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#114: Evaluations for Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Students: The Why

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This Week’s Episode: Evaluations for CLA Students: The Why

This month I had the pleasure of chatting with Kallie Knight (@kknighttherapy), a school-based SLP from Texas, regarding evaluations for culturally and linguistically diverse students. In today’s episode, we discuss why different types of evaluations are important and different things to consider when taking data for these students.

Stay tuned for the rest of this month’s series as we discuss different types of assessments and tips for taking better evaluations for CLA students.

I’m excited to dive in. But before we do, take a look at this reel Kallie made on Instagram. It sets us up with a real-life example of the issues we can run into if we don’t take more things into account when evaluating CLA students.

I hope her reel got you to start thinking about all the odds that are stacked up against this specific student. Let’s dive into the importance of gathering updated and important information about your student *before* we look at assessment results.

Common Mistakes 

  1. Not using the correct tools
  2. Only a static language sample
  3. Everyone comes from different cultural backgrounds, we don’t always understand everyone’s culture, in learning about other cultures we can be more aware
  4. Not getting a parent or caretaker interview

Additional Links

Kallie Knight: @kknighttherapy
Leaders Project
SLP Now Membership

Next Up in this Pod Series

4/5/22: Evaluations for Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Students: The Why
4/12/22: How to Use Language Samples When Evaluating Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Students
4/19/22: How to Use Non-Word Repetition Tasks When Evaluating Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Students
4/26/22: How to Use Dynamic Assessment When Evaluating Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Students

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Speaker 1: 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.

Speaker 1: Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast. This month, we are diving into evaluations for culturally and linguistically diverse students. So CLD for short, and this topic was inspired by Kallie Knight. I am so excited to dive this. She's got some really awesome tips for us to navigate these evaluations. And then just a little bit about Kallie. I told you she's got an amazing Instagram account and it's such helpful and inspiring content. I love how she approaches all things SLP. And just a little bit more about her. She is a school based speech language pathologist in Texas. She is in the trenches with us. Maybe she can tell us a little bit more about her caseload. I'm really excited to hear from her. So hello Kallie.

Kallie Knight : Hi. I'm happy to be here

Speaker 1: Before we dive into all of the nitty gritty strategies and content, I thought it'd be helpful to just kind of back up a little bit and chat about why this topic even matters. And I think that will kind of align with what was in your reel on Instagram as well.

Kallie Knight : For sure. And I think understanding the why is going to guide and make everything we would do in addition or differently for these students or clients. It's all just going to make sense when you understand the why. And so, especially for these students, when we look at like a stereotypical evaluation that we would probably do, we're likely going to use a standardized norm-reference tool. Yes, you'll probably use a couple of different informal measures too, if you're able to. But one of the big things we use, whether you're in a school or clinic, lots of people use standardized testing and it's kind of just a necessary evil. Sometimes we have to do it, but what we have to realize, not only for culturally and linguistically diverse students, but even for some of our kind of mainstream, main culture students, there are a lot of issues with norm-reference test, more issues just come with our culturally and linguistically diverse populations.

Kallie Knight : So for example, if we want to go over psychometrics, like we want to go over classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, which basically is just how accurate is the test identifying people with disorder or not disorder correctly. And if you were to go into the manual or really look into most of these norm-reference tests, that classification accuracy is actually pretty poor. What we're really looking for to be good is about 80% across the board. And most of our norm-reference tests, even for those that the test is normed for is under 80%. So that's a little bit of a red flag.

Kallie Knight : But on top of that for a lot of our culturally and linguistically diverse students, and that could be someone who's from a different culture, from a different language all together, socioeconomic status, like culture goes far more than just you live in a different place than me. But there's a lot of bias there. There's content bias. There's obviously linguistic bias and I could go into that for forever. But these are just some of the issues that when we have these culturally and linguistically diverse students take a test that was essentially normed on and made for oranges and they're apples, we're not really getting a good comparison.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And just to bring this home a little bit, like how can that hurt our CLD students?

Kallie Knight : I mean, I think it depends who you talk to. Some people might say, well, it's not going to hurt them to be in speech therapy and maybe not. But especially from a school based perspective, when I'm looking only at eligibility or what's going to be best for a student, it's going to be the least restrictive environment. And for a student who does not have a disability, which happens to be a lot of our culturally and linguistically diverse students, that's not special education, which is where we give speech therapy. That nuance looks a little bit different, if you're not in a school setting, but I am. So a lot of what I'll talk about might kind of apply to the school setting. So at the end, they're just not getting the help they need. And just think about those other things, like when you get put into special education, I know most kids love to come to speech, but there can be other sociological factors or like feelings associated with going to special education when they don't even have a disability.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Like, I love what you said. Like it won't hurt for them to be in speech therapy. It'll only help. But especially in a school setting, if they're seeing us, they're missing time out in the general education curriculum, which is where they're supposed to be doing their learning. And if they miss out on like a critical component of the math ... I mean, school districts now have a lot of regulations on when students can be pulled, but if they're missing out on, even if it's some other part of the curriculum, like that could lead to some other issues down the road as well.

Kallie Knight : Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Marie Ireland did a presentation at the SLP Summit. If you ever have the opportunity to hear her speak, definitely do that. And we won't go into too much detail here, but she shared like even more consequences in terms of like correlations. Like if students have IEP or the diagnosis and what that looks like long term. So there's impacts that we might not even see, that could come up down the road.

Kallie Knight : Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Okay. Awesome. And then just back channeling a little bit. So in terms of the psychometric properties, I know that some SLPs hear that and they're like, where do I look? Like, what do I look for? So I know it's different for every test, but do you have any suggestions or resources for SLPs who are trying to start looking into that?

Kallie Knight : Yes. So, I mean, obviously if you want to find where it should be, and I say should be because unfortunately not every test reports these kind of psychometric features, and in some cases that should be a red flag in and of itself, but you can find it in the test manual. They should have a section on validity and reliability, and there should be usually a section on sensitivity and specificity and it should outline it. The [ASHER 00:06:41] Leaders Project has a couple of really, really nice in depth reviews on a couple common norm-reference tests, like the PLS and the self. And they'll not only give the sensitivity and specificity, but a lot of other information with like pros and cons.

Kallie Knight : And then I can't remember who made this, but someone or some program or community, someone made a big list where they basically went through all the test manuals and made a list of this is the test. This is the classification accuracy. This is who it's normed on. This is who it's represented in the normative sample. And I can't remember who did it, but I do have access to it. So if there's a way for me to give it to you and get it out to people after this, we can do that.

Speaker 1: I think it's Virginia Department of Education. I think that's part of the research that Marie Ireland was also a part of. But we'll definitely put that in the show notes so that even if it doesn't exist, we'll find a way to have some kind of resource to get us started here.

Kallie Knight : And there's probably more than one document like that, but that makes it easier for SLPs to just grab and go. But I think sometimes it's good to be informed and know if you don't have that quick reference, that you can still find that information and the test [inaudible 00:07:56].

Speaker 1: And let's say a test has like, I don't know how many of them are out there, but let's say a test has 90% sensitivity. Because you said that 80% was the goal for that.

Kallie Knight : Right. That is what is typically considered adequate.

Speaker 1: And then even with 90%, there's 10% who meet the criterion, but may not be. So let's say a test has that 90% sensitivity, but it's normed on, what would be an example of a norm sample?

Kallie Knight : Like a lot of our normative samples have a lot, a lot of people who are monolingual English speakers. So that's one, if we're looking at linguistic diversity. There are some that have some bilingual students, but it's usually Spanish or one or two kids from other language backgrounds. And that's certainly not enough for me to give a fair comparison. Again, like the apples and oranges thing. And on top of that, you need to look at things like socioeconomic status. Like even those kind of things where you're not coming from a completely ...

Kallie Knight : Sorry if you hear my dog squeaking. If you come from a different country or obviously like, oh yeah, you have a different culture, but there's even different cultures from different parts of the United States from different socioeconomic statuses. And most of the time this is, or it should be outlined in the normative sample. And so you're able to go in and look in the test manual and be like, okay, is there a sufficient amount of kids here that represents the student I'm evaluating? And for a lot of our culturally and linguistically diverse kids, it's often no. The answer is no.

Speaker 1: Do you ever use that assessment then?

Kallie Knight : If I wasn't working in a school where it's kind of a necessary evil and they just want to see the score, I would probably skip it all together. However, because it's something I have to use, I can still give it. And when we talk maybe later about dynamic assessment, I can show you some things you can do to still get a little bit of bang from your buck if you're going to give a norm-reference test. But when you report the scores, I just say interpret with caution. And you can explain why, like there was cultural bias, there was linguistic bias and content. And if you want, you can explain some of those or you can just state that. And I often say this person also wasn't represented well in the normative sample. So just interpret with caution. And then you go into the rest of your evaluation that hopefully has a lot of informal information that contextualizes their performance. Because there's a good chance they could have done poorly on the norm-reference test and have a disorder or they could not.

Speaker 1: Perfect. I love how you laid that out. That makes some much sense. Perfect. What are some common mistakes that we might be making? I mean, we talked about some of them, so not considering the normative sample or looking at the psychometric properties of the norm-reference tests, but are there any other common mistakes that you see when evaluating CLD students?

Kallie Knight : I would say the biggest one is probably the tools we use just because people know I need to use my standardized test because that's what we use. And I don't even want to say a mistake because a lot of people just, I think don't know that is the case and that there are better things to use. Or sometimes they know that they should use something better and don't know what it is. And that's when I'm like, you know what? And then you just learn about it, and it's okay, and you don't need to worry about it or feel guilty. But we'll talk about this probably a little bit later if we're talking about informal measures. But sometimes doing things like language sampling and just kind of doing like a static language sample, but not doing any comparative analyses. Just looking at the kid's language sample and analyzing it the same way you would any other kid, a good chunk of the time you might make some errors, but we could go on for a while.

Speaker 1: Okay. Perfect. Anything else that just like general big picture that SLPs should look out for or consider?

