a lot of skills on this list. But if we are, let's say we collect, so we have formal assessment data. We have our parent and teacher report. We observe in the classroom, we have work samples. We've done some informal assessmentm have that language sample. We have a lot of pieces of data.

And across those pieces of data, we've likely identified targets that the student seems to struggle with, whether they haven't been able to produce them or they've produced them incorrectly. So we can have a working list of targets. And then you can look at the Informed SLP's guide. "OK, I have a list of 10 things, 10 grammar targets."

"How do I decide how to tackle this? Which one do I want to target first? In what sequence do I do this in?" The Informed SLP guide will walk you through that. It's a really nice resource. But I think it is a little overwhelming to look at all those skills. If you don't have any of that data going in, then it might be like, my goodness. But it can also be helpful if you're wanting to do some.

It could guide your assessment too. "I feel like the student is around this level." You can probe some of those skills to decide what you might want to target as well. So there's a couple of different ways to use that. but the main thing that we're looking at are like, what are the common threads across all of these sources of data? What are the parents, teachers saying? What am I observing in the classroom? What do the work samples show?

And really thinking about what's impacting the student's ability to access the curriculum and participate in the classroom. So yes, the suggested sequence is really helpful. But if there's a skill a little bit further down the list that are really, really impacting the student in the classroom, we might want to prioritize that.

Obviously want to think about the whole scope of that and looking at the whole child as we're deciding. which goals we want to write and how we want to tackle all of the different skills. So that's what we've got for our grammar goals. Again, head to slpnow.com/198 for quick links to the articles that I mentioned and also some example goals written out. And then I'll also link to the Informed SLP's guide for the suggested sequence of different grammar targets. And yeah, I'll see you next week where we'll continue the conversation on syntax. Hope you have a good one.

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Writing Goals for Vocabulary (Part 1)

October 15, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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Today, Marisha discusses setting goals for vocabulary!

In this episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha discusses the importance of vocabulary goals, particularly focusing on foundational skills necessary for vocabulary acquisition. She introduces the concept of the Matthew Effect, which highlights how students with limited vocabulary struggle with comprehension, creating a cycle of disadvantage. The episode emphasizes the need for direct teaching of vocabulary, the significance of assessing students’ vocabulary needs through various data points, and the importance of basic concepts and categories in building a strong vocabulary foundation. Strategies for teaching these concepts are also explored, including co-teaching methods and specific goal-setting techniques.

Takeaways from This Episode

The Matthew Effect shows how reading impacts vocabulary.
Students often need direct instruction for vocabulary.
Basic concepts are crucial for comprehension.
Multiple data sources help identify vocabulary needs.
Co-teaching can enhance vocabulary learning outcomes.
15 meaningful exposures are needed for word retention.
Categories and object functions are key vocabulary areas.
Assessing foundational skills is vital for intervention.
Setting specific goals can guide vocabulary instruction.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction to Vocabulary Goals

02:48 – Understanding the Matthew Effect

06:00 – The Importance of Vocabulary in Education

08:43 – Foundational Skills: Basic Concepts

11:25 – Strategies for Teaching Basic Concepts

14:09 – Categories and Object Functions in Vocabulary

17:19 – Conclusion and Next Steps

Links and Additional Resources

SLP Now Goal Bank
Core Vocabulary Approach to Speech Therapy
Vocabulary Approach: How to Use Semantic Mapping and the Research Behind it
Targeting Vocabulary Goals with Literacy-Based Therapy: Later Elementary
Best Books for Vocabulary
Stanovich, Keith E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 360-407.
Marzano, R. J. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement: Research on what works in schools. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Pence, K. L., & Justice, L. M. (2008). Language development from theory to practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Snell, E. K., Hindman, A. H., & Wasik, B. A. (2015). How can book reading close the word gap? Five key practices from research. The Reading Teacher. 68(7), 560-571.
Boehm Test of Basic Concepts
Lund, E., Young, A., & Yarbrough, R. (2019). The effects of co-treatment on concept development in children with Down Syndrome. Communication Disorders Quarterly.
Schmidt, E., Hoffman, J., Mulé, C., & Briesch, A. (2023). Adapting a preschool physical activity intervention to be inclusive of children on the autism spectrum. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education.

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple ★ Spotify ★ Google ★ Stitcher ★ Castbox or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I will be your host and presenter today. We're continuing the goal series and today we are going to chat about vocabulary goals, starting with kind of more of the foundational skills. And then next week we're going to dive into more complex vocabulary goals.

Before we dive into the goals that we're writing, I want to take a quick moment to think about the importance of these goals and why we might want to include vocabulary goals because we do have very limited time in our sessions and we only get to write a handful of goals for our students. And we want to be selecting the goals that are going to make a meaningful impact and allow them to access the curriculum and just make their lives a little bit better. So I want to start off by revisiting the Matthew Effect. This was shared by Stanovich in 1986. The Matthew Effect is the effect where students who read more tend to learn more words, which results in improved comprehension.

If we're trying to read a passage and we don't understand the words, then that is going to significantly impact our comprehension. But on the other hand, if students struggle with reading, they are reading less, they're learning fewer words, and they're having poor comprehension as a result because they aren't able to read as much, they're not getting as much exposure, they're not learning as many words, and because they have a smaller vocabulary, they've struggled with their comprehension. And so it's just this not so fun effect where a lot of our students continue to fall behind because they have that initial struggle to be able to read and then they're reading less and learning less words, which then impacts their comprehension.

That is some of the rationale behind targeting vocabulary is just helping our students catch up in that way. And of course, targeting reading and improving their ability to read would make a big impact as well. But today we're focusing on vocabulary. And then another compounding effect here is that a lot of the students that we work with often don't learn words indirectly. And they struggle to learn words directly and they need to be taught words in a more direct way. And this is, this was discussed by Pence and Justice in 2004. I'll share the research citation in the show notes, which you can find at slpnow.com/196.

So our students are reading less, they're learning fewer words and they're just getting less exposure. And with the exposure that they're getting, they're not learning words. They're learning fewer words indirectly as well. And they need to be taught words directly. So you can see how that continues to compound and compound and compound. And it's interesting too, there's a lot of research around how many exposures a student needs to a word for it to become a part of their vocabulary. And Marzano in 2004 said that the average child needs 15 meaningful exposures for a word to become automation.

And then Pence and Justice in 2004, again, shared that children with language impairments need more exposures than the average child. We need to be thinking about that when we're writing goals in terms of, OK, so what is realistic for our students and how do we want to tackle this? And we'll revisit that in just a little bit.

But some other things that I wanted to share. So Snell et al. in 2015 talked about vocabulary being identified as a key factor in the achievement gap. Children from low income families know significantly fewer words when they enter school. And if we go back to that Matthew effect, because they know fewer words, that results in poorer comprehension.

And then they struggle with reading more and it's just this cyclical cycle. And the number of words in a child's vocabulary is an indicator of their linguistic health and it's a factor in their ability to use language in varied context. So we have a lot of rationale behind why we might want to target vocabulary for our students.

But how do we know if this is an area that we want to target? So one huge red flag for me, and of course, we have our formal assessment data and there is going to be, there will be vocabulary subtests that, and if they score below, like if they score lower in those areas, that might be an indicator that we want to look at vocabulary.

But we also want to be looking at parent and teacher report. Are parents and teachers reporting that these students struggle with comprehension? Are they struggling readers? Are they falling behind on the measures that teachers are collecting in terms of reading progress? And when we're observing them in the classroom, do we see anything that might be indicative of challenges or difficulty with vocabulary or less less linguistically healthy kiddo in terms of their ability to use vocabulary in a number of contexts, whether it's comprehension or production.

And so there's a lot of things to think about, and that's why we want to collect different data in addition to that formal assessment so we can look at the parent teacher report, work samples, classroom observation, maybe some curriculum-based assessments or criterion reference test just to help us get a better idea of where they're at with their vocabulary. I've broken this down into different areas. So today I want to focus on more foundational skills.

Basic concepts and categories and object functions. I think these are a precursor skill for students. So if they don't have those basic concepts, they're really going to struggle with following directions. And they really need that basic vocabulary, whether it is those basic concepts or the categories and object functions and describing words.

If they are going to giving definitions, one of the, or like defining new words and defining unknown words and learning to understand them, if they don't have that foundational vocabulary, that's going to be really challenging because that gives us that many more hurdles. Because when we are introducing unknown words.

If we're looking at tier two words, for example, the student has to understand the definition to be able to add that vocabulary word to their mental dictionary, so to speak. So we wanna give them some of those words because it'll be really important for things like following directions and that initial comprehension, but they'll need it as a foundational skill as we start targeting more complex vocabulary. So that's where we're starting today.

And then next week we'll dive into more of the tier two words and affixes and all of that good stuff. But starting with basic concepts, basic concepts have been demonstrated to be incredibly important for future academic achievement. And if we are, if we observe in the classroom, we can see that kindergarten teachers and early elementary students teachers use basic concepts with intense frequency when they're giving directions and giving instruction. So this is very, very relevant as a foundational skill because it's a building block to be able to access more complex vocabulary. But it is also very relevant to the curriculum at this age and being able to access the curriculum and following directions.

Again, I'm going to be a broken record throughout this series, but that's why it's so important to get teacher and parent report and to get work samples and to do a classroom observation to see how these things are coming up. I'm going to share two formal assessments that we can use to look at basic concepts.

We likely won't be administering these tests to every single student. So it might be helpful to look at the parent and teacher report and those work samples and observations to see if this might be an area of need. Like is the student demonstrating that they're having difficulty following directions or do they seem to be struggling with comprehension?

If so, it might be worth assessing this a little bit further with a formal assessment or just some informal assessments too. But two formal assessments that we have are the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts. And I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but it's B-O-E-H-M. And again, I'll link to these tests in the show notes, which you can find at slpnow.com/196.

So those are some options. And of course, again, again reiterating that we want to use multiple pieces of data to help decide what we want to do. And I want to share some really cool things. hopefully we're convinced how important basic concepts are for our students. And then there's some cool studies and like inspiration for how we might tackle this. So a study by Lund et al in 2019, there were three conditions. So the SLP only, the adapted PE teacher only, or the third condition was where the SLP and the PE teacher co-treated. And every week they selected five concept words.

They did this co-treating in 30 minute large group lessons and there was a more significant effect. They found a more significant effect when the PE teacher and the SLP were co-treating, which was really interesting to see. And so that can be a fun strategy or idea if you are writing a basic concepts goal.

Although the purpose of this episode isn't to start diving into treatment, but that could give you some ideas on maybe what types of goals you want to write. So they identified five words each time. And so that could be something that we do. Where we work with the teacher to select X number of basic concepts, maybe the basic concepts that occur most frequently or seem to be the most impactful, and then use that to write a goal. And then there was a follow-up study by Schmidt et al in 2023, and they found that teachers were able to effectively adapt the intervention that we just talked about, and they used it with autistic preschoolers.

So if you're looking for some activity ideas, jumping head to intervention, Lund et al. 2019 and Schmidt et al. 2023 might be some good resources to look into. So in terms of the goals for basic concepts, we can look at comprehension or production. So whether we have students identify basic concepts, like show me the one that is big.

Given a field of choices, for example, or we can have students name them. So there's different ways that we can tackle those goals and we can identify specific concepts that we want students to use. One way that I've done this in the past is I've administered like an informal basic concept assessment and I've identified the number of concepts that a student has mastered and I

Sometimes have written a broader goal of like they'll increase their score on this informal assessment from like 20 out of 50 to 30 out of 50, for example. And then I would just select the words that I want to, or the concepts that I want to target. Or you can get more specific and identify the concepts that you want the student to master by the end of the year.

Attach a list of those to the IEP, and then that would guide your intervention. And you would know, OK, I'm going to cycle through these words and target them until we master them. And I've done other podcast episodes about how to structure that intervention as well. that could be, those are some strategies to set up your goals, whether it's increasing the score on an informal assessment.

Or building a list of specific concepts that you want to target and using that to guide intervention. I think the latter might be a little bit more impactful and effective. then now that brings us to the second section, which is categories and object functions. So again, I'm writing goals for categories and object functions based on multiple data points. So maybe there's something in a formal assessment that indicates students could use support with like categories, object functions, describing words.

I would also consider teacher and parent report and look at work samples and classroom observations and maybe a language sample and see like, do they seem to have difficulty following those directions that incorporate those types of words, do they have vocabulary, describing vocabulary? And again, those will all be critical foundational skills when it comes to advancing their vocabulary as well. So some things that we might, some goals that we might write is like naming X number of items when given a category or an object function.

And then the reverse is naming a category or object function when given some exemplars. And then of course, we want to get as specific as possible. If we can attach a specific probe, that can be really impactful. And if we can identify the types of like categories and object functions that we want to target throughout the year, that can be effective again for guiding intervention and measuring progress too.

And then another goal could be to describe a picture or a word using X number of descriptors. And so those descriptors can include category, object function, appearance, parts, location, color, et cetera, et cetera. So we can write goals around that and helping them use their words to describe items.

or using their vocabulary to describe items or other words. So those are some ideas on how we can tackle some of those foundational vocabulary goals. And again, I'll link to additional, because these quick episodes don't do the topic justice, but I will share links to some other episodes if you want to continue diving in and getting some ideas for.

intervention and exactly narrowing down exactly how you might want to structure this for your students. So that is a wrap on part one of vocabulary and I'll see you next week for continuation on the vocabulary topic.

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Narrative Language Goals for Speech Therapy

October 8, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Today, Marisha discusses unlocking the power of narrative goals!

Narrative language skills are essential for students to connect with peers, comprehend academic content, and participate in classroom activities.

Marisha, SLP and founder of SLP Now, highlights how narrative skills directly impact a student’s success and social interactions.

Through targeted narrative goals, SLPs can support students in improving these critical skills, making narrative goal setting a valuable focus for speech therapy.

Narrative goals are one of the easiest targets to embed in literacy-based speech therapy, where one book anchors several weeks of sessions.

“When students develop written and oral narrative skills, it improves their ability to connect with peers and participate in classroom activities.”

– Marisha Mets

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In this episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha discusses the importance of narrative skills in education, particularly for students with language impairments.

She emphasizes the need for targeted narrative goals to improve students’ ability to connect with peers and participate in classroom activities.

The episode covers various assessment tools and methods for evaluating narrative skills, as well as strategies for writing effective narrative goals that align with curriculum standards. Marisha concludes by highlighting the importance of a comprehensive approach to goal writing, considering multiple data sources to support student success.

Takeaways from This Episode

Narrative skills are crucial for classroom participation.
Targeting narratives can significantly improve student outcomes.
Students with language impairments often struggle with narratives.
Formal assessments help gauge narrative skills effectively.
Informal assessments provide additional insights into student abilities.
Writing goals should consider the whole student experience.
Collaboration with teachers and parents is essential for goal writing.
Rubrics can help track progress across multiple narrative components.
Goals should be specific, measurable, and relevant to the curriculum.
Continuous assessment is key to supporting student growth.

What is Narrative Language?

Narrative language encompasses the ability to tell stories or recount events in a structured manner.

Essential elements, or story grammar, include the character, setting, problem, action, and solution. These elements form the foundation of narrative skills and help students organize thoughts, comprehend, and express ideas.

For students with language impairments, narratives can be especially challenging, impacting their classroom and social interactions.

“Story grammar includes elements like characters, settings, problems, and solutions. It’s the building block for improving narrative skills.”

– Marisha Mets

Stages of Narrative Development

Understanding the stages of narrative development is essential for setting goals that align with a student’s current abilities.

Narrative development progresses from basic event sequencing and single-action descriptions to complex storytelling, incorporating story grammar elements like characters, settings, and resolutions.

Students with specific language impairments often require support at each stage to build these skills effectively.

“Students with specific language impairment tend to produce narratives with fewer words and less story grammar.”

– Marisha Mets

Common Assessment Methods for Narrative Skills

To assess narrative skills, SLPs can use both formal and informal methods.

Tools like the Test of Narrative Language and the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument allow SLPs to evaluate students’ abilities in retelling and generating stories, as well as answering comprehension questions.

Informal methods, such as language sampling, also provide valuable insights by capturing a student’s natural narrative skills in real-time.

“The Test of Narrative Language asks students to retell stories, generate stories, and answer comprehension questions based on those narratives.”

– Marisha Mets

How to Write SMART Narrative Language Goals

Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals is crucial for tracking narrative language progress.

Goals might include comprehension targets like answering questions about story grammar or production goals such as retelling a story with a specific number of story elements. Aligning these goals with classroom expectations ensures students benefit academically and socially.

“We could write a goal for answering questions about story grammar elements like characters, settings, and problems.”

– Marisha Mets

Effective Narrative Therapy Strategies for SLPs

SLPs can improve students’ narrative skills by using strategies like story retelling and personal narrative generation. Utilizing rubrics to measure story grammar inclusion, level of support, and cohesive devices also helps track progress effectively. Marisha recommends focusing on a set number of story grammar elements as a realistic benchmark to ensure students are meeting their narrative goals.

“Retelling a story with five out of seven story grammar elements is a realistic and measurable goal.”

– Marisha Mets

Integrating Narrative Skills into Classroom Activities

Collaboration with teachers is key to reinforcing narrative skills in real classroom scenarios. By working together, SLPs and teachers can integrate narrative practice into daily classroom activities, allowing students to apply their skills in natural settings.

Classroom observations and teacher feedback offer additional insights into how well students are utilizing narrative skills in real-life contexts.

“Teacher reports and classroom observations can give us insights into how well students are using their narrative skills in class.”

– Marisha Mets

Frequently Asked Questions on Narrative Language Goals

What are narrative skills in speech therapy?
Narrative skills involve a student’s ability to tell or retell stories, a crucial skill for both academic and social success.

How do you write narrative speech goals?
Writing narrative goals involves identifying the specific story elements to target, like character, setting, and problem, and crafting SMART goals that reflect a student’s developmental level and classroom needs.

What is the importance of narrative intervention in speech therapy?
Narrative intervention helps students develop organized thinking and expressive language skills, enhancing their classroom participation and peer interactions.

Resources for Writing Narrative Language Goals

Explore the SLP Now Goal Bank for a comprehensive set of narrative goal examples and templates that can help you customize goals to fit each student’s unique needs.

Conclusion

Narrative language goals are an invaluable part of speech therapy, helping students thrive academically and socially.

By leveraging assessment data, classroom observations, and feedback from teachers, SLPs can set comprehensive goals that support students in developing both their communication and critical thinking skills.

“It’s important to look at the whole picture—assessments, classroom observations, teacher and parent reports—to ensure goals truly support student success.”

– Marisha Mets

Links and Additional Resources

SLP Now Goal Bank
Gurney, D., Gersten, R., Dimino, J., & Carnine, D. (1990). Story grammar: Effective literature instruction for high school students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23(6), 335–342.
Gillam, S. L., Olszewski, A., Squires, K., Wolfe, K., Slocum, T., & Gillam, R. B. (2018). Improving narrative production in children with language disorders: An early-stage efficacy study of a narrative intervention program. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 49, 197-212.
Test of Narrative Language (TNL-2)
Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI)
CUBED-3 Narrative Language Measures
DYMOND (Petersen, D.B., Chanthongthip, H., Ukrainetz, T.A., Spencer, T.D., & and Steeve, R.W. (2017). Dynamic assessment of narratives: Efficient, accurate identification of language impairment in bilingual students. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.)
SLAM Cards by Dr. Crowley
MISL (Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language) by Gillam and Gillam

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Transcript

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Marisha (00:00)

Hey there, it's Marisha and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. We are continuing our series on goals and for the next several episodes, it'll be just me on the podcast and we are going to chat about some of my favorite areas to research and target in therapy. And today we are starting off with narratives. So before we dive into the types of goals that we might be writing when it comes to narratives. I wanna touch a little bit on why we might even write a goal to target narratives. So I'm going to share some research that I've come across over the years that kind of has boosted my rationale for targeting these goals. And we'll start off with...

There's lot of research showing that when students develop written and or oral narrative skills. It improves students ability to connect with peers and participate in and benefit from classroom activities, which is huge. That's what, especially if you're working in the schools, we have to document that we are helping students access their curriculum and participate in the classroom. So narratives are a really great thing to target and a way to kind of help students with that generalization and also just being able to help them access their curriculum. And there's a lot of research around teaching story grammar and how it's been found to improve comprehension.

There was a really cool study, it's a little bit older, but it was Gurney et al. 1990. But they worked with high schoolers who had learning disabilities and taught them, they taught them story grammar elements and they found that it even improved the comprehension of a social studies lecture. So that was really interesting to me that these targeting narratives and teaching these skills can have a really profound impact on students' ability to tell stories and connect with peers and participate in the classroom activities because so much of it is narrative-based throughout the day, whether it is in a more curriculum, like hard curriculum, versus connecting with peers. So yeah, that's part of why I love working on narratives. And there's also research that school-aged children with language disorders, if they present or if they demonstrate poor narrative skills, they're disadvantaged during a large portion of the school day because so much of that classroom instruction does incorporate at least some degree of narrative discourse, whether it's in how the teacher is presenting the lesson or how they're interacting.

It's just a really key part of that. And Gillam et al. 2018, go into that in a little bit more detail. So hopefully we're all on the same page now that it is worth our time to target narratives. We can get lot of bang for our buck by targeting these types of goals. It's very relevant to the curriculum and it can have a huge impact on our students, just quality of life in general too.

So in terms of kind of what we expect, I found this, like I think it's interesting to see like what we might see in our students versus other students in the general education classroom. So they have found that students with specific language impairment tend to produce narratives that have fewer total words. They use fewer different words. They have more syntactic errors. They have poorer use of cohesive devices like conjunctions and adverbials. They incorporate less story grammar. So these are the types of things that we might be looking at. So if we collect a language sample for a student's narrative generation or narrative retell, those are some of the types of things that we might see. And we have some normative resources that we can use to determine whether our students are on track or not. And I'll share some of those.

But it can also be helpful if we get into the habit of collecting language samples as part of the process for an IEP, for example, then we can get change over time. And that can give us some good indicators on whether students are, whether they would benefit from targeting narratives and having some goals around those different areas, or if they're progressing, how we would expect them to. But in terms of some of the narrative resources or normative resources. The test of narrative language is a formal assessment and it has norms because that's what formal assessments have. And so in the test of narrative language, students are asked to retell stories. They generate a story. They answer comprehension questions. And there's little rating scales for the narratives. There's a scoring rubric that can give us some data whether students are performing similar to similar age periods. And we of course want to consider the normative sample and all of that when we're analyzing those results and making sure it's appropriate for the student that we're working with. Some other options, if you're like, I'm not sure if this narrative is typical or not, or if it warrants intervention.

Some other norms that we can use are the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument, the ENNI. And I will add links and citations to all of these in the show notes. But you can access that at slpnow.com/195. And then the last formal normed assessment that I wanted to share was the CUBED narrative language measure.

This is by Peterson and Spencer. And again, I'll link to that in the show notes as well. So that can give you some data that you can pull from. And then we, of course, we won't just write a goal for narratives just because the students fall at a certain percentile or whatnot. We want to look at the impact in the classroom as well.

We'll be looking at teacher and parent report and work samples and classroom observations and all of those different pieces of data to really decide if this is an appropriate Avenue for goal writing for our particular students And there are like I mentioned the parent teacher report, classroom observations, work samples all of that. We can also collect informal language samples and analyze them for some of the things that I mentioned, like narratives, like how many total words, how many different words they're using, their syntactic errors, whether they're using cohesive devices, and whether they're including story grammar elements. Some other informal assessment tools are the dynamic assessment, the DYMOND by Peterson et al. is really great.

The school-age language assessment measures, the SLAM cards by Dr. Crowley are great too. And then there's the, we can use SALT to analyze our language samples too. And then there's the the MISL (Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language) by Gillam and Gillam. And again, I'll link to all of these, but these are just some extra resources that you can use in determining if this is a good goal area for your students.

And then as we will obviously be looking at the all of the assessment data, whether it's formal assessment, informal assessment, parent/teacher report, classroom observation, work samples, maybe we'll do little probes or whatnot, language samples. We'll look at all of those pieces of data to decide what types of goals we might want to write for students.

But I wanted to share just a handful of ideas to get us started. So we might write a goal for more related to comprehension. So maybe we could write a goal around answering questions about story grammar elements. So if I were creating a probe for this goal, which is how I like to do my progress monitoring, and I'll share linked to some other relevant episodes in the show notes as well. One article or one other episode that might be helpful is just how I structure my data collection because when we're writing goals, we want to think about how are we going to monitor progress and take data towards this goal. So that's something really helpful to think about. So I'll share a link to that episode and then I'll also share some other episodes that we've done related to narratives if you're wanting to dive in a little bit more because this is a super quick peek at some things that we might be thinking about and some goals, a quick overview of some goals that we could be writing. But we could have comprehension goal, answering questions about story grammar elements. like some common story grammar elements are character setting, problem, feelings, plan, et cetera, et cetera.

So we could ask for character, we would be asking like who was in the story setting, where did the story happen? When did it happen? And so we could develop a probe where we have a short reading passage and then answer, have some questions related to the targeted story grammar elements. And then we can get a baseline and see where students are starting and then measure their progress. And of course these goals that I'm listing off don't include all of the goal elements that are often required by school districts or that are elements of like smart goals. They are, especially for creating a probe and attaching it, the goals are specific. But we might want to also include like duration, accuracy, criteria, and level of support, the setting, and all of that kind of stuff too.

So these are just quick ideas and then hopefully you've got the skills to fill that out. I'll also link to a blog post about goal writing that goes into more detail there. So that's one goal, like comprehension, answering questions about story grammar elements. Another goal might be more of a narrative production goal where we're retelling a story, including X number of story grammar elements. And we would list the elements that we expect the student to include.

So whether it's character, setting, problems, feelings, plan, action, solution. So maybe we could say if those are the ones that we want them to include, that those, I just listed seven story grammar elements. If that's what we're considering, like our complete episode, then maybe we expect a realistic goal would be for them to retell a story, including five out of seven of those.

And that could be just a quick goal that we include. So that was story retell. We can also have a goal to generate a narrative, like a personal narrative, including however many story grammar elements. And then I think it would be helpful to list them out. And I'll put examples of these goals written out in the show notes as well.

Those are some basic goals, looking at comprehension of narratives, as well as the retell and generation. And we can look at the number of story grammar elements included. You can also create a rubric that looks at more than just story grammar elements. And for some students, we might want to do that.

We might want to have a rubric that includes the level of support that they're receiving and the number of elements that they've included, like the number of story grammar elements. And maybe a one is equivalent to having like being given a direct model and lots of prompts and cues, whereas a five on the rubric for level of support is whether they tell it independently without any support. So we can write a goal like to retell a story scoring five out of nine on the story retail rubric. However, you end up setting it up, but that rubrics are a nice way to look at multiple components. So you can look at like level of support, number of story grammar elements included. You can look at grammar, cohesive devices, and whatever is relevant for the student.

And it's a way to track progress on multiple areas. Or you can create multiple goals for those different elements. So another example would be to generate or retell a narrative using X number of cohesive devices. Because if you remember, that's something that we see when compared to typically developing peer students with specific language impairment produce narratives with less cohesive devices or incorrect use of those. And those are like conjunctions and adverbials to help kind of string the story together and make it make sense and to communicate more complex ideas in the story as well. So that could be a type of goal that we could write.

We could also write a goal for number of syntactic or grammatical errors. So those are all different types of things that we can look at. again, in the show notes, I'll give a quick recap of the goals in written format. And then you can access that at slpnow.com/195. But just a super quick recap.

Some potential goal areas that we talked about were answering questions about story grammar elements when given a short story. So that's more of the receptive part. And then when it comes to expression, we can write goals for retelling or generating narratives. And I think some helpful things that we could look at are the number of story grammar elements that are produced, the level of support required, the number of cohesive devices used.

And you can roll in other grammar goals as well, like whether they're using like pronouns and reference. Do they use the characters names and all sorts of things like that. So again, your assessment data will give you a lot more direction in terms of the specific things that you might want to add in. And again, just to recap, we talked about some different formal assessment options as well as informal.

