Marisha

Let's wrap up this series on paperwork, shall we? Today we are diving into paperwork time savers that make this job feel sustainable. I have had a lot of conversations with school-based SLPs. we love therapy, but we hate paperwork. We feel like we're drowning, and can't keep up.
burnout is often a systems problem, not a passion problem. A lot of us are not sure if we can continue managing the workload and doing all the things that we're doing, and coming to terms with the struggle between what we think we should be achieving and the progress we should be seeing.
Hopefully this series has given you some ideas and inspiration to decrease that workload a little bit. Whether you're using SLP Now or not, I hope you're walking away with some nice strategies to reduce that overwhelm, reduce the cognitive load, and help you get your paperwork done a little more quickly.
I want to wrap this up by saying that I would love for you to adopt a buffet philosophy. You do not have to do everything. Pick one or two strategies to implement, use them for a while until they feel automatic and easy, and then reflect. Did this actually help or not?
If it didn't help, just don't do it anymore. But if it did help or it seems like it might help, then iterate on that and continue to do one little change at a time. And it can be frustrating because we want to see change immediately. I do think that some of these strategies have the potential to make a huge difference for you, depending on what your biggest struggles are. Just pick one thing at a time. We don't want to add even more stress to our plate. We want to implement these things in a way that reduces our workload and we can breathe a little bit easier, tackle one more thing, breathe a little bit more easily, and continue to iterate.
So we talked about starting with a reflection and identifying the biggest stressors when it comes to paperwork. We'll keep that in mind as we're going through our buffet of options and strategies. In the first episode in the series, we talked about doing a schedule audit and looking at how our IEPs are spread out over the year, and then identifying if there are any super busy months and doing a quick calculation to see what a good goal would be for all of our IEPs. We talked about using checklists and some of the features in SLP Now to streamline the process when it comes to collecting present levels, progress monitoring and parent, guardian, teacher, student input. All of those things, can be organized in one place for you.
We also talked about a folder organization system to help remove some of the clutter off your desk and have one place to keep all of your pending IEP data. And then we talked about creating templates to make our job easier when it comes to writing reports. We also talked about some cool tools, like a text expander and using find and replace.
And then, yeah, we have lots of different options that we can use. Pick the one or two strategies that you feel like you can implement right now. Maybe you just want to start with your reflection, counting the IEPs that you have due, and then trying to figure out what reasonable work blocks would be to get those done.
And working really hard to fit that time into those blocks could be a great starting point. There are lots of options.
Okay, so now let's chat about what this looks like for a school-based SLP with all of these different strategies in action, We would do our initial audit and determine how many IEPs do I have due this year or the remainder of the school year?
And then figure out how many IEPs we would need to get done on a weekly basis, and set our goal. So are we doing three IEPs and one evaluation every week or is there a different number there? we can calculate this by looking at how many IEPs are due throughout the year and dividing it by the number of weeks of school that we have.
And I like to work ahead a little bit. I know that the spring is a busier time of year. That's when the majority of my IEPs are due. I might only have two IEPs due in September, so I would work on one that's not due until October in September.
I would figure out how much time I realistically need to complete that many reports. If I am a newer SLP or in a new district and learning a new system, I might need a little more time initially.
The ultimate goal would be to get our work done during the workday. For some of us, that might be too big of a shift, and we might need a little time to start implementing these strategies so that we can get our reports done more quickly and be more efficient with our time This way, we can start to cut the time after school, before school, on weekends.
And you get to decide. If your hard and fast rule is that you only do work at work, that can be your constraint. You get to figure out, how you're going to make that happen. Creating those constraints can be really helpful because administrators love it when we bring them data so you can say, this is how many students I have, this is how many groups I'm seeing. I have this many blocks of time to get paperwork done. It takes me about this long to complete a report. If the math doesn't math, if you have a bunch of extra hours of work, then that's a great way to ask for support like, these are the different things I'm doing.
And it's more than just therapy and paperwork, of course. But we can, look at our workload and map that onto the calendar. And be like, okay, this is what I have given my caseload. Can we brainstorm? You can bring options. Can I have assistant support to reduce my therapy time a little bit?
Can I reduce my caseload? Just bring some different options to the table, and I think that administrator will be more likely to support us if we come more proactively. And that's a great option. If you're like, die hard, I'm not working outside of the workday, I'm going to make this happen.
That's a great opportunity to advocate for yourself and speak out, more quickly. But if some of us are okay just working a little bit before or after school and setting up some designated blocks to make it happen, that's an option too. You could still use that approach of advocating for yourself like, I've been spending the past six months implementing these strategies to be more efficient with paperwork.
I'm using these systems, I've cut my time down by this much, but I still can't fit it into my workday. Maybe we can present some types of support that You can request and go from there. That's our system of figuring out how many IEPs we're doing in a given week. At the beginning of the month, I look through and audit the IEPs that are due this month as well as the evaluations.
And then I make sure. the two a week cadence is going to work. It might be that I need to front load a certain week. If the IEPs are not spaced out correctly. Like I mentioned I try to front load with my calculation. If there are 20 weeks remaining in the school year, I might divide by 17 instead. If the number of IEPs is 2.6, I might round up to three just to ensure I'm working ahead of time.
That's what I do at the month level, just make sure that I'm going to be able to get everything done on time and that I have the blocks set aside. And then I'll go ahead and create all the folders for the month. I like to use poly folders, and a dry erase marker. Write each student's name and jot down the due date.
I just have those folders ready to go. I typically start to receive work samples and consent forms around that timeframe. So I set those up ahead of time. Then on a weekly basis, I will identify the IEPs that I am focusing on and set my goal.
And then I put those three folders front and center. Any time I have paperwork time. I'll work through the student who's due first. I'll work on that IEP first. That folder includes all the information that I need. If I get to a point where I'm waiting on information, or I can't do anything, then I go to the next student and repeat.
And those work blocks are more efficient if I have task templates ready to go. We talked about having a printable checklist or using the workload feature in SLP Now for digital task lists. The workload feature in SLP Now includes pre-made forms that you can send to parents, guardians, teachers, and students.
It also includes progress monitoring tools to help with data and best practice based checklists to make the process easier We also have a printable version if you'd rather use that. At the beginning of the month, if a student's IEP is coming up, in SLP Now you just click a button and it creates a new IEP checklist for them. You can choose to use our template or create your own. I just click all of the students' templates. I would probably send out all of the forms at that time, just so that I have them ready to go.
Once the forms come in, that task will automatically be completed. Then there's tasks for present levels, all of that. I just check, each student's task list whenever I have time to work on that student's IEP and just go through until everything is done. And then I'm able to wrap up the IEP within my work blocks for the week.
And then, in terms of writing of IEPs and evaluations faster. We talked about building templates using a text expander and using find and replace as a tool.
If you wanna check out the previous episode, I go into more detail on how that works. But when we have these types of systems where like on the first of the month, like the first Monday of the month, we know that we're gonna set up our folders and create our task list.
And then we know that anytime we have paperwork block, we just grab the folder for the student who's due next and start working through that. Paperwork feels much less heavy when you have a reliable and repeatable, easy system to just get this stuff done and make it easy and efficient.
Eventually as you build this out, you get to leave work at work and get your reports done and feel really good about the quality. Some of us are able to get our work done efficiently, but we don't feel super confident. This was me a few years into being an SLP, I had a good process down.
I didn't feel that confidence and by refining your templates that resolves that issue. I'm super excited that all of these tasks that used to be manual now live in one connected system in SLP Now. So you can track your IEPs and evaluations, send secure forms, monitor progress, review, data, easily generate progress notes, and use that, progress review for your IEP. It makes you much more confident because you're not having to make up any data. It's right there.
You have easy access to your graphs, exactly how your students are doing. You have high quality forms, progress monitoring tools, like those are things that can really boost your confidence, and streamline your paperwork time. So paperwork can feel manageable and being a school-based SLP can feel sustainable.
It is totally possible and something that is realistic. We've got thousands of SLPs in SLP Now who are achieving this and who are using SLP Now to streamline their workload, get IEPs and evaluations and progress done in record time with superior quality They're legally defensible IEPs and really high quality data backed.
So I invite you to check out the free trial of SLP Now, if you're looking for some support to implement this, just go to slpnow.com/pod and you can start with our paperwork course which includes a quick workbook that helps you walk through the process we've been chatting about this month.
You also get access to our workload feature, our forms, and our principal checklist, if you prefer that. I built SLP Now because I was drowning as a school-based SLP, and I want you to have the support that you need Paperwork is one of the big sticking points. We really want to make that easier.
So that is a wrap on our paperwork series. Thank you so much for hanging out, and we'll see you in the next episode.

How to Write IEPs & Evaluations Faster (Without Sacrificing Quality)

February 17, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you want to write your IEPs and speech therapy evaluations faster without sacrificing clinical quality, the secret isn’t typing quicker—it’s eliminating “blank page syndrome” by using standardized systems like report-readiness checklists, shared template banks, and text expanders. By shifting from writing reports from scratch to utilizing predictable frameworks, you can dramatically cut down your paperwork time.

Let’s normalize the dread that comes with opening up your IEP software and staring at a blank page. The blinking cursor, the looming deadlines, the scattered data—it all creates immense pressure. For many school-based speech-language pathologists, the biggest time drain in paperwork isn’t the clinical analysis; it’s simply getting started.

When our working memory is overloaded by trying to remember evaluation scores, track down teacher input, and recall how we phrased that great PLAAFP statement three months ago, we lose our momentum. If you are ready to make report writing manageable again, check out a free trial at slpnow.com/pod to access our time-saving progress note generators and paperwork courses.

Why IEPs and Evaluations Feel Harder Than They Should

Most documentation inefficiencies for SLPs fall into three categories:

Rewriting the same explanations and test descriptions over and over.
Searching for fragmented data across emails, sticky notes, and filing cabinets.
Rebuilding the basic structure of reports from scratch each time.

The good news? Writing faster does not mean lowering your standards. ASHA emphasizes that accurate documentation is a core professional responsibility, and utilizing systems doesn’t replace your clinical thinking—it protects it.