Kallie Knight : I think something else that is important to consider is just everyone does come from different cultural backgrounds and we have to realize that sometimes we don't understand everyone's cultural nuances and what is isn't important in their lives and what experiences they haven't had. So that's, I think another one of those ignorance mistakes sometimes. Sometimes learning about other ... In learning about other cultures, we can be more aware, but I think some of the times everyone comes to the table with different experiences, different beliefs, different values. And if we haven't experienced that culture before, there's always mistakes that we can make there. But some of that is just, you have to learn as you go because you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And what do you feel like has helped you learn more about the different cultures? Is it just experience working with different families or ...

Kallie Knight : I would say that's definitely the best way because even if you try to go online and learn about culture, it usually gives you an idea of a general macro culture. And that doesn't mean that complete aligns with that individual family's values. And so I think there is obviously some good, like maybe doing some book learning or learning on the internet about different cultures, but I think where you really learn and get good contextual practice is just learning from the families themselves. And they're usually more than happy to help you, especially when you're like, I'm just going to let you know. I don't know what backgrounds you come from. I don't know what's important to you. So you tell me what's important to me, what your life experiences are like, and I've made a lot of mistakes and I think that's where I've learned. And I think when you're okay with making mistakes and learning from them, that's probably the best thing to do.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I think in general, people really like talking about themselves.

Kallie Knight : Yeah.

Speaker 1: Like if I were to go see a doctor or a therapist or like whatever support I'm seeking, like if they ask questions and try to get to know me, like I think I feel very seen. And I think that really helps establish that relationship. So we build the trust by like being curious and asking those questions, but we also kind of get to continue building on that.

Kallie Knight : Totally goes along with like just doing a good in depth, thorough case history. So we just touched on that, but I guess I didn't say that explicitly. That's another mistake that sometimes people make is not doing any case history at all, or parent interview or something like that. So I'm glad you touched on that.

Speaker 1: Okay, perfect. So let's wrap up just kind of the intro part of this. So we talked about some of the common learning opportunities when we're working on CLD evaluation. So we may not using the correct tools or considering the psychometric properties and norming sample of norm-reference test. We may only take a static language sample and we'll talk more about that in a future episode. And then another learning opportunity is to take time, to understand the culture and then also to do a good client history background, parent interview/all of those things. So we will talk about you alluded to this too, but if we do use a norm-reference, even if the norm population isn't representative of the student, we can use dynamic assessment too. And that's a really great tool. So we'll talk about that in the fourth episode in this series. So stay tuned for all of the good stuff, but yeah, I'm so excited.

Kallie Knight : Me too.

Speaker 1: 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 episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#113: SLP Data Collection 101: Documentation Tips

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This Week’s Episode: Data Collection Documentation Tips

This month we have been discussing all things data. 🤓

We started out this series with the importance of probe data, when to take it, and why we take it. Last week I shared tips on how to stay organized while collecting data and then we touched on strategies for collecting probe data in mixed groups!

So without further ado, let’s get started with this week’s topic. Today, we are chatting about how to document the therapy data when you are using this probe at the beginning of the session.  And then just focusing on providing students with awesome support throughout the rest of the session.

Shall we dive in?

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

My goal is to provide the amount of support that the students need to achieve 80% accuracy. Knowing their probe data really helps!

1. Take probe data at the beginning of the session
2. Enter accuracy of probe data for each student (if in mixed groups have the students review their goals)
3. Save probe data and put it away and focus on the rest of the session with the student

Types of strategies and supports

Teach the skill (using a visual)

Focused stimulation (for grammar) – research shows that students benefit from focused stimulation prior to producing the target themselves

Contrastive imitation (for grammar)

Model

Visuals
>articulation (placement visual)
>icons for grammar structure

Verbal Cues
>articulation (tongue tip up!)

Gestural Cues
> articulation (hand cue)
> counting fingers when describing action pictures

Additional Links

SLP Now Academy for evidence-backed strategies (included in the SLP Now Membership)

Join our Free Digital Data Bootcamp

Do you want to learn how to set up and customize the digital data collection system that’s helped SLPs save an average of 180 hours per school year for your caseload…no matter its size or diversity. You can… in as little as 5 days! Join the Digital Data Bootcamp today!

Free 14 day SLP Now Trial

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Marisha : 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. Hey, there. It's Marisha and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast. This month, we are diving into all things data collection. We'll start off by talking about collecting probe data and why we would even want to do that.

Marisha : And then we'll talk about organizing the probes, strategies to collect data in groups, and then how to document therapy data. So without further ado, let's get started with this week's topic. Today, we are chatting about how to document the therapy data when you are using this probe at the beginning of the session strategy and just focusing on providing students with awesome support throughout the rest of the session.

Marisha : The cool thing is when you're using the strategy, you get really nice clean data right off the bat, right within the first minute or two of the session. With my system, I just quickly enter because the probes that I use are attached to my session. I'll just open up the session, pull up the probes, run through them for each student. And then I enter their accuracy as each student completes their probe. And then I hit save and I just put that away.

Marisha : And then I focus on giving students exactly what they need to achieve roughly 80% accuracy with that skill. For some students, like we talked about in the first episode of the series, if they score 0% accuracy on the probe, I'm going to provide a lot of support and I'll give the students a visual. I'll break it down. I will do some structured practice and really, like I said, break down that skill for the student. However, if they score really high accuracy, then I'm going to back off and let them demonstrate their skill in context.

Marisha : I mean, their accuracy will likely shift when we jump into context. We'll just want to be prepared to provide supports as needed. But as long as the student is able to achieve about 80% accuracy, I'm not going to add in any support. I'm just going to give them the opportunity to show their skills. And if they need that support, I will be ready to jump in very quickly. That's how I approach that and what that looks like.

Marisha : However, I get a lot of questions about how to document and describe that when we're documenting the therapy session. It's nice to have that one number at the very beginning of the session, but what do I do at the end of the session? And what else do I enter about the other 28 minutes that I was with this student or however long the session is? I really focus on documenting the types of strategies that I use to support the student. Typically, I log into SLP Now, which what I use to collect data.

Marisha : And then I go to the session. Like I said, I enter that data, the probe data. I'll pull up the probe, enter the probe data, and then we're good to go with that. I put that away until the end of the session. This is what I do as we're wrapping up the session in the group. We do like a quick recap of how the session went for the student. I document accuracy without support through the probe. Then I document accuracy with support. We're aiming for 80. More often than not, I just enter 80 for accuracy with support.

Marisha : And then in a SLP Now, there's a dropdown to enter your level of support. This is totally customizable too, which I love. You can enter your favorite types of support. Literally all you have to do at the end of the session is think about what strategies you use to support the student. We'll do like a quick recap of some of the types of things we might enter there. But the cool thing is when you're using the system, let's say the student had 20% accuracy on the probe. I would enter that.

Marisha : They got 80% accuracy and context. When I gave them whatever list of strategies, I would just click those in the session. Then in SLP Now, I can load the template. It's perfect note that I can copy and paste into billing, or just if I don't have to bill, it's a great documentation of the session as a whole. But it tells me the student I saw, what activity we did, when I saw them, what goal was targeted or which goals were targeted, how they did on the probe, and then how they did in context. And that's all just listed out for me.

Marisha : And then it also tells what supports benefited them. If I suddenly develop amnesia and I don't remember what we did in the previous session, I can just load the previous note and see exactly how she did and what strategies were helpful for that goal. We'll just take a couple minutes to talk about some strategies. I might document that I taught the skill using a visual, or that I taught the skill using a structured drill, or that I provided focused stimulation. This is a really cool strategy for grammar.

Marisha : Research show that students benefit from focused stimulation prior to producing the target themselves. If I gave them a past tense verbs probe and they achieved 0% accuracy, grammar is like a little harder to teach, especially for the younger ones, so I find that focused stimulation is really helpful. Maybe as we're reading the book, if the story is written in the present tense, I might just shift it to the past tense and really focus on emphasizing those past tense verbs so that the student has a lot of exposure.

Marisha : And maybe just by doing that, it'll prime them to be able to start producing it when we get to more of a structured drill. And maybe not. Sometimes it takes a longer period of focused stimulation before they're ready to produce that, but we can document using focused stimulation as a strategy. We can also use contrast of imitation for grammar. And then like some of the more traditional things that you might see is like providing a model.

Marisha : I might model how to use the sentence, or I might model the definition for whatever vocabulary target we're working on. And then when given a model, the student can complete whatever task it is. Or if we're working on producing L in sentences, if I give them a model as they're producing it or before they produce it, then that is helpful in increasing their accuracy. You can also use visuals like an articulation placement visual, or like if you're working on story grammar, you might give them icons.

Marisha : I have a sentence pack that I really like to use for grammar goals and it has icons for different parts of speech. We can create little sentence trips to help students build sentences. We can give them verbal cues. The cool thing about this is that you can document which cues were most helpful. For example, if you're working on L and they benefit from the cue tongue tip up or a jaw cue of like you curling up your hand a little bit, you can document that and then you'll be like, "Oh yeah, that strategy was super helpful."

Marisha : You won't have to reinvent the wheel every time. You can just reuse that strategy and it'll be good to go. This was just a quick review of some strategies that a lot of us use and some that I've found in the research. If you want more evidence-backed strategies like this, I would highly recommend checking out the academy. I have broken down... I dug through the research for grammar vocabulary and all of the different areas.

Marisha : We share a bunch of different strategies, evidence-backed strategies, that you can use, and it'll give you tons of ideas for supports. We also have cheat sheets for all of the different skills in the SLP Now materials library. If you don't have time to sit down and listen to a course, the cheat sheets can give you some quick strategies that you can implement.

Marisha : If you're working with a student on past tense verbs and they're having trouble making progress, you can look at that and see if there's any strategies you haven't used yet and give those a try. And then you can add them to your level of support dropdown in the session so you can easily reference them and be reminded of them too. And then if you're an SLP Now member, you have access to all of this.

Marisha : But if you're not, we have a free trial, so you can access all of the courses and download some of the cheat sheets just to see if it would be helpful. And even if just downloading a couple of cheat sheets streamlines your therapy, data, and documentation, that would make me very, very happy. Absolutely no obligation. But if you want to check that out, just head to slpnow.com/trial to give it a try. That's all that we've got for our data collection month, but I did want to share just one quick note too.