And we, again, wanna take those multiple pieces of data when we're writing goals. We don't want to just administer the test of narrative language and write goals based on how they're scoring on those elements. We wanna look at the whole picture and consider parent teacher report and looking at work samples and classroom observations so that we're writing goals that are really meeting students where they're at and helping them access the curriculum.

Supporting our students the best that we can. So that is a wrap on narrative goals. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or feedback or ideas. Instagram is a great place to find us @slpnow. And I hope this was helpful and I'll see you next week where we're going to start diving into vocabulary goals.

Thanks!

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Cycles Approach Speech Therapy: Ultimate Guide to IEP Goals

October 3, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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For children with severe phonological disorders, traditional speech therapy approaches can sometimes fall short. Enter the Cycles Approach—a powerful method originally developed by Dr. Barbara Hodson and her colleagues that has revolutionized how speech-language pathologists tackle these complex cases.

Unlike traditional articulation therapy, which focuses on one sound at a time, the Cycles Approach targets multiple phonological processes within a structured and cyclical framework. The primary goal of this approach is not to achieve mastery of each sound, but rather to stimulate the emergence of correct sound patterns, thereby improving overall intelligibility.

In this guide, we’ll explore the foundational principles of the Cycles Approach, its key steps, and how to effectively implement it in therapy sessions. We will also discuss how to write IEP goals using this approach, offering practical examples and insights from speech-language pathology experts Marisha Mets and Amy Graham.

Whether you are new to the Cycles Approach or looking to refine your practice, this guide will provide valuable tools and strategies to enhance your therapeutic interventions.

Let’s dig in!

What is the Cycles Approach in Speech Therapy?

The Cycles Approach is designed to address the needs of children with highly unintelligible speech by focusing on phonological processes rather than individual sounds. This method is particularly effective for children who exhibit multiple phonological errors, such as cluster reduction, final consonant deletion, and fronting, which significantly impact their speech intelligibility.

Background of the Hodson Cycles Approach

Originally developed by Dr. Barbara Hodson and her colleagues in the late 1970’s, the Cycles Approach was inspired by cognitive and developmental psychology principles.

The method was designed to work with the natural learning processes of children, particularly those who struggle to grasp the rules of sound production and usage. The Cycles Approach differs from traditional methods by its emphasis on cycling through different phonological targets over a predetermined period, rather than working on a single sound until mastery.

Phonological Cycles Approach: Key Principles

Targeting Patterns, Not Sounds: The Cycles Approach focuses on phonological patterns (e.g., fronting, stopping) rather than isolated sounds. By targeting these patterns, the approach helps children understand and apply the rules of phonology more effectively.
Stimulability: Only sounds that the child can produce with some level of accuracy are included in the cycle. This ensures that the child experiences success early in the process, which is crucial for motivation and continued progress.
Dynamic and Flexible: The approach is dynamic, allowing SLPs to adapt the therapy plan based on the child’s progress. It is not a one-size-fits-all method but rather a flexible framework that can be tailored to each child’s unique needs.
Structured Sessions: Each cycle is composed of several sessions that follow a structured format, including auditory bombardment, production practice, and stimulability testing. This structured approach helps to solidify the child’s understanding of the phonological rules being targeted.

I’ve found the cycles approach to be really effective for my kids who are more on the severe end of the spectrum, when it comes to phonological deficits. But also it was really adaptable if I went into preschool classrooms…

Amy Graham

The Cycles Approach has proven to be a powerful tool in the SLP’s arsenal, particularly for children who have multiple phonological errors that severely impact their ability to communicate effectively.

By addressing the underlying patterns of speech errors, rather than focusing on individual sounds, the Cycles Approach fosters more rapid and comprehensive improvement in speech intelligibility.

The Steps Involved in the Cycles Approach

The Cycles Approach is a structured method that follows a specific sequence, ensuring that therapy sessions are consistent and effective.

To get a better idea of How to Implement the Cycles Approach, here are the steps typically involved:

1. Select Phonological Patterns to Target

The first step involves identifying the phonological patterns that need to be addressed. Instead of focusing on individual sounds, the Cycles Approach targets broader patterns, such as fronting, stopping, or final consonant deletion, which are impacting the child’s intelligibility.

2. Organize Therapy Sessions with a Structured Format

Each therapy session is highly structured, following a set format that Amy describes as especially beneficial for new clinicians. This structure typically includes several components designed to reinforce correct phonological patterns through repetition and consistency.

3. Auditory Bombardment

Sessions typically begin with auditory bombardment, where the child listens to a list of target words that highlight the specific phonological pattern being addressed. The goal here is to provide the child with a concentrated exposure to the correct production of sounds, reinforcing their auditory perception of the targeted phonological pattern.

4. Production Practice

During this step, the child practices producing the target sounds within the context of fun, engaging activities. Amy highlighted that working on these patterns rather than individual sounds is crucial, as it helps the child understand and apply the rules of sound usage in various contexts.

5. Stimulability Testing

At the end of each cycle or after a set period, the SLP assesses the child’s ability to produce the target sounds with cues. This step, implied in Amy’s discussion, helps determine if the child is ready to move on to new sounds or if additional practice is needed.

6. Home Practice

To reinforce learning between sessions, children are often provided with simple home practice activities. These might include a list of target words or games that parents or caregivers can do with the child. Home practice is essential for maintaining progress and ensuring that the child continues to engage with the targeted phonological patterns outside of the therapy setting.

7. Adjust and Adapt

Amy emphasizes the adaptability of the Cycles Approach. Based on the child’s progress, the SLP may need to revisit certain sounds or patterns, or introduce new ones. This flexibility ensures that therapy remains effective and tailored to the child’s evolving needs.

8. Cycle Completion and Review

After completing a cycle, the SLP reviews the child’s progress to determine if the targeted phonological patterns have started to emerge in spontaneous speech. If so, new targets are introduced in the next cycle. If not, the current targets may be revisited.

These steps provide a clear and effective framework for implementing the Cycles Approach in speech therapy, ensuring that each session builds towards significant improvements in the child’s speech intelligibility.

“The Cycles Approach is really adaptable, because it’s so structured. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. Especially as a newer clinician, it was pretty much a step-by-step guide to what you do in your 30 minutes or 60 minutes of therapy. Because it was like literally, here are the components of a therapy session, and your lesson plan is done.”

– Amy Graham

Dynamic Assessment in the Cycles Approach

A critical component of the Cycles Approach is the dynamic assessment process, which plays a key role in tailoring the therapy to each child’s specific needs.

This approach emphasizes the importance of understanding the underlying phonological patterns that are contributing to the child’s speech difficulties, rather than merely addressing surface-level speech errors.

The Importance of Phonological Assessment in Speech Therapy

Amy highlights that a thorough and appropriate assessment is the foundation of any effective therapy plan.

She notes that traditional articulation assessments, which often focus on individual sound production, may not be sufficient for children with phonological deficits. Instead, SLPs should perform a comprehensive analysis of the child’s speech patterns to identify consistent phonological errors.

“We have to understand whether or not the child does have a phonological deficit. If we just take a traditional articulation approach and throw it against the wall hoping something sticks, we’re going to be spinning our wheels with most of our kids.”

This underscores the necessity of using a diagnostic approach that goes beyond simple sound production tests like the GFTA (Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation). SLPs should analyze connected speech samples, identify patterns in omissions and substitutions, and consider whether these patterns suggest a broader phonological issue.

Tailoring the Approach Based on Assessment

Once the phonological patterns have been identified, the Cycles Approach allows for the therapy to be tailored dynamically based on the child’s progress. Amy emphasizes that this adaptability is one of the strengths of the approach. The SLP can adjust the targets and methods as needed, depending on how the child responds to the initial cycles.

For example, if a child is not making expected progress on certain phonological targets, the SLP might revisit earlier assessments to ensure the correct patterns are being addressed. This ongoing evaluation is crucial to ensuring that therapy remains effective and responsive to the child’s needs.

“Make sure that you’ve not only done your assessment, don’t just give that Goldman Fristoe, but analyze the child’s speech. Are there patterns to the types of omissions or substitutions that they have? If there are consistent omissions and substitutions – that’s where the Cycles Approach shines.”

– Amy Graham

Dynamic assessment is a cornerstone of the Cycles Approach. It ensures that therapy is not only targeted but also flexible enough to adapt to the child’s unique phonological challenges, leading to more effective and efficient intervention.

Resources for Phonological Assessment

To assist in developing specific phonological goals and conducting thorough assessments, SLPs can utilize the following resources:

ASHA Phonological Processes Chart

This chart provides a comprehensive overview of selected phonological processes, which can be invaluable in identifying which processes to target during therapy. You can access the ASHA Phonological Processes Chart here.

Assessment Checklist:

Make sure to grab a copy of Amy Graham’s assessment checklist here on her site.

Developing Goals for the Cycles Approach

Writing effective IEP (Individualized Education Program) goals is a critical step in the Cycles Approach, particularly for children with significant phonological disorders.

Your goals must be specific, measurable, and flexible enough to adapt to the child’s progress throughout the therapy.

Writing Effective Cycles Approach Goals: A Focus on Flexibility

Amy stresses the importance of writing goals that are not tied to a specific therapeutic approach but are instead focused on the desired speech outcomes. This allows the therapist to adjust the approach if the child is not responding as expected.

“I actually don’t write goals to a specific approach… I write my goals to the specific speech task that I want the child to acquire, regardless of how I get there.”

This approach to goal-setting ensures that the therapy remains adaptable, giving the SLP the freedom to switch strategies if needed without having to revise the entire IEP.

Example of SMART Goals in the Cycles Approach

When creating goals, it’s essential to follow the SMART criteria—goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. For example, a goal might be:

“By the end of the 12-week period, the child will reduce the occurrence of the phonological error pattern of fronting by producing /k/ and /g/ sounds in the initial and final positions of words with 90% accuracy, with no cues, across two consecutive therapy sessions.”

– Amy Graham

This goal is clear and focused on a specific phonological pattern, with a measurable outcome that can be tracked over time. It also allows flexibility in the method used to achieve this outcome, whether through the Cycles Approach or another suitable strategy.

Incorporating Intelligibility and Stimulability Goals

In addition to targeting specific phonological patterns, Amy also emphasizes the importance of including goals related to overall speech intelligibility.

For instance, an intelligibility goal might involve improving the child’s ability to be understood by unfamiliar listeners, which can be measured using tools like the Intelligibility in Context Scale.

In summary, developing goals within the Cycles Approach involves focusing on the broader speech tasks that need improvement, rather than being rigidly tied to a single method. This flexibility allows for a more responsive and individualized approach to therapy, ensuring that each child can make meaningful progress.

Implementing the Cycles Approach in Therapy Sessions

Implementing the Cycles Approach effectively in therapy sessions requires a structured framework that can adapt to the individual needs of the child. Amy emphasizes that while the approach is highly structured, it also allows for flexibility based on the child’s progress and specific needs.

Keys to Successful Cycles Approach Implementation

Structured Therapy Sessions The Cycles Approach is designed with a clear structure in mind, which is particularly beneficial for clinicians. Each session typically includes components like auditory bombardment, production practice, and stimulability testing. Amy highlights how this structure provides a reliable framework for conducting therapy:
Target Selection and Rotation In the Cycles Approach, phonological targets are selected based on the child’s specific needs and are rotated in a cyclical manner. Each target is addressed for a set period before moving on to the next. This rotation helps address multiple phonological patterns, promoting the generalization of correct sound usage across different contexts.
Engagement and Motivation Keeping children engaged is crucial to the success of therapy. While the Cycles Approach is structured, it also allows for the integration of engaging activities that make therapy enjoyable for the child. This engagement is vital for maintaining the child’s motivation and reinforcing learning.
Continuous Assessment and Adaptation Regular assessment is key to ensuring that the Cycles Approach is working effectively for each child. Amy discusses the importance of being flexible in therapy and adjusting the approach as needed:

“Sometimes I might have the best of intentions with a child and think, yep, this is the approach I’m going to go with… and then we get into a few sessions and I think to myself, ooh, this isn’t working. They’re not responding to the construct of this approach.”

– Amy Graham

This ongoing evaluation ensures that therapy remains responsive to the child’s needs and that adjustments can be made to improve effectiveness.

Phonological Treatment Approaches for Different Age Groups

The Cycles Approach is versatile and can be tailored to meet the needs of children at different developmental stages and with varying levels of phonological deficits. For younger children, therapy may involve more play-based activities, while older children might benefit from more structured practice. Amy underscores the importance of understanding the child’s individual needs and adapting the approach accordingly.

By carefully implementing the Cycles Approach, SLPs can ensure that therapy sessions are both effective and enjoyable, leading to significant improvements in the child’s speech intelligibility over time.

Cycles Approach Success Stories

The effectiveness of the Cycles Approach in treating phonological disorders is well-documented through various success stories and case studies.

Amy has personally seen remarkable progress in children using the Cycles Approach. These success stories often involve children who were initially highly unintelligible, with numerous phonological processes, such as cluster reduction, final consonant deletion, and fronting.

And there are many other real-life examples that highlight the approach’s ability to significantly improve speech intelligibility in children who struggle with multiple phonological processes.

Cycles Approach Case Study: Addressing Severe Phonological Deficits

A notable case study, as discussed on SLP Now, involves a four-year-old child named Jayden, who presented with severe phonological disorders, including cluster reduction, fronting, and stopping. The Cycles Approach was applied, with targeted interventions focusing on specific patterns like /k/ and /s/-clusters. Over time, Jayden showed measurable improvements in his speech intelligibility, demonstrating the effectiveness of the Cycles Approach when applied consistently and with clear, structured goals.

This patient, step-by-step approach ensures that each phonological pattern is addressed thoroughly, leading to better generalization of correct speech sounds in the child’s everyday language.

You can read the detailed case study of Jayden’s progress here.

Resources for Learning More About the Cycles Approach

Make sure the check out these free resources deepen their understanding of the Cycles Approach and its application in speech therapy:

Frequently Asked Questions About Cycles Approach

1. What is the Cycles Approach?

The Cycles Approach is a speech therapy method designed to improve speech intelligibility in children with severe phonological disorders. It targets multiple phonological patterns in a cyclical manner, focusing on the gradual emergence of correct speech patterns rather than immediate mastery.

2. How is the Cycles Approach different from the traditional approach?

Unlike traditional articulation therapy, which targets one sound at a time until mastery, the Cycles Approach addresses broader phonological patterns and cycles through them. This method promotes generalization and more comprehensive improvement in the child’s speech.

3. What resources does ASHA provide for the Cycles Approach?

ASHA provides resources and guidelines for implementing the Cycles Approach, emphasizing its use for children with multiple phonological errors. The approach is recommended for addressing severe phonological disorders, and ASHA highlights its effectiveness in improving overall speech intelligibility.

4. What are the primary targets in the Cycles Approach?

The primary targets in the Cycles Approach include common phonological patterns such as final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, fronting, and stopping. These patterns are selected based on their impact on speech intelligibility and are addressed systematically over several cycles.

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Transcript

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Marisha (00:01)

Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I am really excited to be chatting with Amy Graham today. We are continuing the Goal Series and chatting about goals when implementing the cycles approach. And just a little bit of background, you might, well, I think if you're an SLP, you probably already know Amy Graham. She has been on the podcast twice already. So if you're...

You can head to check out episode 17 where she talks about oral facial exams and episode 31 where she talks about childhood apraxia of speech. And I'll just do a super quick intro and then we'll get into the content. But Amy Graham, she specializes in the assessment and treatment of children with speech sound disorders. She has a boutique private practice and only sees kiddos who

for your SSD. And she also has, she's just a phenomenal resource. She presents all over the place and she has a really helpful Instagram account where she actually has videos of her implementing strategies and she answers all of the questions. Just a phenomenal resource. And I'm so, so grateful that she's here with us today. So hello Amy.

Amy Graham (01:23)

It's so good to see you again. Thanks for having me on.

Marisha (01:25)

Good to see you too. And so I'm, I feel like I didn't even do your bio any justice, but I'm curious too. I think it's always interesting to hear kind of your story or anyone's story. But how did you end up learning so much about speech sound disorders or the cycles approach in particular? Can you share a little bit of your journey there?

Amy Graham (01:49)

Well, yeah, I mean, it probably starts with my SLP origin story, which everybody seems to have one, which was my sister had speech therapy when she was little and she's younger than I am by about three and a half years. And knowing what I know now, she had a phonological deficit. And so when she was like, you know, four, five, six, I kind of got dragged along to all of her speech therapy sessions. And so in my mind, I thought.

that's what speech therapists do. They help kids with their sounds. And at that point I thought, that's all we did, right? We fixed S's and R's. And so I thought as I was in school, I thought, you know, that's kind of sounds like after I changed my major like three or four times, I thought, that would be kind of fun. I remember going to that office with the aquarium and the fish tank that my sister was in. I think that would sound like a fun job. You help kids, you know, learn how to say sounds and then you get into the program.

and you learn that our scope of practice is insane. And so I kind of took little detours here and there. I really loved adult neuro. I thought I might go into that, but they weren't hiring when I graduated. They weren't hiring CFYs anyway, or CFs. And so I went into the schools, which I'm really glad that I did because as you know, if you're in the schools,

your caseload is composed of a lot of kids, especially if you're in the elementary ages or even preschool, a lot of speech sound disorders. And so I kind of rediscovered why I like the field with those kids, because I soon discovered too that if I were to match the particular approach,

to the right kid who has the right severity, the right kind of speech sound disorder, I could literally see improvement in real time in one session. And I loved that because that is not necessarily true about a lot of other areas that we treat. And so I love that about speech sound disorders. And I think I was also really fortunate in that my graduate program, I went to California State University Fullerton in Southern California, where I'm originally from.

Colorado now though, but they had a really great SSD class course. And so I felt like I felt really comfortable in kind of tackling speech sound disorders. And now I went to the school in the 90s. So if you went to school in the 90s, you learned all about the cycles approach. That was like the approach of the moment. And so that's what I learned was one of my favorite approaches.

And so even when I did clinicals as a grad student, I had a kid on my caseload who was pretty significantly impaired phonologically. And so I could use cycles as a student and have my supervisor observe and critique. And so I kind of learned how to do the approach that way. And yeah, and so working in the schools, I just found it to be really effective for my kids who are kind of more on the...

severe end of the spectrum when it comes to phonological deficits. But also it was really adaptable if I went into preschool classrooms. And if I had time where I had to push in and we had centers and it's really adaptable because it's so structured. So I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I also really liked the fact that, especially as a newer clinician, that it was pretty much here's a step -by -step.

guide to what you do in your 30 minutes or 60 minutes of therapy. Because it was like literally here's the seven components of a therapy session. And so your lesson plan is done. So I love that. That's how I kind of got into the speech sound disorders aspect of it and how I started using the cycles approach.

Marisha (05:29)

I love that. And I'm excited. Like I have all of the questions now. So the goal of this podcast is to chat about goals. That's a question that we get all of the time. Like, okay, so I decided I want to use this approach. Like, how do I write the goals? But that's like a tiny part of the puzzle, because you mentioned like, we need to know which approach is appropriate. And we want to make sure that we have a thorough assessment.

Amy Graham (05:35)

good.

Marisha (05:57)

to help us make that decision. And so there's a lot of other elements that we want to consider and it's not just, okay, let's write some goals. So what are, and that's, we're not going to focus on that during this podcast episode, but what are some resources that you would recommend? Maybe just kind of in speech, for speech sound disorders in general, where we can do like a good assessment and help narrow things down and then.

Amy Graham (06:19)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (06:24)

kind of just learning more about implementing the cycles approach.

Amy Graham (06:28)

you're right, absolutely all of it starts with a really appropriate and thorough assessment. Because until we understand the nature of the child's deficit, if we just take a traditional articulation approach and just throw it against the wall hoping something sticks, we're going to be spinning our wheels with most of our kids because that traditional articulation type of intervention where, you know, we just pick a sound that they don't have and we're just going to work on that sound and that traditional hierarchy of isolation, syllable word, phrase, so on.

not appropriate for kids with phonological deficits. So we have to understand whether or not the child does have a phonological deficit. And if it gets loud right now, I'm in Colorado and we've got hail. So it's literally going on in the background. So sorry about that if you hear it. But yeah, we do have, we have to understand what's going on. So make sure that you've not only done your assessment, don't just give that Goldman Fristow, but analyze the, analyze the child's speech. Like,

okay, what is going on there? Are there patterns to the types of omissions or substitutions that they have? And if there are, if there are those consistent omissions and substitutions and they're highly unintelligible because that's what cycles is meant for. Cycles approach, and I think that's commonly misunderstood. Well, you know, can we do the cycles approach for everybody? It's really most appropriate for kids who are on the moderate to severe to even profound end of the spectrum where they're missing so many sounds.

in their inventory or they have so many phonological errors. Everybody has this kid. If you work with preschoolers or even early elementary age kids, you've got the kid who has cluster reduction and stopping and final consonant deletion and gliding and fronting and it's like, wow, that is a lot of phonological errors. And that kid is highly unintelligible. And so when you get a kid like that, we're often like,

Well, where do I start? Do I work on K and G until they get it? Do I work on S's? Like, where do I begin? And the cycles approach, we work on all of it in a very cyclical way. And so that's what I love about all phonological interventions is that we're not just teaching motor production of a sound because that is not the nature of a phonological deficit. Yes, they may have trouble learning how to produce a sound if they're not immediately stimulable.

So there's always a motor component to speech, but the nature of a phonological deficit is that the child does not necessarily understand the rules for when we use sounds to change meanings of words, which is why we are always operating within the context of words. So our speech therapy is with words because that's how we teach the rule. And I love this. I talk about this all the time because I had a parent, it illustrates this point really well.

I had a parent who messaged me on Instagram and was really concerned about her, I think it was five year old son. She thought there was something wrong with him because she said, okay, can you say the snake sound? Cause he wasn't doing any S's apparently. And she said, and he could do it immediately. He could do the snake sound when she said it like that. When she said, just make the snake sound, you know, do that, that sound effect and he could do it. And then she's thinking, great, he has S. So she's, so she would ask him, okay, now say snow. And he went, no.

not because it was a motor issue with being able to produce a sound. He did not know the rule that the word snow has to have an S on it to change the meaning from no to snow. And that's what the cycles approach does. That's what all phonological interventions do. Complexity approach, minimal pairs, multiple oppositions, they all teach the rules along with the motor production. And so, yeah, so that's what the cycles approach does. And I think I...

probably forgot what your question was because I just went off on a little tangent there.

Marisha (10:08)

No, I love that answer. And so you gave us a little bit of insight on in terms of what we want to consider in our assessment, like going beyond the basic articulation test and looking at the patterns. And I think you did an episode about oral facial exams, which could be helpful too. Do you have any, because we don't have time to dive into all of that.

Amy Graham (10:19)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (10:32)

But do you have a favorite resource if someone is wanting to learn more about, okay, I know I feel like I could some SLPs might be listening and they're like, okay, I know, like I have a good system for my evaluations. So I'm good there. But for the people who are listening to this is like, Ooh, that could be an area that I really want to learn more about. Do you have recommend?

Amy Graham (10:53)

about assessments, I know it's actually on my agenda to do a differential diagnosis. And actually I've done a two hour course and I've traveled and I do it a lot over Zoom. I just haven't recorded it yet to have it on my website. So that's in the works, a differential diagnosis course for yeah, absolutely. But I would say just kind of.

going through what we know from and hopefully, you know, we all had a course like that, but remembering and going back, what do we all need to include? And so I do have a free assessment checklist that I made for myself to kind of keep in mind, okay, what do I need to remember to do? I need a connected speech sample. I need to do the oral facial exam. I got to analyze the Goldman Fristo or the articulation tests for patterns. And so I do have a free assessment checklist.

that people can download and it's got links to different assessments that you might want to consider, links to intelligibility ratings from Dr. Sharon McLeod. So you can download that. It's on the freebies portion of my website and I'm sure maybe we can even link it in the show notes.

Marisha (12:00)

Yeah, we will link that in the show notes. Perfect. And then because we are recording this quite a bit ahead of time. So I'll connect with Amy before the podcast airs to see if we can add the link to the differential diagnosis course, if it happens to be ready by then. So I'll make sure to check in about that. And then, yeah. And then so that like.

Amy Graham (12:15)

I'm hoping so. I have a lot of plans.

Marisha (12:25)

So we have some resources in place for the assessment and hopefully we'll have the course for differential diagnosis. And then what about the cycles approach specifically? Because we'll chat a little bit about considerations for goals. But if the site goals approach is really new to an SLP, do you have any resources that you'd recommend?

Amy Graham (12:45)

Yes. So I'm going to share this book that is just amazing. So it's Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children. And this is by Dr. Lynn Williams, Sharon McCloud, Rebecca McCauley. And it's a compilation of every chapter is a different approach. And so you can actually go to the cycles approach chapter and learn all about it. And it's a really great reference. It's a great reference for all speech sound disorders interventions.

I also recorded a two hour webinar on the cycles approach. So, cause I got questions, I consult with a lot of SLPs. I do consultations. And so I would find out that as I talked to more SLPs, there was very frequently misunderstanding about what a cycle is, about when you target certain sounds, how long you target those sounds. And so I decided, you know, I'm just going to do a course and really go through it step by step. We go, we even go through assessment.

We go through analyzing their speech errors and we go through the construct of what a cycle is, but we also go through, here's what a therapy session can look like and here are the different components of a therapy session with a lot of actual videos of therapy so that you can kind of see it in action. So, yeah, and I know there's a cycles approach resource page on my website as well too, that all of that is linked in addition to a lot of other resources that I have for the cycles approach.

Like I do have, I have these over here, my cycles decks. I have six authored for Bjorum speech and they're divided by particular phonological pattern. So all of the work has been done for you in those decks as when you're thinking of target selection, because that's another thing we got to think about for target selection. It's very different in the cycles approach and really a lot of phonological interventions because we have to think through, you know, monosyllabic words.

phonetic context, and all of that work has been done for you on those decks as well.

Marisha (14:41)

Awesome. So we have lots of great resources and again, we'll add those all to the show notes. So everyone has easy access to them. Okay, so now let's get to the like the meat of the episode where we get to chat about goals. So once we've done a great assessment and we've decided that the cycles approach is a great fit for our students, how would you like what tips or recommendations would you have when it comes to?

starting to develop goals for that student and kind of whatever you think would be helpful here.

Amy Graham (15:12)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, so when it comes to writing goals for kids who are pretty significantly impaired, because that's who the cycles approach is appropriate for kids who have a lot of phonological errors going on. It's really important one. I mean, we want smart goals, right? It has to be, you know, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to the child and timely. The timeliness part is going to differ based on your setting.

You know, in the schools we write annual goals. For me, I write 12 week goals because I'm private practice. And I feel like after 12 weeks, a lot of times I can kind of get a feel, most of the time I can get through a cycle, not always, but I can kind of get a feel for how that child is doing in therapy after about 12 weeks. So that can vary, but you have to think, okay, what do I think by the time my time period is over? What do I want that child to achieve? And so if you're thinking about,

Goals specific to an approach. I'm going to give an answer that might be a little, a little different than most people might think. I actually don't write goals to a specific approach. And here's why. cycles approach is not the only option for kids who have, you know, severe or moderate to severe phonological deficits. There are other interventions out there. There are multiple oppositions. There's the complexity approach. And so,

sometimes I might have the best of intentions with a child and think, yep, this is the approach I'm going to go with, go for with this child. And then we get into a few sessions and I think to myself, ooh, this isn't working. They're not responding to the construct of this approach or the targets that we've selected based on this approach over here. And so when that happens, I want my goals to be flexible enough to where I can switch approaches and my goals are still going to be appropriate. So I don't really write goals.

to the cycles approach or to the complexity approach, others do, and I know that's how others do it. That's just not how I do it because I want to give myself some flexibility. So I write my goals to the specific speech task that I want the child to acquire, regardless of how I get there. So if you have a child who is stopping and cluster reducing and fronting, that's what I'm going to write my goal for. I want to write my goal for the sounds that I want them to achieve. So.

My goal might sound something like this. And this is just one example. Say we're gonna write a goal for fronting. Maybe they're fronting all the Ks and Gs or T and Ds. So I might say something like, by a certain amount of time, the child will reduce the occurrence of the phonological error pattern of fronting by, and I like to include both. I know some people don't like the negative, but I like both.