6 Steps to Faster IEPs and Evaluations

1. Use a Report-Readiness Checklist

Before you write a single word, confirm you have all the required inputs. The Report-Readiness Checklist prevents you from getting stuck halfway through a report because you are missing a piece of data. Your checklist should include:

Teacher and parent input.
Recent progress monitoring data.
Baseline and current performance levels.
Evaluation results and interpretation notes.

2. Build a Shared Template Bank

Stop reinventing the wheel every time you write a report. Create a Shared Template Bank (using a simple Google Doc) that lists all the headings of your IEP or evaluation. Under each heading, paste your “best of” wording examples. This is an incredible activity to do with the other SLPs in your district so you can collaborate on strong, legally defensible language.

3. Use Fill-in-the-Blank Frameworks

Templates are powerful when they guide your clinical thinking. The Fill-in-the-Blank Framework ensures you never miss a required component. For example, a standard PLAAFP framework should prompt you to include:

Student strengths.
Specific areas of need.
Data sources and current performance levels.
Educational impact.
Instructional implications.

4. Set Up Text Expanders

If your district allows it, text expanders are a game-changer. By assigning a short keyboard code to a long block of text, you can instantly populate your templates. Typing .gfta could instantly expand into your full Goldman-Fristoe test description and analysis framework, saving you minutes of repetitive typing per report.

5. Prevent Errors with The Placeholder Method

Working quickly with templates can sometimes lead to copy-and-paste errors, like leaving the wrong student’s name in a report. Protect your quality by using The Placeholder Method:

Use *** for the student’s name.
Use ** for standard pronouns.
Use * for possessive pronouns.

When you finish your report, simply use the “Find and Replace” function (Command + F or Control + F) to safely swap all placeholders with the correct information.

6. Streamline Progress Notes with Centralized Data

Progress note season often means early mornings, late nights, and working weekends. But what if your data was already centralized? When your progress monitoring data is automatically graphed and easily accessible, interpreting that data is incredibly fast.

Tools to Make Paperwork Calmer

Paperwork doesn’t have to be the part of your job that drains your energy. Systems don’t replace clinical thinking; they protect it from cognitive overload. Small systems compound quickly!

If you want to access tools that automatically generate your progress notes in seconds, graph your data, and provide complete documentation support, SLP Now was built specifically for you. Start a free, two-week trial today to explore the Paperwork Course inside the SLP Now Academy and get your time back:

👉 https://slpnow.com/pod

Transcript

Welcome back to the SLP Now Podcast. We are continuing our series on paperwork, and today we are diving into how to write reports faster without sacrificing quality. First of all, let's just normalize the dread that comes with opening up your IEP software and staring at a blank page. We can call it blank page syndrome.
Especially as a newer SLP, this is what I really struggled with because I would be stressed about all of the IEPs and evaluations that I had due. I felt immense pressure to get a lot done super quickly. My brain was just so overwhelmed. I wasn't feeling super confident, and I would just stare at the page and see that blinking cursor and it's like, what do I write?
So we are going to chat about some strategies to streamline your report writing process, boost your confidence, and help you get things done much faster. I've talked to a lot of SLPs about the struggle with paperwork and some things that SLPs have said that make it a little bit tricky is that it feels like we have to start from scratch.
We rewrite the same things over and over. We might be digging through our files of oh, I did a really nice job talking about this in the report that I did maybe three months ago, but which student was it? Where is that report? Trying to dig through and find that good example. And some of it might be around, remembering information about how the student is performing, evaluation data, progress monitoring data, having to dig for that information.
Especially when it comes to the PLAAFP statement. I forgot to get feedback from the teacher, or I forgot to collect data on this goal. And you're just kind of all over the place, realizing that you have missing data and trying to grab that data and it's just a little bit of a messy process.
The tips we shared last time about having a checklist ready can help streamline this process. You can ensure that when you are sitting down to do your IEP, you have all the information you need ready to go and it's easily accessible.
So the tips we shared last time again will help make this a little bit easier. But one other tool that is incredibly helpful is to build some templates. This would be an amazing activity to do With the SLPs in your district, if you can all come together, create a shared document, and then list all of the different parts of your IEP.
So whatever boxes you have to fill in, make those headings. under each heading have different examples. People can copy and paste examples and vote on which ones are the best. Do some cleanup together.
Whether you're doing this with your whole group of SLPs or a small group., each SLP could plug in examples they feel good about.And you can workshop that together to decide which examples are good to stay.
And then, you would have examples of different scenarios you might come across. You obviously won't create a template for every possible scenario, but if you have a couple starting points, you can copy from the template and paste it in and make adjustments.
Even basic components with fill in the blank sections make your report writing time easier because instead of staring at a blank page, you have something to copy and paste. It gives you momentum and you know your students you are an awesome speech language pathologist. You just need a little bit of a jumpstart to get the process going. And once you have that jumpstart, it's so much easier to fill in the information because you're not being overloaded. By implementing these tips, you'll be able to be calm when you're sitting down to write. And if you have these templates on top of it, it'll just make your report writing so much more fun, because then you can focus on the student. It's exciting to be able to provide a student with support and reflect on where they've been. If we're doing an evaluation, we get to nerd out about what we found and how we can support that student. So paperwork really can be an exciting activity.
And it's just an incredible way to support our students and use our clinical thinking to figure out the best plan for the student. By using the systems we've been talking about and having this template, it makes it so much better.
If you don't have a team of SLPs to work with, you can use the same Google Doc. Write down all of the sections in your IEP. Anytime you feel like, oh, I like this statement. Paste it into your templates and over time you'll have a really strong document to reference.
While you're listening to this, you can open up a Google Doc, pull up an IEP, list the different sections that you have to fill in. You don't have to start plugging in the information just yet, but that's something that you can do right now, and it'll only take you a few minutes.
Anytime you sit down to write an IEP, do a quick review and plug in that information.
I started building my Google Doc template when I was a CF and my template gotvery extensive over the years, ending up being hundreds of pages which made it hard to find anything. There are a couple of tips I want to share.
The first one is to use a text expander. Once you have your template solidified, you can use a tool called Text Expander.
But do check with your district, to make sure that they approve that and that it's okay. There's also some built-in options, like in your browser that you might be able to use as well. But the idea is that you create a shortcut. For example, if I administer, and hopefully your district software includes a template, but let's say I administered the GFTA.
I have a template that I use to explain what the GFTA is and it has fill in the blank spots for different data and analysis. So I type dot GFTA on my keyboard. And I program this into the text expander. Anytime I type dot GFTA, it makes this little noise, it goes like bloop, and then it expands that text and automatically plugs my whole template. You can use this for test descriptions and analysis. You can also use it for different sections of your PLAAFP statement, and all of the different boxes in the IEP that you have to fill in. If you have to do manual typing, if there's not a dropdown, you can use the text expander to make this easier. Now, if your district has software with built in templates, you might not need to do this. The same goes for the template document. If you're not writing a lot from scratch, this might not be worth it. But, many of us don't have access to those time saving tools in our IEP software.
It's really nice even if we only have templates for a few things, it's a lot easier to just type in that quick code versus opening up your template document, going to the right section, copying it, pasting it in. It took me maybe 30 seconds to explain that process, but instead of doing all of that, you could just type in a quick code, which takes two seconds and it automatically fills it in for you.
Another thing that you can do is when you're setting up your templates to make it easier for yourself. Do not accidentally put another student's name in your report. So when you're creating those templates, whether you're using a Google Doc or a text expander, remove students' names and use three asterisks for the student's name.
For pronouns I will put two asterisks, and for possessive pronouns, I'll put one. I will use find and replace. On a Mac, it's command F to open the find feature or control F on a PC. First type in three asterisks then type in the student's name and it'll automatically replace all three asterisks with the student's name.
Then you rinse and repeat for the pronouns too. That helps ensure you don't accidentally put wrong names in the report or use the wrong pronoun. It's a nice way to make sure you're getting the right information. And protects you on days when you're really tired, so you won't make those silly mistakes.
That's what I would do for my IEPs and evaluations. When it comes to progress notes, if you are using SLP Now to collect data, we have a feature that generates your progress notes for you. You choose a few options and let us know what you want your progress note to look like, and then you click through.
We automatically load your graphs for the student. You pick from a dropdown menu like, the student is making slow progress. The student met the goal. We have different options. You can also add your own wording if you have a certain way you like to use, but then you just click the dropdown and then click the next goal.
Click. click, click, and you can generate your progress notes in a matter of seconds. It's all templatized and your data is right there for you. You don't have to go digging for it, and try to interpret a bunch of data sheets and sticky notes. That is a huge time saver when it comes to paperwork.
Progress note week is something that can be very stressful, but what if you could sit down and get all of your progress notes done in an hour or two? Instead of spending a week or two working early mornings, nights, and weekends to get it done.
But now with this feature, it's possible to get it. Just sit down for an hour and knock 'em all out. Make sure to check out the free trial of SLP Now. I have been in your shoes and I was managing a triple digits caseload and all of the tools that we built into SLP Now were created for school-based SLPs like me and you who are feeling super overwhelmed and need some, support. I created these tools to make my job easier, and I hope that they do the same for you. You can access the Academy and the Paperwork course, to get the workbook, the PD hours, and give you more support in starting to set this up.
Or if you're interested in our progress note feature, you can try that out. The free trial, there's no strings attached. You just send your name and email and set up a password and then you have access to everything for two weeks. Let us know if you have any questions and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.

SLP Paperwork Organization That Actually Works (Without Creating More Work)

February 10, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you’re drowning in IEPs, progress notes, and evaluation forms, the secret to clearing your desk isn’t a Pinterest-perfect filing cabinet. It’s a simple, highly functional routine: combining a “one-folder-per-student” system with a standardized checklist, sorted strictly by due date. By utilizing The 5-Step SLP Paperwork System, you can instantly eliminate decision fatigue, keep your workspace clear, and ensure no vital step slips through the cracks.

Ready to make SLP paperwork easier? Start your free trial of SLP Now at slpnow.com/pod.