Marisha : Throughout this series, I've talked about taking data on one goal per session and rotating through the goals. I hope I did a good job mentioning this throughout, but use your clinical judgment. If it makes more sense just to focus on one goal for a month and you just want to go all in on that goal, there is a rationale for having like more of that, like mass practice versus distributed practice over the course of sessions. Sometimes, especially as student make more progress, we might want to target more than one goal.

Marisha : And just because you only collect probe data on one goal doesn't mean that you're not going to target the other goals in the session either. When I'm using SLP Now to look at data, I can easily open up the goals and see the past probe data accuracy. I don't need to collect a probe every session to be able to target that goal. It still gives me an idea of where the student is at even if I didn't collect data in that particular session.

Marisha : Those are just like a couple quick strategies that I wanted to make sure that we addressed. But yeah, that is a wrap on the series officially.

Marisha : If you are wanting to check out any of the links or resources mentioned in today's episode, head to slpnow.com/113. Again, that's slpnow.com/113. We'll see you next month. 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 episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#112: SLP Data Collection 101: Collecting Data in Mixed Groups

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This Week’s Episode: SLP Data Collection in Mixed Groups

This month we have been discussing all things data. 🤓

We started out this series with the importance of probe data, when to take it, and why we take it. Last week I shared tips on how to stay organized while collecting data and this week we will touch on strategies for collecting probe data in mixed groups!

I know how difficult it can be to stay organized with mixed groups. But let’s continue to build on this month’s podseries and take the tips that we’ve already talked about and apply them to our mixed groups.

Let’s get to simplifying, organizing and recording our probe data!

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

Step 1: Get Organized

Step 2:  Make it Quick

Step 3: Set a Routine

Join our Free Digital Data Bootcamp

Do you want to learn how to set up and customize the digital data collection system that’s helped SLPs save an average of 180 hours per school year for your caseload…no matter its size or diversity. You can… in as little as 5 days! Join the Digital Data Bootcamp today!

Free 14 day SLP Now Trial

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

Download New Tab

Marisha: 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.

Marisha: Hey, there. It's Marisha and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. This month, we are diving into all things data collection. We'll start off by talking about collecting probe data and why we would even want to do that. Then we'll talk about organizing the probes, strategies to collect data in groups and then how to document therapy data. So without further ado, let's get started with this week's topic.

Marisha: Now, let's dive into strategies to collect probe data in a group. We chatted about a lot of different strategies last time, like the main strategy being goal cards and making that part of your routine. When students walk into the therapy room, they grab their goal cards. If you're doing teletherapy, when they join the session, they pull up their goal cards. Then if you have multiple students in the group, the main focus while other students are doing their probes is just for them to review their goals. They can look through their goals and be reminded of what they're working on in speech.

Marisha: Goal awareness is a huge factor in progress. So you can even have like a little quiz or like pop quiz kind of thing, where you ask them, like "Who can name all of their goals?" or something. So that'll motivate them to review their goals and of course over time, they're going to [inaudible 00:01:52] have their goals memorized so that will get less exciting, but it can still be a fun way, like, "Who can tell me all of their goals?," and six months into the IEP, it would be super impressive if they can just rattle off all the things that they were working on. So I think it is a nice way to keep them engaged for the most part, we just might not have to switch it up a little over time.

Marisha: So that is the main strategy that I use to collect probe data. I find that that keeps most students engaged enough for the few minutes that I need to take probes on other students in the group. Then if that's not working, here are some additional strategies that we can use to make this a little bit more streamlined and doable and just like nice and easy. I like it when things feel easy in the speech room.

Marisha: So one is like, is your organization up to par? Is it hard for students to find their goal cards? Are they triggering some behavior because they're like, "I can't find my cards," and blah, blah, blah. So how are you organizing the goal cards? How are students gathering them? Is that an easy thing to do?

Marisha: In the last episode, I talked about how I have a calendar pocket chart that I use and students know exactly where to go to grab their cards so it's a very easy process. They just grab them, they sit down, there's no challenges in that process. It's really easy for them to do. So making sure that we're organized in terms of getting the goals.

Marisha: And then are we organized in terms of the probes as, are we spending a bunch of time flipping through pages, trying to find the right thing? Because if we're a little disheveled and anxious or like, "Ah, where are the probes?" then the students will pick up on that energy and react to that as well. So can you make the process even more streamlined to grab your probes? And definitely check out the previous episode in terms of how to keep them organized so that you can quickly access your probes, there's just seconds in between each one, whether you're using a binder or doing that digitally, make it really easy to grab those probes and access them.

Marisha: Then the next step, if you're still struggling with that, maybe to review your routine. Like, what does it look like? Do the students know that they come into the speech room, they grab their goal cards? Maybe having a visual and just setting the expectation. What does it look like when our other students are doing their probe? Like, we have quiet hands and feet potentially and we can be creative and use our clinical judgment too on what is most appropriate. But again talk about, what does it look like when other students in the group are doing their probes? Are we screaming and yelling and jumping in with answers or are we sitting quietly and looking at our goals, just setting the expectations and showing what a successful routine would look like and praising it when we see it. It might be hard for some students and just praising every step in the right direction so that we can get through those probes and really set our students up for success.

Marisha: And just like I explained to you in the first episode of this series why it's important to collect probe data, we can explain that to our students too. If a student is making it hard for another student to complete their probe data, that can really have an impact. So just sharing about the why and why it's important, those strategies typically do the trick for me, but I wanted to share just a couple more ideas just in case that doesn't work for your group.

Marisha: One thing that you can do, if they're really solid on their goals, you can give them some of the visuals. It gives them a little bit more to look at. So you can give them the visuals for their goal, or you can have them go grab their visual. So while they're waiting their turn, they grab the visual for the goal that they're targeting that day and they can take a quick look at it.

Marisha: Another thing that they can do is, if you're going to do a book, while they're waiting, they can do a book walk and look through the book and kind of prime themselves for what they're going to do. You can also have them actually read the book while they're waiting. They won't get very far because these probes are very, very quick, but they can start to read or review the article for the day.

Marisha: If they have speech sound goals and are at a higher level, they can try and find their sound in the book or in the article and that can be a good strategy. Maybe if they're is an activity that requires a little more time, like if two of your students have a comprehension goal and you need to read like a little passage and ask questions about that and the other student just has a super quick probe, maybe you can have an activity ready to go for that student. Maybe they can do something on the iPad related to their skill. There's so many different scenarios, but if that makes sense, that's something you can do.

Marisha: But I really don't think you need to spend a lot of time finding activities. I think just getting the progress organized, making it seamless process to grab the goal cards, you pull up the probes super quick, you gather the probes super quick and then you're good to go. I mean, it depends on the group and the goal, but I shoot for 5 to 10 items and I try and keep it nice and quick and streamlined.

Marisha: Another option too, like if maybe there's just some different goals that require a little bit more time, you can just pull the students separately, like once a month or every quarter, just to check in on a specific goal that's maybe a little bit harder to do a quick probe on, but I really think this works for the majority of students. And of course we're using our clinical judgment to adjust if we're feeling like, "Well, maybe this isn't the most representative," or maybe we need to just change things up a little bit. But those are my top strategies to make this easy and a really effective practice.

Marisha: But yeah, that's all for now. Then next week we are going to talk about documentation and how we document the probe data, how we document the support that we provide in the actual session and all sorts of good stuff. It's going to be a good one. So join us next week.

Marisha: Then if you want to check out the show notes for today's episode, you can go to slpnow.com/112. Again, that's slpnow.com/112, and we will see you next week.

Marisha: 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 episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#111: SLP Data Collection 101: How to Stay Organized

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This Week’s Episode: SLP Data Collection and How to Stay Organized

This month we are going to discuss all things data. 🤓

We started out this series with the importance of probe data, when to take it, and why we take it.

I’m excited to continue to share my organization strategies and data collection routine with you.

We’ve now got all this glorious data…how do we stay organized?

Let’s get started!

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

Step 1: Goal Awareness

Goal Cards make it easy to keep track of which goal we want to target. Check out this blog post for more information: Speech Room Organization: Studnet Goals

Step 2:  Digital or Paper?

📝 Binder Option

Avery Easy Index
number all of my probes and store them in binder
create goal cards for each student (to review the goal)
write the number on the goal goal

💻  Digital Option

With the SLP Now Membership, you can attach them to the session
Check out this Blog Post: How to Organize Probe Data

Additional Resources Mentioned

How to Organize Probe Data

Pocket chart link

Avery Easy Index

Free 14 day SLP Now Trial

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Marisha : 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.

Marisha : Hey there, it's Marisha, and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast. This month, we are diving into all things data collection. So we'll start off by talking about collecting probe data and why we would even want to do that. And then we'll talk about organizing the probes, strategies to collect data in groups and then how to document therapy data. So without further ado, let's get started with this week's topic.

Marisha : Now let's chat about how to organize those probes and those assessments. And if you're just tuning in for the first time, I'd highly recommend going back to last week's episode, that's 110, and that'll explain the basics for how I collect probe data and why I do it that way. But today we're getting into the nitty gritty details of how to get it all organized. So the first strategy that I think is super helpful, is to make goal cards for your students. If you're seeing your students in person, I'll link to a blog post that explains in more detail how this all works, but then I'll also share a quick little template that you can use to implement that with your students. And to find these links, you can go to slpnow.com/111 to access that. So it's slpnow.com/111 to access the free templates and all of the links that I'll mention.

Marisha : Backing up a little bit before we get into kind of the nitty gritty in terms of the actual cards, I really like using cards because it makes it easy to keep track of which goal I want to target with a student or which goal I want to collect data on. And it helps make sure that we're cycling through our students' goals, and it also is a great activity for them to do while they are waiting for their turn. So what we do is if we're doing this in person, I just print out little squares and it'll depend on the student. So sometimes I might just have the goal typed out, I might just print it out, but I really prefer to have students write the goal in their own words. So I just have these little cards, they write their goal. You can also have them write why it matters or whatever kind of things you want to add on, like how they'll feel when they meet their goal. Whatever you think is helpful, whatever might help meet that student.