I want to know, well, why am I working on K and G? What are they doing? they're fronting. Got it. So we're going to reduce fronting by producing K and G in initial and final position of words with 90 % of the time, with no cues across maybe two sessions or whatever. You can be pretty flexible with that, however you like to write your goals. So that might be how I write a goal.

And the way that I get there might be through the complexity approach. It might be through the multiple oppositions approach. It might be through the cycles approach. And so I might have multiple goals. So if a child has a lot of different phonological error patterns with the cycles approach, actually, as with most phonological approaches that are appropriate for kids with severe phonological errors, you can target a bunch of sounds in a year, in 12 months.

the way we do it might be a little different depending on the approach. So that's how I like to do it. And I have a goal for each phonological error pattern that I want that child to eliminate or reduce in the time period that I'm going to be working with them.

Marisha (18:57)

That makes a lot of sense. And it's okay.

Amy Graham (18:59)

I might have another goal too, just to add to that, because the goal with the cycles approach is a little different than others in that the overall goal is to increase intelligibility. And so I might write a goal for intelligibility. And I love writing a goal for the intelligibility in context scale, which is a free resource to help you gauge intelligibility of kids based on parent or caregiver report. And so I will write a goal to that.

And I have that linked on my, again, on that free assessment checklist. So if a parent, it's a seven question questionnaire basically that a parent answers and you ask them, how much does a stranger understand your child? Five, I forget, it's like one to five from not at all to often, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. And you can score it. And so I've actually written goals to that.

Like if a parent is reporting 20 out of 35 or 15 out of 35 when you calculate their score, my goal might be, based on parent report, intelligibility will improve to 25 out of 35 on the ICS when administered to the parent. So there's some different ways that you can measure improvement. And those are just a couple of ways I like to do it.

Marisha (20:15)

Yeah, and so I love that. And because we do, it could be that for whatever reason, the approach that we chose isn't the ideal approach. I love the suggestion to take that into consideration. That makes a lot of sense. And then in the show notes, I'll put like a sample goal in case anyone was scrambling to try and write it down. But that'll be in the show notes. And I'll also link the...

intelligibility and context scale. And I love that as a goal too, because especially if our, our student, if we're in the schools and we have a student is exhibiting a really, really long list of processes. I mean, we may want to write a goal for each one of them, but we could also like pick the biggest thing for our book and then add the intelligibility goal as well.

Amy Graham (21:04)

Yep. Yeah.

Marisha (21:10)

Like is that what you would recommend or?

Amy Graham (21:12)

You know, it kind of depends on the child. Like I like to, I mean, it might be more goals than you're used to, but if you are, if you've got a kid that's that impaired, I think that's, I think that's okay. Especially if you're using an approach that you know, yeah, I'm using the cycles approach. So when, you know, 15 weeks or so, I can absolutely target all of those error patterns, then why not write a goal for it? That doesn't mean that.

Maybe they'll achieve all of those. Maybe if they're not stimulable for K or G, I may not write a goal for that yet, but I'm going to still, you know, at every session, see if I can get them to be stimulable. But I maybe I don't think they're going to be able to achieve that by the end of my reporting period. So maybe I don't include that yet, but I might down the road. So there's, or maybe I'll write a goal for child will be stimulable for the K and G sound in isolation, right? If they're not stimulable yet.

So again, that's another goal that you can write for any approach if it's a sound that you want that child to eventually acquire. Yeah, so I think if we're creative, I think we need to step away from this idea of we have to pick one sound and that sound has to be 90 % accurate in all word position. That's an articulation approach, right? That's articulation. I want to know, I want that child to start learning about these particular sounds.

that we're trying to teach. And that's why another goal, I'll give you another example. With the cycles approach, when we get through an entire cycle and we've targeted all the patterns and all the sounds that we are gonna target in that cycle, we reassess to see if any of those sounds begins to emerge in spontaneous speech. And so when, according to the cycles approach, when a child starts to use, let's say, let's keep fronting for example, when they start to use K and G,

in spontaneous speech at about 50 % accuracy. So 50 % of the time, they're saying it correctly. You don't have to target it in the next cycle. So I have often written a goal too, and I'll write this across the board for other phonological, because this really is true for phonological learning. Once a child reaches past that 50%, most of the time they're saying it correctly.

The rest is likely to emerge on its own without direct intervention. So I might even write a goal for, you know, child will produce K and G at over 50 % accuracy during a spontaneous speech sample of 10 minutes, you know, across two sessions or whatever, you know, you can kind of get as specific as you need to, but write a generalization goal and thinking about what we know about phonological development, because again, we're teaching the rule.

And once the child starts to learn that rule and it starts to emerge in their spontaneous speech, we know that rule is probably taking hold. And then we can just monitor it without having to necessarily directly target that in their speech.

Marisha (23:58)

Yeah, that's a great suggestion. And then, so going back to the word level goal, and I'm just curious, kind of in your practice, what you've seen. So if we write the goal at the word level, and let's say they achieve like the criteria and 90 % accuracy, do you typically see that go into conversation or?

Amy Graham (24:14)

Mm -hmm.

Not always. So that's another thing to consider too, because that is acquisition of the skill during your assessment. You know, that's what they're, you know, when you show them the pictures, can they do the sound? But generalization is our ultimate goal. So we have in phonological interventions, we have this narrow measure of generalization, which would be that. Like maybe give them a list of 10 words that have the target sound that you've been working on, but you haven't addressed those in therapy. Is it generalizing to untrained words?

So you can write a goal and add untrained word list to that goal at the word level. But once they're about 90 % of that time, they're producing that in untrained words that you haven't addressed in therapy. Once they get there, then it's time to start looking at that generalization to spontaneous speech. And we continue to address it until we hear that child start to use it in spontaneous speech, even if they're like 100 % accurate over here. We got to still address it.

that because just because they're accurate with at the word level doesn't mean learning has taken hold. So we have to continue to address it. We might even tweak what we're doing in the therapy session, which I go into in my course, like maybe we're gonna use those words in phrases and those kinds of things. We're gonna make the, you know, change the linguistic context a little bit about what we're practicing, but we're gonna keep addressing it until the ultimate goal is to get to that.

at least 50 % I like to shoot for a little more even spontaneous production.

Marisha (25:47)

Perfect. And then are there any other goals that you would add? Because we talked about at the word level, kind of spontaneous speech. Would you ever write goals kind of in between that, or would you always just?

Amy Graham (25:59)

I don't because I think some people think of the in -between goal might be use them in phrases, use them in sentences. Again, that's a traditional articulation goal. That's not what I'm going for. I'm going for is the child learning the rule for these words have to have the back sound, right? The K and G versus the T and D. And we do that most of the time, we're doing that at the word level. So that narrow, we have that narrow measure of generalization when it comes to phonological interventions. And we have a generalized, you know, a general or a broad measure of generalization, which we.

spontaneous speech. So those are kind of the only two that I go into. But I also, like I said, I do like that intelligibility goal because here's why. When you have a child who's so impaired, let's take, for example, maybe they have final consonant deletion, right? And they're saying, I don't know, like cat, for cat, they're saying cat, right? They just drop it off altogether.

And so you're doing your cycles, you're targeting final consonant deletion and everything else and maybe S clusters and gliding and fronting and all of it. And then you get to the end of your cycle and you're reevaluating and the child says something like, pass. Well, is it accurate? No, it's not accurate. But is it better? Because now they're at least marking a final consonant? Yes.

So if a child says, I want to pet the cats versus I want to pet the cat, is it more intelligible? Likely it is. And so that's why I like an intelligibility goal because as the child's speech system improves, the sounds may not always be perfect and accurate, but we want them to get closer and closer and closer until it is accurate. And so that's why I like that measurement of intelligibility too, because it looks at not just, is that sound perfect in that word position? It looks at, yeah, but are they being understood a little bit more?

Marisha (27:49)

Yeah. And that's the ultimate goal. So I love that. And then, cause you also mentioned, so to recap, we did the word and spontaneous conversational speech goals. Then we talked to the intelligibility and context. And you also mentioned a stimulability goal.

Amy Graham (27:51)

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, because some kids for the cycles approach, we don't address word level practice. We don't do an entire session at words until they can actually produce it correctly, because this is one of those approaches where we want errorless learning. We don't want to reinforce inaccurate productions. But what if you have a kid who can't do K or G yet, right? I get a lot of those kids who takes time. And so we don't focus an entire session on that. We maybe focus five minutes at the end of the session.

to see if I can get them, if I can use new cues to get them to be stimulable. And then we can, once they are stimulable, then we're gonna spend an entire 60 minutes of therapy on that sound with particular words. And so if a child is not stimulable, absolutely, I will maybe even write, child will produce or child will exhibit stimulability of this particular sound.

I'll even write in any phonetic context. Maybe they can get it at the end of a word. I just want them to show me that they're stimulable. So in any phonetic context, or you can say in isolation, given maximal multisensory cues, because we're going to go through our entire toolbox until we can get that kid to say that sound. And then, you might even say like five times out of 10 trials or six out of 10 trials or eight out of 10 trials.

whatever you think that child will be able to achieve within that time frame. Because once they can achieve that, then you can start targeting at the word level and then you can rewrite for that next reporting period, you can rewrite that goal to address word level practice.

Marisha (29:40)

Perfect. And anything else that you would add in terms of goals?

Amy Graham (29:45)

I'll probably have something to add after we stop recording. I'll probably think of something, but I don't, nothing that's coming to mind at the moment.

Marisha (29:48)

That's always how it works.

Yeah, and I love this because it's like once you have a little bit of a framework and everything, like it feels so simple and it like it makes sense. So.

Amy Graham (30:04)

And I think it is. It's a lot simpler than we think. I think most things like apraxia therapy, it's a lot easier than we think. Not easy, but simple. It's a lot simpler than we think as far as choosing targets and thinking of what do we actually want. If you stand back and you kind of take a big picture as opposed to getting up close and looking at the 45 sound substitutions and omissions that the child has, step back. What's the big picture? What do we want to happen? What sounds do we want them to acquire? It really is simple.

Marisha (30:31)

Yeah. And I, especially with speech sound disorders, it seems like, like the cycles approach and like DTTC for apraxia, a lot of them have really nice like step -by -step guidelines to at least guide the intervention. and I love what you said about writing goals for the specific speech task and not having it be for a specific approach. because that, that makes it simpler too.

Amy Graham (30:43)

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And it gives you freedom to change your mind. I love the complexity approach. It's one of my favorite approaches where we target a complex cluster or two that it might be challenging for the child that they may not even be stimulated before, but that's what we're doing. But that depends on the resilience of the child, the maturity of the child, the age of the child. I've had some kids, I go in and I'm like, yep, this is what we're doing. And the minute I challenge them with something that's hard, they're under the table and I've lost them. And so I think, okay.

you know what, this is not working, I'm gonna switch to the cycles approach because we're working within their zone of proximal development for the cycles approach, where they just need a little bit of help to be accurate. And sometimes kids need to feel that success right away in order for you to get buy into the whole therapy process. And the cycles approach can be a really great way to do that.

Marisha (31:45)

Yeah, that's great. So any last tips or tricks before we wrap things up? I mean, you could speak for hours and hours and hours and hours. We could be here next week still.

Amy Graham (31:53)

man.

I could go on and on. I think my biggest tip for any SLP, and this kind of goes even beyond goals, is to understand the nature of the child's speech sound disorder. Meaning, again, we're going back to assessment, but what's going on? Is it articulation? Is it a distortion, like our lateral lispers, those are distortions where we should use a motor -based intervention? Or is it phonological? Do we really need to...

to even if they're not stimulable, just because I think this is a common misunderstanding. If a child is not stimulable for a sound, then it must not be phonological. That is not true. A child does not have to be stimulable for their primary deficit to be phonological in nature. Just means we're going to have to work extra hard and use a lot of cues in our toolbox to help them become stimulable for that sound. But once you understand, OK, what's the nature of the child, it's going to help you choose a better approach.

And honestly, it's gonna help kids get off your caseload faster. And I tell when I do my courses, that is my goal for parents, for the kids, for SLPs. I wanna get kids off your caseload and I don't wanna see it this time next year because I want to have implemented an approach that matched the child's deficit so that we can make them intelligible so much faster. And using a phonological intervention for phonological deficits is so much faster than using that traditional articulation approach. So I think that would be my takeaway.

specific necessarily, but find out, make sure you know what the deficit is so you can be much more effective and efficient in your service delivery.

Marisha (33:34)

Yes, a thousand percent. And everyone wins if we're able to do that. Because like you said, our caseload's more manageable, kids get like, they don't have to come to speech, they get to be, if they're in the schools, they get to be in the least restrictive environment. And if they're able to be intelligible, their quality of life will be that much better. So lots and lots of wins with that.

Amy Graham (33:36)

yes.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Marisha (33:58)

yeah, and I'm just so grateful for you, Amy, for continuing to share so generous generously. I'm always super inspired whenever I hear you speak or I get to chat with you on the podcast. yeah, just really grateful for your time and that you're sharing your expertise with us. And I think that's a wrap.

Amy Graham (34:19)

Thanks, Marisha. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me back on. It's been fun.

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How to Craft AAC Goals for Speech Therapy

October 3, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Today, Rachel Madel discusses setting goals for AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) users.

Guest Bio

Rachel Madel M.A.,CCC-SLP is a board-certified speech-language pathologist and AAC specialist. She co-hosts a weekly podcast called “Talking with Tech” that guides parents and professionals on utilizing technology to support communication. Her work has been featured in Autism Parenting Magazine, Speech Science, Practical AAC, Xceptional Ed, and ChildNEXUS. She is the founder of a digital media company that provides educational resources, therapy materials, and training videos to help support parents of children with autism.

Takeaways from This Episode

Independent initiation is a crucial goal for AAC users, regardless of their age or communication modality.
Spontaneous language samples can provide valuable insights into a student’s current communication and help identify areas for growth.
Expanding vocabulary to include core language and developing pragmatic functions are important goal areas for AAC users.
Repairing communication breakdowns should be a goal for students with low speech intelligibility.
Incorporating AAC into the entire team’s goals and training communication partners is essential for success.
Rachel Maydell’s AAC Ally course and the interview with Rachel Dorsey provide valuable resources for goal writing and understanding neurodiversity affirming practices.

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Links and Additional Resources

What Are AAC Goals and Why Are They Important?

AAC goals serve as structured steps for developing a student’s ability to communicate using AAC systems.

Unlike traditional speech therapy goals, AAC goals must account for multimodal communication, integrating methods like AAC devices, picture exchanges, and verbal cues.

These goals also provide pathways for students to engage meaningfully in their environments, fostering both independent initiation and core language use.

“Before we can dive into the goals, we need to make sure that we have all the elements of an AAC system that will help support our students fully.”

– Rachel Madel

Tips for Writing AAC Goals for Speech Therapy

Setting effective AAC goals requires collaboration, careful observation, and understanding the student’s unique needs.

Rachel suggests starting with independent initiation, focusing on goals that encourage students to communicate without prompting.

In addition, AAC goals should address core vocabulary, pragmatic functions, and, for verbal communicators, repairing communication breakdowns.

“When given aided language input, the student will… you can embed that into a goal to get the team on board.”

– Rachel Madel

AAC Goal Examples

Here are some examples of AAC goals based on Rachel’s approach:

Independent Initiation Goal: “The student will independently initiate communication using their AAC device in 80% of opportunities.”
Core Vocabulary Goal: “The student will use core vocabulary (e.g., ‘eat,’ ‘drink,’ ‘go’) to request actions in 4 out of 5 trials.”
Pragmatic Functions Goal: “The student will use AAC to request, comment, and protest across 3 different activities.”

These goal examples support students in using AAC for more than just basic requests, expanding their ability to interact meaningfully with others and navigate various communication contexts.

AAC Goal Bank

For SLPs looking to explore additional examples and resources, the SLP Now Speech Therapy Goal Bank provides an extensive collection of AAC goal templates.

This goal bank offers practical starting points, helping SLPs design goals that are customized to each student’s AAC needs.

With these resources, practitioners can set functional, impactful goals that promote growth in independent communication and core vocabulary.

AAC Goals for Functional Communication

AAC goals for functional communication aim to equip students with the skills needed to interact effectively across everyday environments and situations. Functional communication includes the ability to request, reject, comment, and express preferences or needs.

For many students, Rachel emphasizes the importance of fostering independence and building core vocabulary as foundational elements.

By focusing on functional goals, SLPs can support students in developing practical communication skills that allow them to engage with others meaningfully.

“So often, I want to build on the communication the child already has and get them using that more independently.”

– Rachel Madel

Writing AAC Goals for Specific Populations

Early AAC Goals

For young or early communicators, AAC goals should focus on building foundational communication skills.

At this stage, it’s essential to encourage basic interactions and begin with simple, high-frequency vocabulary that supports common needs.

Early AAC goals often center on cause-and-effect understanding, like pressing a button to request or comment. By focusing on accessible actions, these goals help lay the groundwork for more advanced communication as the child develops.

“Sometimes we need an in-between system… it’s really about helping young students initiate and understand the basics of AAC, and then building from there.”

– Rachel Madel

Writing AAC Goals for Students with Autism

When crafting AAC goals for students with autism, it’s important to consider their unique communication styles and sensory needs.

Rachel recommends focusing on goals that incorporate core vocabulary while promoting independence and reducing prompt dependency.

For instance, goals can target pragmatic language use, such as requesting, commenting, or protesting, which allows students to express themselves across different settings.

Additionally, consider building in goals that help autistic students manage communication breakdowns, ensuring they can advocate for themselves when needed.

“AAC goals need to support all the reasons we communicate—not just requests but also comments, questions, and even advocacy.”

– Rachel Madel

AAC Goals for Emergent Communicators

students who are just beginning to communicate—goals should focus on building independence and expanding from nouns into core vocabulary.

“We can figure out targets for vocabulary by looking at what the child is communicating independently and spontaneously.”

– Rachel Madel

AAC Goals for Verbal Communicators

With low speech intelligibility, AAC goals often include repairing communication breakdowns. These goals help students understand when they are not understood and use their AAC device to clarify.

“One of the biggest goals for verbal communicators is repairing breakdowns—helping them understand when they weren’t understood.”

– Rachel Madel

AAC Goals for Core Vocabulary

Core vocabulary consists of high-frequency words like “go,” “help,” “more,” and “stop,” which can be applied across multiple contexts.

AAC goals focused on core vocabulary aim to expand a student’s ability to communicate more effectively and flexibly.

Rachel emphasizes integrating core vocabulary into AAC goals to support more dynamic interactions.

For instance, if a child is already using nouns to communicate, an SLP might introduce goals that encourage them to use core words to request actions or describe activities.

This approach allows students to interact with others more naturally and enhances their overall communication skills.

Advanced Concepts in AAC Goal Setting

As students progress, advanced AAC goal-setting techniques can help them achieve greater independence and precision in communication.

These concepts include developing a cueing hierarchy, which helps students gradually rely less on prompts, and setting up repair strategies for communication breakdowns.

For example, Rachel advocates for building awareness of communication challenges so students can independently recognize and correct misunderstandings.

Incorporating these strategies into AAC goals empowers students to take ownership of their communication and interact with increased confidence and autonomy.

“Repairing breakdowns and understanding when you weren’t understood are essential parts of advanced goal setting, especially for verbal communicators.”

– Rachel Madel

Frequently Asked Questions about AAC Goals

What are AAC goals in speech therapy?

AAC goals are objectives set to help students communicate effectively using augmentative and alternative communication methods. They focus on promoting independence, building core vocabulary, and addressing the functional needs of each student.

How do you write AAC goals for nonverbal students?

For nonverbal students, AAC goals often focus on building initiation skills and using core vocabulary. These goals enable students to communicate needs, preferences, and engage with others through their AAC systems.

What are AAC goals for core vocabulary?

Core vocabulary goals involve teaching high-frequency words that can be used across many contexts, such as “go,” “want,” and “help.” These words provide students with flexible tools for communication, allowing them to participate more naturally in interactions.

How do you track progress with AAC goals?

Tracking AAC progress involves regular assessments and observations, such as monitoring a student’s ability to independently initiate communication, expand vocabulary use, and engage in various pragmatic functions. This helps ensure that goals are evolving with the student’s progress.

Conclusion

Crafting AAC goals involves supporting independence, core vocabulary, and a range of pragmatic functions, all tailored to each student’s needs.

With strategies like independent initiation and core language expansion, SLPs can create meaningful goals that empower students in their communication journey.

For additional guidance, tools like the SLP Now Goal Bank and resources from experts like Rachel Madel can be instrumental in setting effective, practical goals for AAC users.

“AAC is for everyone… it’s about embedding AAC into all aspects of communication.”

– Rachel Madel

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That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

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Transcript

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Marisha Mets (00:00)

Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited to be continuing our Goal series. We are going to be chatting about goals for AAC with Rachel Maydell. She is a board certified speech language pathologist and AAC specialist. She also co -hosts the podcast Talking with Tech, which is an incredible resource. And she's also been featured in tons of publications and

has created some amazing courses. And so I'm gonna turn it over to Rachel. So hi, Rachel, welcome. Hi, I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you and to dive into this conversation. And I'm curious, just before we start chatting about all things goals, how did you end up learning so much about AAC and having this become your specialty? You know, I always like to share the story.

when I was in graduate school, I remember walking into a preschool classroom and seeing a few of the students using picture exchange and watching the SLP that we were kind of there to observe just using pictures and visual supports. And I remember thinking to myself, like, why is she just not working on having them talk? And so I'm just like, wow, like young, like fresh me.

just being so judgy about AAC. And it's ironic that that's now my specialty and definitely an area of passion for me. But I think it's a testament to not truly understanding the power of visual supports, the power of AAC. And so very quickly I realized that many students benefit from AAC. And I was in a situation early on in my career where

I had a lot of students that just weren't making progress with traditional approaches with, you know, they weren't imitating verbally. They didn't have a lot of sounds. their speech was very inconsistent and unreliable. And I remember one of my first cases where I was like, okay, I think this is a really good candidate for AAC. Like, let me call the AAC specialists. And she came in and helped support, you know, me in kind of an assessment and

it was incredible to see the progress that we could make. And so as soon as I had that experience, I was just like, okay, what other kids could I introduce AAC to? And then one thing led to the next. And my personality is very much intense rabbit holes of research. And so as soon as I was just like, my gosh, I need to learn more about AAC. I don't know, hours and hours and hours later, I...

was like, is so awesome. And the more I learned, the more I integrated into my clinical practice. And then here we are. And now I'm like teaching others about AAC. it's definitely an area of passion for me simply because the kids that were helping to support communication with AAC, they're very complex cases oftentimes. And communication is not coming easily. And it's become, you know,

a passion of mine to help support that population of students because it can feel very overwhelming as a parent. And I've had a lot of families come to me in my practice and just feel hopeless that like nothing will work. And when we get the right tool in front of a student and we know how to utilize that tool and support them through that tool, it's really incredible to see language develop, to see all different skills.

and really get to know who that student is because now we have a way to connect with them. And so that's kind of the short version of how I got interested in it and I think why I'm so passionate about it. Yeah, I love that. And I could just see you lighting up. That passion definitely comes through. I love that. so the goal of this podcast is to chat about goals and help SLPs navigate that.

But that's clearly a very small piece of the puzzle when we're thinking about our ultimate goal of helping students, students a form of communication. And we're thinking about high quality assessment and implementing treatment strategies and all of that. So what are your favorite resources? Maybe we can just call out a few things or maybe just mindset types of things just to help SLPs

navigate those elements and maybe point them towards some resources. Yeah. So I think the first thing to mention is that if you're working with students, making sure that they have access to a robust AAC system. So it's like, before we can dive into kind of the goals, like we need to make sure that we have all the elements of an AAC system that will help support our students fully.

And so when I'm thinking about robust AAC, I'm making sure that that system has access to lots of core language. It's not just a bunch of nouns. It supports motor planning for communication, which we know is so important when it comes to AAC, meaning the buttons don't move and they stay in one place. The more kind of touches you need on an AAC device to get to where you're going, the harder it becomes, the longer the motor plan.

the more complex it is, the less likely our students are going to be communicating with us. And the less likely communication partners are going to be modeling on that device if it's six hits to get to where I'm going. so motor planning becomes an important principle of robust AAC grammar, being able to change from singular to plural, from regular tense to past tense and future tense. All of those things become really important.

And another huge one is access to a keyboard and literacy. Because we know that we can only program so many words into an AAC system. We have to give kids access to letters and spelling so that they can fully communicate all the things that they want to share and what they want to say. And so those are kind of like the big points. So if you're working with a student who doesn't have access to high tech, robust AAC, then there's definitely some,

things that you can do to start trialing, it's okay, because that's the reality of the nature of the work that we do, right? I just saw a kid the other day and he's using a pecs book and I'm like, okay, like how do we start aligning that student on a trajectory for high tech robust AAC? And so I just wanna kind of call that out because I think that sometimes we can feel like stuck as clinicians, like, okay, like I know that.

He might be a good candidate for something more robust or I don't know the private SLP recommended this system, but I'm not seeing a keyboard and I'm not seeing core language. so definitely making sure that our students are on that path because so often I see families come to me in my practice with AAC systems that are already set up. And I'm like, there's some tweaks that we need to make here because

This is just like a bunch of nouns, right? We know we need lots of different parts of speech and all of those kinds of elements of robust AAC. So I wanna start there just because I think it's an important reminder for everyone. Does it necessarily have to be high tech? Although that's the easiest for most students in this day and age, but there are things like pod books and things that are robust that are not necessarily on a high tech speech generating device. But for most of our students, we're looking towards high tech.

and so anyway, I just want to, I want to share that first and foremost. Yeah. And I think this is, cause I feel like in grad school, in my AAC class, they went through like all of the different options and there is kind of like, if we see these things, like use this type of system. and I feel like that's one thing that I've learned from you is that like, like, like, there anyone who you wouldn't use? Like anything that would exclude a kiddo from using, like a

high tech device that has that robust AAC system with the core language supporting more motor planning? No, the only exception potentially to that would be a student who is really young and we're just trying to get them initiating on AAC. So I just did that assessment with that kid with the PEX book. We actually recommended more of a stepping stone AAC, which is what I like to call it. It's like not

Super robust, however, we know that we're not gonna stay there forever. And I'm very clear with the family and the whole team, like we're using the system so that we can improve fine motor so that we can eventually get to this system. And I show that system, that kind of end goal. So that would be the only exception. Sometimes we need an in -between system where we're trying to really target the fine motor and just kind of.

get this young little one to understand the cause and effect of an AAC system. But no, I feel like so often we can go directly to high tech AAC and have a lot of success. I think it's a myth that we need to get to a certain level of PEGs or we need to try paper -based or light tech AAC before we do something robust. I've worked with two -year -olds that are on a high tech robust AAC system.

Granted, have to make some modifications sometimes and use some masking of some of the vocabulary, but like it's really cool that we can, you know, right out of the gate, start with something more robust. And again, we have to design with the end in mind, meaning if we know this is where we're headed, then like we need to get there as soon as possible and kind of reverse engineer our ways, our way back instead of like, well, right now.

gonna start with this system that has super big buttons and there's only six words on the screen. And it's like, that might be where the student is now, but if that's not where we want them to go, then we're gonna have to change the system over time. And so my biggest concern is that I don't wanna have to change that AAC system if I can avoid it. Cause that's like metaphorically pulling the rug out from underneath a student, like to completely change their AAC system takes time and.

all of that energy we've spent for that first system, now we have to kind of start fresh with a new one. So my goal in an assessment and the selection process is like, how can we get to that end goal and then work our way back? It's like, okay, we know we want this system long -term. How do we make those modifications to help support it more? They are currently knowing that over time, these skills will build, their vocabulary will build, all of these things will improve and we'll be in a really solid place.

Yeah. And it's almost like a kid starting preschool in English, and then he starts to master it. And then in kindergarten, like, just kidding. We have to speak Spanish now. It's almost like telling them to learn a whole new language because they're starting over with that motor plan and all new icons and all of that. So yeah, that makes sense. OK. And then anything else you wanted to share?