The Problem with “Visual Clutter” on an SLP’s Desk

We know the feeling all too well. You sit down to write an IEP, but your desk is covered in papers. You see a progress note you forgot to submit, an evaluation you need to schedule, a teacher feedback form you printed two weeks ago, and a sticky note reminding you to follow up on… something.

That visual clutter quickly turns into decision fatigue. When your brain has to process 15 different pending tasks at once, it becomes incredibly difficult to focus on just one. The goal isn’t to create an aesthetically perfect setup; it’s to build a system that helps you work faster, feel calmer, and get back to doing what you love.

The 5-Step SLP Paperwork System

Ready to work smarter, not harder? Here is the exact, easy-to-maintain workflow that keeps your paperwork moving efficiently.

1. Use One Folder Per Pending IEP or Evaluation

This is the simplest strategy that makes the biggest difference. Create one dedicated folder for each student with a pending IEP or evaluation. Any time you get a piece of paper—a parent input form, a work sample, or a scribbled note from a hallway conversation—you immediately place it in that specific folder. When it’s time to sit down and write the IEP, everything you need is already gathered in one place.

2. Use a Hanging File Organizer

To keep your desk clear, store these folders in a hanging file organizer (either hanging on a wall or sitting upright on your desk). If you love color-coding, go for it! But the real magic isn’t the colors—it’s the fact that every student’s paperwork is contained, labeled, and allows for quick grab-and-go access.

Pro Tip: Use a dry-erase marker to write student names on the folders so you can easily reuse them throughout the school year!

3. Create “The Catch-All Folder”

Sometimes you receive a document for a student before they are officially in your active evaluation or IEP workflow. Instead of letting it land in a random pile, create one specific folder labeled The Catch-All Folder (or “Incoming Papers”). Drop stray items there until you are ready to create that student’s official folder. This one habit prevents crucial papers from disappearing into the abyss.

4. Organize by Due Date

This step is the ultimate cure for decision fatigue. Place the folder that is due soonest at the very bottom (or front) of your organizer. When you have a paperwork block, you simply grab the next folder in line. There is no debating, no sorting, and no wondering, “What should I do first?” The decision is already made for you.

5. Pair Your Folders with a Checklist

Folders organize your papers; checklists organize your brain. If you’ve ever scrambled at the last minute because you forgot to grab a language sample, a standardized checklist changes everything. Instead of trying to hold 15+ complex steps in your memory, you just follow the list. If it’s on the checklist, you don’t have to think about it.

Digital vs. Printable Checklists: Which is Right for You?

Every SLP’s brain works a little differently, so choose the format that reduces the most friction in your day:

Printable Checklists: Print and laminate your checklist so it’s reusable with a dry-erase marker, or keep a stack of printed checklists and toss one each time an IEP is finished.
Digital Checklists: Use a digital system where tasks load automatically, progress is tracked without sticky notes, and student forms are stored securely in one paperless hub.

Ready to Streamline Your SLP Paperwork?

If you want a done-for-you digital system to make this entire process effortless, SLP Now has you covered. Inside the platform, you’ll find pre-made IEP and evaluation checklist templates, secure digital forms for parents and teachers, and automated reminders built specifically for real school-based SLP workflows.

👉 Start your free trial at slpnow.com/pod. (No credit card required!)

When you sign up, you’ll also get instant access to our comprehensive paperwork course, complete with a workbook, time-saving templates, and the opportunity to earn PD hours!

Transcript

Hello there and welcome back to the podcast. Let's continue our series on paperwork. Today we are going to chat about paper organization that actually works without creating more work. If organization makes you feel overwhelmed. You are not alone, especially when it comes to organizing paperwork.
But if you're like me and you're excited about the idea of some organization tips and strategies, either way, I am excited to share some strategies that you can use. Organization should make your job easier, not harder. Especially on Instagram, we'll see these beautiful color coded boxes and systems.
Some of them take a ton of work to maintain, and maybe look prettier than they are functional. And of course, this varies. Every SLP is different and needs different types of systems. There's definitely nothing wrong with color coding. I do love a good color coded system, but our focus in this episode is going to be on things that make your job easier.
We wanna cut any of the unnecessary fluff of things that you don't need. So let's chat about how we organize all of these pieces of paper that we have pending at any given time. How I like to set up my paperwork, because there's nothing worse than having your desk be covered in papers. And anytime you're sitting down to work on an IEP or an evaluation, having to dig through all of the things on your desk and the mental overwhelm of trying to sit at your desk and focus on one thing, but then you see this IEP, this evaluation, and this progress note. I think having a clear desk is one of those strategies.
And of course, you know yourself best. If that doesn't negatively impact you, then you don't have to worry about this. We'll talk a little bit about strategies on how to choose what to focus on. If you have a hard time finding the right papers and if you are getting overwhelmed by all of the papers on your desk, this is for you. What I like to do is I have one folder per pending IEP or evaluation. I put all of the relevant information in there. A lot of it is actually digital now because I used to use it to collect forms, but my forms are digital now.
My progress monitoring is now digital. If I have any work samples, I might have consent forms, if I am collecting any papers, they go into that student's folder, like their IEP folder or their evaluation folder. Every time I get a piece of paper, I stick it in the appropriate folder.
It takes me no time at all. I'll share a link and a picture in the show notes, but I like to use this hanging file organizer. It has color coded folders, which is great. It's hanging on my wall and I use a dry erase marker to write the student's name so I can erase it when I'm done and use it for the next IEP. I use that to organize all of the pending paperwork. If I receive something for a student's IEP I just stick it in the appropriate folder. I have everything I need in one place.
It keeps my desk clean. It helps me keep track of all the things. If you receive something ahead of time before a student's IEP is due, and before that IEP or evaluation is in your queue, you can have one catchall folder for all the work samples and other documents.
And then whenever you're setting up a new IEP folder, you can look through that and make sure that you don't have anything for that student. The folders are organized by due date. Whatever IEP is due first is on the bottom. Anytime I have a paperwork block, I grab the folder on the bottom and open up my checklist in SLP Now, and I do as many items as I can for that student's IEP.
If I run out of time, I'll just put the folder back and pick up where I left off next time. If I get through all of the items for that student and still have some time left, I'll grab the next folder and work on that IEP. I'll continue that process until I'm all caught up or out of time.
We just rinse and repeat during every paperwork block. I don't have to waste any time deciding what to work on. It's already decided for me. The big cognitive load relief trick here is using a checklist, which is incredibly helpful if you feel the massive mental load of trying to keep track of all the tasks.
If you are like me and forget certain steps, like, grabbing a language sample for each IEP, that's something I would often forget and scramble last minute to do If that is on your checklist, you're less likely to forget.
Or if your district has specific steps once you complete an IEP, that can help you keep track of the process and keep things straight. If it's on your checklist, you don't have to think about it. You just reference the checklist and do it when it comes up and then you're good to go.
Checklists help us reduce errors, prevent last minute scrambling. With a system like I just described, you can move through things quickly. They help create momentum and support you as an SLP in making paperwork more manageable and ensuring high quality, information and that we're not forgetting important steps. I'm going to tell you about, how I set this up digitally, but we also have a printable checklist if you prefer not to have a digital system. This is included in the free trial of SLP Now as well.
If you search checklist in the materials library, there's an editable printable version. I give a sample of what the steps might look like for an IEP or an evaluation, but you'll want to check with your district and consider those requirements, so you can customize it to fit your needs. If you prefer not to do digital, you can print the checklist. Laminate it so it's reusable and use a dry erase or wet erase marker. Or you can have a stack of paper checklists and toss them every time you're done. If you use the printed checklist, mark off the steps as you complete them.
And that works really well. In SLP Now, we also have a workload feature and pre-made templates that are best practice informed. We include parent guardian forms, teacher forms, easy ways to collect information needed for an IEP or evaluation.
The form is created for you. You just have to grab the link and share it with the parent, guardian teacher, or whoever else you need feedback from. We also have student forms. It's set up in a secure way.
That information automatically gets loaded to your account. They also include progress monitoring tools, so you can do that all digitally. And it includes reminders for the important steps in the IEP and evaluation process. You can also create your own list. So if you don't love the template, it's just a place for you to start. but you can create your own list and add your own custom tasks. Every time an IEP is due, you would just click the button to create that checklist It automatically loads all of those tasks, and then you send off the forms.
You can see when the forms come in, and use that to manage your process and make it streamlined. That is just a quick peek at how you can get your paperwork process more organized. Again, I mentioned the free trial to SLP. Now. If you go to slpnow.com/pod, you can access the paperwork course that includes a workbook and templates. You can take a quiz and get PD hours. It also includes access to the workload tools if you want to give that a try and test it out. You would just enter your name and email, create a password, and then no credit card required, no strings attached.
This is a good opportunity to check out the course, grab some of those time saving templates, and maybe try out this digital task management system. That's what we've got for you today. We'll see you next week, and we'll chat about increasing our report writing time without sacrificing quality.
Can't wait to see you there.

SLP Paperwork Planning: How to Decrease Overwhelm

February 3, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you’re feeling crushed by the sheer volume of IEPs, progress reports, and evaluations, the most effective way to regain control is by implementing The Backward Planning Framework combined with non-negotiable Time Blocking. By shifting from a reactive scramble to a proactive paperwork schedule, you can decrease overwhelm, ensure deadlines are met effortlessly, and finally stop bringing your work home on the weekends.

Try the SLP Now free trial at slpnow.com/pod to access the Paperwork Course + workbook and start building your system.

The Reality of the SLP Paperwork Pile

Let’s be honest: you didn’t become a Speech-Language Pathologist to spend all day staring at forms and writing reports. Yet, with high caseloads and endless compliance requirements, paperwork can easily consume your schedule. When we don’t have a solid plan in place, we end up writing IEPs during our lunch breaks or trying to decipher hastily written data notes on a Sunday afternoon.

The good news? The amount of paperwork isn’t going to change, but how you manage it absolutely can. Planning your paperwork intentionally is the key to working smarter, not harder.

3 Strategies to Master Your Paperwork Planning

To reduce decision fatigue and keep your desk clear, try implementing these proven scheduling strategies into your weekly routine.