Marisha : But I think what the goal is and why it matters are super helpful. And then typically students have two, three, four goals or whatnot. So we would just cycle through those goals at the beginning of every session. Well we would do one goal each session, but then if we have three goal cards, I just keep them in a little stack. I would just put them in a paper clip. You can also use a little binder ring so that they stay in order. How I had it set up, I made a little packet of each student's goal cards, put it together with a paper clip, and I stored them in one of those calendar pocket charts. That's linked in the blog post, that'll be in the show notes.

Marisha : So the cards fit in that organizer and just for student confidentiality and everything, I had colored pieces of paper as well. And instead of having the student's names, I let them pick a sticker and it is incredible how quickly they attached to their sticker. Like they knew exactly which sticker was theirs, and they knew exactly which packet to grab, it's really funny how that works.

Marisha : But yeah, so each student would grab their packet as they walked into the speech room and I color coded it by grade or classroom or whatever, just to make it easier for me to remember. But what we do is each student has their packet, they sit down, they start looking at their goal cards and they do a quick review. And then whichever goal is on the top is the goal that we're going to collect data on. Cards might get shuffled around as the students are reviewing them. And just to remediate that, like the first thing I ask is like, "Which goal is on the top?" And then ask each student which goal is on the top.

Marisha : And I might shift, again, clinical judgment, always trumps structure, but I would just ask each student, which goal was on the top, and as long as that made sense, we would collect probe data on that, and we'll talk about more strategies on how to collect probe data in a group. But this is really the key strategy, is they just take time to review their goals. If they need a little bit more to keep them busy, we might have them grab their visual for the goal that we're targeting in that session potentially. This really varies group to group. But I think reviewing their goals is one, very great activity to do. And then number two, it'll keep them busy as they're patiently waiting for their classmates to quickly complete their probe.

Marisha : You can get creative with the cards too. You can even add the visuals on there. Like for articulation, you can have the placement visual just ready to go. Or you can have a quick word list or something right on the card. So that's one option in terms of collecting the data. You can just have a quick word list that you run through right on the card.

Marisha : But first a lot of the goals, it's a little bit more elaborate than just saying a couple of quick words. So there are two main ways to organize the probes. So when I started doing this, I made a binder for myself and I am obsessed with the Avery Easy Index. They're just beautifully colored tabs, and they have a nice sheet in the front where you can write a little table of contents so you know what each tab means. And it's beautiful, it's functional, really great. So I'll link to some examples of that in the show notes. I then would number all of my probes and they would get stored in the binder.

Marisha : And so on each goal card, I would just write the number that that corresponds to. So if it's naming antonyms is probe number 16 in my binder, I would just write 16 on the probe card. And then I would know exactly which one to turn to, and easy peasy, ready to go. So that is kind of what that looks like for the binder. And then when I'm completing a student's IEP, I just make sure to have the goal cards ready to go so that the student can fill in their cards to review their new goals. And then I also want to make sure that I have a probe that I can use for that goal. If I don't, I need to find one or create one and add that to the binder so that I am ready to collect data on that.

Marisha : And I think that's a really key strategy, whether you're using this or a different data collection strategy, I think we really need to have a solid way to ... We need to make sure that we know how we're collecting and measuring progress on a goal, because there's nothing worse than a goal that you can't collect data on and if it's not clear whether the student met or not. That's kind of the process there. Then I've been ... As you can probably tell throughout these episodes, I'm a huge fan of digital tools to make things easier. Sometimes it's hard to flip through the binder while you're trying to collect data on your data sheet or on your computer, or it's just a lot of stuff. So I created a bunch of digital quick probes, is what we call them and these are all available on SLP Now.

Marisha : And so when I set up a student's goals, I go into the session and you can attach this in a number of ways, but I basically just attach the probe that I want to use to the student's goals. So then when I pull up that session, I have my laptop or my phone or my tablet, whatever I'm using, I go to the session and I select the goal that I want to target. So whichever one is on top for the student, and then when I open that goal, it shows the assessment that I picked for that goal. So it cannot get any easier. We have a pre-made library of a bunch of different quick probes that can easily be attached to the session. They're little slide decks essentially, and so you can just go through and collect data on them.

Marisha : The other option is to create your own. So if you want to make your own data collection, your own little quick probe, or if you want to use something that you have from Teachers Pay Teachers or something that you created over the years in a PDF, or something that you scanned in, you can also add that and attach that. And you would just click that, it would open up, you would have quick access to it and you could run through the probe and then you're good to go.

Marisha : So two options to organize the probes, a binder, or organizing it digitally. And I just gave one example of what that would look like. And then again, using goal cards to keep the process organized. And I would just make sure to put, when I have that stack, as we're putting the goals away, I want to make sure that the goal that I want to take data on next time is at the top.

Marisha : If you are doing teletherapy, you can totally still do this using Google Slides. You can share a slide deck with each student, and just have a slide for each of their goals and you can just rearrange the slides. So if you collected data on producing K in sentences, you can move that to the bottom of the list and then whatever else is next. And then the students can like review their goals and everything as you're waiting. So that's how I would implement that in a number of scenarios. If you want to check out any of the resources that I shared, you can go to our show notes at slpnow.com/111. And that's a wrap for today. We'll see you next time.

Marisha : 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 episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#110: SLP Data Collection 101: Why Collect Probes

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This Week’s Episode: How + Why I Collect Probe Data:

This month we are going to discuss all things data. 🤓

We are going to start out this series with the importance of probe data, when to take it, and its importance. I’m excited to share my strategies and routine with you. Creating a framework for my therapy sessions really helped me as an SLP stay organized and focused. And it really helps the student with expectations and accountability.

Every session I start out with probe data.

Strategies + Tips Discussed:

✓Take probe data first thing!
This routine helps set up you and your student for success. 

✓Collect data on one goal (per student).
Rotate the goals every session so you

Why is this so important? 

Like I mentioned before, it helps set up for success in the session by providing expectations, student accountability AND it helps you as an SLP gauge where the student is at with that goal.

Examples of where to being after Probe Data has been taken:

0% accuracy – step back and teach (reduce frustration)

20-60% accuracy – emerging skill

80%+ accuracy – opportunity to practice in context (reduce boredom)

Additional Resources Mentioned

3 tips for Easy Data Collection Blog Post

Join our Free 5-day Digital Data Bootcamp

5-Day Digital Data Bootcamp event being run by SLP Now.
Not signed up yet? You can do so here: https://www.slpnow.com/ddb

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to the podcast? If you’re not, subscribe today to get the latest episodes sent directly to you! Click here to make your listening experience auto-magic and as easy as possible.

Bonus points if you leave us a review over on iTunes → Those reviews help other SLPs find the podcast, and I love reading your feedback! Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews,” “Write a Review,” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is.

Thanks so much!

Transcript

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Marisha Mets: Hello there and welcome to the SLPNow 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.

Marisha Mets: Hey there, it's Marisha and welcome to the SLPNow podcast. This month, we are diving into all things data collection. So we'll start off by talking about collecting probe data and why we would even want to do that. And then we'll talk about organizing the probes strategies to collect data in groups and then how to document therapy data. So without further ado, let's get started with this week's topic.

Marisha Mets: Let's chat about how to collect probe data and why we would even want to do that. If you want to check out any of the resources that I mentioned throughout the podcast, you can find the show notes at slpnow.com/110, and that's slpnow.com/110 and that'll be a great place to keep track of all the different resources. But anyway, when it comes to probe data, I think this is an incredibly powerful strategy because we need that data to drive our therapy. We are making decisions using external evidence, but also internal evidence and what we're seeing in the therapy room.

Marisha Mets: And probe data is just a really nice way to collect that. So I like to collect that data first thing when students come in. So of course, we'll check in and see how they're doing, make sure they're ready to learn and all of that. But once we're checked in and good to go, they know that the first thing we're going to do is a quick probe. It just takes a couple minutes and we run through one goal per student. So it'll be like five to 10 stimulus items, but the main strategies here, do it first thing, collect data on one goal per student. And in terms of why I do it this way, it's a pretty simple process.

Marisha Mets: It also sets me and the student up for success in the session. So let's say that I'm working with a student and they achieve 0% accuracy on the probe. That is a sign to me that I need to step back and definitely not dive into practice. I need to spend some quality time teaching the skill. And this is important because then I know exactly where they're at, how they're coming into the session, how they're doing independently because my goal is for them to use these skills independently in the future. So that doing it right at the beginning of the session helps me see exactly where they're at without any support, without any extra reminders, other than being in the speech room.

Marisha Mets: It's not perfect, but it's the best we can do. So for the student who achieves that 0% accuracy, if I step back and teach, then I know exactly where they're coming in. And it also reduces their frustration. If I were to just jump into a literacy based therapy unit and have them try to use the skill in context, they would be so frustrated. And when students are frustrated, they shut down. They might like exhibit behavior and it's just not a great place to be in. And we're also not in like their proximal zone of development and we're not meeting them where they're at.

Marisha Mets: We're just kind of trying to drag them along to where we want them to be. But by taking that data, seeing it, evaluating it and making it a plan, we can reduce that frustration and set them up for success. And then these are just kind of rough figures. You can use your clinical judgment in terms of which percentage you use. But if a student achieves like 20 to 60% accuracy, I would look at that as an emerging skill. So that can be something that we celebrate like, yay, they were at 0% accuracy for the last three weeks. We did some great teaching and now they're at 40.

Marisha Mets: That's awesome. So, that means that's emerging. And we can use, again, our clinical judgment to decide how much time do we spend teaching, like how much do we want to refresh, how quickly are we going to jump into embedded practice, like what does that look like. But in that zone, I might do like a little bit of teaching, do a quick refresher, maybe do like a structured drill, or maybe if they're at the higher end or if the quick teaching review goes really well, maybe we can just jump into embedded practice. So, that's kind of like that middle zone where we use more of our clinical judgment.