No, I mean, that is just like a really important reminder. And if you think that it is student might benefit from AAC, like you're right. So like try it. AAC hurts no one, helps everyone. And if it's not necessary, eventually we don't need to use it, but it can definitely be such a great support for students in learning language. Even, you know, many of the students in my practice, they have verbal speech. They just, they're autistic and it's not consistent and reliable. And so they need some type of backup.

And so there's so many different ways that you can utilize AAC to help support students. Yeah, I love that. Great. So should we start diving into some goal chat now? Yes, let's go. So because I feel like we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours. But if you were sitting down with an SLP who is like,

Okay, so I have this new AAC kiddo. Like, what do I think about as I start to navigate goals? Like, what would you say? Yeah, I mean, I think that it comes down to a few different areas that I like to think through when I'm thinking about goals for an AAC student, especially one who's an emergent communicator, because oftentimes kids that are getting AAC...

they're just kind of starting off now having an OO, a way that's reliable to express themselves. And so we're really thinking through that lens of emergent communicator, even if they're 12 or 15 or the age doesn't really matter, right? An emergent communicator is just starting off with language, just starting off, you know, with AAC especially. And so I like to think about how is this student currently

initiating communication because so often I see that especially if they haven't had access to AAC, even if they have some verbal speech, these students become very prompt dependent. And so they're not really initiating communication. And so I'd say 95 % of the students that I start working with, my primary goal is to work on independent initiation.

And that can be across any modality of communication, meaning it doesn't have to just be with AAC, but I really need kids independently initiating more. And the reason why I need that is because one, we know how quickly and easily students can become prompt dependent. And one way to think about this is if you are looking at a student and you're doing an assessment or this is a student that's on your caseload,

happens when you take all of the supports away, meaning like you're not prompting them, you're not asking them a question, you're not modeling language, like what are we left with? And that would be, you know, spontaneous language sample, right? Like what is a student saying completely on their own? And when I, and this is an exercise that I actually have communication partners do. Parents, like when I first meet a student, I send them home with a tracking sheet. like, tell me what your child said and in what context throughout the next week before I see you next.

and we're gonna look at that together. Same thing with teachers. You can even do this, you know, if you're doing an observation with a student that's brand new to your caseload or not brand new, just observe in the classroom, what are they saying? And oftentimes it's not a lot of communication. And so my first goal is how do we get kids more independently initiating communication? Again, whatever modality, it's just important that kids are initiating.

And the reason that becomes so important is because it really forces the communication partners around a child to pull back and give them space and wait time. And all these beautiful strategies that we know are so important to allow kids the space to become independent with their communication. And so that's the number one, I'd say goal area for me. And of course it's looking at what a student's currently doing and building off of those strengths.

But so often I really want to build up the current communication they have and I want to get them using that communication more independently. And that can be a huge shift again, because it's like, seems pretty straightforward. It's like, yeah, independent initiation. However, in order to get there, you often have to do a lot of training and support with the communication partners because

Communication partners like teachers and paraprofessionals, parents, they're jumping in, they're asking the question. They're saying, tell me on your talker, tell me, what do you want? They're giving us super high levels of support. But once you train communication partners to kind of tempt, pause, just give space, all of a sudden we see kids initiating communication more. And then we have a really strong foundation to expand vocabulary.

to go into all of the of nuances that many people think of when they're thinking about goals for AAC students. But if we don't have independent initiation, then we're not going to get very far without super high levels of prompting. And at the end of the day, when I send my student off, like I want them to be able to independently communicate and such an important thing. And again, it takes a lot of kind of training of the circle of support.

But when you see that, and you can oftentimes see that happen pretty quickly if you are capitalizing on what a student's motivated by and you're really doing that communication partner training, that can be huge. And again, you're not coming in with something brand new. It's like building off of the communication the child's already showing you. And so that is a huge topic area for goals, in my opinion. Yeah, I love that. And that makes a lot of sense because we're

if we're focusing on what they're independently communicating, that's what's going to be most important to them and most functional too. Like that's how they communicate. So we can easily work off of that too. Exactly. And when you see that spontaneous language sample come back, right? It's like, I know there's intrinsic motivation for communication because these are the things you were motivated to say in the last week. And so it shows me exactly what kids are motivated by. It's like,

Okay, they said iPad, they said outside, they said more when it comes to jumping on the trampoline, right? It's like so obvious what they're currently motivated by. And then if we look at that, then we can figure out ways to expand on what they're currently doing spontaneously. And that's really how you figure out targets for vocabulary is, you know, take that spontaneous language sample and then figure out how can I maybe...

If this student's using primarily nouns, it's like, how do I expand into more core language? Which gets me into the other topic area of goals, which is really important is like core language, right? So many of my students are using mostly nouns for communication and we can expand that into core language. There's opportunities when a child says their favorite food to then model eat or drink, right? And so it, but if the,

if you're trying to figure out goals, the best way to do that is to see what a child's communicating independently and spontaneously. And again, build off of that, because you have so much information there about what a child's currently doing. And we don't have to come out of the field with something brand new. It's just like, no, get them better at what they're already doing and nudging them in the right direction as far as expanding into more core language. Another one is pragmatic functions.

Many kids are just using requesting. And so how do we expand their pragmatic functions? These are all things I'm thinking about when I'm looking at that spontaneous language sample to figure out like, okay, where does this child actually need to go? You know, that would make a big impact for them. And those are kind of topic areas that I'm ticking off those boxes. I'm like, yes, most kids need to work on independent and initiation. Many of them need work with more core language and

many of them also are only using language for requesting for the most part. And so I need to expand into all the different reasons that we use language. Yeah, I love that. And then are those like the three main areas that you think about to start or is there anything you would add? Yeah, I mean, there's other kind of topic areas. say I'm working with a student who

I would consider it to be a primarily verbal communicator, meaning they are speaking and talking and the reason that they need AAC is because no one understands what they're communicating and what they're saying. So they have really low speech intelligibility. So for that student, I'd be thinking through repairing communication breakdowns, right? And so that's an area where I would certainly be writing a goal for repairing breakdowns because

So often our students don't even know that there was a breakdown. Like they're not even aware. So it's like building awareness. Like you were not understood my friend. Like, you know, cause oftentimes kids will say the same thing in the same way. And unfortunately some kids don't have the ability to say something more intelligibly. And so my primary goal for that student is getting them to understand, to go say it a different way, i .e. go to their

talker and say it using AAC. But there's very specific things you can do with kids to show that there's a communication breakdown. I'm a really big advocate of being super confused and like, how with this super confused face and my hands up in the air. Those are gestural cues to a student that they're not being understood. It's a naturally occurring thing that we can.

and exaggerate for our students so they can understand, someone's not understanding me right now. And then, you know, making sure that we're scaffolding that support for students. If every time they're not understood, we jump in and we say, tell me on your talker. Then guess what? That child's never gonna learn how to independently go to their AAC and tell you.

because we just come in with that prompt and like, they're like, okay, great, someone just puts my AAC device in front of me and that's what reminds my brain that I can use this, right? So again, it's kind of scaffolding that support so that we can, again, move towards independence. And so that would be one area that if you're working with a student who has verbal speech and is primarily a verbal communicator, they're excited to say things verbally even if they're not intelligible.

Repairing communication breakdowns would be a really big goal area. Yeah, that's great. And this has been a really nice overview of different areas to think about. so hopefully anyone listening feels like, I might have some goals for independent initiation or vocabulary or pragmatic functions. And that would be a good place to start. But if someone is wanting to learn more,

and dive more into all of the goals and all of that. Do you have any resources that you'd recommend? I actually am launching a brand new course. So I have a course called AAC Ally. It's the assessment version, but I'm really excited this fall I'm releasing the treatment edition and I go into tons of details about goals. I actually had an interview on talking with tech with Rachel Dorsey. Rachel Dorsey is

all about neurodiversity affirming practices. She's an autistic adult who talked in detail about goals for AAC. And one thing that I loved during that interview, and this was years ago that I had her on the podcast, but she said she always adds to the beginning of her goals for an AAC user when given unrestricted access to AAC, student will. And I've been like using that ever since. like, yes, I love this.

because it reminds everyone on the team to get that device. This device needs to be in front of the student all the time. I love that and it's actually a really great resource. can send you the show notes. Should I send you the link for the show notes? Because that's just a really, really great interview. Those are the big things that I'm thinking through when I'm thinking through goals and resources. We oftentimes will touch on these things during talking with tech.

But that episode in particular, feel like we really go into goals. And I know Rachel Dorsey has, I believe, a course on goal writing, which again, like she's a big proponent of an advocate of AAC. And yeah, I know that that is something that we're thinking through too, right? It's the goals that we're writing need to be based in neurodiversity affirming practices. And I'm always thinking through that lens too. And one other thing I'll add is that

You know, I think that when you're writing a goal, you have to consider the entire team around a student. And I think that, you know, there's ways that you can kind of build in these safeguards. So say a student doesn't have a lot of core language and you don't see a lot of modeling happening in the classroom. You can write in the goal.

when given aided language import or when given a model on their AAC, student will. And so I just wanna share that because there's ways that you can embed things into a goal that really help get that team bought in, get that team on board. AAC is for everyone. so it's like integrating into all the different goals and in IEP, I think is really important. And so.

Those are just some things too, to kind of keep in mind and consider. Just because I feel like we have an opportunity to integrate and embed AAC into an IEP in very strategic ways. And so that would be one more kind of piece of advice that I would give. Yeah, that's great. And I will make sure to add the links to the courses in the show notes and then also

The interview with Rachel Dorsey sounds great. And so I'll add all of those resources in the show notes so they're easy to find. then, so just a quick recap of the things we talked about. So we talked about considering independent initiation and then using the spontaneous language sample to help as a jumping off point to look at vocabulary goals, pragmatic function goals, and then

I love the snippet that you gave, like when given unrestricted access to AAC. And then definitely diving into Rachel's episode for more details on things to consider for those neurodiversity affirming goals. And then to consider that entire team. And like, if we're not seeing that modeling in the classroom, we can add a phrase like when given aided language stimulation. And I'm sure

that your AAC Ally course goes in or no, would it be the new course that goes into more of this? So they're both going to be called AAC Ally. So it's AAC Ally assessment, AAC Ally entry. So yes, it will definitely go into a lot more detail. There's a whole module on goal writing for AAC because it was an area that many people wrote to me about for the original AAC Ally assessment version. And I was like, man, like I need to help support the goal writing process. That's like such a big piece of this.

So yeah, there's a whole module on goal writing. Awesome. And then also, because I think a huge part of this is supporting the students environment. So of course there's things that we are going to teach the student, but we can potentially have way more impact by training the communication partners in their environment too. So I'm sure you dive into all of those. Totally. Well, that's the thing is like we

in order to be successful in this work, we have to actually be coaching communication partners. And so the other element of this is how do I help communication partners set goals for themselves? How do I help a teacher set a goal for how much she's gonna model during her specific lesson? How do I help a parent figure out how they're going to model this specific word?

in this routine. And so, you know, of course we have goals for our students, but we also can have goals for communication partners and help that communication partner set a goal. And we also can have goals for ourselves if we're new to AAC and we're like, I'm not even sure how to model. You know, we can have those goals for ourselves. And so I feel like the goal writing process can actually be a lot larger than just thinking about the goals for our students.

And yeah, I mean, that's what I do all day is I coach communication partners and part of that coaching is like, okay, we're all gonna, we're gonna sum it up and like, how are we gonna integrate this? How are we gonna make this a part of our routine? How are we gonna create these healthy habits so that it feels more seamless? Because I understand that AAC can feel very daunting and overwhelming and we have an opportunity to start integrating into people's routines in a way that feels really easy and achievable.

and we can kind of build off of those small wins. so, yeah, goal writing, we're in like a goal -writing matrix when we're thinking about AAC, because it's like, there's goals for me, there's goals for communication partners, there's goals for students. Yeah. I love, that's great. So many good things. Thank you so much for breaking this down for us. This was really helpful, and I'm excited to dive into the other resources too, because we're never done learning. There's always more.

Totally, I feel the same way. like, okay, like I get the chance to do a lot of, you know, presenting and speaking at conferences and things. And I'm always like so excited for the learning that happens because we all have our own unique experience and we all have really incredible ideas. And so it's like the more you are just curious to learn, I think the better a clinician you can be. And so it's just really exciting in this day and age how easy information is to get access to.

Yeah, I'm always curious to learn more. And I'm so thankful that I have so many people around me that are able to teach me and help me become a better clinician. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm grateful that you're one of those people who are me. So yeah, thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. And then again, check the link to the show notes is like in the description of the episode. So if you're listening and want access to those resources, go check it out and then.

Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.

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Autism IEP Goals For Students Not Yet Speaking

October 3, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

As SLPs, we know how rewarding it can be to create meaningful IEP goals for autistic students who are not yet speaking.

These students communicate in unique ways, and our job is to set them up for success by crafting goals that tap into their full potential. Today, we’re diving into how you can develop IEP goals that meet their needs—whether they’re communicating with AAC devices or showing their first signs of verbal speech.

Drawing from expert advice by Rose Griffin, SLP and founder of ABA Speech, and Marisha Mets, founder of SLP Now, we’ll explore practical strategies for writing functional IEP goals that support communication, vocational skills, and overall success for students who are not yet speaking.

Let’s dig in!

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The problem with IEP Goals for “Nonverbal” Students with Autism – Why SLPs Need to Rethink These Terms in 2025

The language we use to describe autistic students has evolved.

Terms like “nonverbal” may no longer fully reflect the capabilities of these students. In 2025, many experts, including Rose Griffin, recommend shifting to phrases like “students who are not yet speaking.” This change highlights the potential for speech development and acknowledges that communication can happen in many forms—whether through gestures, AAC devices, or spoken language.

Nonverbal Autism vs. Nonspeaking Autism

When it comes to describing students who are not yet speaking, the terms “nonverbal” and “nonspeaking” are often used, but they hold different implications.

For many SLPs, terms like “nonverbal” might still be common in practice, but this language can unintentionally suggest that a student will never speak, which is not always the case.

The term “nonspeaking” acknowledges that communication is happening through alternative methods, and verbal speech may emerge later.

Many experts, including Rose Griffin, advocate for using “students who are not yet speaking” as a more inclusive and hopeful term to describe these students’ potential for communication.

By adopting terms that reflect progress and potential, SLPs can foster a more positive, forward-thinking approach to communication development.

Additional Note on Language Preferences:

It’s important to recognize that there is an ongoing debate between person-first language (PFL) and identity-first language (IFL).

While person-first language (e.g., “person with autism”) was traditionally encouraged to emphasize the individual before their diagnosis, many autistic individuals now prefer identity-first language (e.g., “autistic person”), as it acknowledges autism as an integral part of their identity rather than something to be separated from.

As SLPs, it’s essential to remain sensitive to individual and community preferences when choosing terminology.

Understanding Students Who Are Not Yet Speaking

Many autistic students communicate in ways other than speech. They may use gestures, facial expressions, or AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices to express themselves.

For these students, the key is to recognize and support their unique communication styles. While they may not be speaking yet, that doesn’t mean they won’t develop verbal skills later. It’s important to meet them where they are, focusing on their current abilities while working toward progress in communication.

“I specialize in helping all autistic learners find their voice, but especially those who, regardless of age, are still having a hard time finding a robust way to start communicating.”

– Rose Griffin | Founder, ABA SPEECH LLC

The Importance of Comprehensive Assessment for Students with Autism Who Are Not Yet Speaking

Before crafting effective IEP goals, it’s crucial to thoroughly assess how a student communicates in various settings.

Rose suggests observing students during unstructured times, such as recess or lunch, to get a true sense of how they are communicating across the day

These insights can help ensure that goals are individualized and meaningful.

“It can be hard for students who are not yet speaking to give a standardized test and get a true snapshot of a learner’s communication baseline. Go into the classroom, go into the gym or recess or lunch. Some of those unstructured times are where you can really see those nuggets of how the student is really communicating.”

Rose Griffin | Founder, ABA Speech, LLC

Rose also emphasizes the importance of using tools like the Functional Communication Profile Revised and the Communication Matrix to capture a student’s communication baseline.

Functional Communication Profile Revised

The Functional Communication Profile Revised is a comprehensive assessment tool used to evaluate communication skills across various environments for individuals with disabilities, including those with autism. It can help you identify functional communication needs and strengths, which is essential for setting goals.

Click here for more info.

Communication Matrix

The Communication Matrix is an assessment tool designed to evaluate the communication skills of individuals who are not yet using language. It focuses on how individuals express themselves through nonverbal means, including gestures, facial expressions, and augmentative communication devices.

This tool is especially helpful for students with complex communication needs, such as those with autism who are not yet speaking. It helps SLPs and caregivers understand the student’s current communication abilities and develop appropriate goals.

You can explore more here: Communication Matrix.

Setting Functional IEP Goals for Students Who Are Not Yet Speaking

Functional IEP goals focus on helping students communicate effectively across all settings, particularly in real-world scenarios.

Rose emphasizes that these goals should have real-world applicability and vocational relevance.

For students who are not yet speaking, this might include learning to request help, using AAC devices, or participating in activities that build life skills. As Rose states;

“We have to really get serious about why we’re working on this and how it’s going to be helpful for the student[…] We’re going to work on things that are important functionally, important for leisure skills, and also thinking about that vocational piece as well.”

Key Areas for IEP Goals for Nonspeaking Students

When setting IEP goals for students who are not yet speaking, it’s essential to focus on key areas that foster communication, independence, and meaningful participation in daily activities.

These areas typically include functional communication, vocational skills, and leisure skills.

Each of these domains plays a significant role in helping students engage with the world around them, whether through asking for help using AAC devices or building the skills needed for vocational settings.

Functional Communication Goals

Functional communication goals are designed to help non-speaking students develop the skills needed to express basic needs, make requests, and participate in daily activities using their current communication methods, whether through gestures, AAC devices, or other non-verbal means.

These goals are essential because they focus on helping students communicate in ways that are practical and meaningful across various settings, such as at school, home, or in the community.

For non-speaking students, functional communication goals are relevant because they enable them to:

Express needs and wants effectively (e.g., asking for help).
Engage in social interactions.
Participate in activities that enhance independence.

These goals lay the groundwork for more complex communication as the student’s abilities develop.

SLPs should ensure that these goals are directly applicable to real-world scenarios, enabling students to use communication tools across various settings.

Make sure to check out the full list of functional communication goals in the SLP Now Goal Bank as well as the ABA Autism Goal Bank.

Vocational Goals for Older Students Who Are Not Yet Speaking

Vocational goals are essential for older students, helping them build skills they can use in real-world settings.

Rose emphasizes the importance of breaking down tasks into manageable steps. This process, known as task analysis, can be used to support students in learning key job-related tasks, like pushing in chairs or following a visual schedule at a work site.

She explains; “I would come up with a task analysis […] just breaking down the skill into steps” to ensure progress is measurable.

Leisure Skills Goals

Leisure skills are often overlooked but are crucial for ensuring students can enjoy fulfilling, balanced lives.

Rose’s suggests using modified leisure activities, such as adapted games like UNO or Scrabble, to help students engage in fun, meaningful ways.

These goals are especially important for building social connections and giving students structured ways to relax and participate in group activities. As Rose notes, “We might end the session with a modified leisure activity” to keep the focus on participation and enjoyment”.

Tips for Writing Effective IEP Goals for Non-Speaking Students with Autism

Writing effective IEP goals for non-speaking students requires goals that are clear, measurable, and achievable.

Rose emphasizes the importance of collaboration between SLPs, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders to ensure the goals align with the student’s real-world needs.

SLPs should focus on goals that promote independence, communication, and participation across environments. Rose suggests framing goals around skills that will be valuable long-term, ensuring they are functional for both the classroom and beyond;

“When writing IEP goals, it’s important to be clear, measurable, and achievable. Collaboration with teachers, parents, and other stakeholders is key to success because ultimately, we’re all working towards the same goal—helping the student communicate and participate in the world around them.”

Rose Griffin | Founder, ABA Speech, LLC

More SLP Resources for Students with Autism

Check out these resources to learn more about how you can support students with autism:

Rose Griffin’s Favorite Resources for Students Not Yet Speaking:

ABA Speech Connection Membership: Provides access to specialized courses and support for SLPs working with students with autism, focusing on practical strategies for communication development.
ABA Autism Goal Bank: A curated collection of pre-made IEP goals tailored for students with autism, offering examples across various communication and social skill areas.
The Functional Communication Profile Revised: A comprehensive assessment tool used to evaluate an individual’s communication skills across a variety of settings, including non-verbal methods.
The Communication Matrix: An online community and tool designed to assess how non-verbal individuals communicate, providing a clear framework for setting communication goals.
Rose’s Instagram

Conclusion

In this guide, we’ve explored how to set effective IEP goals for students with autism who are not yet speaking.

From functional communication to vocational skills, each goal should be tailored to meet the unique needs of these students.

By utilizing tools like the Functional Communication Profile Revised and collaborating with a team of educators and parents, SLPs can create meaningful, achievable goals that foster real-world success.

As Rose Griffin reminds us, the ultimate goal is to help these students communicate and thrive across environments!

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple ★ Spotify ★ Google ★ Stitcher ★ Castbox or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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Marisha (00:01)

Hey there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited to have Rose Griffin with us here today. We are going to be chatting about writing goals for older students who are not yet speaking. And Rose has been on the podcast at least once or twice already, but she is a speech behavior analyst.

She has a really interesting perspective and I'm really excited to chat with her about older students who are not yet speaking.

Rose (00:36)

Thanks so much for having me. It's great to see you. It's great to be back on the podcast.

Marisha (00:41)

Yeah, and I cannot wait for this conversation. I like, I know you have so many great resources. But before we dive into all of the tips and resources, I'm curious if you could, because I did a super, super short bio for you. But I'm curious, how did you end up learning so much about working with this population? And can you tell us a little bit of your story?

Rose (01:05)

Yeah, absolutely. I became a speech therapist. My first year I worked just in a school and I worked with general education students who working on speech sounds funny enough because now I specialize in autism. In my second year, I started working in a non -public program for autistic learners who typically had behavioral barriers to their learning and a lot of the students were older. And so that's really where my passion started in helping students who are traditionally harder to reach and are

older in their chronological age, but still don't have a way to communicate with the world. And that just started my whole, I say mission in life now with my platform at ABA Speech, but I have worked in public schools and non -public programs and my platform here at ABA Speech allows me to really specialize in helping all autistic learners find their voice, but especially those who, regardless of age, are still having a hard time finding a robust way to.

to start communicating. And so that's really what I have specialized in clinically and doing trainings. And so that is why I really love speaking about this topic and because I feel like there's not a lot of information out there. So I like to be somebody who is a source of support while there's.

Marisha (02:19)

That's amazing, I love it. And the topic for our podcast today is writing goals, but writing goals is obviously a very tiny part of the puzzle. And we want to make sure that we're doing a high quality assessment before we dive into writing goals. We don't just wanna take a list and be like, that looks good. So we wanna have a good rationale. And we also want to make sure that we're implementing evidence -based practice and

evidence -backed strategies and all of that when we're planning our treatment based on those goals. And that's a lot to tackle. And since you are a phenomenal resource, I thought I would just ask, if there's an SLP who's newer to working with this population, we're going to share some quick tips for goals, but what other resources would you recommend to help get them kind of up to speed?

Rose (03:14)

I think the assessment process is so important and what can be hard for students who are not yet speaking is it can be hard to give a standardized test and get a true snapshot of a learner's communication baseline. So the functional communication profile revised is a nice resource to get more of that data on how the student is communicating across a lot of different domains. I've also used the communication matrix.

which is a free or very affordable online option that allows you to get a better idea of conveying how the student is currently communicating. And I think that if you give assessments like that, and then also, just like Asha says in the practice portal, is observe, do an observation. Go into the classroom, go into gym or recess or lunch. Some of those unstructured times is where you can really see those nuggets of how is the student really communicating.

How are they applying their skills across the day? And then all of that information together is going to give you a really nice baseline of, okay, here is how the student's currently communicating and what is going to be most important so that student can communicate more effectively, can have a way to communicate with the world across environments. And that's gonna be so important as a student gets older with vocational opportunities and social opportunities and things like that. So that's kind of how I approach the assessment piece.

Marisha (04:37)

That's amazing. I love that as a quick overview. And the communication matrix is especially cool. For those of you who haven't used it, it's an online tool and it makes like a really nice visual. And it's really nice to kind of show parents our rationale and all of that. Yeah, so I love all of those. So functional communication profile revised and the communication matrix as to assessment.

options and then also observing throughout the students school day to get a better picture. And then so in terms of intervention and I think we did we actually chatted about this on our previous podcast. I'll have to link to it in the show notes but I'm curious like what resources would you recommend for an SLP who's

kind of wondering, like looking for ideas on where, like how to structure therapy or how to start approaching things.

Rose (05:40)

Yeah, I mean, we talk about that a lot in our courses of ABA Speech Connection, our CEU membership, or ASHA approved CE providers. And I try to always incorporate older students because once again, there's not a lot of great information. There's actually a really good Facebook group for middle school and high school speech therapists on, it's just on Facebook and there's, it's a really nice group of people. But I try to answer a lot of the questions in there and provide courses. And I really think that for students who are not yet speaking, who are middle school, high school and beyond,

a focus on how is a student communicating for functional communication, how are they communicating within a vocational setting because that becomes something with the transition piece that we need to think about. And the way that I frame social language skills, because that can be a touchy subject with people too, we want to make sure that we have a sense and it's not compliance -based by any stretch, but social skills can be really important in the workplace. And so the way that I kind of work on that, which we might've talked about last time a little bit,

is through leisure skills. So adapted and modified leisure skills. How can this person have work in their life that they enjoy and when they have a break time or when they go home, how can we help them have this larger life? Because what I've seen doing this 20 plus years and just having a lot of friends who have autistic kids of their own is that when somebody gets out of school and they're no longer receiving school services,

that person's life can get really small. And the families too, if they don't have access to the community, if they're not in a day program that they really enjoy, if they don't have employment, whether independent or with a job coach, a person's life can get really small. And so as a speech language pathologist, I'm always thinking, why is this important? Why am I working on this? I'm not saying get rid of the prepositions and things like that, but I kind of am. We have to really get serious about.

Why are we working on this? Why is this important for this person when they're 30, when they're 40, when they're 50? And that's how I really kind of have that two pronged approach of, okay, we're gonna work on things that are important functionally, important for leisure skills, and then also thinking about that vocation piece as well.

Marisha (07:47)

Yeah, I love that. So just to recap, focusing on functional, vocational, and then leisure skills. And then I'll link to your membership sounds amazing. Those courses, I think would be super helpful for someone navigating this world. And then I'll also link to our old podcast episode just for a little bit more context in terms of that. But that was super helpful.

So now we get to start chatting about the goal side of things. And I feel like you gave us a little bit of a preview when you were talking about treatment. But what are the most important considerations when writing goals for those older students who are not yet speaking?

Rose (08:36)

I think something that's really important, if you're providing any type of individual instruction, which some people may be getting individual instruction is thinking that I always like to use this line that the student will complete targeted skill, whatever it is in the larger school environment. I definitely think that we have to get out of the therapy room. There's still some clients I would see in the therapy room in middle school, high school, maybe a student who has selective mutism, but we're eventually going to generalize those skills to the larger.

School environment maybe a student who stutters but we're also going to practice strategies and then generalize it to the real world because We have to get really functional and there's a lot of research that says that if our treatment Looks closer to what the natural environment is then we're going to have a better chance that those skills are going to generalize Which at this age, it's very important I'll never forget I went to a talk once and the lady said she saw a student and the shirt said on the front I have autism and on the back it said don't waste my time

which I thought was really, really funny. But that's kind of how I think of things. I want to be really comfortable saying like, this is why this is important for this student. This is the scope and sequence of why this is important. And I had a group of students that I started working with in third grade and.

It was a small district. I actually worked with those students until they were about in 11th grade and I had other students on my caseload, but it was kind of nice. They were really differentiated group just to kind of see what is the scope and sequence. Why am I working on this now and how's that going to be helpful for when the student is in high school and goes to job supported employment? How is that going to be helpful when the students really just did a supported employment with a district job coach and things like that? So I think getting really firm on why these things are important is going to.

really set you up for your goal setting to be functional.