1. Implement The Backward Planning Framework

Don’t wait until the week an IEP is due to start working on it. Instead, look at your month ahead and identify every due date. From there, work backward to create mini-deadlines for yourself. For example, if an IEP is due on Friday the 20th:

Two weeks prior: Send out parent and teacher input forms.
One week prior: Collect updated baseline data and language samples.
Three days prior: Draft the present levels and proposed goals.

Breaking the massive task into bite-sized milestones prevents the dreaded night-before panic.

2. Protect Your Time Blocks

If you don’t schedule your paperwork time, other tasks will inevitably swallow it up. Look at your master schedule and carve out dedicated, non-negotiable blocks of time strictly for documentation. Whether it’s 30 minutes at the start of your day or a larger block on Friday afternoons, protect this time fiercely. Close your email, shut your door if you can, and focus solely on the task at hand.

3. Batch Similar Administrative Tasks

Task-switching drains your brain’s energy. Instead of writing one IEP, answering an email, and then prepping materials, try task batching. Spend one entire planning period just scoring assessments. Spend another block only drafting goals. By keeping your brain in the same “mode,” you’ll work much faster and make fewer mistakes.

Stop Taking Paperwork Home

You deserve a healthy work-life balance, and having a clear, actionable paperwork plan is the first step to achieving it. You don’t have to overhaul your entire life—just start by backward planning your next three IEPs and see how much lighter your workload feels.

Ready to Streamline Your SLP Paperwork?

If you want a done-for-you digital system to make planning and documentation effortless, SLP Now has you covered. Inside the platform, you’ll find everything you need to automate your data collection, generate beautiful progress graphs, and manage your caseload without the headache.

👉 Start your free trial at slpnow.com/pod. (No credit card required!)

When you sign up, you’ll also get instant access to our comprehensive paperwork course, complete with time-saving templates and the opportunity to earn PD hours to help you conquer your to-do list once and for all!

Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. I am looking forward to kicking off this series all about paperwork. We have a series of four episodes designed to help you reduce your overwhelm around paperwork and to give you some practical tips and strategies to lighten the load. In this first episode, we are kicking off with paperwork planning and how to use a planning system to decrease your overwhelm.
So before we dive into some practical tips and strategies, let's start chatting about how things actually are. A lot of us dread paperwork. We wake up in the middle of the night, Waking up from a nightmare that we forgot to do a certain piece of paperwork or that we're called into a meeting and had no idea the IEP was coming up and all sorts of nightmares, even if we're generally on top of our paperwork.
I find that this has been a common thread across a lot of my SLP friends. Even if we're not having nightmares about paperwork, it's something that we always carry mentally. We're juggling all these deadlines in our heads thinking about doing this for Johnny and this for Isaac, it's a lot of mental load and I can absolutely relate to feeling really behind. especially when I was carrying a triple digit caseload, I never felt caught up. It was incredibly mentally draining I was not very efficient either because I was so stressed about paperwork.
It took me way longer than it should have. I forgot to do certain things and it was just a little bit messy. After refining my process and figuring out what worked and what didn't, I'm excited to share some of that with you. We are going to be chatting about different strategies to decrease those open loops of deadlines, swimming through our head nonstop, help reduce decision fatigue and help you prioritize and make the most of your therapy.
The first step in that process is to do an inventory of your paperwork. Before we fix anything, we need to know what paperwork workload we're dealing with and where the stress is coming from. Some reflection questions to think about.
Are you meeting deadlines? Are you confident in the quality of your paperwork? How much work are you taking home? What type of paperwork causes the most stress? Is it IEPs, evaluations, progress notes? Jot down some answers to help you understand exactly where you're at.
And this isn't about judgment, it's about clarity. So you can decide what you need to prioritize, because we're going to be doing a whole month of strategies. If you're really struggling with the confidence and the quality of your reports, you might want to focus on different strategies than if you are taking work home all the time.
Or if you're really stressed about IEPs, you might focus on those first. Just jot down your initial thoughts. In the SLP Now Academy, we have a paperwork course that includes a workbook with all of these questions and some additional reflection tools, as well as other resources to help you on the paperwork journey.
And you can access that totally free by signing up for a trial. So if you're interested in that, go to slpnow.com/pod. That'll take you to the registration page. You just enter your name and email and a quick password, and then you have access to the Academy course as well as a bunch of other resources.
And you don't have to enter a credit card or anything. If you're, looking for additional support. that's a great place to go. Step two is our schedule audit and the course workbook. the Paperwork Course workbook in the Academy also includes some templates to help you with your audit.
What you want to do is list your upcoming IEPs and evaluations and group them by month. If you're using SLP Now to manage your caseload, most SLPs enter the IEP and evaluation date. When setting up their caseload. you can filter for, show me all the IEPs due in February, March, April, May, etc. Then you can jot down, I have 10 due in February, 15 in March, and so on. This gives you an overview of the rest of the year at a glance. You can use these numbers for a couple different things.
This will help you see which months are going to be busiest. If one month is significantly higher than others, you might want to plan ahead and front load some of your IEPs. If you have 20 IEPs due, in May, maybe you ask for some extra support.
Whether it's asking your administrator for SLP support or decreased therapy time, maybe having an assistant. If that doesn't feel realistic you can also ask for support at home or just lower expectations.
Instead of having a home cooked meal every night, you get some easier meals set up for yourself, so you can plan ahead that way and brainstorm what makes the most sense for you. And then another thing that you can do is if you know how many IEPs you have until the end of the school year, you can divide that by the number of weeks left in the school year too.
Let's say I have 30 more IEPs left and we have 10 weeks of school. I can do 30 divided by 10. That tells me, I should be able to complete about three IEPs a week.It takes me about this amount of time to do that many IEPs. Set aside time in your schedule to make that happen. If you are very overloaded and you're working early mornings, nights, weekends, it might not be realistic to suddenly shift from working extra hours to only doing work at work. Sometimes that can be a really overwhelming goal to set. If you've been taking reports home and working all hours, it might not be realistic to get this done during the school day.
Wherever you can plug in blocks of time to work on paperwork during the school day, that'll be amazing because over time, especially over the course of this series, you'll get faster at your paperwork and you'll be able to get done more in less time.
Eventually those paperwork blocks will be more efficient and you can decrease some of your early morning, evening, and weekend work blocks. If I know that, my workload is really heavy right now I need to figure out a way to make it more manageable. I just told myself, okay, I'm going to get to school a little bit early every day. I am going to use that as my paperwork block before the students come in, before the teachers start knocking on my door. That'll be my focus time.
You can also create focus time for yourself during the school day. Close the door, put up a sign, put on your headphones when you're in the focus zone. Just protect that time for yourself,
Before school, during school, after school, whatever it might be. That is the recommendation in terms of your schedule audit and examples of how you might use that audit to help you make this a little bit easier. By planning ahead of time, it gives you some options. You can try and ask for support or communicate with your admin.
If you share specific numbers, they might be able to offer some potential solutions. They're more likely to help you too, versus if they just check in with you and you're in the middle of a crazy paperwork week and you're like, I'm drowning in paperwork. There's not much they can do to help. The same goes at home if you can put some meals in the freezer so you have some easy go-tos or see if its in the budget to eat out a little bit more .
Planning is deciding when we're going to work on things and not doing everything.
Sometimes we have 15 IEPs due in a month, and we're thinking about all of those But if you set up your system with an audit like, every week doing three IEPs and one evaluation, you can test to make sure that pace will help you meet your deadlines.
You may have to work ahead a little bit or set your goals per month. if you make that decision for yourself ahead of time, like every week I'm going to focus on three IEPs and one evaluation. Then, you know, okay, I only have to think about these four pieces of paperwork instead of trying to think about all of the pieces at once.
That can help reduce anxiety by a lot because it reduces that mental load. Instead of spinning between 10 different IEPs, we're really focused on those three and get them done much faster than if we were trying to split our attention.
Having a system like this holds your deadlines for you and makes planning actually doable. You're not having to reinvent the wheel every week or every month. You know what your goals are, and you have blocks set aside to make them happen. We're gonna talk about even more systems throughout this month to make the most of your time blocks.
This is just our intro episode, but as we go through the series, I'm going to share what this looks like for me and how I set it up and how I'm able to meet my weekly and monthly goals and get work done in a very balanced and calm way. I mentioned the free trial previously, but if paperwork is living rent free in your head, the SLP Now free trial is a safe space to experiment with some different planning and systems and it doesn't have to be a commitment to overhaul everything.
And like I said before, we have a paperwork course that includes a workbook. You can take a quiz at the end for PD hours, but it walks you through some systems and gives you instant access to some tools to help you implement this. Feel free to go check it out at slp now.com/pod and we will see you in the next episode.

3 Best Picture Books to Teach Story Grammar Elements

January 27, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Choosing the right picture book can make or break a narrative intervention session. If you’ve ever felt frustrated trying to use a popular book that just doesn’t fit your students’ goals, the secret is using stories that contain a Complete Episode. By selecting texts with a clear problem, plan, and resolution, you reduce cognitive load and give students the exact structure they need to understand, retell, and create meaningful narratives. Let’s look at why Complete Episodes matter and three of our absolute favorite picture books to use in speech therapy.

Why “Complete Episodes” Matter in Narrative Intervention

We often assume any good children’s book will work for narrative therapy, but not all stories are created equal. A “Complete Episode” is a framework that aligns with research-backed models of narrative structure. It typically includes:

Characters & Setting
Initiating Event (the problem)
Internal Response (how the character feels)
Plan (what they decide to do)
Attempt (the action they take)
Consequence or Resolution

When students can identify and use these Story Grammar Elements, we often see massive improvements in their reading comprehension, vocabulary depth, sentence formulation, written expression, and even social communication skills.

What to Look for in Picture Books

Not all popular children’s books are ideal for story grammar goals. Many beloved stories just follow a loose sequence of events without a clear plan or resolution. This forces your students to infer critical elements, making your job a lot harder.