Marisha Mets: But then if a student is at 80 or 100% accuracy, then we definitely want to give them the opportunity to practice in context and really step things up. If we're just sticking to a rigid routine where every time we teach the skill, if a student is at 80 or 100% accuracy, they're going to get bored because they know this skill. They have seen it probably a million times already. And so by focusing too much on the teaching, we're to lose that student and then they also may start exhibiting different behaviors and all of that.

Marisha Mets: So at this end, if they're scoring that higher accuracy, I again want to provide them an opportunity to practice in context, that'll keep them engaged. It's in their zone of proximal development. They're ready for that. So, that's what we've got in terms of very quick explanation of how I structure my probe data collection and why. Join us next week for more of the nitty gritty on how to actually organize that process, how to gather your probes, how to know which goals you're going to collect data on and how to organize it so that it's like a nice seamless process.

Marisha Mets: So, that's a wrap for today and we'll see you next time. And then again, if you want to check out this show notes with a quick recap, I also have like a little blog post on data collection. You can find that at slpnow.com/110. We'll see you next week.

Marisha Mets: Thanks for listening to the SLPNow 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 episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#109: SLP Productivity 101: IEPs

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This Week’s Episode: How to Increase Productivity with IEPS

If you’ve been following along with this podcast series, I’m hoping that you’re starting to feel more productive and more confident with your therapy. We’ve discussed how to build your core materials,  how to streamline your therapy planning, and how to efficiently streamline evaluations.

We will wrap up this month’s podcast series all about productivity by sharing some quick tips on how to streamline IEPs.

Let’s get productive! 🤓

How to Streamline IEPs

✓ Shift your mindset
Check out this blog post for more info: The Midset Shift for SLPs

✓ Map out your due dates
Check out this blog post for more ideas: How to Manage your Paperwork

✓Schedule time
☕️  I used to come in a little early so I could have uninterrupted time
🎧  Bring noise-canceling headphones
🙅🏻‍♀️ Put your “do not disturb” sign up
📝 Set goals

✓ Create a Checklist
🍎 Write Goals: How to Write Goals
🍎 Gather handouts: Check out this blog post for important handouts: Must-Have handouts and Forms for SLPs
🍎 Gather probes/visuals/ Teaching strategies Assess

✓ Create Templates
🍏 Speech Room News: Paperwork Short Cuts
🍏  Text Expander + Find and Replace: How I cut My Paperwork Time in Half

 

 

 

#108: SLP Productivity 101: Evaluations

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This Week’s Episode: How to Increase Productivity with Evaluations

If you’ve been following along with this podcast series, I’m hoping that you’re starting to feel more productive and more confident with your therapy. We’ve discussed how to build your core materials and how to streamline your therapy planning.

I am so excited as we continue this month’s podcast series all about productivity! In this episode of the SLP Now Podcast, I share some quick tips on how to effectively and efficiently streamline evaluations.

Let’s get on with the productivity! 🤓

Streamline Evaluation Strategies

1. Create a Checklist

Option 1: Printed and/ or laminate

Option 2: Digital Task Management Systems

Asana: Check out this blog post: How to Conquer your Task List Using Asana
ClickUP

2. Test Templates

Save your own template!  (use a google doc)

Steps to Build Your Evaluation Templates

1. Set up a document. Type the main categories in your evaluation report (e.g., reason for referral, medical history, etc.)
2. Go through a completed evaluation. Copy and paste the sections into your template document.
3. Replace student names/pronouns with symbols (e.g., *** for student name, ** for possessive pronouns, * for subject pronouns).

Bonus Tip #1
Collaborate with other SLPs to build your templates. 🤝

Speech Therapy Test Descriptions: Home Sweet Home

3. Text Expander

Create multiple text expander shortcuts and make yourself a cheat sheet by naming them after acronyms.

4. Use “Find and Replace” 

Control or Command F > Search for. the”***” and replace it with the student’s name and pronoun. 

5. Organize the paperwork

Hanging organizer (amazon link)

Additional Blog Posts

Conquer Caseload Management

 

#107: SLP Productivity 101: Therapy Planning

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This Week’s Episode: How to Increase Productivity by Streamlining Therapy Planning

I’m am so excited as we continue this month’s podcast series all about productivity! Last week we wrapped up talking about how to build your core materials and this post will focus on productivity by building a routine and planning for therapy ahead of time.

In this podcast episode, I share some tips on how I was able to focus on a therapy routine and how it truly helped me become more efficient and productive with time.  Your future SLP self will thank you.

Ready to streamline your therapy and get it planned in as little as 10 minutes a week? OK! Let’s get to it!

Streamline Therapy Planning

The Importance of a Therapy Routine

Step 1: Check-In

Step 2: Teach

Step 3: Practice

Step 4: Wrap Up

For more information, check out this blog post: Therapy Planning Bootcamp: Revamping your Therapy Routine

Literacy-Based Therapy

This therapy framework was such a game-changer for me. It’ll take a few minutes to gather your materials, but then you’ll be ready to hit the ground running!

I plan a month-long unit to work through 5 steps of the Literacy-Based Therapy Framework. 

5 step literacy based therapy

Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)
Step 2 (Reading)
Step 3 (Post Story Comprehension)
Step 4 (Skill Practice)
Step 5 (Parallel Story)

Additional Links:

Check out this blog post: Planning Speech Therapy Evidence-Based Interventions 

Join the Literacy-Based Therapy Challenge for FREE

Check out our Therapy Planning Bootcamp – Easy & Efficient Therapy Plans

Free 14 day SLP Now Membership trial: Academy Courses Included

#106: SLP Productivity 101: Building Your Core Materials

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This Week’s Episode: How to Increase Productivity by Building your Core Materials for Speech-Language Pathologists

I’m am so excited to start this month’s podcast series all about productivity! Let’s be honest, sometimes we get so wrapped up in all of the materials that we’ve gathered over the years and we fall down a rabbit hole.

I was sort of “forced” to build my core materials when I switched jobs and move out of state. The school that I moved to didn’t have many materials available. There were some… but not many. At first, it was terrifying but it quickly became eye-opening once I realized that my productivity was much higher once I built my core materials and didn’t have to shuffle through extra “fluff”.

In this podcast episode, I share some tips on how I was able to rebuild my core materials and discard others. Taking the time to build your core materials library will save you so much time! Your future SLP self will thank you.  Ready to dejunk and find a good balance of core materials for your caseload?

Alrighty! Let’s get to it!

Build your Core Materials

Taking the time to build your core materials library will save you so much time! Your future SLP self will thank you.

What do you need to target your students’ goals

✓Map out your caseload 

Caseload At A Glance
Click here to download your FREE Caseload at a Glance.

✓ What goals are you targeting? And how many students have those goals?

✓ Make  3 copies for each of the main categories that you’ll need

✓ Prioritize. We can’t do everything at once. If we can see which goals are more prevalent, we can make strategic decisions.

Probes/Progress Monitoring

✓ More on this next month!

✓ My strategy is to make sure I have a probe ready to go to measure progress when I write the goal

Visuals

✓Organize them in an accordion folder

✨YOU ✨

✓continue building
✓ Research summaries (included in the SLP Now Membership) 

✓ Watch Academy courses (included in the SLP Now Membership) 

✓ Read journal articles  

✓ Read the Informed SLP

✓ Attend courses like Therapy Planning Bootcamp: Building Your Core Materials

SLP Summit Recap: How to Thrive as an SLP

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I presented on burnout at the SLP Summit, and the goal of the presentation was to share strategies to help SLPs thrive!

Defining Burnout

We started the conversation by defining burnout. (We need to be clear on what we’re dealing with first, right?!)

This is the definition that we worked with:

Burnout is what we experience when we face too much chronic stress over an extended period. It’s characterized by three attributes: exhaustion, cynicism, and a lack of productivity, all at the same time. – Chris Bailey

There were over 2,000 SLPs who joined us live, and burnout is definitely something that is rampant in our field!

Triggers for Burnout

We then broke down the 6 main triggers for burnout.

Six main areas of your work serve as a breeding ground for chronic stress. The worse you are in these areas, the more likely you are to burn out. – Christina Maslach

The six areas are…

1. Workload
2. Control
3. Reward
4. Community
5. Fairness
6. Values

During my presentation, I asked SLPs to rate how much they were impacted by these triggers. We used a 1-10 rating scale. A rating of 1 means that the trigger doesn’t have an impact on the SLP’s burnout, a rating of 10 means that the trigger has a debilitating impact on the SLP’s burnout.

We also did a ton of brainstorming and came up with strategies to address these triggers.

Let’s take a minute to dive into each of the triggers, shall we?

1. Workload

Workload was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 60.2% of SLPs. The average rating was 6.6.

This was rated as the strongest burnout trigger.

1 SLP Workload Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

“The day is not enough to do all the duties we have been given (IEPs, evaluations, transfers, referrals, progress reports, billing, meetings, therapy planning, bus duty, etc.).”
“It’s the extra stuff that doesn’t relate to our work but takes so much of our time. Things like staff meetings, department meetings, Educator Effectiveness, etc.”
“What stresses me the most is that I don’t have time to plan during my planning time.  My planning time is taken up with logging, IEP’s, progress reports, billing, etc.”
“The referrals have been non-stop since returning to in-person learning.”
“I got 5 SLI referrals today.”
“I had to explain to my EC teacher this year how he gets a sub if he’s out but I need to make-up the visits to hit frequency!”
“An added stress this month is the number of make-up sessions I will have for students who are in quarantine… So many!”
“I don’t have time to go to the bathroom or to go out to get lunch!”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

Mindset

“I shifted my mindset. Even though the Medicaid billing is a pain, it makes it possible to go to PD presentations.”

Here’s a blog post all about mindset, if you’re inclined to dive in more!

Therapy Strategies

“I am a big fan of single item therapy. I plan one activity for the entire day and adapt it to the groups (instead of using something different for each group). I used lots of literacy-based therapy.”

I also offer a totally free 5-day challenge to walk you through literacy-based therapy. It includes quick, to-the-point, 5-minute training videos and tools to help you streamline your therapy planning!