Marisha (10:22)

Yeah, I think that's really important. And I love how you said that, like highlighting the research that shows that if treatment looks more like the real world, then we're more likely to generalize, which is.

ultimately what we want. Like who it doesn't matter. I always talk about this when it comes to like following directions types of goals. Like it doesn't matter if they can follow five million step directions in the therapy room. Like what will they, what are they looking like on the playground or at work or any of that. So I love that. and then,

So do you think we could dive into like maybe an example or two for the different areas that you mentioned? So you talked about functional communication, vocational goals, leisure skills. Could we maybe just chat through what that might look like a little bit more specifically?

Rose (11:07)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I had one student who was working on a vocational skill of going down to after lunch, him and appear. It was myself and a parapro. We would walk down to the cafeteria and the students would push in the chairs. They each had kind of different jobs in the cafeteria. And this was just kind of getting them ready for, it's like pre -vocational for when they're going to go to a vocational site, which is what they did at the high school that I worked in.

And so what I did for those students is I came up with a task analysis, which is just breaking down the skill of pushing in the chairs at lunch. And so it just was a step by step. I'd say, okay, we're going to go do our job now. We're going to go push in the chairs, potentially show a visual on the students visual schedule. And then just circling, like, did the student walk down the hall nicely? You know, did they start pushing in a chair and then look to the other one and orient to it? There's actually a lot of different steps.

And so then I would write down how many steps were included in that whole protocol and then what level of prompting we were hoping to get to. So it wasn't going to be completely independent, but probably maybe with no more than two prompts or something like that. So I'd have the steps listed, I'd break them down. And then you can just Google task analysis and you just write down every little step. And then you can just circle a plus or a minus, a plus or a minus.

And then that way, I feel like that's really nice real world data that is going to translate to more of a vocational setting. So that was an example of one vocational skill that we had addressed at the high school setting.

Marisha (12:48)

Yeah, I love that. And then, so with the task analysis, do you notate like the level of prompting for each of the steps or is that more general?

Rose (12:59)

That's a good question. Yes. Yeah, I would. And it depends on who, you know, because you want these things to be worked on, not just by the speech language pathologists, right? I always say my most important job is not the actual therapy. It's building rapport with the entire team so that I'm really just kind of helping to support communication that happens when I'm nowhere in sight. That's really where the magic happens on school -based teams.

And so yeah, you could definitely put the level of prompting and that gets into a whole, probably a whole other show, but we don't want to verbally prompt something because we want to verbal prompting is really hard to take that prompt away. We don't want our students to be prompt dependent. And that's something that really happens a lot with all students who are receiving services. And so for that specific example of pushing in the chairs, I might do a gestural prompt and then just pointing to the chair that needs to be pushed in next and then try to fade.

And just to piggyback on that, something I'm doing with my podcast, Autism Outreach, is like a little summer series where I'm doing shorter solo shows. And one that I talk about is making friends with the school administrative assistant or secretary, whatever your district calls them, and head custodian. And that is how we became up with that vocational activity. It's just trying to be friendly with people in the building and be a detective for what vocational opportunities.

might exist for your students in your buildings. And that's a nice way to, too, advocate for what a speech -language pathologist does, because most people don't really know what our scope and practice is.

Marisha (14:28)

Yeah, I love that. And that's so just functional and applicable. Yeah, that's really awesome. And I feel like if they, so if we're writing the goal in the IEP, we would just reference the kind of like task analysis kind of rubric that you created and use that to score.

Rose (14:51)

Yeah, you can definitely use the word rubric, whatever makes sense for you. Task analysis might be a jargon type term, but just gives you a framework. And I wouldn't just put the one vocational task in there. I would probably leave it open ended and maybe put a total of five vocational tasks or whatever it is with the criterion being whatever you set for the student. And then over two or three consecutive sessions, whatever makes sense for you in your clinical or school based setting.

Marisha (15:18)

Yeah, I love that example. I think that'll be really helpful. And you gave, because some of these things can feel really challenging to measure, but I think using the task analysis and having kind of like a checklist that you're using that you can quantify, you can quantify like the level of prompts needed or whatever makes sense. I think that would be, that's really cool.

Rose (15:27)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (15:41)

I love it. Okay. And then what about leisure skills? What could that?

Rose (15:46)

Yeah, so for leisure, I might go into the classroom and do a group, like a leisure group. And so we might start with a question of the day that has visuals, or maybe when I had a smart board, they had smart board markers. I used to love that. It's such a nice thing when you have that in a school. Question of the day, everybody comes up and answers. Then we do an adapted book with real life pictures about something the students are doing. Usually it was about a vocational unit. I have this whole vocational book that I've created, and I have one for unit.

housekeeping unit because I knew what my kids are going to be job sampling as they got older and then we would end the game or end the session with a modified leisure activity. And so the way that I typically write those goals and that's included in this goal bank that I think we're going to put in show notes is just to put a duration of time that the student is going to engage in a group and then I might just put how many times they're going to participate and that might just be examples of like.

comes to the board, answers the question. It might be more open -ended. It really depends on your district and how specific you need to get. But I might say within a 25 -minute group session, Quinn will participate 10 times with no more than one prompt over three consecutive sessions. So participate could mean a lot of things. It could mean coming to the board with a smart board marker and voting. It might mean raising their hand. If I say who's excited to...

I don't know, take a walk on the track today. It's just kind of that. I hate goals that get us into specific ways to communicate. I really hate when an advocate would want me to write a goal for commenting because some of my kids didn't care. They didn't want to comment. They didn't care about that. And I think the neurodiversity movement really makes you think, with the neurodiversity lens, why are we working on this? Why is this important?

And everybody that's listening is going to have a different idea about that. And people that are on the other side of the IP table are going to sway you and want you to work on things. And that's the hard part about being a public school employee is that you can urge advocate, share research, but ultimately it's a team decision. So that can be hard. So that's why I got into writing those goals like that, to demonstrate that progress of like, wow, the student number one is staying in the group for 25 minutes. Look, they never used to do that. Number two.

We've done all these modified leisure activities, which I have a lot of free video models on my YouTube, ABA speech, so modified UNO, modified Scrabble, all those different modified Connect4, all those different games that you can then, when you report on progress, be really specific with those activities and how many times the student is participating.

Marisha (18:23)

Yeah, I love that. And that it gives that flexibility for the student to participate in ways that feel authentic to them versus like, you must comment or you must ask this many questions. It's like, what if they don't have it?

Rose (18:33)

Yes.

I know. And I just hate contriving those really awkward and strange social situations. And those are sometimes I just have always worked in really affluent districts. So there's always lawyers involved and advocates. And sometimes you just, you know, get in these heated discussions about goals and, you know, where you talk for hours about one goal and their objectives. But I mean, sometimes it's hard because when you're school based, you can't always say, I don't want to do that. I don't believe in that goal that takes away from the students in the event as well.

and promotes masking. But you can definitely try to be professional and try to advocate for evidence -based practice.

Marisha (19:17)

Yeah, and I'm sure there are ways to kind of compromise along with that too.

Rose (19:23)

Yeah, I have your director present. Yeah, I think those are important.

Marisha (19:25)

Okay, awesome. And then should we do one more example?

Rose (19:33)

Sure, yeah.

Marisha (19:34)

to do a functional worm.

Rose (19:37)

Yeah, functional communication. You know, for functional communication, middle school, high school, it might be asking for help with the task. So I had students who were more in general classes, maybe supported, where I would go into, they have a study period and I would, in the session, we would work on saying like, I need help with this. And then I would go into their supported kind of study hall to see if they would ask the teacher for help because they needed help on an assignment. And so that was nice.

Or students who are using an AAC device, who are maybe completing a vocational task at a work setting and they don't understand how to do it, or maybe they need more work. These are things that we look at in vocational situations. And so seeing if a student could use those different phrases, how can we teach them in the session? But then also, I think our service delivery too for middle school, high school students, if you can, with your caseload, I know there's always environmental barriers, but.

That's why I really love being a high school therapist because I would go out to the local hospital and see the student working at the snack bar. I would go out to the supported floor at the Cleveland Clinic and see the students doing corporate work. And I really love seeing my clients in those real world situations. Because then when we would go to the meetings and we would talk with all the adult service providers, the meetings get very, very large when the students get older.

I had real world information to share about how the student was doing. And so that service delivery piece might look different too. You know, I had some students I would see twice a week. I had some students I would see quarterly at their job setting just to still be that communication support on the team. It really varied.

Marisha (21:16)

That's amazing. This makes me want to go work in a high school. Yeah, I've always loved that because it's so functional and real, like you're preparing them for where and I mean, like when we're working with school or like elementary students, we're still working on very functional skills that will allow them to participate in the classroom and with their peers. But there's just something really cool about.

Rose (21:19)

It's fine.

Marisha (21:44)

like preparing for a job and I love that. So this was so fun getting to chat. I always leave our conversations feeling really inspired. Do you have any last kind of tips or anything that you wanted to share that we didn't get to yet?

Rose (21:47)

Yeah.

Yeah, I would just say if you're transitioning to middle school and high school, I think it's really important to just try to build rapport with each teacher and try to build rapport with each student, potentially observe them first. I think that's really important. I always just put that as a data point on my data sheet that I've observed them because it's all about that ongoing communication. And I did work in a district where I had a really reasonable caseload, which I was always really lucky to have that. But I always did try to email each parent.

even though that about did me in, but I thought it was important because just the nature of where I worked parents were hyper involved. And I wanted to make sure that I was a source of support to say, hey, if you're not happy with something, if you are happy with something, if you have a question or if you just want to say hi, let me know. And I always tried to do that at the very start of the school year because when we work with humans, there's always going to be some problem that comes up. And so if you in the beginning of the school year, just reach out and extend that olive branch.

that is going to be very, very important and show that you're there to support the students.

Marisha (23:06)

Yeah, I totally agree. Well, this was so incredibly helpful. And I'll in the show notes, which will be linked to the episode. I'll share Rosa's Instagram, I'll share her course, like her membership, which includes lots of really epic courses that will go into even more detail, as well as some other resources that we mentioned during this episode.

and then yeah I think that's a wrap.

Rose (23:39)

Well, thanks for having me.

Marisha (23:41)

Thanks for joining us, Rose, and I hope everyone has a fabulous rest of their day.

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FAQ

What's the difference between "nonverbal" and "nonspeaking" when describing autistic students?

"Nonverbal" can unintentionally suggest a student will never speak, while "nonspeaking" acknowledges that communication is already happening through alternative methods and that verbal speech may still emerge later. Many experts now recommend "students who are not yet speaking" as a more accurate, hopeful framing.

How do you assess communication for a student who is not yet speaking?

Standardized tests often can't capture a true baseline for these students, so tools like the Functional Communication Profile Revised and the Communication Matrix are used alongside observations during unstructured times like recess or lunch, where natural communication is easier to see.

What are the key goal areas for older nonspeaking students with autism?

Three main areas: functional communication (expressing needs and requests), vocational skills (job-related tasks broken down through task analysis), and leisure skills (modified games and activities that support social connection and enjoyment).

How do you measure progress on a vocational skill goal?

By breaking the skill into a task analysis, a step-by-step breakdown of the task, then scoring each step as met or not met, and tracking the level of prompting needed (for example, gestural versus verbal) as the student moves toward more independence.

Gestalt Language Processing Goals: An SLP’s Guide with Katja Piscitelli

October 3, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Today, Katja Piscitelli discusses how to navigate goals for Gestalt language processors!

Takeaways from This Episode

Understanding the stages of natural language acquisition is crucial for writing goals that align with the child’s development.
Goals for Gestalt language processors should focus on spontaneous and self-generated language.
Resources such as Marge Blanc’s book, Meaningful Speech course, and the Communication Development Center website are valuable for learning more about natural language acquisition.
Each stage of natural language acquisition has specific goals, such as increasing the amount and variety of gestalts in stage one, mixing and matching gestalts in stage two, and introducing verbs and complex grammar in stage four.

Links and Additional Resources

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple ★ Spotify ★ Google ★ Stitcher ★ Castbox or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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Marisha Mets (00:00)

So hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. We have Katya Piscitelli with us today and she is going to help break down how we can start navigating goals for our Gestalt language processors. And before we do that, just a really quick intro to Katya. She works in Sacramento, California. She has an incredible

private practice called total spectrum speech. And she specializes in working with autistic clients and she uses the natural language acquisition framework. She's also presented in several different locations and has just become a really well, sought after resource for speech language pathologists. So I'm excited to have her here today. So welcome Katya.

Thanks, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat. Yeah, me too. And so I gave a little bit of an intro, but I feel like it doesn't do you any justice. So I'm curious to hear just a little bit about your story. So how did you end up learning so much about natural language acquisition and just kind of a little bit of how you got to where you are? Yeah, I mean, I'm learning right along with you all, but

In 2020, I stumbled upon it. I was not taught about Gestalt language or natural language acquisition in school as most of us weren't. But right out of my ACF in 2020, I found it. Meaningful Speech started posting on Instagram and I happened to find her account in the very early days and

I always knew I wanted to support autistic students, but I felt like I was just spinning my wheels, not really getting anywhere. And it never felt quite intuitive the way I was taught. It always felt a bit icky and I never really knew why. in finding learning about Gushelt language processors and NLA and just child led therapy in general, it was...

everything that I had been missing. So I really dove into it and started making it my specialty. in, gosh, I think 2022, I started seeing private clients and focused only on supporting Gestalt processors. So I've been supporting solely GLPs for about three years now.

And yeah, I've really dove in and learned as much as I could, but yeah, definitely still learning every day and every client is so different as we all know. Yeah, what a great story. Thank you for sharing that. so I get a lot of questions about, okay, so how do I write goals for this or this or this? And I think natural language acquisition and all of that brings up even more of those questions.

And it's obviously a really tiny part of the puzzle. And we want to make sure that we're doing like a high quality assessment before we write those goals and that we're implementing evidence -backed strategies and all of that. And we don't have the time to dive into all of that to fully do the topic justice. So I'm curious if you have any favorite resources to help SLPs who are just wanting to learn more about the basics.

Yeah, when I got started learning about Gestalt, the only resources that we really had were Marge Blanc's book, Natural Language Acquisition on the Autism Spectrum, which is still the most amazing resource because it's all of this 15 years of longitudinal studies on Gestalt processors in one book and lots of amazing case studies. But we really just had that and Marge Blanc's courses on

Northern Speech Services, but now we have so many resources. So whether you're trying to invest in a course or just get some free information, there's a ton out there. And I have a lot of it pinned in my feed on Instagram under free resources, but my favorite

Courses are still Marge Blanc's courses as well as the Meaningful Speech course. And then there's a group called Natural Communication and they have a free introductory course to the natural language acquisition stages. They have some paid shorter courses as well. And then my favorite resource for parents and teachers and speech therapists is

CommunicationDevelopmentCenter .com, which is Marge's website. It goes really in depth into each of the natural language acquisition stages, has examples of therapy, lots of research and just resources linked there, so all for free. So it's a great, great place to start. That's awesome. So many resources. I was...

Your Instagram account has so many resources, like you said. So in the show notes, I'll add a link to your profile and some of my favorite posts, if that's okay. And then I'll also include some of the resources that you mentioned, including Marge Blanc's book, the meaningful speech course, and then some of Marge Blanc's courses as well, and Marge's website. So lots and lots of resources to help us get started.

And then, natural language acquisition and all of that is still potentially, because you graduated in 2020 and you didn't learn about it in grad school. So the vast majority of SLPs probably didn't have that in their training. And those of us who know about it have learned about it kind of after the fact. But can you give us like a brief description of what it is and kind of

just to make sure we're on the same starting point. Yeah. So Gestalt language processors, there's two ways to process language, analytic and Gestalt. Hopefully we, if you're looking for goals that align with these kids, hopefully you're at least understanding that difference a bit, but natural language acquisition or the stages that these kids naturally move through to go from.

delayed echolalia all the way to self -generated grammar. So there's four main stages with two extra stages, which is basically just more and more complex grammar in those two extra stages. But yeah, March Blanc noticed that most autistic kids that she was supporting with language were moving through these stages naturally, or this same sort of sequence naturally. They were going from delayed echolalia, stage one to

mitigating or mixing and matching these chunks of language in stage two. Then they started piecing out single words in stage three and then in stage four putting those single words together like all kids hopefully do to create grammar. So she just noticed that happening and put a name to it. And natural language acquisition is that name to describe that process that happens. So we can do therapy and goals that are supportive of moving kids.

through that process. Yeah. And I think maybe this is obvious, but can we chat a little bit about, so, because I think our first step is determining what kind of language processors our students are. But is there, I guess, like from your perspective, could it do harm or is it like potentially not best practice if we're writing goals for,

like traditional goals when the student might benefit from more of the natural language approach. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see quite a few kids that have obviously had a more analytic style approach. So maybe they would have done better with learning gestalts or these larger chunks of language, but they were really

taught and drilled single words because we assumed that they were learning the way many kids do, which is at the single word level to begin. And then they get kind of stuck in that place. So yeah, it can definitely slow progress or cause kids to get a bit stuck. Some kids will do fine with whatever input you give them, but typically kids who are really needing some language support, it's going to be much more supportive if we're

teaching them in the way that they are truly processing. Yeah, that makes sense. So then what are some important considerations when we are writing goals for those students? Yeah. So you really have to understand the stages and to really get comfortable writing these goals.

In terms of generally supporting Gestalt processors, I'm always looking to have the same sort of criteria in goals. Like it should be spontaneous and self -generated, not prompted. So typically I start the goal with child will spontaneously and

without prompting produce whatever the goal is because that's one of the biggest things we're looking for when supporting push -dot processors and movement through the stages is that the language they're producing is spontaneous. It's not something that we're prompting with a question or giving a direct model. And what else? What other criteria do I look for?

I think that's the biggest thing. Yeah. And then we can talk about what those goals look like, but I'll let you lead that. Yeah, that would be great. the first thing is that when we're writing these goals, we're thinking about writing them for what the student will spontaneously produce without prompting. then your next...

I assume the next step then would be to look at kind of what stage they're in and write goals according to that. Yeah.

Yeah, so generally our assessment is really looking at the language sample and figuring out which stage they're falling into most of the time. Because typically these kids are a bit all over the place and they might be 80 % in stage one, but a little bit in stage two and a tiny bit in stage three. And that's super typical, but we want to write goals and support them in the place they are the most and then try to move them to.

the next closest stage. Yeah. then, so, cause let's say that, cause when you're doing the assessment, you are looking at the utterances and you kind of like classify the utterances. let's say they're at like 20 % stage one, 60 % stage two, and then what? 20 % stage three.

So would you write some goals? Would you write most of your goals in stage? Cause they're pretty much doing stage two already. So your goals would probably be more stage three, right? And I know it's so hard to say with like this is you would be looking at the whole child and not just like those three pieces of data. But is that how you would think about it?

Yeah, so you said that there are 80 % stage one, 20 % stage two, 20 % stage three. 20 % of utterances are like at stage one. Okay, got it. 60 % stage two. So it adds up to 100, but. Okay, I flopped those. Yeah. So yes, when we're looking at goals, we're typically looking for them to be 50 % in the

earlier stage before we move to the next. So if they're in 60 % stage two, they've hit that 50 % criteria of stage two, so they're likely ready to start moving to stage three. that shows in the example you gave because they're in stage three 20 % of the time. typically what we hope to see is once a child is at 50 % stage two, give or take, they're going to start naturally moving to.

stage three. When it comes to moving to the next stage in any of the stages, it's not our choice to move them there. We really have to follow them there once they go there naturally. Yeah, so if a child was meeting that criteria, it looks like they would probably be ready for stage three. But I'm often kind of, I'm often writing goals for a couple stages at once. Sometimes they are,

showing readiness for the next stage and moving there, but there's still some things we need to fill in in the previous stage. For example, if they're in stage one, 70 % of the time in stage three, 30 % of the time, they're showing that they're ready, or sorry, stage two. If they're in stage one, most of the time in stage two, 30 % of the time, they're showing readiness that they can move to stage two and start mitigating.

So we can help them there. We can write a goal that they're gonna get to 50 % stage two and help them to mitigate more. But then we also wanna make sure that they're hitting all the criteria in stage one. And the things we're looking for in stage one are really amount and variety of gestalts. The amount is really dependent on the child, how many gestalts we're really looking for. So there's no set number, but we want them to have quite a few.

and we want them to have variety and that is often the biggest piece I'm looking at. So if a kid's moving to stage two, I might follow them there and write goals there, but also maybe they're missing some variety in stage one and I'm gonna give them gestalts for that as well. So maybe they are producing lots of mitigations, they're ready for stage two, but they're not producing protests and protesting gestalts. I might also be filling those in.

giving them more protesting gestalts as I'm also helping them to mix and match. So sometimes it's a little, it's a bit in both stages, wherever stages they're in and you're kind of making sure they're filling in the missing pieces before fully moving on. Yeah. Yeah, that does make sense. like if we, with this hypothetical kiddo that we've been talking about, so if like, let's go with the kiddo who's 70,

percent stage one and 30 % stage two, because I think that's easier to wrap our heads around than the numbers I gave. So we could write a goal where the child will spontaneously without producing or without prompting produce. And I guess this would be given a language sample, da -da -da -da. They'll produce 50 % of stage two utterances. Is that something that would like?

potentially be a goal? Yeah. then you said, actually, did you have something to add? No, go ahead. OK. But we're still working on the stage one because even if they're at 70%, there's still room for growth there. And we get to use our clinical judgment to decide which areas the student would benefit from. And you had given an example of protesting castles.

we could write a goal that the student will spontaneously without prompting produce like whatever type of stouts that we want them to produce. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe five new protesting phrases in that example. So when it comes to goals in each stage and stage one are my goals are usually focused on amount or variety of gestalt. So it might just be if they're, if they're picking up

our models rather slowly, I might just make a goal for amounts like this child's gonna produce 10 new Gestalt and it can be any Gestalt that they might pick up on and that's our overall goal because even 10 new phrases would be awesome. Or I look at communicative functions or variety. So maybe I'm just hoping to increase general variety. So child will produce more variety of

utterances to include communicative functions like commenting, protesting, suggesting, whatever, whatever communicative functions you think are maybe lacking. Or I might just focus on one specific communicative function that's missing, but that's usually what stage one looks like is either more gestalts or specific kind of gestalts that they might be missing. Yeah, that makes sense.

And then, so I feel like we've got some good ideas just for the general stages. And then we talked a little bit about stage two. Is there, could we go over just like some quick things that we might, like more specific goals that we might look at for stage two and three and maybe four? Yeah. Okay, cool. So.

Like I said, our overarching goal on stage one is more Gestalt and greater variety. And the idea is once they have that, once they have a lot of Gestalt and a big variety of Gestalt, they're gonna naturally move to stage two. And then our overall goal is that they're just going to mitigate, they're gonna mix and match these Gestalt more, they're gonna break them down. So generally stage two goals just look like a percentage that they'll be in stage two. if they're,

only in stage two, 10 % of the time, maybe I'm gonna try to move them to using stage three 30 % of the time. And that 50 % threshold is kind of the, where we're trying to get them because we assume once they're there, they're gonna naturally start to move to stage three. Not every kid is gonna start moving to stage three the second they're in 50 % stage two, but that is the overarching goal of stage two. So it just kind of generally.

looks like that, just a greater amount of mixing and matching. And then once you have that, they'll naturally move to stage three and stage three looks very different. It looks like pulling out single words and then making two and three word combinations. So in stage three, we're looking for three different types of words, nouns, descriptive words, and locative words.

And then we're looking for two or three word combos, including those, all of those. So your goals might just be around percentage again, like the child's going to be in stage three, 50 % of the time. Or you could look at some of those words or word combos specifically, like maybe child will produce noun plus noun combinations.

or they'll produce noun plus descriptor combinations, or they'll produce more isolated descriptor words. We really start with the isolated words and then move into the word combinations. So you could look at any piece of those noun locative words or descriptive words that they might not be using as often as the other pieces and really try to focus on those. Yeah. And then once they are...

doing that readily, they're there about 50 % of the time and they're using all of those different combinations, noun plus noun, noun plus descriptor and noun plus locative word. And they're moving into three word combinations. Then they're gonna start, hopefully, naturally moving to stage four and adding in verbs. And then our goals start to look more like typical grammar goals. So whatever.

grammar piece they're missing, starting with really basic grammar. So we're starting with, just as we would with any toddler, kind of toddler -like, really basic level grammar, three word combinations, maybe noun plus verb. And then from there, it gets more and more complex. ING verbs, past tense, and so on, until they're producing clauses and...

really complex grammar. So stage four goals look very different depending on where they are in that grammar acquisition.

journey, but yeah. That sounds great. That's a really helpful overview. think, cause I took some courses when I started learning about this too. And I think this will be just, I don't know. I wanted like a quick easy way to kind of wrap my head around, okay, what would this actually look like? So I think this will be really, really helpful in just like,

Okay, give me a quick, quick overview and then I'll dive into more detail. But I feel like this is a really nice framework and just starting to think about what it could look like. So thank you for breaking this down so nicely. Yeah, I'm glad. I think it's really helpful to understand kind of how each stage flows into the other to really frame our goals. If we know that once we hit the certain criteria and in each stage, it'll naturally

the child will naturally move to the next. It can help us understand why we're even writing that goal. So yeah, I hope it was helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And in the show notes, I'll have like a little recap of this as well so that if you are listening, hopefully you'll have like a good, easy reference to look back at too. And yeah, is there anything else that you wanted to share while we're chatting?

no, I'll just kind of refer again to communication development center. If you're wanting more info on the stages and supporting each one and they have, when we're supporting stage four, there's some grammar sheets that we follow that are created by Laura Lee. They were norms for analytic processors. So not really with Gestalt in mind, but we can use them to support.

the grammar development once you're in stage four. So if you're wanting those charts, you might hear them mentioned on Instagram or wherever the DSS and the DST, those are linked at that website as well for free. So yeah, it's a good place to go if you're wanting more resources, more info about grammar or any of the, any related info. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah.

And then like I said, I'll link to your Instagram and everything in the show notes so people can follow you and see all of your awesome content. And yeah, thank you for being so generous with your time. This was great. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.

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Neurodiversity Affirming Speech Therapy Goals

August 27, 2024 by Marisha 1 Comment

As SLPs, we’re always looking for ways to support our students in the best way possible. When it comes to neurodivergent students, using neurodiversity affirming practices is key.

These approaches celebrate individual strengths and communication styles rather than trying to “fix” differences.

In this guide, we’re tapping into the expertise of Jessie Ginsburg and Chris Wenger to show how you can write IEP goals that truly support and honor neurodivergent students.

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Understanding Neurodiversity Affirming Practices

At its core, neurodiversity affirming speech therapy embraces the idea that neurological differences like autism, ADHD, and other neurodivergent conditions are natural variations of the human brain, rather than deficits to be “fixed.”

This approach focuses on building on a student’s existing strengths and respecting their preferred communication methods.

As Jessie Ginsburg and Chris Wenger highlight, it’s essential to collaborate with neurodivergent individuals and their families to ensure that therapy aligns with the student’s unique needs and perspectives.

“You really do need to understand what makes something neurodiversity affirming. And for us, I know our favorite way to learn has always been to learn from autistic people.”

– Jessie Ginsburg

Neurodivergent vs. Neurotypical Communication Styles

Neurodivergent individuals often communicate in ways that differ from neurotypical norms.

For example, autistic students may use alternative methods like AAC devices, gestures, or specific speech patterns that reflect their unique way of engaging with the world.

Understanding these communication styles is crucial for SLPs to create supportive environments where students can express themselves freely.

What is Neurodiversity Affirming Speech and Language?

Neurodiversity affirming speech and language therapy is about supporting the communication preferences of neurodivergent individuals rather than trying to change them to fit neurotypical standards.

This might include helping a student express their needs using their preferred method of communication, whether it’s verbal, through AAC, or other means.

What is the Neurodiversity Affirmative Therapy Approach?

The neurodiversity affirmative therapy approach shifts the focus from “fixing” neurodivergent behaviors to celebrating and supporting them. This approach ensures that therapy goals are aligned with a student’s authentic communication needs and helps them advocate for themselves in various environments.