When selecting books for narrative intervention, look for stories that:

Present a clear problem.
Show the character’s goal or plan explicitly.
Include obvious attempts and consequences.
End with a satisfying resolution.

3 Picture Books With Complete Episodes That Work in Therapy

To save you hours of flipping through library books, here are three go-to picture books that naturally support the problem–plan–solution structure.

1. A Camping Spree with Mr. McGee by Chris Van Dusen

This book combines rhythmic text, engaging illustrations, and a clear narrative arc. When Mr. McGee and his dog encounter an unexpected problem during a camping trip, the story naturally walks through a problem, plan, and resolution.

Why it Works: It features a clear initiating event and consequence, making the story grammar elements incredibly easy to identify. This book is especially effective for introducing narrative concepts to elementary students or supporting basic retell tasks.

2. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

This classic offers a more complex narrative structure with repeated episodes and strong opportunities for perspective-taking. The main character’s plan is explicit and intentional, making it ideal for targeting higher-level narrative skills.

Why it Works: It has a repeated problem–plan–solution structure that supports discussions about character motivations. It is ideal for mapping multiple episodes when students are ready to move beyond basic story grammar identification.

3. Duncan, the Story Dragon by Amanda Driscoll

This story excels at illustrating internal responses and goal-directed behavior. Duncan’s emotional reaction to his problem drives multiple attempts, making it a powerful tool for teaching deeper narrative elements.

Why it Works: This book is particularly helpful for targeting internal states and feelings, which are often challenging concepts for our students to grasp.

How to Use These Books in Narrative Intervention

Once you have the right book, use a predictable routine to maximize learning. We highly recommend pairing these books with visual story grammar organizers. Model the identification of each element during shared reading, practice retelling using structured supports, and gradually move your students toward independent narrative generation.

Ready for More Narrative Intervention Support?

If you want step-by-step support for identifying story grammar elements and implementing narrative intervention with confidence, we’ve got you covered. Check out our SLP Summit course on narratives! It includes ready-to-use graphic organizers, step-by-step teaching strategies, and a story grammar organizer specifically mapped out for Duncan, the Story Dragon.

Transcript

Today we are diving into one of my favorite topics, which is using picture books to teach story grammar elements. But I don't use just any picture book. I want to make sure that I am using a picture book that contains complete episodes because we need to have all of the story grammar elements available to us in the story to actually teach the story grammar elements.
I'll walk you through three of my go-to books and what makes them narrative intervention gold and give you some ideas on how you can use them to teach story grammar in a way that's engaging and evidence-based. So before we dive into the books, let's chat a little bit about why complete episodes matter.
A complete episode includes characters setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempt, and then a consequence or resolution. This structure reflects the way that stories often work in academic context. And they're really important for reading comprehension writing and social communication.
When students are able to identify, retell, and eventually generate their own complete episodes, we see improved comprehension, more vocabulary depth, stronger sentence formulation, improved written expression. All of this happens when the story naturally contains these elements.
And that's why I've intentionally curated today's list of books. They include a clear problem, plan, and solution. A lot of popular children's books, the plan has to be inferred. We want a text that has a clear plan. A lot of texts are a sequence of random events, like I'm going outside to play and then I saw this and this and this, and then I went home. But we want stories with a clear problem and solution. that brings us to my list of books with complete episodes that I'd love to use to teach story grammar.
So first up is A Camping Spree with Mr. McGee. This story is incredibly engaging. It has bright illustrations, rhythmic text, and a clear narrative arc. It's about Mr. McGee and his dog. They go on a camping trip and a bear bumps their camper and they roll downhill and, end up in A river. And so they have to come up with their plan and figure out how to get out of this situation. This is a fun one to use, because it includes different story grammar elements.
Then second up is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. This has really nice character traits. It has a repeated narrative structure. It's definitely a more complex episode. We get to do perspective taking and map multiple episodes.
It's about a mouse who meets some predators, and the predators try to invite him to dinner so they can eat him. But the mouse comes up with a great plan to outsmart his predators and avoid being eaten. This is a fun one for those more complex structures.
And next up is Duncan, the Story Dragon by Amanda Driscoll. This is a great way to illustrate internal responses and goal oriented behaviors. It's about a dragon who desperately wants to finish a book, but every time he reads, he gets excited and burns his book.
And so we get to see him navigate this problem, make multiple attempts. So again, this is also a more complex story, but it has a very satisfying resolution. These are some great stories to target story grammar.
If you want some help identifying the specific story grammar elements and giving your students some visuals, check out my course in the SLP Summit. I walk through strategies to help you implement narrative intervention with confidence.
I also share a set of freebies that include graphic organizers that you can use across narrative interventions. I also include a specific story grammar organizer with, the elements identified from Duncan, the Story Dragon.
It'll decrease your prep time, if you're looking to implement this and you just want a little bit of support, that is a perfect place to start. So just type slpsummit.com in your browser. It'll redirect you to the Be the Brightest site and the registration page for the Summit. Then just sign up there, access my course on narratives, as well as seven other incredible courses.
I hope that they are super helpful and I will see you in the next episode.

4 Ways to Use a Narrative Graphic Organizer

January 20, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If your students struggle to organize characters, settings, and events into a cohesive story, the most effective tool you can use is a Narrative Graphic Organizer. By providing a clear visual framework, you instantly reduce their cognitive load and make abstract story grammar concepts concrete. Whether you’re targeting personal narratives or literacy-based retells, utilizing a shared graphic organizer will unlock stronger storytelling, richer language samples, and better generalization across your therapy sessions.

If you want to see these strategies in action and grab free graphic organizers, check out my on-demand SLP Summit course for a deeper dive.

The Power of a Visual Framework

We know that students with language disorders often struggle with narrative macrostructure. When we ask them to retell a story or share what happened over the weekend, the details can quickly become jumbled or left out entirely. The Narrative Graphic Organizer solves this by acting as a roadmap, visually guiding students through the essential elements of a story so they don’t have to hold everything in their working memory at once.

4 Ways to Use a Narrative Graphic Organizer

Here are four practical, evidence-based ways to integrate this simple tool across different grade levels and therapy contexts.

1. Scaffold Personal Narratives

Personal narratives are incredibly functional and motivating, but organizing personal experiences into a coherent story is challenging for many students. Before asking a student to verbally recount an event, have them use the organizer to visually map out:

Who was involved.
Where and when the event occurred.
What happened first, next, and last.
How the situation was resolved.

Pro Tip: Have students draw simple pictures or jot down keywords in the organizer before speaking. This significantly reduces overwhelm and leads to clearer, more organized language output.

2. Build Pre-Story Knowledge

You don’t have to wait until after reading a book to use your graphic organizer! During a brief “book walk,” students can use the framework to predict characters and settings, anticipate problems, and practice telling a predicted version of the story. This activates background knowledge and helps you identify vocabulary gaps early on.

3. Support Story Retell After Reading

After reading a picture book or fiction-based article, bring out that exact same narrative graphic organizer. Students can reference the text to identify story grammar elements and sequence key events. Comparing their pre-story predictions with the actual story is also a fantastic way to build metalinguistic awareness and reflection skills.

4. Create Parallel Stories for Generalization

Once your students truly understand a story’s structure, you can use the organizer to create a “parallel story.” This involves following the same narrative framework as the original text, but changing one or more key elements—such as swapping the character, the setting, or the solution. Consistent structural support across varied contexts is a research-backed way to promote generalization.

Want to Go Deeper?

If you’d like to see these strategies modeled step by step and grab free narrative graphic organizers, check out my on-demand course inside SLP Summit. It’s packed with practical examples you can use right away in your therapy sessions.

👉 Explore the course and access the freebies through SLP Summit.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the SLP Now Podcast. I am Marisha. Today we're talking about four simple ways to use a narrative graphic organizer in your therapy sessions. And these strategies work beautifully across multiple grade levels, as long as we're still targeting narrative structure. And these strategies give students a clear structure for organizing their thoughts, whether they're telling a personal narrative or retelling a story they heard from someone else, a picture book or a fiction article. There's lots and lots of options and uses here. So let's jump in to our four ways to use a graphic organizer.
The first step is to use the graphic organizer to structure personal narratives. One of my favorite starting points in intervention is helping students produce personal narratives using the graphic organizer to help them organize something that happened over the weekend or on the playground, whatever is meaningful to the student. Let's make a narrative about it. And we can use the graphic organizer and go through the different elements and ask them like, who was there, when did it happen, where did it happen?
Do some quick pictography to fill in that graphic organizer. And produce a beautiful personal narrative. By using this graphic organizer, it makes personal storytelling much easier. It reduces the overwhelm and gives us really rich language samples.
The second strategy is to use a graphic organizer to build pre-story knowledge when implementing a literacy based therapy unit. Before reading the story, I like to do a book walk and look at the cover of the book and maybe look at a few pages. We don't read it yet. We just scan the book, then we use the organizer to activate pre-story knowledge. After looking at the cover we'll go through our graphic organizer, and we'll ask who do we think the story is about? Where do we think it'll happen?
What do we think the problem will be? We can draw some quick pictures, like little stick drawings, to symbolize what we think will happen in the story. And that is a way to practice building a narrative. Then students can practice telling their version of what they think will happen.
This gets some really meaningful repetitions. It's a great way to make sure that we have adequate story knowledge before we dive in, because if students really struggle with this, I might do some vocabulary instruction, a virtual field trip, or fill out a KWL chart
But using the graphic organizer for pre-story knowledge is really helpful and gives us a great starting point for our unit. The third way we can use the graphic organizer is to support story retell.
After we read the book or the fiction article, we can go through the questions and identify the character, the setting, and all of the different story grammar elements. We can reference the book or article to help create that story retell.
And then that brings us to the fourth and final way we can use a graphic organizer. So that is to create a parallel story. Once we've read the book or the fiction article, we can create a parallel story. A parallel story is following the same narrative structure of the book or article that we just read, but we change some elements.
We might change the character, the setting, the problem, the resolution, whatever it might be. And this supports generalization because students are able to apply that narrative structure, but it's still scaffolded. It's a structure they're familiar with and it helps us bridge that gap to more open-ended storytelling.
My students love creating their parallel stories. They get to infuse their own lives and their own stories into the final parallel story. So it's a really fun activity on all ends. To recap the four strategies we talked about when using a graphic organizer. Use it for personal narratives, pre-story knowledge activation, story retell and parallel stories. If you keep your story grammar graphic organizers, students can use those to compare and contrast. So maybe the pre-story knowledge one, you can compare it to the actual retell. Like what did we guess correctly? Where were we off? That leads to a lot of additional fun language opportunities as well. To wrap things up, a graphic organizer is a very simple tool, but it can be very powerful. And we can use it across a variety of narrative contexts. If you want a deeper dive into narrative interventions to see graphic organizers being used for these different types of narratives, be sure to check out my SLP Summit course.
The replay is available until January 31st. It's packed with practical examples that you can use right away. It also includes some free graphic organizers that you can use in your therapy room for all of the purposes listed in this episode. So that's a wrap for today.
I hope to see you at the SLP Summit. If you go to slpsummit.com, it'll redirect you to the Be the Brightest site and the registration page for Summit. Check out my on-demand course, where you can access the freebies and learn more in-depth strategies than I shared today.
I hope this was super helpful and I'll see you in the next episode.