Paperwork Strategies

“I schedule time for paperwork in my day.”
“I blocked out one day a week for meetings, evaluations, paperwork, and consultation.”
“I create templates with colleagues for the different documents we need to fill in.”
“I created Google Forms for teacher/parent questionnaires. It saves a lot of time!”
“I have benefitted so much by moving to electronic notes.”
“I write my note while I’m with the student and bill the same day.”

Service Delivery Strategies

“I provide classroom interventions.”
“The multitiered approach can help with this, as long as the admins are on board. Lesley Sylvan has a practical book about this.”
“My district does therapy the first three weeks of the month, and we use the 4th week (if there is one) for make-ups due to SLP absence and school activities (like benchmark testing). We do not make up time for student absences.” ASHA provides some resources, in case you’d like some more detail/clarification on this!
“I reduced the number of weeks I see students yearly. My time is written X minutes/year. I’m doing 25 weeks instead of 30. This allowed me to take assessment weeks, have time for IEPs/report writing, etc. The speech team got together and made this decision in response to increased caseload.”

Advocate

“Put on your big girl pants and speak up for yourself. Don’t worry about being a pain. You are not! You (and your students!) are important.”
“I advocate my yourself. I learned how to say ‘NO’ to the things I can’t handle.”
“I was successful in decreasing my workload by advocating for myself and my students. I created a schedule with lunch, planning, and evaluation time first, then added the students. When I could not fit any other students, I let the director know that those other students did not have an SLP. I was able to get part-time assistance, and I was eventually able to get a full-time SLP. Life has been much better now that we have 2 SLPs at one school.”
“I document my workload on my calendar and fill in the ASHA workload calculator. I show it to my supervisor and cross-reference union agreements.”
“I started putting my regular weekly therapy schedule and blocks for evals and paperwork into my Outlook calendar so my admin can easily see what I’m doing when.”
“I document how much overtime I am working and what work I am doing outside of work. I advocate for myself when asked to take on more. I use data to show why workload is not manageable.”
“I shared with our Board of Education that students were missing 40% of their sessions because I was having to cancel to do evaluations, screenings, IEP meetings.  Based on this data, they hired another SLP.”
“When communicating with administration, I present a solution–rather than just stating the problem.”
“Working in a district with a strong union has definitely been really great for having a reasonable workload.”
“Reach out to your LEA for support, and go up the chain from there.”

Ideas for Support

“My district hires SLPAs to support high workload.”
“We have secretaries that do a lot of the non-skilled paperwork end for us.”
“In my district, we have an admin who handles IEP paperwork and scheduling.”
“We need substitutes. I feel so much stress when I think about if I have to be out for any reason, even if I’m sick.”
“I worked as a contractor in a nonpublic private school.  The therapists did the therapy notes and the SLPA finalized the billing.”

Set Boundaries

“Don’t do your work at home at night, weekends, and breaks.  If it doesn’t get done, maybe admin will get the picture.  We have to stop working on our own time to meet deadlines or keep in compliance.”
“I have stopped bringing ANYTHING home. Now, I am telling parents the caseload reality.”
“SLP’s are not responsible for making up missed sessions at school; your district is responsible.  You’ve earned those personal and sick days! Our state organization recently stressed this!”
“I don’t let myself get behind on billing. I am willing to stay later one night a week, but I set my limit there.”
“I never left school before Medicaid billing was complete. There was no way I was going to bring that home. I did bits and pieces during the day.”

2. Control

Control was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 31% of SLPs. The average rating was 5.1.

2 SLP Control Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

Here’s what some of us are struggling with…

Administrative Support/Understanding

“Two new administrators think they know my job better than I do after 30 years.  THEY DO NOT!  I used to have a much higher caseload and workload, but certain administrators over the years has made many of our lives intolerable.”
“They think they know my job better than me, because I’ve been over 25 years. New admin just has their own judgments and ideas that they are implementing on everyone, regardless of student need.”
“In terms of playing a part in deciding or weighing in on determining district policies, I feel like our SLPs have very little autonomy.”
“It feels like the district bends to parents WAY more than they listen to data, reason, etc. This can be frustrating.”

Ethics

“I’m not able to say ‘no’ to new clients/diagnoses that might be out of my wheelhouse.”
“I work in non-public schools, so there are strict rules that all students are seen once a week for 30 minutes, all pull out and group.”

Scheduling Constraints

“I am having trouble with control because I am preschool inclusion. I rely on trying to fit my students’ needs around the teacher’s daily schedule, and I can’t always get my minutes in due to classroom expectations.”
“I make my own schedule, but there are so many times in the day I’m not allowed to pull students. ALL students have core classes at the same time.”
“I get frustrated that I am scheduled for IEP meetings, even when I have the time blocked out on my ‘public’ calendar for my sessions and district meetings.”
“If my day is completely scheduled with conferences and seeing students, when exactly am I supposed to do paperwork during work?”
“When I worked in private practice, I didn’t have control. They made sure I was always at 85% productivity. (I was seeing clients 34 out of 40 hours.) They made my schedule, and I had no control. They would schedule me 4-5 hours back to back without a break.”

Teacher Training

“I hate having to attend all-day teacher training ‘just because.’ I had reports to write, calls to make, tests to score, therapy planning to do, etc. I feel like I’m sitting there wasting a full day bored and frustrated.”

But we do have a few wins!

“Control is really the only positive for me. I appreciate the flexibility of my job.”
“In terms of my daily work and service delivery modes and methods, I have plenty of autonomy.”
“I’m lucky to be able to create my own schedule and it’s helpful to create time to schedule make-up sessions, paperwork, or meetings.”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

“I take advantage of the opportunity to make my own schedule and determine when my breaks are.”
“Blocking out times during the day made me feel I had more control over documentation and other chores.”
“At the end of the day, I post a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door, turn out the lights, and get the paperwork done for that day.  If teachers come to the door, I leave a message on my sign to make an appointment to speak with me.”
“I strictly manage my caseload so that only those who are in need of therapeutic intervention qualify. Others receive some other type of indirect intervention or consultation. I do this while I keep my fellow SLPs in my district in mind so that I don’t do anything that could potentially increase their caseloads if children move or are assigned to other schools.”
“We have to remember that we have some control over our own caseload.  I am trying to be more thoughtful when writing IEPs to recommend services that will be effective and workable, rather than just the traditional recommendations.  I am doing a lot more push-in and teacher consultations for students who are close to being discharged.  We are the experts and we need to be more comfortable presenting evidence for the service delivery models that are best for our students.  Co-teaching and collaborating with other specialists in the school district has also been helpful. ”

3. Reward

Reward was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 38.5% of SLPs. The average rating was 5.5.

3 SLP Reward Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

We were a little quieter on this trigger, but here are some of the comments related to Reward:

“The pay is stupidly low. Our district is offering a pay raise to subs and we have tons of contract workers who make more than we do, but no raise for us.”
“It just feels like I am not able to do anything well because of being pulled in so many different directions.”
“I got a nice note from a teacher after a meeting yesterday. It was so wonderful!”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

“Because we had a separate group for SLPs, our teacher’s association negotiated for us with our input.  We had a separate salary scale which reflected our level of education.”
“Join the teacher’s union.  Several of our SLPs threatened to quit and now we have ASHA dues and licensure paid. We also get reimbursement for Medicaid billing.”
“I like to send a quick positive email to teachers about a student while the student is still in my room. It takes no time and the student, teacher, and I all feel good.”
“I post those positive notes and pictures in front of me on my bulletin board to remind me that I am appreciated.”
“I keep a folder/envelope of all the positive emails and cards from parents, drawings from students, emails from students, present and former. I refer to these at really challenging times.  I have some really supportive families and students in the midst of all these challenges and that’s where I choose to focus when things are difficult. I have been working for 37+ years as an SLP.”

4. Community

Community was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 27.5% of SLPs. The average rating was 4.8.

4 SLP Community Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

This is clearly a need for many of us…

“I’m the only SLP in my small district.”
“I work at three schools, so community is a tough one for me.”
“Who has time to foster relationships at work when we are working through lunch and every other minute of the day?”
“Working in telepractice in the schools keeps me really separate from others and the sense of community is totally lost.”

However, there were far more positive comments related to Community:

“I love my students. They can make me laugh any day!”
“The community is the part that makes the job worth it for me. I have some great relationships with my coworkers and parents.”
“I get great satisfaction from the connections I have with my students and being able to engage them in a variety of ways. I also enjoy building relationships with the families.”
“I’ve had more parents thanking us for sticking with teaching with all this stuff going on. That has been nice.”
“YES! I love my teachers and they love me!  They learned how to implement strategies, and I learned about their curriculum.”
“I share an office with another SLP and we are constantly collaborating and bouncing ideas off of each other.”
“There are 7 SLPs at my school, and I’m the newest one. Never have I felt like an outsider. They have accepted me with open arms, and the teachers have followed suit.”
“If it weren’t for my fellow SLP’s at work, I don’t think any of us would make it through a week.  I am lucky to work with 5 other supportive SLPs.”
“We have 9 SLPs in a pod in my school, and we support each other emotionally and professionally. It really helps to have people to talk to.”
“The community is one of the main things keeping me in the school setting. Even when I am on speech island, it has way more bridges than when I worked in SNFs with a 90% productivity ‘requirement.'”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

Try New Service Delivery Models

“Co-treatment and push-in model approach helps build a positive community.”
“Push-in really helps teachers learn what we do and value our knowledge. They model what we’ve done, which is a win-win.”

Interns

“I take interns whenever I can. It’s really nice to see everything with fresh eyes.”

Be Intentional

“If you want support, you have to be supportive of others. Take time to say hello, catch up, and offer to help with a simple task.”
“Eating in the staff lounge helped me.”
“I make sure to have lunch with my special ed teachers to just talk about life 2-3 times a week.”
“Phuong Palifox made the recommendation to us to give student ‘shout outs’ regularly. Just 1 per day can make a huge difference in your relationship with parents!”
“When I am feeling overwhelmed and struggling to connect, I take a step back and think of one simple thing that I can do or work on with just one student that could make a difference.  OR I just pick a day or two to just HAVE FUN with my students.  That often does the trick for me!”