One key consideration in this approach is masking—the act of neurodivergent individuals suppressing their natural behaviors to fit in with neurotypical expectations. Research shows that masking can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and mental health challenges, including burnout and a diminished sense of self (Source: National Autistic Society).

By avoiding goals that encourage masking, therapists can focus on creating a safe space where students feel comfortable being their authentic selves.

Importance of Dynamic Assessment for Neurodiversity

A key element of neurodiversity affirming therapy is using dynamic assessment to understand each student’s strengths and challenges in real-time.

Traditional assessments may not always capture the full picture of a neurodivergent student’s abilities, which is why dynamic assessments—where you observe and interact with students in different situations—are so important.

It’s essential to assess how a student communicates and engages in natural settings before creating goals.

“Before we start developing the goals… we’ve got to have some information about what is going on in the environment. So it really has to come down to a dynamic assessment. We really want to figure out, when they get stuck on something in class, what’s this student’s way of communicating that they need support?”

– Chris Wenger

Developing Neurodiversity Affirming Speech Therapy Goals

When developing neurodiversity affirming speech therapy goals, the focus is on supporting the student’s authentic communication style rather than trying to “normalize” behaviors.

These goals empower neurodivergent students to communicate in ways that align with their strengths and preferences.

This may involve self-advocacy, emotional regulation, and helping them participate meaningfully in different environments.

What are Neurodiversity-Affirming Goals?

Neurodiversity-affirming goals are those that respect and reflect the individual’s communication preferences, rather than attempting to change or “correct” them.

These goals build on the student’s natural abilities and aim to enhance their quality of life by promoting self-expression in ways that are comfortable and effective for them.

“We’re not writing goals to create more stress and anxiety… We’re creating goals where they’re like, ‘yeah, that’s what I need help with’. So now they have buy-in into their own goals… and everybody gives each other a high five at the meetings.”

– Chris Wenger

How to Write Neurodiversity Affirming IEP Goals

When writing neurodiversity-affirming IEP goals, it’s important to involve the student and their family in the goal-setting process.

Goals should be personalized, practical, and tailored to the student’s real-world experiences. Jessie and Chris recommend focusing on areas such as functional communication, emotional regulation, and self-advocacy—skills that will help the student navigate their environment with confidence and independence.

Speech Therapy Goals for Autistic Students

Speech therapy goals for autistic students should prioritize the student’s preferred communication methods, whether that’s using AAC, gestures, or speech.

Rather than pushing neurotypical communication norms, these goals should enhance the student’s ability to communicate their needs and desires in a way that feels natural to them.

Total Communication Approach in Speech Therapy

The total communication approach embraces the use of multiple communication methods—such as AAC devices, verbal speech, and gestures—so students can express themselves in the most effective way.

Jessie and Chris stress that this flexibility is key to neurodiversity-affirming therapy, as it allows students to advocate for themselves in ways that feel authentic.

Why is the Total Communication Approach Important for Neurodivergent Students?

Neurodivergent students often have unique communication needs, and the total communication approach helps bridge the gap between different communication styles. By providing access to a range of communication methods, SLPs can better support their students’ interactions with peers, teachers, and family members, giving them more confidence in expressing their needs and thoughts.

Incorporating the Total Communication Approach in IEP Goals

When writing IEP goals, it’s important to incorporate the total communication approach by including different modes of communication in the goals themselves. This ensures that the student has access to multiple tools for communication and that the goals are flexible enough to accommodate the student’s preferences.

We know that sometimes that verbal speech might not happen in that moment, and that’s okay. So within the goal, we might put something to add ‘when given access to total communication’… That implies we’re not forcing the child to use verbal behavior or spoken language… We’re honoring the student and giving them a variety of ways to advocate and to express what helps them out best.

– Chris Wenger

Addressing Sensory Regulation in Speech Therapy

For many neurodivergent students, sensory regulation plays a crucial role in their ability to communicate effectively. Sensory regulation refers to how students process sensory input, such as sights, sounds, and textures, and how it impacts their emotional and physical state. In neurodiversity affirming speech therapy, it’s essential to acknowledge and address each student’s unique sensory needs.

“We want to make sure that our goals are also honoring autistic characteristics. Autistic brains function differently than neurotypical brains and their sensory is going to be different. The way they regulate their emotions is likely going to be different. The way they socialize might be different. The way they communicate might be different. So really taking into consideration..”

– Jessie Ginsburg

Autistic Communication Style

Autistic individuals often have distinct communication styles, which may include alternative communication methods or particular ways of expressing themselves verbally.

Rather than shaping these styles to fit neurotypical norms, neurodiversity affirming therapy focuses on supporting these natural forms of communication.

Jessie and Chris emphasize the importance of respecting these differences, noting that focusing too much on neurotypical communication can cause more harm than good: “We’re not just trying to make them fit into a mold.”

Neurodiversity-Affirming Speech Therapy Goals Examples

Writing neurodiversity-affirming goals requires a shift from traditional goals that aim to “normalize” communication toward goals that embrace the individual’s authentic communication style.

These goals focus on building self-advocacy, enhancing emotional regulation, and supporting functional communication skills in everyday situations.

For examples of effective, neurodiversity-affirming IEP goals, you can explore the SLP Now goal bank, which provides practical, real-world goals tailored to meet the needs of neurodivergent students.

How to Be a Neurodiversity-Affirming Speech Therapist

To become a neurodiversity-affirming SLP, it’s important to embrace a strength-based approach that focuses on the unique abilities of neurodivergent students rather than trying to “fix” perceived deficits.

This involves creating a supportive, judgment-free environment where students feel comfortable communicating in their own way.

Additionally, SLPs should collaborate with students, families, and other professionals to ensure that therapy goals are individualized and meaningful.

For more guidance on fostering meaningful connections with neurodivergent students, check out Jesse Ginsburg’s book, Ready, Set, Connect!, which provides practical strategies to help SLPs connect with their students and create more effective, affirming therapy sessions.

Frequently Asked Questions About Neurodiversity Affirming Speech Therapy

Q: What is neurodiversity affirming speech therapy?

A: Neurodiversity affirming speech therapy recognizes and celebrates neurological differences, such as autism and ADHD, as natural variations. It focuses on supporting the individual’s communication preferences rather than trying to “normalize” behaviors.

Q: How can I be a neurodiversity-affirming speech therapist?

A: To be a neurodiversity-affirming SLP, embrace a strength-based approach, collaborate with students and families, and create therapy goals that respect and support the student’s unique communication style. You can also explore resources like Jesse Ginsburg’s Ready, Set, Connect! for practical strategies.

Q: What are neurodiversity-affirming goals?

A: Neurodiversity-affirming goals are therapy objectives that respect the student’s natural communication style and prioritize functional, real-world communication over conformity to neurotypical norms. These goals focus on areas like self-advocacy, emotional regulation, and functional communication.

Q: How do I write neurodiversity-affirming IEP goals?

A: Start by involving the student and their family in the goal-setting process. Focus on areas that promote independence, such as functional communication and self-advocacy. You can find examples of these goals in the SLP Now goal bank.

Q: What is the total communication approach in speech therapy?

A: The total communication approach allows students to use multiple methods, such as AAC, verbal speech, gestures, and written communication, to express themselves in ways that feel most natural to them.

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Transcript

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Marisha (00:00)

Okay, hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited to have two special guests today. We have Jesse Ginsburg and Chris Wenger, and we are going to be chatting about neurodiversity affirming goals. And so I'm, I cannot wait for this conversation. And before we dive into chatting about all things goals,

I thought it would be super helpful to get to know a little bit about Jesse and Chris. They are a dynamic duo with a wealth of knowledge and experiences. So we'll kick things off just letting them share a little bit about their story and kind of how we ended up getting into this conversation about neurodiversity.

Jessie & Chris (00:53)

Yes, thanks so much for having me back. So excited. I know we were talking about so much has changed since we chatted last and now I got to bring Chris along this time. But yep, we're both two SLPs. We are based in Los Angeles and it's kind of fun because not only are we parents together, four boys, but we have very different work settings and just very different experiences, but we both love working with autistic.

kids and that's really our passion area, but I am a clinic based SLP. I own a clinic in Los Angeles for the last over 10 years. And so I work with a lot of littler ones. And then I have a panic attack about the age eight when I call Chris and say what I do with this child. No, but he is a school based SLP working with older kids. So it's fun to come together and have different perspectives.

Yeah, it's so funny that Jesse says that because it's like how I am too when someone approaches me with like a really young child and says, hey, so what about this goal or what about this? And I am I'm like, well, let me let me find out. Let me call Jesse. Yeah, he'll get like his friends from high school who have a kid who need help or something. And then he's like, can you send a voice memo to this person I knew 20 years ago? Totally. That's a baby. And yeah. Yeah. So, you know, following that, that's my setting. It's been my.

The majority of my life has been working with teenagers. So over the years, I've really kind of learned what works, what doesn't work, what makes a neurodiversity affirming goal versus a traditional goal. What are next steps for the future? Like, you know, my whole journey has kind of shaped together to learn this stuff. So but it's all been specific to teens and young adults.

Marisha (02:47)

And I love how we all end up with our areas of specialty and like we can build those networks to help us help all kinds of kiddos. So yeah, I love those stories and this will be a really cool conversation because we'll get the perspective for different age ranges as well as different settings like private practice versus the schools. So I'm really excited to dive into all of this. And.

We've gotten a lot of different questions about neurodiverse, neurodiversity affirming goals and what those look like. And I'm really excited to dive into that. But I know that writing goals is actually a very tiny part of the puzzle. And so, because well, there's a lot more learning that we need to do beyond like, here's a goal bank, for example. So what are some of your?

favorite resources for SLPs are maybe getting started to help give them a good foundation to start thinking about those.

Jessie & Chris (03:49)

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's funny, I was kind of laughing in my head when you said that, that it's such a tiny piece, because it's like, you can't just give someone a neurodiversity affirming goal, and then expect that the therapy is going to be using a neurodiversity affirming approach. You really do need to understand what makes something neurodiversity affirming. And for us, I know our favorite way to learn has always been to learn from autistic people.

and follow autistic people on social media. We have a lot of autistic colleagues and friends that we've had really great conversations with. And that's just, I would say, the number one way that I've at least tried to consume information about how can we best support our autistic kids. Let's ask our autistic adults that we have in our lives and then try to go from there. Yeah. And to shadow that,

back into the goal writing, asking, you know, and connecting with resources with other autistic therapists, autistic voices, which goes right back into the goal writing process, including the client or the student in that goal writing process. That is your first stepping stone on a no diversity affirming goal. Who's the goal for?

Is the goal for the teacher is the goal for the therapist is the goal for the parent or is the goal for the child for the client? That's where we have to step. So that's like one of the very first things we question, like, who's this goal for? Who's it going to benefit? And that right there will help guide the process of writing the goal. But yeah, I always feel like that. Need for connecting with and getting input from that individual.

Because that's intrinsic motivation right there, right? That's like neurodiversity affirming approaches and strategies in general is how do we get away from that externalized motivators and what's intrinsically motivating for the individual? Because if they can have say in their goals, what works for them? What do they need? Then that's where you're going to get a lot more success.

Marisha (06:05)

Yeah, I love that. So Jesse's point was reaching out to or learning from other autistic individuals in the community. And then I love how you added Chris that like our our students and our clients are like they're the stakeholders there. So communicating with them too. And you gave some really good examples of like questions that we can ask our students to help guide that conversation. So I love that.

And then do you have, could we maybe shout out a couple of accounts as examples? Like if an SLP is like, ooh, I love that idea. Like, where can I start on Instagram?

Jessie & Chris (06:45)

I feel bad because I don't want to exclude anyone by not saying names of people. Do you have people you would want to list? my gosh. I mean, I could give you a couple of people who I've worked with directly who have been awesome. It's just there's so many people. Honestly, it's hard to... Maybe we can give you a list to add in your show notes or something. But some people we've worked with and interviewed, one autistic SLP, her name is Sam Roundtree. Her...

Marisha (07:05)

Let's.

Jessie & Chris (07:14)

handle for a long time was the Aussie Specie. She's been awesome, worked on a project with her. my god, I feel like there's just so many people we've interviewed. Lyric, whose handle is neurodivergent rebel and Lyric always posts these questions that say that say autistic asking autistics. So if you go to the post, it's all

Autistic responses, which is really really cool Yeah lived experience educator. Yeah, I like a chain They have like such great content that really focuses on getting away from neuro normativity and working with Our clients and our students through a neuro diversity affirming lens So yeah that handle is at lived experience educator I think like resources to like I really like to go on the website neuro classic comm

you know, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, ASAN is a great one. But yeah, just kind of exploring those and hearing input from from voices has really kind of helped out. Yeah. So there's a few right there. Yeah.

Marisha (08:21)

Yeah, and then I'd love that I'll share the accounts that you mentioned as well as some of those websites. And then you guys highlight people on your accounts as well. So I'll link to Chris and Jesse's Instagrams as well as just another starting point as well. And then, okay, so.

Jessie & Chris (08:39)

awesome.

Marisha (08:43)

Obviously, there's a lot more to learn about goal setting to really help us, but let's humor the people and give them a little bit of what they want in terms of goals. And then I saw, I think it was a collaborative reel that you posted.

between, maybe it was Jesse's, I'll link the real either way in the show notes, but you were sharing about neurodiversity affirming social groups. And one thing that you said, like instead of teaching social skills and making kids sit and forcing conversation, we can provide a safe place for kiddos to be themselves and allow them to move and allow conversation to flow naturally. So I thought that was a really cool.

illustration of kind of some of the thought process. So and I'll share that if people are wanting to look back at that. But what are some important considerations when we are and maybe you have different perspectives based on what age you're working with, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on like, what should we think about as we're writing those goals, in addition to kind of doing our background research and.

listening to the autistic voices and our clients going from there.

Jessie & Chris (10:01)

Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, Chris could definitely speak to this a lot more specifically, but I think the biggest thing to think about is, you know, our goal is not to just try to take a child and then fit them into the mold of what is quote normal, you know, and previously a lot of our goals would do that. It was, well, most of the time kids can have conversations for five minutes and they can take turns back and forth. So that means this child needs to be able to do that too.

But we want to make sure that our goals are also honoring autistic characteristics and, you know, autistic brains function differently than neurotypical brains and their sensory is going to be different. The way they regulate their emotions is likely going to be different. The way they socialize might be different. The way they communicate might be different. So really taking into consideration that our goal is to really support them in the areas where they

need support or feel they need support. We're not just trying to make them fit into a mold. Yeah. And that's like kind of more exactly on the if we're working on, you know, social engagement, social language, social emotional needs. Shouting what Jesse said is that's the first thing. Are we trying what's the what's the goal? Is it supporting the individual? Because if we're teaching them to act or imitate their typical peers,

then we're inadvertently going to create more stress. We're going to create more anxiety because the goal essentially is telling them, hey, look, your way of communicating or who you are is not OK. You have to you have to not be you anymore. You have to fake your whole identity and pretend to be somebody else. So we're going to create a goal for you to imitate what your typical peers are doing. And there's just a lot of harm in that because.

What ends up happening over time is you start to create this sense of an individual being more hyper vigilant where they're going into social situations like, well, did I initiate it the right way or did I not? Did I exchange back and forth conversation or not? Did I stay on topic the way I was forced to do or not? And then what ends up happening is they withdraw, become socially isolated. So inadvertently does the thing that we don't want to happen in the end.

So I think that's really something that we can we can focus on. So I guess at this point, what do we do? Well, we would create things, situations that are natural, where conversations can happen naturally, where they can meet peers who are like minded that share similar interests. Right. So like, I'll give you an example. We created a Lego club once a week.

after school and we weren't sure how that was going to kick off. This is just in the past six months. But we had a couple of students that had interest in that. And so we reached out to a teacher who is willing to host it once a week for an hour after school, student led, and it generated 16 students so far. But like up the bat, we have 16 students who were like

Wait a minute, there's a Lego club where I can go connect with other people who like to build Legos. No pressure to socialize. No pressure to have to fake who they are. Conversations happen naturally. Relationships happen authentically. We're not forcing people into conversations they don't want to be a part of. We're not taking away unstructured time for them to have to be forced into conversations. We're not forcing eye contact. We're not forcing...

neurotypical style engagement where one person has to put the Lego on and then the next person puts Lego on like things just happen naturally. That's the way life should be. Right. And so and so that's what we would want to do to create those natural conversations to happen to build those skills. And then another thing that Jesse will will shadow and share a lot more of because I learned this from her. But.

Whatever the goal is, if you're working with language, if you're working with vocabulary, you're working with social emotional needs, you're working with grammar, like whatever the goal is, you always have to ensure that the child's regulated. You're going to not get from point A to point B if you don't start there. And so, yeah, that sometimes can be dismissed or not really viewed as a necessity. So.

What might that look like in context? You have to do a makeup speech session. So your sessions are usually Mondays, you know, third period. But there was a holiday. So you're like, all right, well, I've got some time on Friday. Well, the students working on some makeup work in their study skills class or they're in an art project, they have a monotropic mind, they're focused. And then they get the phone call and their teacher says, hey, you have to go over to A100.

because it's speech time, you're going to have a child whose regulation is not going to be the same as it typically would. And so they come to speech and you're like, darn, they're not saying anything. I'm not getting any results. I'm not, you know, it's like, well, we have to think first and foremost, is this is this individual that I'm working with regulated? How do we get them there?

So so Jesse can kind of share a little bit more on that because that's her area. I learned that was good. He learned something from me. I learned a thing. As you were talking to put the dirty clothes in the laundry basket or else one hour massage punishment. I was thinking about you said something that made me think about how I used to teach. OK, am I the only one who did this? I used to have like popsicle sticks with paper.

glued to it and it would be comment question and then we would go back and forth. Did you ever do that? Probably not. You were ahead of your time. Was this in school? No, like with a student, like a seven, eight year old. Okay, let's have a conversation about a topic we choose. And then I remind them by holding up the thing if they need to ask a question or if they need to make a comment. And anyway, that's exactly kind of what I remember. Like,

having conversations about the popsicles that we ate. But yeah, I know what you're saying. But that's how I would teach conversation skills. It's like, OK, well, a conversation looks like I say something. You respond. You ask a question. I respond. And that's just maybe a neurotypical communication style. But if we are just focused on teaching autistic kids neurotypical communication styles, they're not going to actually go out there and

take those skills to be able to develop authentic friendships. And, you know, compared the popsicle sticks compared to I remember when I had these two girls in my office, they were like maybe six and seven sitting on these very chairs. So they were kind of getting some sensory like spinning around as they were talking to each other. And they spent 25 minutes talking about Pokemon and anime is Pokemon the different completely different or is it like a

No, that isn't. That's anime. Okay, so they were talking about anime for 25 minutes and I was like thinking like, man, I did my job. Like they didn't need anything. I didn't, it's like the way you know you're having a successful social group is when you're not needed. You know, and I think like oftentimes we sit back and we feel like, my God, well, I'm the therapist. I need to be interjecting. I need to be talking. I need to be teaching. But if you can...

create a scenario where you have people having an authentic conversation that they're genuinely interested in and you're not needed, that's an amazing thing.

Yeah, absolutely, I agree.

Marisha (18:08)

And you gave some good examples of like just kind of, and they even created their own context in that example. Like they figured out what they want to talk about and they were able to keep talking about it. And like with the Lego club, they're kind of self -selecting there of like, yeah, I love that Legos. I'm going to go to that.

So what would that look like, especially for like school -based SLPs? Like how would we reflect that in a student's IEP? Like what does that look like?

Jessie & Chris (18:38)

Yeah, I mean, regarding goals. So I'm going to give myself a shameless plug here because it goes with the topic. Before we start developing the goals, because there's I get this question like so often, what are neurodiversity affirming goals? Does anybody have a gold bank? But prior to the goal, we've got to have some information about what the need is first. Like what is going on in the environment?

I've got to get information about how things are going on in class with their peers. What does the student want? Like all of that information. So it really has to come down to a dynamic assessment. We really want to figure out, you know, in class, is this student when they get stuck on something, what's their way of communicating that they need some support? It doesn't always have to be through spoken language, but.

Are they reaching out to the teacher? Are they talking to their caregiver? Are they writing it down? If they're becoming dysregulated because let's say they had a substitute teacher come in, that was unexpected, which happens quite often. How do they handle their ability to co -regulate? Do they have a safe person in the building? Who is their trusted adult to go to? How are they advocating to?

get a sensory break or how are they working on co -regulating with somebody like we need to know this information. So the questions, this is always a life thing too. The questions we ask are going to determine the outcome of how we how the goal and the reports are written. Right. So it has to start there. The challenging part that we have as SLPs and OTs and PTs and everybody else on the IEP teams and in private practices.

the forms that we have to assess currently, like the standardized ones, ask the wrong questions because they're asking, how do we get this kid to be more neurotypical? So the system for 70 years now has only created more harm than good because now what you're doing is working against a child's neurology and then when they become dysregulated,

A functional behavior analysis comes in and an FBA is done. And then the behavior plans put on this kid when the reality is they don't have a behavior plan. They just had an unmet need and an unsolved problem because we were asking the wrong questions in the first place. So I created a dynamic assessment that asked the right questions, that asked the teachers, hey, I want to know.

What are accommodations that are working? How does this student self -advocate? What's it look like with the dynamics when the class has small groups put together? What's it look like when things, when the child or the student becomes dysregulated? And then we have a whole different set of questions that are asked to the students so we can get insight about what they're looking for in a friend so they're not feeling pressured to have to be forced into a social.

skills group, we ask the caregivers like, you know, what are some things that are working all strengths based, by the way. But that's where we have to start. And then once we get that information, then we can collaborate. We can work with the student and say, hey, now what is the need? Is the need for the student to advocate for a quieter space when there's test testing going on or.

Does the student need some support with noise canceling headphones during the rally and assemblies that are happening on Fridays? Does the student need a little bit of support about the perspectives of their typical peers without sacrificing their autonomy and giving them a variety of things? Does the student need a little bit of support on being aware that their autistic communication style might be a little different than their peers and it's totally OK? Like, what?

is that information and that will drive the goal. That's huge. Let me drop your mic. Mic drop. Yeah. With all of that being said, I want to say this, too. With all of that being said, we can add things in any of the goals where we come from a level of knowing when a student feels like they've been put into the fight, flight, freeze, fawn response, their nervous system.

Marisha (22:33)

Yes, I think that's the whole conversation right there.

Jessie & Chris (22:55)

happens, they've got anxiety, we know that sometimes that verbal speech might not happen in that moment and that's okay. So within the goal, we might put something to add to any of our goals when given access to total communication, right? And then that implies we're not forcing the child to use verbal behavior is what it's called or like spoken language, they must verbalize it. We're honoring the student and giving them

a variety of ways to advocate and to express what helps them out best. That helps in the schools, but it gives them the tools to help beyond the school walls. So if they have a dentist appointment in the future when they graduate or when they're in high school, whatever age they are, they might be thinking it would be really nice if I could wear my noise canceling headphones when I go to the dentist, because I hate that loud sound that squeals.

And I don't like the bright lights, so I'm wondering if I wear my tinted glasses and I have a certain schedule that works better for me. How can I advocate for those needs? Well, we've given them the resources and the tools like you don't have to call on the phone. But how can you use Yelp to reach out and to connect with them through, you know, written language or through text or through the scheduler? So there's a lot of benefits that these goals can serve on a large scale.

Marisha (24:22)

Yeah, that is incredibly functional.

Jessie & Chris (24:26)

Yeah, absolutely. And it's authentic to them. Like they're not, we're not creating goals that, you know, again, are creating more stress and anxiety. We're creating goals where they're like, yeah, that's what I see. I need help with too. So now they have buy -in into their own goals, which is great. And the parents are like, hey, that sounds like a good plan. I would love for my child to, you know, work on those things. And so then everybody gives each other a high five.

at the meetings. That's huge. Without actually the hands touching, germs and stuff. Air high fives at the IEP meeting.

Marisha (25:06)

That sounds like a really great way for everyone to win.

Jessie & Chris (25:09)

Or we can hold up popsicle sticks and be like, hey, great job. Hey, fantastic.

Marisha (25:12)

I love that. And I think so the first reel that I mentioned was one that Jesse recorded on her own, I think, but there was another one that you all did together, like a conversation about goals. I'll link that in the show notes too. But that's so because I was I see a couple.

kiddos, I don't carry a full caseload anymore, but I was working with an autistic kiddo and I had just updated his goals and I had put in a goal for like to have him after having some conversations with Jesse, I put in a goal to have him like self advocate for sensory supports. And then you did that real and that was the goal you're talking about was like, yeah.

Jessie & Chris (26:04)

my God, so funny. Yes. Rugrats audio. yeah.

Marisha (26:09)

Yeah, I love that one. That was super fun. But it was a really cool, because I still have so much to learn in terms of implementing all of this 100%. But just my experience with those types of goals, like you can really see a huge difference. Like the parents, they're like, of course, like that makes so much sense. And that's so helpful. And it's a goal that helps them at home. And...

in a bunch of settings. And then the kiddo loves it too, because it's really empowering for him to be able to communicate what he needs. So yeah, I've really enjoyed this conversation and getting even more ideas on how we can kind of start to implement that. And I'll definitely link to the dynamic assessment too, because that seems.

Jessie & Chris (26:58)

That would be awesome. Yeah. And I can kind of share where to find it. I wanted to add one more thing, too, because this question comes up, this whole conversation that we've had, there's always one last question that pops up because the majority of parents, when they hear this type of, or caregivers that hear this type of language and this new shift, they're like, yes, this, this, that sounds like so much what my child needs. But then you're going to get that.

really small, small group that isn't on board. And they're like, nope, social skills training right now. My child needs to be like their neurotypical peers, and there's no budging. We want this. Or you might be in a meeting, and there's an advocate that's like, hey, we know what? We want evidence -based programs that are about social skills training.

And I hear this question a lot. So my response is I always try to guide. I don't like try to say, no, don't do that. But I just try to guide with research out there. And I say, you know, I understand where you're coming from with the idea that if they have these social skills like their typical peers are going to be happier and, you know, things are just going to blossom. But the research and what we know is that teaching people in general to heavily mask, to be an authentic.

will lead to future mental health challenges and issues. And here's the research. So that way the parent has information to go, OK, well, you've given me some information so they can do some exploring and understand the harms in it. That's really how I approach that question, because we will, as SLPs, be presented with that question.

or those challenging moments where it's like, no, I hear your neurodiversity friends. I don't want it. I want to force this. And we have to, we do what's ethical, which is supporting the students we work with by not teaching them how to be inauthentic. So I wanted to share that because that's a valuable piece of information I've learned over the past couple of years on how to address that. Yeah. And I think like the underlying ideas.

It always for me at least comes down to a connection driven approach and how can we make this child feel safe and comfortable with us and feel like they can be themselves in front of us and in front of other people as well. And, you know, when we really sit down and think about it, how can I put, you know, connecting with this child, with the student at the forefront of what we do, it's like everything else comes.

more naturally, you know, and that's was the inspiration of my book I just wrote because that's what it's all about. It all comes down to how can we build a connection and that's when kids really learn and that's when kids feel safe and comfortable.

Marisha (29:53)

Love time.

Jessie & Chris (29:53)

Yeah, no, that's huge. I think that's at the forefront of it too. Ready, set, connect.

Marisha (30:02)

And we'll link to the book in the show notes as well. But like Chris said, it's called Ready Set Connect.

Jessie & Chris (30:10)

Yeah, I love it.

Marisha (30:11)

Love it. Well, is there any any other last thoughts before we wrap things up? I mean, you shared a huge wealth of knowledge and resources that I'm super proud of.

Jessie & Chris (30:23)

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is it is so setting specific when we're writing goals. And like, sometimes it's stressful for me just to listen. We're talking, he's like talking maybe about one of his students goals. And it's just, I feel like there are so many hoops you have to jump through in the schools, because he'll all tell him one of my goals. And he would be like, I could never use that goal for X reason, you know? And so,

I feel like writing neurodiversity affirming goals in a clinic at least. And I can't speak for every clinic because of course funding sources are different, but we do take insurance and we try to write goals that are the most, that are very easy, general goals that gives us the most flexibility possible. So back to Chris, he said adding when given, what did you say? When given,

access to total communication. Yeah, so having like a total communication goal, that's like our go -to goal for a child who comes in and is non -speaking or maybe minimally speaking or inconsistently speaking. And that gives us so much flexibility because we can work on anything now because our goal is total communication. You know, whereas if we have a child come in and we know their Gestalt Language Processor and we can identify what stage they're in, we write them a goal for that. And...