Why I Don’t Write Sequencing Goals (And What I Do Instead)

January 13, 2026 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you’re frustrated because your students can perfectly sequence four picture cards in your speech room but still struggle to retell a story in the classroom, you are not alone. The secret to bridging this gap is to stop writing isolated sequencing goals and start utilizing The Narrative Framework. By shifting your focus from rote sequencing (first, next, last) to story grammar and causal relationships, you give students the exact tools they need to understand, organize, and generate meaningful language.

The Problem with Traditional Sequencing Goals

Picture this: you’ve spent weeks working with a student on sequencing how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or how to brush their teeth. They master the goal! But when their teacher asks them to recount a story they just read or explain why a character is upset, they freeze. Why does this happen?

The reality is that traditional sequencing tasks rely heavily on rote memory and isolated chronological order, completely missing the context. In the real world, events don’t just happen in a vacuum—they happen because of cause and effect. When we only teach “first, next, last,” we increase our students’ cognitive load without giving them a meaningful structure to anchor their thoughts.

What I Do Instead: The Narrative Framework

To work smarter and actually see carryover into the classroom, we need to focus on narrative macrostructure. Here is how you can pivot your therapy approach to be more functional and evidence-based.

1. Target Story Grammar Elements

Instead of arbitrary sequences, teach students the building blocks of a story. When students understand the Story Grammar Approach—identifying the characters, setting, initiating event (the problem), internal response, plan, attempt, and resolution—they naturally understand the sequence of events because they understand the why.

2. Focus on Causal Chains

Events in a story are linked by cause and effect. Instead of asking, “What happened next?”, ask, “Because the character felt sad, what did they decide to do?” This shifts the focus from simply memorizing an order to deeply understanding character motivations and problem-solving.

3. Use Literacy-Based Therapy

Ditch the disconnected picture cards and lean into high-quality picture books. Using real literature provides rich, authentic contexts for students to practice organizing information. It also seamlessly aligns your speech therapy goals with their classroom reading standards.

How to Write Narrative Goals Instead

If you’re ready to make the switch, here are a few ways to structure your IEP goals to reflect this approach:

Retell: “Given a narrative text, the student will retell the story including at least 5 story grammar elements (e.g., character, setting, problem, plan, resolution) with 80% accuracy.”
Comprehension: “After listening to a short story, the student will answer explicit and inferential questions related to the story’s causal chain (e.g., ‘Why did the character do that?’) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.”

Ready to Ditch the Sequencing Cards?

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to start targeting narratives effectively. If you want access to done-for-you literacy-based therapy units, visual organizers, and digital data tracking, we’ve got you covered.

👉 Start your free trial at slpnow.com/pod. (No credit card required!)

If you want to dive deeper into the exact steps for teaching narratives, be sure to check out our on-demand narrative courses inside the SLP Summit.

Transcript

On today's episode, I want to chat about something that's a little controversial, but in a good way, and it's why I don't write sequencing goals, at least not in the way that many of us are used to. I am going to share what I do instead and why I believe that this leads to better generalization and improved outcomes for our students.
First let's chat a little bit about what we usually mean by sequencing goals and why that might be a problem. I've written these goals in the past, but they look like: "Student will sequence for picture cards or Student will follow three step directions. It's a lot with picture cards and following directions, and that kind of sequencing is very decontextualized, stripped down and uses isolated tasks.
And the problem is that these isolated tasks often don't generalize. So a student might be able to order four picture cards or follow three step directions, but what does that matter if they can't apply that into the classroom? The things that really matter are being able to tell stories, retell events, understanding sequences of events in real life. Sequencing in real life rarely exists in a vacuum, like real communication, like telling a story, telling what happened at recess, that involves vocabulary, grammar, memory, attention, story structure, which is way more than isolated ordering of some pictures. And the research supports this too. Targeting sequencing in isolation often taps only short-term memory, and it doesn't build the complex cognitive language skills needed for comprehension and expressive language. So if we're writing a sequencing goal, like: "Student will sequence four picture cards with 80% accuracy", and if we're only using those sequencing cards, that builds a narrow skillset that doesn't reflect real world language use and won't generalize outside of the classroom.
Then what does it actually look like? What do I do instead? So what I have found to help, and the research supports this as well, is that I contextualize sequencing within narrative based frameworks. And so we target sequencing goals within narrative based therapy and work with real stories.
Instead of picture cards or decontextualized routines, we use books, story retells, or personal narratives, and that way sequencing becomes part of a bigger picture. We're able to incorporate vocabulary, grammar, story grammar, comprehension, all of these different skills that provide a really meaningful context and are reflective of how students would be using this in the real world.
And then facilitate facilitating that generalization, because again it doesn't matter if they can sequence 10 images with a hundred percent accuracy if this isn't generalizing to the classroom. By using a narrative based approach, we're encouraging students to build a mental schema, and that helps them recall and organize information that frees up their working memory for comprehension and expressive language, and instead of just having to memorize.
By doing this, we're able to address underlying skills like working memory and attention. Sequencing isn't just about ordering events or pictures, it heavily relies on skills like working memory and attention. by targeting these skills in context rather than an isolated ordering of pictures, we're supporting comprehension, narrative retell, expressive language, following directions, all of those different types of skills, and planning for generalization from the start. We're building towards comprehension versus a very isolated skill.
And by embedding sequencing in this narrative context, we're giving students repeated opportunities to target additional skills like using temporal vocabulary, first, next, then last. They get to use causal language. They get to incorporate story grammar, and those are all really important for real world communication.
So what does this actually look like? Instead of writing a goal of "Student will sequence four picture cards with 80% accuracy", we might write goals about when given a short story, the Student will retell the story with temporal language. Or when asked to produce a personal narrative, the student will produce a coherent narrative with a beginning, middle, end structure and at least three temporal or causal words. Those are two examples of how this might come together. In the show notes, I'll give the full example of the goal . What this looks like in therapy is that we use real stories from books, familiar routines, personal experiences, and we use those to build vocabulary model, temporal and causal language, support working memory, and then gradually fade those scaffolds.
Some common things that SLPs might say are, I need a goal that's easy to measure. And these are perfectly measurable goals. Like the examples that I gave, you can develop a probe to easily measure progress towards that.
Another common thought that I've heard is my student really struggles with sequencing.
That is also valid. We can provide scaffolding and support in these contextualized activities. Maybe we can just use a really short personal narrative, but that is a lot more meaningful than random picture cards. We can create, we can use pictography and make quick pictures, and then gradually increase the complexity, but at least we're starting with a meaningful context.
So why this matters in terms of the big picture, we're helping students gain skills that they'll actually use, whether that's producing narratives, retelling narratives, comprehension, following multi-step directions. Targeting sequencing in this way will lead to really meaningful gains of some functional skills, and by teaching in this way, we're also helping students build cognitive skills like memory and attention, and we're more likely to see carryover and generalization when we're using this type of approach.
And if you're curious what this looks like in context with some concrete examples, I'd love to see you at the SLP Summit. My course is on demand. I'll include a link in the show notes. It'll be available until January 31st. I would love to see you there, and we are including some cool freebies as well.
Definitely check that out if you're wanting to learn more about what this could look like. That's a wrap for today. Thanks for hanging out and we'll see you next time.

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6 Evidence-Based Strategies to Target Summarizing in Speech Therapy

December 9, 2025 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever asked a student to summarize a story and ended up listening to a ten-minute, breathless recount of every minor detail, you know how challenging this skill can be. The secret to targeting summarizing effectively is moving away from vague prompts like “tell me what it was about” and utilizing a structured, visual framework like The SWBST Strategy (Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then). By giving your students a predictable formula, you can drastically reduce their cognitive load and help them confidently identify the main idea without getting lost in the weeds.

If you want to follow along with ready-made visuals, passages, sentence frames, and photo scenes, you can access the Summarizing Skill Pack inside the membership.

Why Summarizing Matters (And Why It’s So Hard)

Research consistently shows that summarizing improves overall reading comprehension, supports information recall, and boosts academic performance across content areas. However, summarizing requires an incredibly high level of executive functioning. To summarize successfully, a student has to hold the story in their working memory, filter out the non-essential “fluff,” and then formulate a cohesive sentence. For our students with language disorders, this often leads to immediate cognitive overload.

6 Evidence-Based Strategies to Target Summarizing

To make this abstract language skill concrete, here are six highly effective, research-backed strategies you can use in your speech therapy sessions.

1. Explicitly Teach What a Summary Is

Students often rely on ineffective rules of thumb (e.g., “the main idea is the first sentence”). We need to provide clear, student-friendly definitions of a summary, a main idea, and key details. Use a visual metaphor, like an umbrella, to show how the main idea “covers” or connects the key details. This concrete visual helps students internalize the concept.

2. Use Graphic Organizers to Build Understanding

Graphic organizers make abstract concepts concrete. Try using a format that puts the main idea at the top with key details below, or use organizers with integrated sentence frames. These tools help students identify the structure of a text before they ever attempt to generate an oral summary.