What Districts Are Doing

“Our speech department meets once monthly for ‘What Works Wednesdays.’ It gives us the opportunity to share successes, needs, and ideas.”
“My team meets every Wednesday for 1.5 hours to discuss at-risk or current students we support.  Definitely a time to feel connected.”
“My large district is divided into regions. This helps to make our team feel smaller and helps us to build community. Our SLP team also has a Facebook group that we sometimes use to problem solve or to check in with each other.”
“I’m thinking of moving to a larger district that has more SLPs.  I have heard that they get together for PD and get to know each other.”
“I was in a small district where I was the only SLP for K-8. I collaborated with other SLP in the high school sending district. It was great for support and ideas.”

5. Fairness

Fairness was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 38.4% of SLPs. The average rating was 5.5.

This was rated as the second strongest burnout trigger.

5 Fairness Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

Being Seen

“I feel like we are treated like they want us to be isolated robots with the workload.  Do therapy, quickly document and that is all.  But, you know that is not all we do.”
“The School District does not seem to care and is unwilling to work with us.”
“Administrative decisions do not feel fair. The way they treat professional teams is sometimes not equitable. Some professionals are expected to do more workload-wise compared to others. Sometimes the pay is different, too.”
“I feel my coworkers trust my judgment, which is nice! But they also think that I ‘have it easy’, which feels really isolating.”

Unfair Expectations

“Our headstart has 27 evaluations within 30 days, with all of the meetings after school and deadlines within 40 days. No other SLP in the district is required to do IEPs after school!”
“My biggest stressor is the fairness aspect. I don’t understand why admin thinks SLPs need to be trained in a 100 different educational programs. At no time will I be teaching math…”
“I’ve been pulled from providing services multiple times to be a teacher’s aide. It’s not fair to the kids or myself as I then had to complete make-ups.”

Space

“Fairness is my biggest trigger. I would love to have adequate office/therapy space at a school site. Just once. Not a leftover conference room that is shared with others.”
“SLPs are often thought of last. We work in closets and have to work around programs like reading intervention, PE, music therapy, etc. We have to be the most flexible. It doesn’t always feel fair.”
“Our general education counselors have their own offices, while all of the special education service providers have to juggle space and share. It makes us feel less respected and less valued.”

Adequate Services

“I disagree with placement decisions where severely cognitively impaired children are not getting adequate services. Teachers and SLPS feel our opinion doesn’t count with administration, even when we have the data to support our views.”

Billing

“I definitely struggle with the fact that we have to bill Medicaid for our district to get reimbursement for services, yet I don’t get any of that money to better serve my students (e.g., materials, professional development).”
“Our Medicaid reimbursement funds go to pay administrators.”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

“I have found that finding something good to say about the people who may make my job more difficult (and sharing that with them!) can help put the other person in a place to work on the change in dynamic.”
“Ask for what you need. Communicate! Share data and offer potential solutions.”
“I feel I gained a lot of respect by being open to doing staff training and allowing for questions/shadowing.”
“I stopped being an employee of the school systems. There is a lot more freedom in working for a therapy company.”

6. Values

Values was rated as a strong burnout trigger (a score of 7-10 on the rating scale) by 26.8% of SLPs. The average rating was 4.7.

Many of us still connect with our work at a deeper level, which is great news!

6 Values Ratings

How is this showing up for SLPs?

Quality of Services / Making a Difference

“I feel like the students are NOT getting what they should be getting!”
“I’m guessing those that rated value as high did so because when our caseloads are super high, we tend to feel like we are not helping anyone.”
“I have been doing this for over 40 years.  I love doing therapy and I still love planning and trying to come up with new and motivational activities. It is just that with the caseloads, it is not the quality I would like it to be and it is frustrating.”
“If I have 8 kinds in a group working on different skills, am I really providing FAPE? That can really weigh on me when the caseloads are high.”

However, a lot of SLPs shared this as a strength…

“I love my students and I love what I do! The therapy is what I love!”
“I’ve always felt our profession is valued and brings much to others.”
“Helping my students find their voice is my passion, so I always try to go back to that purpose in my job.”
“Seeing a child succeed and have the ‘AH-HA moment(s)’ is REALLY WONDERFUL! Enjoy that moment and savor it!”
“I love to learn. I will never learn everything in the field of speech-language pathology. I also love that I find people in my ‘tribe’ every place I’ve ever worked.”

What are some ideas to work on addressing this trigger?

“I remind myself of why I chose this field in the first place.”
“I find small joys and build from them.”
“I do a daily gratitude journal.”
“I have a folder with all of the cards, notes, drawings, etc. of gratitude I’ve been given over the years. I look at it on the bad days and am reminded of my why!”
“I moved to more of a 3:1 model last year. This year, I am able to see more of my students in the gen ed setting. This allows me to help with generalization and carryover more and allows me to connect more with the staff and help them understand how important what I do is.”
“I developed a private Facebook group for my staff of SLPs to share resources, ideas, and success stories. It was clear that it wasn’t for complaints. Those needed to be handled in a different manner.”
“We need to bring it back to our students every day. They are why we do it. Emphasizing gratitude is important.”
“Making more of a connection with my co-workers and creating a ‘team’ environment has helped me to feel more value as an SLP.”

What now?

We clearly have our work cut out for us! We have a lot of room for growth.

One of the big takeaways from the presentation is to focus on what we can control. We may be able to take some action to address the triggers, but there are some things that we won’t be able to change.

Here’s an exercise that may help…

Take a moment to jot down all of the things that you are struggling with at work.

Which one has the biggest impact on you?

There’s almost always something we can do. We may not be able to fix the problem right away, but is there something we can do to move in the right direction or to decrease the impact?

Check out the suggestions above for some “problem-specific” inspiration.

If there isn’t a solution that makes sense right now, keep reading!

Bonus points if you wrap up this activity by jotting down what you do appreciate about your job.

What can we control?

We may or may not be able to control specific triggers, but we can control our mindset and how much we let these triggers impact us!

I know, I know! This may feel like a silly suggestion when you’re struggling with a really big issue. How in the world will silly little habits like breathing help me with my massive caseload?

Here are some thoughts that SLPs shared in the chat:

“Self-care is so important. I think back to my earlier years about all the worry and anxieties on writing reports/doing IEPs. Just not worth it. Even the simple things (like eating lunch and going to the bathroom) are part of self-care.”
“I was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in September of this school year. I 100% believe that the high level of stress at work as an SLP contributed to this. Self-care is not selfish.”
“I did not take care of myself during my CF year, and now I have an autoimmune disease.  You have to take care of yourself or you end up paying the price.  I learned this the hard way.”
“I was forced to deal with burnout this past month. I got so sick I had to have surgery. All related back to stress.”
“I remember that as much as I love what I do, I want my own life. I didn’t sacrifice and give my life to this career. I know what I’m worth and I have to remember that districts/jobs/clinics need us more than we need them. There are ALWAYS jobs and we have to recognize and accept our own worth and value.”

If we don’t take care of ourselves, how can we expect to keep showing up for our students (and in our lives)?

So what could this look like?

Create a menu of options for yourself. What can you do…
– In the moment (e.g., take a deep breath, turn on some music, think of one thing you’re grateful for)
– When you have a few minutes (e.g., take a walk, meditate, watch a funny YouTube video)
– When you have time to invest (e.g., get a massage, read a book, meet up with friends, take a yoga class, go on vacation)

During the presentation, I shared lots of research on how these types of activities can significantly reduce your stress levels.

Here are some other ideas shared by SLPs:

“I realized changing my perspective has been really beneficial for my mental health.”
“Write and rate goals for yourself just like we do for students. One year my goal was to eat lunch every day.”
“Take all of your personal days. It helps a lot!”
“I stop when I’m too stressed. I take a couple of minutes and put a meditation on my computer while I clean between students. It helped calm me a bit.”
“I actually scheduled bathroom and short breaks in my schedule (with my admin’s encouragement).”
“I downloaded the Balance app on my phone.”
“I love the Piano Yoga playlist on Spotify.”
“I used to keep the word BREATHE on my laptop to remind me to breathe and relax as I worked on my computer. I had a parent ask me at a conference when he saw it if the word was for them. I told them if it helped, go for it!”

Making Changes

Several SLPs shared that they changed their circumstances!

These ideas may not be doable for everyone, but here are some options:

Reducing Hours

“I reduced my work hours to maintain my sanity.  Totally worth it even though getting by on a little less money.”
“I could no longer do the job full-time. I switched to part-time. It was the only way I felt like I could serve my students the way I wanted and also have some work/life balance. The difference in my mental health and job satisfaction has been significant.”

Changing Settings

“I prefer the flexibility of private practice. Part of also being a good SLP is knowing when to say “no.” I have a waitlist going and have just learned I can only take on what I can take on. I have also decided to get less pay and be subcontracted; this means someone else does the billing to various funding sources for me. I just submit my hours for each client. That alone has helped my stress.”

Several SLPs have also switched to teletherapy.

Changing Schools

I didn’t see any specific comments about this, but it is clear that some districts are more supportive than others. Don’t be afraid to explore other options! If you are interviewing at a district, ask to connect with some of the SLPs. This can be a great opportunity to get a feel for what the unique strengths/challenges are for that particular district. No district will be perfect, but you may be able to find a better fit for you and your needs.

Wrapping Up

Whew! That’s a lot!

Remember, meaningful progress is supposed to be slow.

Pick one strategy to start with.

Pick a strategy that feels easy and that you can easily stick to.

You’ll be amazed to see how big of an impact one little thing can have!

You’ve got this, SLP! 💛

15 Speech Therapy Books, Apps, and Toys for Preschool and Early Intervention

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This is a guest blog post by Jennie, a school-based SLP, all about speech therapy materials for preschool and early intervention.

Like with any population, it is so important to have the proper tools to create therapy sessions that are engaging, fun, and meaningful. Below are some of my favorite toys, books, and apps to use with the early childhood demographic. It is crucial to find the right tools in order to be a more confident and successful speech-language pathologist, but I want to emphasize that you don’t need all these things. I find that intentionality and simplicity is key in order to create purposeful and effective therapy.