So we write our goals to give us a lot of flexibility over what we do and keep them really general so that it's not just that we're targeting specific activities or specific situations. So I think there's a lot of benefit to that. So if you have the ability to make your goals broader and more general, I've always found that to be easier. Yeah, I agree. And better. Yep. We're given access to total communication.

when working with activities where the child is regulated, like all of those things that right off the bat set up the student for success. I think that we are one step closer to meeting that goal and helping the kids. So we mentioned the assessment when it comes to goals within the schools. The reason why it can be sometimes challenging is how do you measure a self advocacy goal? How do you know the student is, you know,

asking for, you know, use of, you know, something that's calming for their sensory needs or requesting to co -regulate with the counselor or the mental health coach that's on campus or how do you know that they're advocating for the accommodations listed in their IEP. So I like to use a rubric -based system. I have a whole system and the assessment.

And so yeah, I'm gonna just share that word you can locate that because it's all kind of in the same place based on whatever is you're looking for if you're looking for beyond that and You're looking for a neurodiversity of activities I got all that. So here's how you do it. You go to my Instagram and Then you go to speech dude. So just type, you know, you find me at speech dude and then DM me the word bananas and there you go That's it. That's all you have to do. Just DM me the word bananas. I

And you're going to go bananas on some great neurodiversity affirming resources. That's how you do it. And then for Jessie, she's got her own stuff as well for where you could locate her book and all of those things. So you want to share? Yeah. The books at ReadySetConnectbook .com. And when you get it, you get the audio book for free. You also get a lot of other awesome stuff for free, like a free training, free event coming up that I'm going to be hosting. And.

Very easy to get anywhere. Yeah. Awesome.

Marisha (34:16)

ReadySetConnectbook .com. Awesome. And then, yeah, I'll link to all of that in the show notes as well. But thank you both for sharing such a wealth of resources. And it's, that bananas DM seems like it'll cover everyone's questions from the, because it sounds like you mentioned everything from dynamic assessment to actual activities. So.

Jessie & Chris (34:19)

Ready, set, connect.

Yeah, dynamic assessment to where you'll find the Gold Bank or something new that I haven't released yet, but a way for to locate providers and autistic therapists and clinical psychs and the right people. That's what the world needs. We need the right people. And so I got information there, too. Yeah, it'll be it's good stuff.

Marisha (35:10)

Amazing. And I know this was such a small, like this, I mean, it's been what 36 minutes or whatnot. This doesn't do the whole conversation justice, but I'm really grateful for you sharing. And then hopefully the listeners have some good resources to continue that conversation and continue growing as professionals. So thanks for doing this with me today.

Jessie & Chris (35:34)

Yeah Marcia, thanks so much for having us on. Thank you for having us. We love being here. Yeah, love the topic and we love being here. We appreciate it.

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Writing Preschool Speech Therapy Goals

August 20, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Kelly Vess, a seasoned speech-language pathologist with over 20 years of experience, shares her insights on setting effective preschool speech therapy goals.

With a background in research, clinical instruction, and early childhood education, Kelly has devoted her career to helping preschoolers develop essential communication skills.

In this article, we explore her recommendations for creating impactful goals in expressive language, vocabulary, and speech intelligibility, highlighting the importance of research-backed goal-setting for early intervention.

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Why Preschool Speech Therapy Goals Matter

In preschool speech therapy, well-defined goals are essential for creating meaningful progress, particularly in areas like early language development and expressive language delays.

Kelly Vess emphasizes that selecting complex, research-backed targets can lead to faster, more impactful gains. By focusing on these high-quality targets, SLPs can help children communicate effectively sooner, benefiting their social interactions and overall development.

As Kelly puts it;

“If you take a chisel to the rock and work on simpler targets, you can see progress, but a complex target will create a waterfall impact, leading to broader improvements”

Key Areas for Preschool Speech Therapy Goals

1. Expressive Language Goals

Developing narrative and storytelling skills significantly enhances expressive language abilities in young children.

By focusing on narrative development, SLPs can improve a child’s overall communication skills, setting the stage for more complex language use as they grow. According to Kelly, working on storytelling skills is transformative:

“If I work on this child’s ability to tell a story, am I changing this child’s life? Yes”.

Additionally, targeting complex sentence structures can further support children’s ability to express themselves effectively and meaningfully.

2. Vocabulary Goals for Preschool Speech Therapy

Vocabulary development is foundational for preschoolers, contributing not only to communication but also to early academic success.

Kelly emphasizes the importance of setting both receptive and expressive vocabulary goals, focusing on the words a child can understand and use. When discussing assessments, she suggests evaluating expressive vocabulary if a child often uses non-specific language, such as “this” or “that,” which can indicate a need for targeted vocabulary intervention.

3. Speech Intelligibility Goals

Enhancing speech clarity is crucial for young children to be understood by peers and adults, which supports their confidence and social interactions.

Kelly recommends structured, multimodal cueing—visual, auditory, and gestural prompts—to improve speech intelligibility.

By layering these cues, SLPs can create a supportive pathway to clearer, more independent speech, adjusting support as the child progresses.

Early Intervention Strategies for Preschoolers

Early intervention plays a pivotal role in improving the long-term outcomes for preschoolers facing speech and language delays.

Kelly recommends involving parents from the outset, using input forms and home language samples to inform therapy.

This initial input provides insights into a child’s interests and natural language use, enabling therapists to tailor their sessions.

Tips for Writing Preschool IEP Goals

When creating Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals, specific, functional, and measurable targets are key.

Collaboration between SLPs, parents, and teachers helps to ensure these goals are well-aligned with the child’s needs and classroom environment.

Kelly stresses the importance of starting with “most to least” prompting—providing full support initially and gradually reducing cues as the child gains skills.

This approach, which aims for 80% success to avoid frustration or habituation of errors, enables students to progress effectively:

“We always want to make sure it’s 80% because if we’re below that…we have habituation of errors”

Sample Preschool Speech Therapy Goals

To provide a foundation for setting measurable, impactful goals, here are examples inspired by Kelly Vess’s approach to preschool speech therapy:

Expressive Language Goal:

This goal targets the child’s ability to express ideas clearly, building narrative and storytelling skills that are essential for social and academic success.

“The child will use a complete sentence with 4-5 words to describe a familiar event with minimal verbal prompts in 80% of opportunities.”

Vocabulary Goal:

By setting both receptive and expressive vocabulary goals, SLPs can help children expand their word knowledge, which is foundational for effective communication and later academic success.

“The child will identify and name objects within four different categories with 80% accuracy.”

Speech Intelligibility Goal:

Using structured cueing techniques, this goal supports children in developing clearer speech, aiding both peer understanding and self-confidence.

“The child will increase intelligibility by producing multisyllabic words with 70% accuracy.”

Each goal is designed to be functional and measurable, enabling SLPs to track progress while addressing critical communication skills for preschoolers. Find hundreds more in the SLP Now speech therapy goal bank.

Frequently Asked Questions on Preschool Speech Therapy Goals

Here are some common questions related to preschool speech therapy goals:

What are typical speech goals for a 4-year-old?

Speech goals for a 4-year-old often target foundational communication skills such as expressive language, vocabulary development, and intelligibility. Examples include goals for expanding sentence length, using specific vocabulary, and producing multisyllabic words with clarity.

What is an example of a speech therapy goal for preschoolers?

A goal might focus on expressive language, such as: “The child will describe events using a complete 4-5 word sentence in 80% of opportunities.” This target supports sentence formation and storytelling skills.

How do you write IEP goals for preschool speech therapy?

Effective IEP goals are specific, measurable, and functional. They should reflect the child’s unique needs and be written in collaboration with teachers and parents. For example, a goal might specify the number of prompts needed, a target success rate, and a clear skill to be achieved, like “naming objects across four categories with 80% accuracy.”

What are the IEP goals for preschool apraxia?

For children with apraxia, goals might include improving speech intelligibility through structured practice of multisyllabic words and phrases, using layered cueing methods that support motor planning and production.

What are some effective early intervention goals for speech therapy?

Early intervention goals often focus on foundational language skills, including building expressive and receptive vocabulary, enhancing intelligibility, and developing narrative abilities through age-appropriate stories and conversation.

Conclusion

Setting meaningful, research-backed goals is crucial in preschool speech therapy to foster essential communication skills that benefit children well beyond the therapy room.

By focusing on expressive language, vocabulary, and intelligibility, SLPs can support preschoolers in developing skills that will enhance their social interactions, confidence, and readiness for academic challenges. As Kelly Vess illustrates, structured, layered support tailored to each child’s needs ensures that goals are not only achievable but transformative.

Encouraging SLPs to incorporate these insights into their practice, Kelly emphasizes that small adjustments in goal-setting can make a significant impact, empowering children with foundational communication skills that open doors to future success.

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

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Transcript

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Marisha (00:00)

Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited for today's interview. We have Kelly Vess joining us. She has over 20 years of experience as a preschool speech language pathologist, researcher, and clinical instructor. She's presented at ASHA and is just generally a very sought after speaker. And so I'm very, very excited to have her today. She's also an author and just

Kelly Vess (00:22)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (00:29)

a wealth of knowledge and expertise and experience. She shares a lot of that on her Instagram, kellyvesslp. And she has amazing YouTube videos. so we'll link to all of her platforms because I know you're just going to want to learn more from her after we're done. our chat today, I reached out to Kelly because I really wanted to chat about preschool goals.

And so that's what she's here to chat about. So welcome, Kelly.

Kelly Vess (00:59)

Well, thank you for having me Marisha. This is such an important topic. I am kind of drooling to talk and discuss this topic. I think that when I think about the preschool goals, I think of it as kind of the intervention plan. If you go to a dietician or a personal trainer or a naturopath, they're only as good as their intervention plan.

And that's what we're talking about today. So I couldn't be more excited. This is a wonderful topic that you've selected. Thank you so much for having me.

Marisha (01:30)

Yeah, and it'll be a relatively short discussion. And so there's, we're just going to touch the very tip of the iceberg, but I'm really excited to, for SLPs who have some questions in this area, hopefully you'll walk away with some really good initial tips and then some additional resources, or like direction and where else to go. So we'll come up with our own intervention plans in a way. So.

Kelly, I read off a little bit of your bio, but I'm curious to hear from you and I'd love to hear a little bit of your story. Like how did you end up learning so much about preschool? Like how did you end up specializing in that area and what has that journey looked like for you?

Kelly Vess (02:11)

Yeah, thank you for asking because I think that this is why the goal, this is all based on the intervention plan, it's based on who you are. And I'm a researcher and in my undergraduate studies and my master's studies, I was a researcher throughout all of that. And what I learned as a researcher is that details matter. So your treatment target matters, which I know Marisha, you talk about a lot in narratives and complex syntax.

You're going to get better gains if you have a more complex treatment target. So the years of research that we did in my studies was showing that the target is so important. It's kind of like the food that you eat. The food that you eat is going to account for 80 % or more of how healthy you are. And the treatment target is no different. It's what you take in, your client takes in.

and how complex and how rich is that treatment target will have such an impact on the gains you're going to see in these children. So that background as a researcher is one piece, but another piece is I was a preschool teacher before, and now I'm completing my doctorate in early childhood education. So I'm all about treating the whole child and not treating the mouth. So that goes into how the goals are

And lastly, being a fitness instructor. And having that background as a fitness instructor really plays a role because you realize if you only have 30 to 45 minutes a week to create change, you're going to need to make that challenging. So challenging targets are going to create change, and speech pathologists really need to be frugal with the limited time they have.

So there's no time for fluff. There's no time for busy work. Every minute counts. So I think all of that, in over 20 years of being a speech pathologist in the schools, you also learn from being effective and being ineffective. So you have to do something different when you're doing something that's not working, and you have to do more of what is working. So then the goals change over time. But I think that that background

in being a researcher, in being an early childhood educator, not just treating a mouth, and in being a fitness instructor where it's like, what are you going to do if you only have 45 minutes a week and you need to create change in that amount of time? And then lastly, that experience of 20 years being in the field and failing and succeeding that really guides what that intervention plan is going to look like at the end of the day.

So the who is really important to what your intervention is going to look like, and that's the goals. So that's a great question.

Marisha (05:06)

so many amazing takeaways. The one thing that's many, but one thing that's really standing out to me is, so I just attended a course by Jennifer Taps Richards where she was teaching about the complexity approach. And she was so, and I haven't heard this in the context of like preschool goals. So I'm really excited to you chat more about this. But one thing that she said in her presentation was that implementing

Kelly Vess (05:08)

Okay.

Marisha (05:34)

complexity approach for her speech sound disorders increased her batting average as a speech language psychologist. So yeah, there's another approach where we might see progress with the other approaches, but there could be a way to make faster progress, which benefits students in multiple ways because they are then able to communicate effectively that much faster and all of that. So is that what you're talking about in?

Kelly Vess (05:41)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (06:04)

kind of a way of increasing our batting average with strategically selected ones.

Kelly Vess (06:07)

Yes, Jennifer Taps, yeah, I see she was just on the SLP summit. She has led the way. She was leading the way in the 90s, telling all of the speech pathologists, hey, look at what I'm doing over here and her grassroots effort. She's kind of ahead of her time. And then people tried it out and they saw the amazing gains for themselves. So she is a pioneer in the field that you had speaking.

And I like how Lynn Williams describes it. You can take a chisel to the rock and work on simpler targets, or you can take a complex target and that'll take fireworks to that rock. It'll blow it up. There'll be a cascading impact. And I like the way she describes it, a waterfall impact in which you're working on an S blend and you get for free the P, B, T, D, N, those

Earlier developing sounds are going to naturally develop and I like what she says It doesn't develop like a geyser if you work on P and B, you're not gonna get the R You're not gonna get the S. You're not gonna get the F. It doesn't work that way So yeah, that is Jennifer taps is such an amazing pioneer in our field and spreading the word about this approach and through word of mouth school speech pathologists tried it out and they looked at the gains and they

This is working. And now the field is catching up and the research and the publications are saying, well, the more complex target is getting better gains. the clinicians kind of led the research. We're ahead of the research.

Marisha (07:48)

Yeah, I love that. And so I'm really excited to chat about what that might look like for other preschool targets, because I'm aware of a handful of different articles, but I'm just sitting at the edge of my seat. I want to learn about this ASAP. But before we dive into goals, because writing goals and selecting targets is actually a very tiny part of the puzzle.

Kelly Vess (07:50)

Mm -hmm.

Marisha (08:12)

There's so much that comes before that, like a high quality assessment. And we want to make sure that we're choosing evidence -based treatments. although we don't have time to dive into all of that, because we're going to do kind of a quick breeze through some of the target selection ideas.

Do you have any favorite like resources or suggestions for speech -language pathologists if they're listening to this and they're like, I need a little bit more of the backstory first.

Kelly Vess (08:47)

Yeah, great question. What we want to do is we want to front load the before we meet that child, we want to send that parent input form out. And that parent input form is going to most importantly tell us what does the child like? What are the child's favorite toys? What are the child's favorite movies? The favorite songs? Getting that input is going to be crucial among all other input. Another thing we're going to want to do is get a language sample from the parents phone.

So what I suggest is the meal time, because the meal at the table, a 10 minute language sample, a meal time, because in the past, I've had just a 10 minute language sample within play. And what's happened is I've seen the back of the child's head walk into every room like a real estate agent. I felt like a real estate agent seeing every room in the house. have no idea what the child's saying. I have no idea what the context is that the soundtrack.

could be dun -dun -dun -dun -dun -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. So it was pretty chaotic. It was very hard to transcribe. But what I found is a 10 -minute snack time or meal time language sample. And I get that from the parents' phone in advance. So that is what I like to get before I meet the child. So then after that, when I meet the child, I can bring my flowers, which means

I meet them, I have my bin of dinosaurs in my hand. This is a dinosaur party, their favorite toy. That's not a coincidence. So we really, yeah, we want to set up for success. And I also know which tests I want to use. If the child's using this, that, here, it, a lot, I want to look at their expressive vocabulary. So if the child is only answering questions when there's a visual reference, I'm going to want to look at the auditory processing.

So that video language sample tells me so much. So from home, that has been a real game changer. And the parent input form.

Marisha (10:51)

Yeah, I love that. Okay, so are you ready to chat about some goals? Okay, let's do that. So let's pretend I'm a super fresh, like SLP working with preschoolers for the first time. Like what would we chat about when we're looking at those

Kelly Vess (10:56)

of course, yeah. Let's talk about some of the things.

Thank you.

This is really great. So when we're looking at goals, I like to go back in time and I'm going to go back in time to John Rosen back in 1973. He worked with adults that had strokes and he developed dynamic tactile temporal cueing at 80 % accuracy level. Let me explain what that is. He developed a method in which you give all of the cues you have, every cue in your toolbox as a starting

And then you pull away the cues, the auditory goes first, the talking cue, and you pull away the cues, always ensuring at a moment to moment basis, the individual is at an 80 % accuracy rate. So we want to think about that in terms of the goals. Now, he did that for language for people with aphasia. Edith Strand, many years later, said, let's use this approach with children with apraxia.

So she used the dynamic tactile temporal cueing approach with apraxia. Then we have Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson and their story champs, which is a highly effective intervention. And they said, let's use dynamic tactile temporal cueing with story champs for literacy. So they're all using a highly effective evidence -based approach on different populations.

And that approach is, I'm gonna give you multimodal cueing. I'm gonna give you the speech, I'm gonna give you the visual, I'm gonna give you the print, I'm gonna give you gestures, I'm gonna give you every cue I have, and then we're gonna do it together. We're gonna talk together in choral speech, and then I'm gonna stop talking. But I'm gonna do the visuals, the gesturals, the print, I'm gonna give you everything else.

and then I'm gonna pull a different tool away and I'm gonna pull a different, so it's that scaffolding as you've talked about a lot. And most scaffolds to least scaffolds at the end is where you're headed. And we always wanna make sure it's 80 % because if we're below that, we have frustration and we have habituation of errors. If we're above that, it's just too easy.

So that is the challenge point that the research across disciplines, that 80 % is a magic number, and that most to least prompting hierarchy is simply more effective than at least to most prompting hierarchy. So that is what we're going to do when we write those goals, whether they're speech goals, whether they're language goals, whether they're augmentative communication goals at the preschool level.

We're going to write them in. I'm gonna give you everything in my toolbox and I'm gonna take tools away, but I'm not gonna drop you. I'm gonna keep you supportive. And I like the word is dynamic, because it's moment to moment. So sometimes children need no cues. And the next minute they're like, I'm kind of distractable, I'm losing interest. They need every cue, right? So it's a dance. It's

Today's session, we're going to give you this level of cueing. It's this moment, it's this level of cueing.

So that is what we're looking at when we write those goals.

Marisha (14:30)

Awesome. then, so if we're looking at the different, so let's say you, we did our evaluation, like we worked with our kiddo, we got like the parent feedback, teacher feedback if applicable, which it would be for school -based SLPs. And then we got the language sample, we kind of did our assessments. And so I think that like the DTTC,

dynamic temporal tactile cueing approach makes a lot of sense in terms of approaching the intervention. But how do we decide which areas we're going to focus on? Because we could do, and maybe we can focus a little bit more on language and letters, but how do we select those targets and how do we get more specific with the goals that we're writing?

Kelly Vess (15:21)

I love that question because there's so much you can work on and their goals are not all created equally. If I work on grammatical morphemes, am I changing this child's life? No. And also the research indicates grammatical morphemes will naturally develop over time. But as you are always emphasizing, if I work on this child's ability to tell a story, am I changing this child's life? Yes.

So when we work on, as you know, I feel silly talking to you about your area of expertise, but when we work on storytelling, we're improving all aspects of communication. Where if you work on grammatical morphemes, you're kind of like, let's strengthen your grip, and we're gonna work on grip strength, and you're not changing this child's life. So not all goals are created equally, and I think if the child has a language impairment, well, first of I'm gonna go a little bit back in time in the research.

In 2004, James Law, he wrote a meta -analysis of speech therapy. And he kind of, I think it was the Wizard of Oz study, because he took the curtain and he pulled it back and he said, you know, I'm going to tell you what's working and what's not working. He said, speech therapists, they're improving articulation. They're improving expressive vocabulary. Are they improving language comprehension? He's like, they're not.

I looked at all the studies, you guys are really not doing a good job in this area. He's like, are you improving the child's ability to express themselves syntactically? What you focus on. It's mixed, not really. So what he showed us is he's like, you guys are really very ineffective in this area. And then we had Triner Spencer and Douglas Peterson come out with story choms and narrative interventions.

which Marisha I know is your middle name, Marisha Narratives Intervention Mets, is like, I'm here to change lives here. And what they showed is we improve language expression, language comprehension, all of these areas, stories telling, literacy skills, look what our intervention is doing, and they're saying, and it's doing for preschool age children.

It's working for school -aged children. It's working for children with cognitive impairments. It's working for children with autism. It's working with children who speaking other languages that are English language learners. So they showed that we can improve language comprehension, and they did it in replicated studies. And they said through storytelling, story -viewtelling, Marisha, I'm speaking your language here, and learning the elements of the story and through syntax.

the focus on syntax, which they call the proto story, the child's first story, right? So the research today does show that speech pathologists can improve language comprehension. It's not gonna be done by doing multi -step directions. It's not gonna be done by WH bingo. It's not gonna be done by grammar. I'm thinking of the grammatical cards, preposition work. It's going to be done.

through stories. that is one reason the stories are really important. But another reason the stories are really important is sadly, we know that children that have developmental language delays are much more likely to have peer rejection. They're much more likely to suffer from sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. They're much more likely to have behavioral challenges. We're talking about exponentially more likely.

So these children, have stories to tell. And unfortunately, as you know, Marisha, they lack the ability to tell the stories. So they're very locked in. So if you want to change these children's lives, what are you going to do? It's like you're going to work on narratives. You're going to work on narrative development. If you want to change their lives in terms of improve their communication skills,

That's what you're gonna wanna do if you wanna change their lives and in terms of improving their emotional well -being and their social well -being, that's what you're going to wanna do. So I think that I really respect, I know that you did on SLP Summit, I saw the wonderful presentation you did on narratives last year and this year on syntax, which is exactly where you wanna be if you wanna change lives. So another study.

that came out in 2017 was, and this is syntax, which is another area that you focus on, which is Amanda Owen Van Horn and Mark Fay. Mark Fay, we've heard of his name because he's the king of, in our field of grammatical morphemes, he's studied it for years. They found in 2017, they had an article said, do the hard things first. And they found that if you focus on complex syntax,

you're going to get better gains and more themes than if you focus on more themes. So once again, it's support for the complexity approach when it comes to language. So instead of working on inged, plural, as you might find many things in teacher paid teachers to download and use for your lessons, that's like working on the grip and strengthening a child's grip to improve their overall health.

You're doing very little work with very little time that you have. Instead, what you're going to want to do is focus on narratives or syntax, and the research very much supports it. So that's where I would definitely put all of my eggs in that 30 to 45 minute basket that I have, which is a very small basket.

Marisha (21:12)

Yeah, it's unfortunately small, but we can do some pretty awesome work with that basket. Awesome. And so how would, so for SLP, cause this could be a pretty significant paradigm shift for some SLP. I'm trying to think of some of the types of questions that they might ask. So, cause especially with preschoolers, I feel like they might be thinking, well, that sounds too hard. Like how do I?

Kelly Vess (21:14)

Mm -hmm, yeah.

Yeah.

Marisha (21:40)

And I think using, like you were talking about the scaffolding and the DTTC and making sure that we have appropriate supports. But what would that look like in a goal? And maybe, I guess this is two part, like what would you say to the SLPs who are like, but isn't that too hard? And maybe we can walk through an example of what it would look like and how we make it not too hard for those preschoolers.

Kelly Vess (22:07)

I think this is a wonderful question because a lot of SLPs are like, where is the who, what, where, yes, no question, what, doing? Why aren't you working on that? I gave them the test. I said, who is that? They couldn't say farmer. I said, where is that? They didn't answer that question, right? So why are you working on how? So what I would do with a child that doesn't have who, what, where, yes, no, because of the cascading impact, I know that this is scary.

Marisha (22:16)

Bye.

Kelly Vess (22:36)

I'm going to work on how. And what happens is when I give them the test at the end of the year, the who, what, where, yes, no, ing, what are they doing questions naturally develop. Is that what you find as well? Marisha, you have a cascading impact in which this child you're working with narratives on, you're working at a higher level, the wh questions naturally developed.

So that is what is happening in my clinical experience and that is what is happening for Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson. They're showing that we are getting this stuff for free. And that's what happened with Amanda, she has such a long name, Amanda Owen Van Horn and Mark Faiz research. They said, we're getting the small stuff for free. Do the hard stuff first, which is focusing on complex sentences. And you're gonna get the grammatical morphemes.

So you have to, it is a paradigm shift. And the way it works, I'm just going to give you an example of a goal, okay, of how I would write this. So for instance, the goal is that the child will respond to how questions with a minimal level of prompting. This would consist of a visual reference. So they see the picture there when you ask the question how, for instance, or something like that, okay? So where would start

On day one, and this is really important, I'm just gonna take a break for background, I only see, have 50 children in my caseload in a school, I only see the parents at the IEPs. I see grandma and grandpa drop the child off for speech, and nanny. So I need to use that time to tell the parent, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Here's a game plan and this is how we're gonna do it. This is my parent coaching time. This is the only time I have.

to coach the parent on how we're going to go through this. So for instance, I will take my bottle of water that I have at the table at the IEP, and I will explain this is how we're going to do it. In the beginning, I'm going to give them a maximum level of prompt. That means we're going to talk together in slow, choral speech on how to pour a cup of water. For instance, I'll give them an example of that. So I'll say, we'll say, first.

Get the bottle. And I'll touch my nose and I'll show them all at it. Next. And then we'll do it together slowly. Screw and charades and act it out. Screw off the cap. Then I'll say, then, and I'm speaking slowly in choral with the child. Then pour it in a cup. And I'll say, lastly, drink it. And I will tell them we are going to speak in choral echoed speech together.

I'm gonna charade, just like you're playing charades, every single step, and I'm gonna use the same terms. I'm gonna say first, next, then lastly, to develop that automaticity. So that becomes automatic for them. Every time I'm gonna use the same terms. And then I'll tell them the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop talking. Wherever I can, I'm going to use my gestures and they're gonna use the words. And I'm gonna say, you're the teacher now.

So this is just like they're doing in story champs. They fade out the verbal, they still provide the physical cues, they still provide the visual cues, they still provide the print even, but now you're the teacher, the child's the teacher, not you Marisha, the child's the teacher. So then after that, we're going to take out another cue. So, and then finally at the end of the year, the child just has the visual cues and you say, how do we get water? And they're telling the story from beginning to end.

So that is what it looks like it's a most level prompting to least and we're always at 80 % or four out of five times for the session. But I walk the parents through me opening the bottle of water and what's hard for me is taking the time to actually go through each of the goals and model it. Because I grew up in a family of six children and we learned that kids are to be seen and not heard.

and you take as little time as possible and keep your mouth closed, you know. so in here, it's like you have to take the stage and you have to take time and give yourself space and time so that the parent can do this at home. And I give examples. So if the child wants something from the fridge, a snack from the fridge, what are you going to do? We're going to make it a story. The child wants a toy. You're going to make it a story. How are we going to do this? So we have to take

advantage of the IEP time because parents, 90 % of them or more are dual income. They can't meet with you during the school day. You need to take advantage of that one meeting you have a year to get them on board with this is how we're going to do this. This is the method. So I hope that's helpful to your audience, but that's what it looks like when it's language based.

Marisha (27:52)

Yeah, I love that. for, because I think it's good to have like a level of skepticism and especially with that paradigm shift. It's like, but that's how I've always done it or that's how I learned in school and all of that. because I, in the show notes for this episode, I'll gather some of the research articles that Kelly has mentioned. And I'll see, I know there's

Kelly Vess (27:54)

Mm -hmm.