3. Model Your Thinking (Metalinguistic Talk)

Students benefit immensely from hearing an adult’s internal thought process. Read through a simple text and think aloud to show students how you identify main ideas, how you filter out non-essential information, and how you compare possible summaries. This models the exact internal monologue we want them to develop.

4. Start With Pictures Before Moving to Text

Pictures remove the decoding barrier, allowing students to focus entirely on idea-level comprehension. Show a photo scene, provide possible main ideas, and discuss which key details support each option. This supports a gradual release of responsibility before diving into complex written passages.

5. Use Sentence Frames

Sentence frames reduce the linguistic load so students can focus on the content rather than the syntax. Try using frames like: “The main idea is ___ because ___” or “The text is mostly about ___ and includes details such as ___, ___, and ___.”

6. Teach Text Structures Explicitly

Instruction in nonfiction text structure (Description, Sequence, Cause/Effect, Problem/Solution, Compare/Contrast) is one of the most evidence-supported ways to improve comprehension. Knowing the structure helps students anticipate what matters most and what is simply “extra” information.

References

Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Speaking and Listening in Content Area Learning.
Kim, A.-H., Vaughn, S., Wanzek, J., & Wei, S. (2004). Graphic organizers and their effects on the reading comprehension of students with LD. Journal of Learning Disabilities.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction.
Pressley, M., & Afflerbach, P. (1995). Verbal protocols of reading: The nature of constructively responsive reading.
Ukrainetz, T. A. (2015). Contextualized Language Intervention: Scaffolding PreK–12 Literacy Achievement.
Williams, J. P., Hall, K. M., & Lauer, K. D. (2005). Teaching expository text structure to young at-risk learners. Journal of Educational Psychology.

Ready to Simplify Your Literacy-Based Therapy?

If you want ready-made materials to support these strategies (including photo scenes, student-friendly definitions, leveled passages, and scaffolded organizers), we’ve got you covered.

👉 Get started with the Summary Skill Pack and 5 free material downloads!

Transcript

Let's chat about some strategies that we can use when targeting summarizing in our therapy sessions. This first strategy will be no surprise if you've been listening to the previous episodes, but we want to make sure that we're explicitly teaching what summarizing is. Students need clear instruction on what a summary is, what a main idea is.

A lot of times when I ask students, what's the main idea? They'll say the first sentence in the paragraph. Although that sometimes works, that won't necessarily work all the time and really helps students generate effective summaries.

So we wanna make sure that we're on the same page, that they have student friendly definitions of a summary, a main idea, and key details, and then also giving them an overall visual. In my Summarizing Skill Pack, I like to use an umbrella to help them understand what the main idea is and how the key details fit into that.

A combination of student friendly definitions and visuals to help that explicit instruction.

Then the second strategy is to use a graphic organizer. So I have a couple graphic organizers that I like to use. One of them is your traditional main idea at the top, the key details underneath the main idea.

And then I also have a graphic organizer that has sentence frames built into it to help students understand how to verbalize the summary. It helps it flow into an actual verbal summary. Once we have those pieces, we have our visuals, our student friendly definitions, we have the graphic organizer. Then I like to model my thought process and do some meta linguistic talk as I am summarizing. We may use a simple text or a picture to make that easier to understand in the beginning.

What I do is I read through a simple text and I ask myself basic questions about the text to help myself identify the main idea and the key details and maybe exclude details that aren't key details. In the Summarizing Skill Pack, we have beautiful photos with potential main ideas and key details. And we also have really simple passages. And we have multiple choice options that you can use to help students build those summaries. It's a fun way to scaffold that skill and it makes it possible for me to model my thought process. We have a number of photo scenes as well as written passages. I can model the first one, then we can do one together, and then I can gradually hand it over to them and let them model that process.

That is some very structured practice. Modeling that meta linguistic talk, and gradually releasing that. Leveraging pictures before text, just so that they can wrap their heads around the process.

I already alluded to this a little bit, but the fifth strategy is to use sentence frames. We have some graphic organizers built into the skill pack that have those sentence frames to help students produce those summaries verbally. We first identify the main idea and the details, and then we're able to produce a summary, which helps us in

generalizing the skill into functional contexts.

Our sixth strategy is to also teach text structure and help students identify them. We might need a slightly different graphic organizer or slightly different sentence frames to help them generate summaries effectively. Those are our six strategies for today. Explicitly teaching the skill, modeling and gradually giving students more autonomy, leveraging graphic organizers, starting with pictures and then moving to text, using sentence frames, and including a variety of text structures and teaching those explicitly So those are our strategies for today. If you want to access any of the materials that I mentioned today, head to slpnow.com. You can sign up for a free trial and get five free downloads, no strings attached. If you're already a member, search for the summarizing materials. You'll find the skill pack as well as summarizing activities for all of our nonfiction texts.

I'll also link the show notes for more detailed research citations and more written detail on these strategies if you want to reference that. That is a wrap and we'll see you real soon.

Morphology Made Simple: Easy Ways to Teach Affixes in Speech Therapy

December 2, 2025 by Marisha Leave a Comment

If you have ever felt overwhelmed trying to tackle vocabulary goals with your speech students, morphology is the answer. By shifting away from memorizing endless lists of vocabulary words and instead focusing on explicit morphology instruction, you teach your students the actual building blocks of language. Teaching affixes (prefixes and suffixes) is one of the most efficient, high-impact vocabulary interventions SLPs can deliver, helping students improve decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension across all content areas.

Why Morphology Matters

With high caseloads and limited time, we want strategies that offer the biggest return on our investment. Memorizing a list of words only teaches a student those specific words. However, teaching them how to break apart a word using its morphological clues gives them a flexible tool they can use forever. Research shows that explicit analysis and repeated practice improve comprehension and morphological awareness.

To help students grasp this, we need to explicitly teach them that:

Words are made of meaningful parts.
Those parts carry clues.
We can use those clues to figure out meaning.

4 Steps to Teach Affixes in Speech Therapy

If you’re looking for an easier way to target morphology, try implementing The Word Detective Framework. Here is our simple, step-by-step approach.

Step 1: Build Conceptual Awareness First

Before diving into complex graphic organizers or lists of words, start by building conceptual awareness. Students benefit from clear, concrete examples of how affixes actually transform base words. You can introduce this by showing how adding a single letter or syllable changes everything:

✔️ cat → cats (adding -s means more than one)
✔️ happy → unhappy (un- changes the meaning to its opposite)

Step 2: Explicitly Teach High-Value Prefixes and Suffixes

Rather than overwhelming students with dozens of affixes, focus on the ones they’ll encounter most often. Walk through exactly what prefixes and suffixes are, and introduce high-value, common affixes (like re-, un-, in-/im-, and dis-). We like to print off definition cards and give students their own copies. Treating them almost like vocabulary “trading cards” gives students ownership and provides a concrete visual they can reference across sessions.

Step 3: Teach Students to Become “Word Detectives”

Once students understand common affixes, teach them a framework for analyzing words step-by-step. A simple Morphology Graphic Organizer can guide them through the process:

Identify: Find the prefix, root, and suffix.
Define: Determine the meaning of each individual part.
Combine: Put the meanings together to infer the meaning of the entire word.
Check: Use the inferred meaning in a sentence to see if it makes sense in context.

For example, if the target word is disagree, they identify the prefix (dis- meaning “not” or “opposite of”), the root (agree), and combine them to mean “to not agree.”

Step 4: Reinforce Affixes Across Contexts

To ensure these skills stick, students need repeated practice. Have them act as word detectives by highlighting affixed words in literacy-based units, picture books, or science experiments. You can also have them create a Vocabulary Journal where they collect new examples of their target prefixes and suffixes, write definitions, and see their progress over time.

References

Carlisle, J. F. (2010). Effects of instruction in morphological awareness on literacy achievement: An integrative review. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(4), 464-487.
Goodwin, A. P., & Ahn, S. (2013). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions in English: Effects on literacy outcomes for school-age children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(4), 257-285.
Honig, B., Diamond, L., & Gutlohn, L. (2013). Teaching Reading Sourcebook. Novato, CA: Arena Press.

Ready to Simplify Your Morphology Instruction?

If you want ready-to-go materials so you don’t have to spend hours making your own flashcards and graphic organizers, we have you covered! Inside our Prefixes Skill Pack, we have word cards and graphic organizers that help students get structured practice.

👉 If you’re an SLP Now member, search the library for books and articles that contain specific prefixes or suffixes!

Not a member yet? Sign up for a free trial to download the skill packs and get access to definition cards, visuals, and vocabulary activities that make morphology instruction simple and consistent.

Transcript

Today we are chatting about some strategies that we can use when targeting prefixes and suffixes with our students. This is one of my favorite strategies in terms of vocabulary, because prefixes and suffixes are so common. Honig et al 2013 say that the four most common prefixes and suffixes account for 97% of derivational words.

I am all about working smarter and not harder. If I can focus on four affixes and give students the tools to break down that many words, just with that one little tool like that gives us a lot of bang for our buck. So let's chat about how we can break this down. The first strategy is to help students understand what affixes are and how morphology works.

I would start off instruction by giving some specific examples of how a prefix or a suffix changes a word. One common suffix is -s. If we have a cat and then we add -s to it, that means there are multiple cats. So by adding that suffix, it changes the meaning of the word.

If we know what these little words mean, it can help us figure out what words mean if we know some parts of the word. It's a helpful strategy. It doesn't work for all students. Some students need explicit instruction and teaching of explicit vocabulary targets.

This is a strategy worth trying to see if it helps our students. So that the first strategy, like I said, was just explicitly teaching and helping students understand how morphology works. The second step is to explicitly teach selected prefixes and suffixes. In SLP Now, we have visuals, with the prefix, a student friendly definition, an icon to help represent what the prefix means, as well as some examples.

And so we can use this to introduce the word. They're just little cards. We can use them throughout our instruction. I like to print these off and give students their own card, so they can reference it and have some ownership.