5 Preschool Book Series for Speech Therapy

Shared book reading is so important for our young students as it sets the tone for not only future reading success, but exposing our students to words that they would not have learned in everyday conversation (Montag, 2015).

5 Preschool Book Series for Speech Therapy

1. Sandra Boynton

Boynton has a myriad of popular books including Moo, Baa, La La La!, Blue Hat, Green Hat, and Barnyard Dance. These books are repetitive, minimal in text and pictures, and overall fun and engaging for the student. That makes these books ideal for targeting basic wh questions, requesting, labeling, and early speech sounds.

2. The Old Lady Series

This series is fantastic for the students who can’t seem to sit still for a story! It is highly engaging and ideal for working on sentence formulation, retelling, and sequencing due to the story’s repetitive nature. There is a book for almost every season, holiday, and theme!

3. How to Catch Series

This series is directed more towards older preschool students. Similar to the Old Lady series, there is a book for an array of holidays and themes. My students love the colorful pictures and following along to the humorous plot while I get to target rhyming, answering wh questions, sequencing, and vocabulary.

4. Lift the Flap Books

There is something just so appealing about lift the flap books. They are extremely interactive and ideal for our students with trouble maintaining attention. These books are also great for incorporating core words such as ‘open, look, turn, find.’ It allows the student to learn by giving them the opportunity to explore. Where’s Spot? as well as Campbell Books are popular books that are ideal for targeting prepositional phrases, naming, and describing.

5. If You Give… Series

This series by Laura Numeroff is an old favorite. There are a variety of books, and the beautiful pictures are terrific for helping our preschoolers to recall characters and events in the story. They also allow you to incorporate sequencing, describing, cause and effect, and increasing sentence length.

4 Apps for Preschool Speech Therapy

As a traveling SLP, I only have so much room in my therapy cart. Although I prefer physical materials for my students, I like to use apps to fill in any gaps I might have in my collection. Below are apps that are affordable, functional, and enjoyable to use.

4 Apps for Preschool Speech Therapy

6. My Play Home (FREE for the basic version, $3.99 for the full version)

If you don’t have enough room to carry a dollhouse around, here is a digital version! This app is incredibly interactive and brilliant for a range of language goals including but not limited to pronouns, turn-taking, following directions, role-playing, sequencing, increasing sentence length, and vocabulary. Doll houses are perfect tools for our early childhood students because they are functional and versatile. My favorite feature of this app is the ability to mirror the app on two devices. This means that you and your student or more than one student can play together within the same app.

7. Toca Boca ($3.99)

Toca Boca makes a variety of apps that your students will undoubtedly enjoy. I personally love using Toca Kitchen, Toca Hair Salon, and Toca World. With Toca Kitchen, you’ll find yourself targeting simple and complex directions, pronouns, commenting, and sequencing while your student feeds an array of questionable foods to their character. Toca Hair Salon will allow your student to be in charge as a hairdresser while also targeting verbs, turn-taking, and labeling. Out of all the Toca Boca apps I have, Toca World would be my favorite because it allows you to have a variety of locations (e.g. farm, stable, school, hospital, etc.) all in one place.

8. Libby (FREE)

If you have a library card then this app can be useful to you. Libby is a free app that allows the user to borrow free ebooks, digital audiobooks, and magazines from your local library. This app is ideal for teletherapists, traveling SLPs, or for someone who needs a particular book when even Amazon Prime isn’t fast enough.

9. Articulation Station ($4-8 per sound or $60 for the full version)

This is an articulation app that is comprehensive with beautiful images, easy ways to track data, a voice recording feature for auditory feedback, and the ability to use in a group session with up to six students. Articulation Station can also be used in language therapy as well! This tool is a great asset to a traveling SLP (no need to carry articulation cards) or when you have multiple students within a group.

Need additional apps? Check out this blog post!

6 Toys for Preschool Speech Therapy

6 Toys for Preschool Speech Therapy

10. Farm Set

An old favorite that not only targets basic speech sounds but also allows you to target functional vocabulary, grammatical concepts (such as plural tenses and present progressives), asking and answering wh questions, prepositions, and increasing sentence length. I personally like to have an array of animals, a few farmers, and other items such as tractors, hay bales, and fences. I also keep a few animals that do not belong on the farm to work on negation and categories.

11. Play Food Set

There are a ton of play food sets out there. I prefer the ones where you can cut the food with a play knife and that comes in its own container, which makes it great to travel with! Bonus points if you can find one that has a sink and stovetop to target even more language and articulation opportunities.

12. Puzzles

I prefer wooden puzzles because they are durable, include fun colors, and our little ones can hold them so much better. Puzzles are ideal for working on turn-taking, naming, answering -wh questions, and sequencing. I find myself using them to reinforce articulation trials as well!

13. PlayDoh

How could you not have PlayDoh in your therapy toolkit? Our students with little hands might have a difficult time opening the lid to the PlayDoh which will create a fantastic opportunity for initiating communication. This tool is not only rich in language opportunities but is fantastic for targeting specific speech sounds such as /k/ or s-blends. For example, you can have your student cut, squeeze, or smash the PlayDoh.

14. Pirate Treasure Chest by Learning Resources

This toy pairs perfectly with mini articulation objects or Mini Brand toys. The student will have the best time locking and unlocking the treasure chests, as well as sorting and matching the trinkets included. I get more natural and spontaneous conversations with my students using this combination of toys.

15. Cosmic Soda Vending Machine

A random little find from Five Below that my students absolutely love! You can target an array of articulation sounds with keywords like coin, soda, machine, cherry, orange, and grape. But fair warning…this toy is LOUD. Feel free to keep the batteries out or put tape over the speaker to muffle the sound.

These are just a few of my favorite therapy materials for the early childhood population. I value quality over quantity when it comes to my therapy materials. I love materials that are easy to travel with, simple to set up, and can be used in multiple ways. Now it’s your turn! What are your favorite therapy materials? Share in the comments below!

References

Montag, J. L., Jones, M. N., & Smith, L. B. (2015). The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning. Psychological Science, 26(9), 1489–1496.

How to Recover from Burnout

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Are you wishing away your days until you get to the next break?

Do you struggle to get out of bed each morning because you’re so overwhelmed?

These are just a couple of signs that you are likely on the verge—or dealing with—full-blown burnout.

While it can be super scary to face the reality that you are seriously burnt out from the profession you chose (not for the fame and fortune, but because you wanted to make a difference) and spent so much time and effort to train for, it’s also comforting to know this is common for SLPs, and you CAN recover from it.

I’ve been there.

I struggled with a crazy workload. My weekends and evenings became an extension of my workday. I was buried in paperwork and didn’t see HOW I would ever get caught up, much less get ahead.

Thankfully, I found that I could implement a bit of self-care and make some simple changes to work smarter, not harder, that made all the difference and made me love being an SLP again.

Let’s get you on the road to recovery from your own SLP burnout.

Fill Your Cup So You Have Enough to Give Your Students

Self-care isn’t selfish, and it’s absolutely essential to keep you going throughout the school year. Here are some things to try:

• Exercise: Make exercise a regular part of your day, even if all you have time for on most days is just a walk around the school property. The fresh air and change of scenery does wonders.
• Journal: Every morning, I jot down five things I’m grateful for in my journal. This is a fabulous way to start the day with the right attitude. I also find that getting any stressful thoughts out of my mind and onto paper helps me process them quicker.
• Hydrate: I know, who has time to pee? But, trust me, your body and mind work better when they are properly hydrated.
• Get rid of clutter: Spend time either at the beginning or at the end of your day to tidy up. Your students and YOU will benefit from a less chaotic environment.
• Gratitude box: Make yourself a gratitude box to store meaningful cards or pictures that you can turn to on particularly difficult days. This will help shift your focus back to the reason WHY you’re an SLP and reinforce the difference you make in the lives of your students.
• Create a support system: It can sometimes feel like you’re all alone as an SLP working in schools. Find ways of connecting with other SLPs, whether it’s organizing a monthly lunch with other SLPs working in your district or by joining a professional learning community.
• Commit to a schedule: One way to reinforce boundaries with yourself and others is to commit to a schedule. Not only will it help you focus and be very productive during your workday, but it also helps others respect your time. There will always be more to do, but in most cases, that paperwork you need to complete will wait another day.
• Stop comparing your SLP journey to others: I also found that when I caught myself in the comparison game or thinking of all the things I “should” do because other SLPs were doing them (spend a few minutes on Pinterest, am I right?), it wasn’t productive.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

The other strategy that I found helped me recover from SLP burnout was to work smarter, not harder.

1. Update your planning tools.

I found that when I had a plan for my therapy sessions, they were much more productive and effective. I created a Therapy Planning Workbook, which is available as part of the SLP Now Membership, that can really help overhaul your practice.

2. Evaluate how you’re collecting data.

Take a second to think about how you’re collecting data. What is working? And what is not working? It’s intimidating to think about changing systems in the middle of the year, but the right system could save you so much time and headache! Check out this post for some inspiration!

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

It’s not necessary for you to reinvent the wheel for your therapy sessions. Why not try some pre-made materials from Teachers Pay Teachers and the SLP Now Membership?

4. Connect with other SLPs.

You’re not in this alone! Angie Merced shares fantastic strategies to help SLPs tackle burnout.

I also did a presentation at the SLP Summit where we define SLP burnout and identify the triggers. The presentation included data and feedback from thousands of SLPs!

5. Collaborate with others.

Sometimes working smarter is all about gaining a new perspective. Talk to the teachers in your school or the administrators about challenging cases, and reach out to your own mentors or other SLPs in social network groups or other professional groups you are part of to get insights about how they manage challenging situations that could apply to what you’re dealing with.

A perfect place to get valuable insight from others is at the SLP Summit, a totally free online conference! There’s still time to register, and I think you’d walk away with renewed passion for being an SLP and some practical tips and tricks to help you work smarter.

If you’ve experienced burnout as an SLP, what helped you recover?