Thank you.

Marisha (28:18)

like a handful more that I could probably pull too. But just showing, because I think it helps to see examples of this in like the types of goals that we would be writing, like for narratives and for syntax and all of that. So yeah, we'll pull that together so that you have, because maybe you don't, you might not want to change this for your entire caseload right off the bat, but maybe just give it a try with one student and

Have that research to back you up and be like, okay, this is a good decision. This is a good thing to try. And then kind of go from there. Do you have any other feedback or suggestions?

Kelly Vess (28:57)

And I think that is a great plan. And I think that that is the way we have to think is I think oftentimes, and this is what I learned in graduate school 20 years ago, but many still practice this today, is they base their goals on what's next. So instead of, you create your goals, instead of saying, if the child can do it, being a gatekeeper and saying, the child can do this, this is the next step, that's how I'm gonna decide my goals.

You need to instead focus on how can the child do this complex goal. And I think that takes believing in yourself as a speech pathologist, as well as believing in a child. You need self -efficacy. You need to believe that your toolbox, you've got what it takes to build the Eiffel Tower, to put that sky -fold and take that child to the sky and then pull away your support. You need to believe in the child and believe in yourself.

But yeah, I think that that is the question every time you need to ask is not, can the child do this? But how can the child do this? And then I think that people will be amazed just like with Jennifer Tapps, which she did is she went out there and said, hey, here's some research from Judith Garrett, try it out. And people are like, my goodness. And now everyone's working on three element S blends.

they're ahead of the researchers and the researchers are like, yeah, they're right. This is working. The clinicians are ahead of the research. And I think the same thing here with Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson's story champs, people are like, wow. And the work you're doing as well in narrative intervention, people are doing it and they're seeing these incredible gains that they weren't making using the old fashioned, I picked what was next, the plus one.

what they were doing in the testing and what they got is they got plus one results. Where when they did your approach, when they did the Story Champ approach, they were seeing plus 10 of results. They were seeing that spontaneous, the spontaneous gains.

Marisha (31:04)

And so we've talked about some examples of those more complex targets, like the how questions, like skipping the who, what, when, jumping to how, and then writing goals for narratives. And I'm curious, what would your syntax goals look like for your preschoolers? Can we maybe talk through one example there?

Kelly Vess (31:28)

That's a good question. With the syntax goals, I do think the complex sentence is so important. So what I do is I do focus on that how question. I always go there. And then at the end of it, I would like to say within a spontaneous language sample, I'd like to see the emergence of complex sentences in a spontaneous language sample. And that's the final goal. But of course, to get there, I do use the how questions to get there with the

of that. So that's a wonderful question. Thank you for asking that.

Marisha (32:02)

And then do you have any other like goals just since we're cause SLPs love it. So it was like, I always have to ask, like, there anything else that you would, and I know it's kind of hard because it's, it's always individualized and everything too. I'm just curious if you had any other favorites that are top of

Kelly Vess (32:06)

Yeah. Good. Yes.

I think this is, I know this is another area that you work on that I think is crucially important and Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson have shown this is crucially important is the elements of the story. So when working on the elements of the story, the reason that's so important is because, well, first of all, this is where I think Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson are very impressive. That used to be something that was worked on in third and fourth grade.

So in third and fourth grade, children were introduced to what is the setting, who is the character. These are the elements of the story, which I'm sure your listeners know, but what is the emotion, the action, the consequence. So that used to be third and fourth grade. And then Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson said, if we teach this in a multimodal manner in which the children are using gestures, if they're saying in choral speech with us, if we have visual references for

if we have a symbol for it as well, a visual icon, then these preschoolers can learn this concept. And they showed this is highly effective in improving, once again, literacy skills, language comprehension, language expression. So that is another skill that is worthy of that little basket we have, putting our eggs in that 45 to 30 minute basket we have to create change.

And that is another goal. So the way I would typically write that is, once again, I would say that, for instance, this is an example. The child that currently is unable to tell a story that includes the six elements of story grammar, I'm going with six. Some could go through eight, some could go through four, depending on how complex you want it and the age you're working with. So for instance, I said the character, the setting, the problem, and emotion, action, and consequence. So I'm going to say

By next year, the child will be able to tell a story provided auditory cues. So this is where we'd say, what is the setting? Print cues, gestural cues, visual reference, and word retrieval cues. So this is giving all of this support to a preschooler so that they're actually able to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. So that would be an example in which we're focusing on the elements of the story.

And then what we're going to do is we're going to take away the auditory. So the next level of cueing is we're giving that with gestural cues. I'm not saying who is the character. Instead, I'm just tapping my head to say character. So we're going to get rid of auditory, just like we did with our language, just like we do with our speech. It's the dynamic, tactile, temporal cueing. We always want to get rid of the auditory.

is early and as soon as possible because it's the hardest to fade. The children become dependent upon it. So, and we always want to be like, you're the teacher now, I wasn't even talking. That pass of the baton is really important.

Marisha (35:15)

Yeah, I love that. And that was a really helpful example. think the examples that we went through hopefully will give SLP some good resources to start trying this out. And this was just like the tip of the iceberg discussion. I feel like we could chat for hours and hours about all of this. So yeah, but just to be mindful of time and all of that, we'll just start to wrap up. But I'm curious if

and SLP was really enjoying this conversation and on the edge of their seat like I was. What do you think would be the best place to learn more from you or connect with you? Because I know you've got Instagram, YouTube, your website, and I'll share links to all of them, but I just want to give you the opportunity to share what you would think.

Kelly Vess (36:04)

Thank you, Marisha. You're so kind. I think the preschool SLP, CaliVest SLP on YouTube is basically the best place to connect. But thank you so much for having me. is, and thank you for the amazing work you do. I know about your work and you're focusing on all of the life -changing areas and syntax and storytelling and doing such creative, amazing work in that realm. So I'm excited for all the lives you're changing. Thank you for having

Marisha (36:32)

Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. And I feel like I need to just turn it all of that right back on you. Because you've got like lots of amazing content out there and you're doing the exact same changing lots and lots of lives with all of this great work that you're doing. So thank you for continuing to show up and do that. And yeah, like I said,

We'll share the show notes with all of the resources, all the links we mentioned. And I hope everyone has a fabulous rest of their day.

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A Month of Therapy Using a Vocational Unit

May 7, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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Welcome to another episode of the SLP Now podcast! We’re on the last of our six-week series about planning a month of literacy-based therapy, with units that will meet the needs of your entire school-aged caseload!

So far, we’ve used Dr. Ukrainetz’s five step literacy-based therapy framework to work through a month of therapy planning for five units: a play-based early language unit, a picture book, a fiction article, a non-fiction article, and a science experiment.

Today, we’re taking the final step on our therapy planning journey with a month of plans for a vocational unit!

This unit is ideal for students who are working on functional communication skills, and using language in “real world” situations versus a classroom environment.

For these plans, we’re going to use a unit from the SLP Now membership that’s all about ordering fast food! We chose this unit because it’s something that students are very motivated by, and it’s a lot of fun to work with.

Now let’s dig in! 🍔🥤

🍽️ Not sure which unit best suits your caseload? No problem!

Take a quick two-minute quiz, and we’ll send you a personalized list of recommended units based on your specific caseload needs — plus resources to help you implement the activities we talk about in this series.

Click here to get your recommended therapy plans

Speech therapy plans for a vocational video unit

We use Dr. Ukraintez’s literacy-based therapy framework as a guide for our vocational units, but they’re set up a little bit differently than the text-based units. This one is broken down into four weeks of activities: planning and preparing, modeling videos and acting it out, reflection and troubleshooting, then discussion activities.

There’s a wide range of activity options to explore, and you can use these materials and activities to target a variety of goals—like syntax, vocabulary, narratives, sequencing, and more!

Remember: It’s up to you to use your clinical judgment when you’re planning sessions.

We create our therapy plans to cover a month of activities, but you can move through the steps at the pace that works best for your students’ needs. You are the expert of your caseload! 🙌

Week One: Planning and Preparing

Find out what students need to know, and build knowledge to access the activity.

This step has a lot of overlap with step one of Dr. Ukraintez’s framework: Pre-story knowledge activation. It’s important to gather that background information so that you know how much your students understand about the subject matter before getting into skill practice.

You can prepare students by introducing the topic and giving an overview of the unit. Ask your students some questions to find out how much they know about ordering fast food, and talk through the content on the activity pages:

Having concrete data about your students’ background knowledge goes a long way towards setting them up for functional communication success. And, doing that groundwork now will make those future activities—like problem solving—a little easier.

If your students struggle with that foundational knowledge, you can fill the gaps with some of the activities we’ve used in our literacy-based units—like a virtual field trip!

🍟 Head to our Instagram and comment “FAST” on this post if you want a link to the virtual field trip for this unit, plus some other therapy plan goodies!

Week Two: Modeling and Acting it Out

It’s time to put it into action!

When we were creating the plans for this unit in the SLP Now membership, we hired secondary students to help us make the modeling video that’s included. We recorded them ordering fast food so we would have a really good example of pure modeling to work with.

Once the students have watched the pure model videos, they get to act out their own scenario. They can recreate the conversations from the videos using the supplied scripts, or create their own! Either way, this step gives them the opportunity to work on those functional communication skills in a super practical way.

💡 All of the materials in this post are included with an SLP Now membership.

Already a member? Access your plans here

Not a member? Not a problem! Start your free trial today(opens in new tab)

Week Three: Reflection and Troubleshooting

Ask questions about the activity

While you don’t need to use the worksheets in SLP Now for this step, we are big fans of them. This purpose of this section in the unit is to ask your students questions that are focused on reflection and application to build comprehension, and target some problem-solving skills, and the worksheets have some great ideas for questions. Of course, you can also write your own!

Whatever works best for you and your students is the right activity choice.

Week Four: Discussion Activities

Let’s talk about it together!

In this step, students have the chance to dive into the topic a little further. This helps to encourage generalization and discussion. It’s also a great time to add an extension activity!

You can support the students in creating a project that’s inspired by the unit they completed, like recording a video of them acting out the script to watch back later, or have the students write about their favorite fast food restaurant and why they love it so much.

The activities in this unit are language rich (as always!) so you can target a ton of language goals—but they’re also great for working on executive function skills, sequencing, perspective taking, and more! There are so many functional exchanges in the actual scenarios, and students can work on creating personal narratives in their reflection.

These plans you’ll also include a troubleshooting section to work on critical thinking and problem solving, plus plenty of opportunities to compare and contrast.

This vocational unit is full of great functional communication activities! 💪

💌 If you have any questions or are struggling to implement this unit with your students, send Marisha a DM on Instagram! She’d love to hear from you.

Bonus: Focused Skill Activities

Introduce new skills and provide structured practice.

This step wasn’t mentioned on the podcast episode, but it is step five of Dr. Ukrainetz’s literacy-based framework—and hey, if the worksheets exist, you might as well use them!

If the ideas mentioned above aren’t providing the targeted skill practice that your students need, using worksheets or other focused activities are a great way to get the necessary exposures.

And that’s a wrap on our six-week series about plans to cover a month of therapy! This was so much fun for us to create, and we hope that you had just as much fun learning with us.

We love nerding out on the evidence with you, and, we love getting creative about therapy plans + working smarter! We’re so grateful to share those loves with an incredible community of SLPs… including you. 🥰

Next up—we’re going to shift gears from therapy planning to speech room organization because there’s nothing like a little spring cleaning before school’s out for the summer!!

Links and Additional Resources

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

How is that possible, you ask?

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

Join thousands of SLPs and get the support you need

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple(opens in new tab) ★ Spotify(opens in new tab) ★ Google(opens in new tab) ★ Stitcher(opens in new tab) ★ Castbox(opens in new tab) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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00:00 Hello there, and welcome to the SLP now podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
 
00:19 This week we are diving into our last unit type.
 
00:24 We are wrapping up the six week.
 
00:26 Series, and today we are going to walk through a vocational video unit. And so this unit is ideal for students who are working on more of that functional communication and using language in very functional scenarios. This is an example of a unit.
 
00:50 In SLP now, and it is all about ordering fast food, which is a.
 
00:58 Super motivating activity for a lot of.
 
01:00 Our kiddos, and it is a great.
 
01:03 Functional activity for them to use their language in a very functional way. So how the unit is set up, it's broken down into four weeks of activities.
 
01:17 And of course you can use your.
 
01:19 Clinical judgment to adjust things, but in week one, it's all about planning and preparing.
 
01:25 So we have some activity pages that.
 
01:28 Will help students plan and prepare for.
 
01:33 The actual fast food ordering activity. If I were using this in week two, I would show the students the.
 
01:42 Modeling video that's included with the unit.
 
01:45 So we hired secondary students to record.
 
01:50 All of these functional scenarios for us.
 
01:53 So we recorded them ordering fast food.
 
01:57 So it's a really great example of peer modeling. And then once they watch the peer.
 
02:03 Model videos, then they get to act out their own scenario. And then in week three, there are.
 
02:11 Some activities around reflection and troubleshooting. And then week four includes some discussion activities.
 
02:19 These are language rich activities, as always.
 
02:24 But they're really great for targeting executive function skills, sequencing, perspective taking. Again, like I said, lots of functional.
 
02:33 Communication in the actual scenarios, and they.
 
02:39 Can work on creating personal narratives in their reflection. There is a troubleshooting section, so they can work on critical thinking, problem solving.
 
02:49 And there's also some opportunities for compare.
 
02:53 And contrast within the activities.
 
02:56 So as you can see, this is.
 
02:59 A great functional communication activity, and we can also use it to target a.
 
03:05 Variety of goals from syntax, vocabulary, narratives.
 
03:11 All of that good stuff. So it's got a really nice range of activities.
 
03:16 It's structured kind of similar, inspired by.
 
03:20 A literacy based therapy unit. So when we're planning, we kind of have some pre story.
 
03:26 Well, it's inspired by the pre story.
 
03:28 Knowledge activation step from our literacy based.
 
03:31 Therapy framework, the one developed by Doctor Ukranitz. It asks them about, like what they.
 
03:37 Know about fast food. Like, have they been to a fast food restaurant? And kind of gathering that background knowledge and that background knowledge will be really helpful.
 
03:48 Once we have, like, the concrete facts, it'll make it really easy to help students use that functional communication and do that problem solving because we've done all of those steps ahead of time. And like I said, we have the.
 
04:05 Modeling video where the student gets to.
 
04:08 See peers in that scenario.
 
04:12 And then there's a video modeling script so you have easy access to the script if your students would like to use that, or they can create their own.
 
04:22 And again, there's so many language opportunities here. It's hard to get super specific because.
 
04:28 There'S so many goals that you could target, and there's such a wide range of students that you can use this with. But if you have any questions or.
 
04:36 You'Re struggling to think about how you might use this with some students, send.
 
04:41 Me a DM on instagram.
 
04:42 I'd love to hear from you, but yeah, so that is an overview of.
 
04:48 The different activities that you can use in conjunction with this unit.
 
04:53 And like I have mentioned in the.
 
04:56 Previous unit, if you'd like to check.
 
04:58 Out this unit, if you are already.
 
05:01 An SLP now member, just go to.
 
05:03 The therapy plans tab on the SLP now site and then type in fast food and just click.
 
05:10 And then you'll have instant access to this therapy plan, including the video and the interactive resources.
 
05:16 All of that good stuff. And if you're not a member yet.
 
05:20 Go to slpnow.com unit. That'll send you to our free trial page. And all you have to do is enter your name and email and a quick password so that you can log in.
 
05:32 You can also go to therapy plans tab.
 
05:34 Check out the 400 plus units, including this one.
 
05:39 Kind of see if it would be.
 
05:41 A good fit for you.
 
05:42 And yeah, that is a wrap on.
 
05:46 Our vocational video unit.
 
05:49 Like I said, don't hesitate to reach.
 
05:51 Out with any questions. I'd love to hear from you and I hope your week is off to a fabulous thanks for listening to the SLP now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episodes sent directly to you. See you next time.

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FAQ

What is a vocational unit in speech therapy?

A vocational unit focuses on functional communication skills using real-world scenarios, like ordering fast food, rather than classroom-based topics. It's ideal for students who need practice using language in practical, everyday situations.

How is a vocational unit structured?

It follows four weeks of activities: planning and preparing (building background knowledge), modeling and acting it out (watching peer-modeled scenarios and practicing them), reflection and troubleshooting (comprehension and problem-solving questions), and discussion activities (generalization and extension projects).

What speech and language goals can a vocational unit target?

A vocational unit can target a wide range of goals, including syntax, vocabulary, narratives, sequencing, executive function, perspective-taking, and critical thinking, all within functional, real-world contexts.

Who benefits most from vocational units in speech therapy?

Students working on functional communication skills and applying language in real-world situations, rather than a traditional classroom context, tend to benefit most from this type of unit.

A Month of Therapy Using a Science Experiment

April 26, 2024 by Marisha Leave a Comment

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Welcome to another episode of the SLP Now podcast! We’re on week four of our six-week series about planning a month of literacy-based therapy, with units that will meet the needs of your entire school-aged caseload!

For the last four weeks, we’ve used Dr. Ukrainetz’s five step literacy-based therapy framework to work through a month of therapy planning for three units: a play-based early language unit, a picture book, a fiction article, and a non-fiction article.

Today, we’re taking the next step on our therapy planning journey with a month of plans for a science experiment!

This unit is ideal for or students who need a high quality contextualized activity, but may be resistant to using a text. It’s also great for students who are working on social language or problem solving skills because the activities mimic a classroom environment!

Like the literacy-based units we’ve talked about in the past, these activities are incredibly language rich. They can be used to target goals for vocabulary, grammar, syntax, following directions, asking questions, collaborating with peers, and more—even if you’re working with mixed groups.

🔬 Not sure where to start, or which unit best suits your caseload? No problem!

We make general recommendations about which age group to use each unit for, but every caseload is different! That’s why we also created a quick two-minute quiz to help you get started in the right place:

Tell us about your students’ age range and goals, then we’ll send you a list of recommended units + resources based on your caseload needs.

Many SLPs are resistant to the idea of doing science experiments in speech sessions because of the potential material costs or complexity. But we want to encourage you to give it a shot anyway, especially if you’re using the therapy plans inside SLP Now!

For all of our science experiment units, Marisha has done all of the recommended activities in her own speech room or classroom, and recorded herself completing them using simple + inexpensive materials to show how doable they are.

With a bit of confidence, you’ll find these easy—and fun!—to implement.

And if you aren’t able to round up the materials or do the live experiment, you can watch the video with your students, instead. 🙌

Now let’s talk about therapy plans for a science experiment:

🌈 Making a Rainbow

Like the other units we’ve talked about in this series, our science experiment plans are meant to cover four weeks of activities.

However, the five steps we’re going to follow for a science experiment unit are a little different than literacy-based therapy because we aren’t using a text.

Our new unit checklist looks like this:

1. Plan and Prepare
2. Watch and Do
3. Reflect and Troubleshoot
4. Discussion, and
5. Focused Skill Activities

Now let’s dive in to our science experiment unit!

Week one: Plan and prepare

Like pre-story knowledge activation, this step is about figuring out what your students already know, and what kind of knowledge they need to build in order to access the activity.

You can start with a conversation about rainbows, or ask what they expect will happen during the experiment. If there are gaps in knowledge that you want to bridge before diving into the actual experiment, you can use a KWL chart or virtual field trip to help.

💡 Inside the SLP Now membership, we have worksheets for this unit with questions with questions to guide the discussion. Check it out!

Week two: Do the experiment!

This is like reading the book in a literacy-based framework, but it might take a little more time depending on the experiment you choose. 😂

If you physically have the materials, doing the experiment is a great way to incorporate some of those goals related to social language, collaboration, problem-solving, or following directions. But if you don’t have the materials, that doesn’t have to stop you from using the unit! You can always use a video, whether you build a unit around a YouTube video or use one of the videos in SLP Now!

Week three: Reflect and Troubleshoot

This is a great opportunity to ask questions about the experiment, reflect on the process, and discuss ways to apply the learnings to real life. If things didn’t go according to plan, you can practice some problem-solving and brainstorm ways to improve next time!

📝 There’s a worksheet for that! Check out the SLP Now membership for ready-to-go worksheets with questions for reflection and application, to help build comprehension and problem-solving skills.

Week four: Discussion time!

After reflecting on the experiment, it’s time to talk about it. This step gives students a chance to dive into the topic further, encouraging generalization and group discussion.

This is also when you could add in an extension activity, similar to post-story comprehension or creating parallel story. For example, students could draw or write out step-by-step instructions to summarize the experiment, or they could create a mock science television show using a tablet or smartphone camera.

Step five: Focused Skill Activities

At this point, we’re ready to introduce new skills and provide some structured practice. You can target so many goals with this unit, and SLP Now has worksheets to help you do that — whether you’re working on affixes, present/past tense verbs, vocabulary, and more!

🎯 SLP Now has worksheets that you can download or use digitally — and there are suggested activities for each unit that are linked to the target you’re working on!

Hit the easy button and sign up for your free trial today!

Science experiments are a low-key way to get students engaged in language-rich activities, and with fully prepped experiments at your fingertips and activity pages, they require minimal work on your part… just fun!

We’ve got 10 complete science experiment units inside SLP Now, with even more on the way:

🧪 Get your science on!

Just a heads up: That link will only work if you’re signed in to SLP Now.

Not a member yet? Let’s fix that today. You don’t even need a credit card to sign up for your 14-day free trial and let the experimenting begin!

That brings us to the end of our science experiment unit — and we’ll be back at it next week when we wrap up this series with our final episode… therapy plans for a vocational unit!

Links and Additional Resources

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

We analyzed the books, identified the targets, and created unit plan pages that suggest activities based on the skills you’re targeting and your students’ needs!

This is a one stop shop for all your literacy-based therapy needs, including resources for virtual field trips and visuals to help those concepts stick.

You can sign up for a two week trial that is risk-free and free-free → We won’t even ask for your credit card so there’s no worry about an unexpected subscription! All you have to do is click! 🥳

Subscribe to the SLP Now podcast and stay tuned for our next series. We’re kicking off September by helping you get your data collection, paperwork, and therapy planning processes in tip-top shape!

Listen to The SLP Now Podcast on Apple ★ Spotify ★ Google ★ Stitcher ★ Castbox or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

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00:00 Hello there, and welcome to the SLP now podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
 
00:19 This week we are diving into a science experiment unit. So this is part of a six week series where I've been sharing month long therapy units for different age ranges. And the previous units were using picture books and articles, and they were much more literacy based. But like I said, this week is a science experiment, so it's a little bit different. And this unit is ideal for students who are maybe a little bit resistant to using a text, and you need another high quality, contextualized activity. I think this is a really great break for students, and it's still an amazing way to target any of their goals. And I think it's also a really amazing context for students who are working on social language or, like collaborating with peers or more problem solving those types of goals.
 
01:28 This is a really nice, hands on context to target those goals, and it mimics what they would be doing in the classroom as well, in a different way than an article would. So this type of unit is really nice for those types of students and groups. And if you are having trouble deciding which of these units are ideal for your caseload, check out the show [email protected]. Again, that's slpnow.com 187. That'll be a link to the show notes, that which will include all of the resources that I mentioned today. But you'll also find a link to a two minute quiz, which you'll enter a few quick details about your caseload. And then we'll generate a therapy plan for you based on the details that.
 
02:25 You share with us.
 
02:27 And so that'll give you a really great starting point. And then you can listen back to these episodes for some extra tips for the units that you want to use with your caseload. So now, without further ado, let's dive into the actual unit. So this science experiment is called making a rainbow, and it's broken into four weeks of activities. So just like the other units, it's meant to cover a month of therapy, just a little bit of context if you're not familiar with therapy plans inside SLP. Now, for our science experiment units, I recorded myself completing a number of different experiments, and all of the experiments are using really simple, inexpensive materials, so they are easy to implement.
 
03:23 They're all experiments that I've done in my speech room or in classrooms, so they are absolutely easily implementable if that's a word, and the material should be easy to grab. But I also recorded a video of the experiments, so you could, instead of gathering all of the supplies, you also have the option to use the video that we've created and complete the activities in conjunction with the video instead of the hands on experiment. So both options are completely doable. So it is what it is, and then just a quick overview of what the unit looks like. In week one, it's really focused on planning and preparing. And then in week two is when, whether or not you have the supplies to do the experiment, I encourage them watching the video.
 
04:25 There are some really great opportunities for language and problem solving within that, and then they can actually do the experiment. And then in week three, there are some activities around reflection and troubleshooting. And then in week four, there's a more overall discussion of the experiment. And for all of these weeks, we have activity pages that will guide you through the unit in like, guiding the planning phase. And this is all very language rich. So like I said at the beginning, this is great for facilitating collaboration between peers and problem solving. But all of these activities are also language rich, so we can still target them for or use these activities to target goals like syntax and vocabulary and whatever goals we might be writing at this age range.
 
05:25 So yeah, there's different resources again, and activity pages that you can use to walk through that experiment. And I don't think it'd be helpful to read out the questions necessarily. But you are welcome to check out this therapy plan. It's totally free to check it out. So if you're already an SLP now member, just go to therapy plans tab and type in rainbow and then it'll show you the experiment. And then if you aren't a member yet, head to slP now.com unit. All you do is enter your name and email and a quick password. We won't ask for your credit card or anything like that, but then that'll give you access to the free trial where you can browse all of our therapy plans.
 
06:18 You can also check out the science experiment unit for making a rainbow and kind of scroll through the different activities and resources there. But that is an overview of how I would use a science experiment with my students. Let me know if you have any questions. I'd love to see you on Instagram if you want to send me a DM. Let me know how this unit went, or if you have any questions or ideas, I'd love to hear from you. And yeah, that's a wrap on this week, and I hope you love the science experiment.
 
06:55 Thanks for listening to the SLP now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episodes sent directly to you.
 
07:07 You see you next time.

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Marisha

Today, Marisha Mets discusses Setting Goals for Syntax Mastery

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Today, Marisha discusses setting grammar goals!

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Today, Marisha discusses setting goals for vocabulary!

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What is Narrative Language?

Stages of Narrative Development

Common Assessment Methods for Narrative Skills

How to Write SMART Narrative Language Goals

Effective Narrative Therapy Strategies for SLPs

Integrating Narrative Skills into Classroom Activities

Frequently Asked Questions on Narrative Language Goals

Resources for Writing Narrative Language Goals

Conclusion

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What is the Cycles Approach in Speech Therapy?

Background of the Hodson Cycles Approach

Phonological Cycles Approach: Key Principles

The Steps Involved in the Cycles Approach

1. Select Phonological Patterns to Target

2. Organize Therapy Sessions with a Structured Format

3. Auditory Bombardment

4. Production Practice

5. Stimulability Testing

6. Home Practice

7. Adjust and Adapt

8. Cycle Completion and Review

Dynamic Assessment in the Cycles Approach

The Importance of Phonological Assessment in Speech Therapy

Tailoring the Approach Based on Assessment

Resources for Phonological Assessment

ASHA Phonological Processes Chart

Assessment Checklist:

Developing Goals for the Cycles Approach

Writing Effective Cycles Approach Goals: A Focus on Flexibility

Example of SMART Goals in the Cycles Approach

Incorporating Intelligibility and Stimulability Goals

Implementing the Cycles Approach in Therapy Sessions

Keys to Successful Cycles Approach Implementation

Phonological Treatment Approaches for Different Age Groups

Cycles Approach Success Stories

Cycles Approach Case Study: Addressing Severe Phonological Deficits

Resources for Learning More About the Cycles Approach

Frequently Asked Questions About Cycles Approach

1. What is the Cycles Approach?

2. How is the Cycles Approach different from the traditional approach?

3. What resources does ASHA provide for the Cycles Approach?

4. What are the primary targets in the Cycles Approach?

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What Are AAC Goals and Why Are They Important?

Tips for Writing AAC Goals for Speech Therapy

AAC Goal Examples

AAC Goal Bank

AAC Goals for Functional Communication

Writing AAC Goals for Specific Populations

Early AAC Goals

Writing AAC Goals for Students with Autism

AAC Goals for Emergent Communicators