It's like collecting Pokemon cards. Once they tell me what the word means, they get it, and then they can use that to write all the examples of the word that they're finding. For example, if we're targeting re- as a prefix, they would get that card.

If words are coming up as we're doing all of the literacy based therapy activities, they can add those to their cards and build a vocabulary journal.

They're seeing the visual and the student friendly definition. It's two strategies in one. We want to teach the specific meaning of the prefixes and suffixes. A bonus tip is using those definition cards to help students, embed that practice across multiple units as well.

In our Prefixes Skill Pack, we have word cards that can help students get more structured practice. We give you a list of words with the most common prefixes, and then you can pair that with our graphic organizer. And I would first start by modeling this strategy, but the graphic organizer has boxes for a prefix, the root, and the suffix.

So like if the word is disagree, we would first identify. the prefix, root, and suffix if there is one. And then they write dis- in the prefix box, agree in the root, and then it kind of walks them through the process of. Okay, first we have to identify the prefix, root, and suffix.

Then we find the meaning of the prefix and the meaning of the root, and we put those meanings together to infer the meaning, and then we can, put it in the sentence to kind of check that meaning. I start by modeling that process. Once students have multiple examples, I gradually decrease what I'm showing them. We do it together first then they do it with me, and then they get to kind of do it more on their own. But teaching that process of breaking the words apart and really being like taking out their magnifying glasses and looking for our target prefixes and suffixes can be really beneficial.

We just would continue to target and practice this skill. it makes sense to start with discreet skill instruction, where we walk through how morphology works, what prefixes and suffixes are, and then we explicitly walk them through the process of how to be a word detective and break words apart and identify the meaning and how those strategies work.

In addition to actually teaching the meaning of those prefixes in suffixes.

And then the last step is to bring this into context. The trick of giving students cards for their target prefixes and suffixes and having them look for examples of that throughout all of the units, throughout the entire IEP period, can be really helpful.

And then for additional support in helping you contextualize this practice. In SLP Now, we've analyzed all of our picture books, articles, and science experiments, all of our therapy plans. We've pulled all of the relevant targets. You can search for a specific prefix in suffix and find articles that have those words in them.

We also create book and article specific activities for you where it gives you a graphic organizer that you can use to practice that word. it has spots to add other examples of the word as you go through different units

So it's a way to build that vocabulary journal and implement other evidence-based vocabulary strategies, in terms of coming up with a sentence with a word in it and drawing a picture of the word. Those are bonus strategies embedded into the units. That is a quick blitz of some strategies we can use when targeting affixes.

If you want to access any of the activities that I shared today, head to slpnow.com and sign up for a free trial. You can download five activities, totally free, no strings attached. I'll also share a link to the show notes with more detail, in terms of research, citations and all of that.

Thank you for joining me today, and we'll see you in the next one.

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Multiple Meaning Words: The SLP CLEAR Method Explained

November 25, 2025 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Teaching multiple meaning words doesn’t have to be a planning nightmare. By using a structured, context-driven approach like The CLEAR Method™, school-based SLPs can help students build flexible language skills while drastically reducing prep time. This method focuses on explicitly teaching students how to figure out meaning using context clues, visual organizers, and parts of speech—giving you a repeatable framework to use in any session.

Is the CLEAR Method™ for Teaching Multiple Meaning Words Right for You?

This approach works best for SLPs who:

Are currently spending hours planning and prepping materials each week
Want to maintain high-quality, evidence-based therapy
Need materials that support consistent repetition and generalization
Value time with family/life outside of work

If you’re already using a comprehensive therapy resource or prefer creating everything yourself, this may not be for you.

But if you’re spending hours planning sessions and want that time back, without compromising quality, keep reading.

Using structured, planning-first methods like these can lead to dramatic time savings and better student outcomes.

Just like the time Courtney saved with her 40 student caseload:

slp software case study multiple meaning words

“It’s been a one -stop shop for me. I’ve been able to gather my materials, collect my data live, and then have a graph to show how the students are making progress or what goals I didn’t target in a previous session.”

– Coutney Tomberlain, SLP at Cobb County School District (20 yrs experience)

These results didn’t come from working harder.
They came from using repeatable methods and ready-made supports instead of rebuilding lessons from scratch.

And that’s exactly what the CLEAR method for multiple meaning words is designed to help you do.

Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack

Ready-to-use materials that follow the CLEAR Method™ so you can teach multiple meaning words with confidence — without spending hours on prep.

CLEAR Method™ framework with step-by-step teaching guide
Pre-written sentences for context-first instruction
Parts of speech supports including student-friendly reference cards
Visual organizers to anchor meanings and reduce cognitive load
Leveled practice activities (K-4+) with built-in repetition across contexts

Everything you need to assess, teach, and generalize multiple meaning words — all in one place.

Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack preview

Why multiple meaning words matter for kids

Multiple meaning words are words that have more than one meaning, depending on how they’re used. Research indicates that approximately 50% of English words have multiple meanings! (Nagy & Anderson, 1984)

For example:

bat (an animal vs. sports equipment)
change (coins vs. doing something differently)

Many students — especially those with language impairments — have difficulty:

using context clues
thinking flexibly about word meanings
shifting from one meaning to another

This directly impacts:

vocabulary development
reading comprehension
overall language understanding

That’s why how we teach multiple meaning words matters just as much as what words we choose.

What Are Multiple Meaning Words?

Multiple meaning words are words that have more than one meaning, depending on how they’re used in a sentence or situation.

The key is this:
👉 The word itself doesn’t change, the context does.

Examples of Multiple Meaning Words in Sentences:

Bat
- The bat flew out of the cave.
- She hit the ball with a bat.
Change
- I have change in my pocket.
- It’s time to change your shoes.

For many students, especially those with language impairments, this flexibility doesn’t come naturally.

Instead, they may:

lock onto the first meaning they learned
ignore context clues
guess based on pictures or prior knowledge
struggle when the same word shows up in a new way

This is why multiple meaning words often become a bottleneck for:

vocabulary growth
reading comprehension
understanding grade-level texts

👉 Want Ready-to-Use Multiple Meaning Words Examples Like These?

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack includes pre-written sentences, visuals, and organizers so students can practice identifying meanings in context — without you creating everything from scratch.

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Multiple Meaning Words visual organizer example

Why Multiple Meaning Words Are Tricky for Kids

On the surface, multiple meaning words seem straightforward.

But for students, they require several skills working together at once:

understanding sentence meaning
using context clues
knowing parts of speech
thinking flexibly about language

If one of those pieces breaks down, students often:

choose the wrong meaning
get confused when meanings shift
struggle to explain why a meaning makes sense

types of multiple meaning words

That’s why simply giving students a list of multiple meaning words or a worksheet often isn’t enough.

They don’t need more words.
They need a clear way to think through meaning.

A Better Way: Teach the Process, Not Just the Words

Instead of asking students to memorize definitions, effective instruction teaches them how to figure out meaning.

That’s where the CLEAR Method™ comes in.

It gives students a repeatable process they can use whenever they encounter a word with more than one meaning — in therapy, in the classroom, and while reading independently.

In the next section, we’ll break down the CLEAR Method™ step by step, starting with the most important piece: context.

The CLEAR Method™ for Teaching Multiple Meaning Words

Over time, we’ve found that the most effective multiple meaning word instruction follows one clear pattern.

We call it the CLEAR Method™.

It’s a simple, practical process that helps students:

figure out the correct meaning
explain why it makes sense
and apply that thinking across new contexts

CLEAR stands for:

C — Context First
L — Label the Part of Speech
E — Explain the Meaning
A — Anchor With Visuals
R — Repeat Across Contexts

Instead of memorizing definitions, students learn a process for understanding meaning,which is what actually supports comprehension.

Let’s start with the most important step.

👉 Want Instant Access to Examples Like These?

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack includes:

Pre-written sentences for context
Student-friendly parts of speech guides
Visual supports that make meaning clearer

➡️ Start a Free Trial to Access This Skill Pack

Multiple Meaning Words visual support example

C — Context First

Context is the foundation of multiple meaning word instruction.

If students try to decide what a word means without context, they’re usually guessing.

That’s why the CLEAR Method™ always starts with a sentence or situation, not the word by itself.

What this looks like in practice

Instead of asking:

“What does the word bat mean?”

Start with:

The bat flew out of the cave.
He grabbed the bat before stepping up to the plate.

Then guide students to ask:

“What’s happening in this sentence?”
“What clues help us figure out the meaning?”

This shifts students from guessing to analyzing.

Why context-first instruction matters

When students consistently start with context, they:

rely less on memorized definitions
pay attention to surrounding words
become more flexible with meaning

Research shows that context clues significantly aid vocabulary learning and support students’ ability to derive word meanings independently (Baumann et al., 2003).

This directly supports:

reading comprehension
understanding unfamiliar vocabulary
independent problem-solving in texts

In the next section, we’ll look at how identifying the part of speech helps students narrow meaning quickly — especially when words can function in more than one way.

L — Label the Part of Speech

Once students understand the context, the next step is helping them narrow the meaning.

That’s where parts of speech come in.

Many multiple meaning words change meaning based on how they’re used in a sentence — not just the situation.

Helping students ask:

“Is this a thing (noun)?”
“Is it an action (verb)?”
“Is it describing something?”

can immediately eliminate the wrong meaning.

Simple sentence frames that build flexibility

Sentence frames make this step concrete and student-friendly.

👉 Want this step ready-to-go?

Resources like this student-friendly reference card come included in the skill pack, along with sentence frames and organizers that guide students through the process without you creating them yourself.

Multiple Meaning Words parts of speech reference card

For example:

Noun frame: I have a ___.
Verb frame: I am ___.

Using the word change:

I have change. → coins or money
I am changing. → doing something differently

These quick tests help students:

think more flexibly about word meanings
generate definitions more independently
explain why a meaning makes sense

Why this step matters

Labeling the part of speech:

reduces random guessing
builds metalinguistic awareness
supports students who struggle with abstract language

It also gives students a strategy they can reuse when they encounter unfamiliar words in reading.

👉 Want this step ready-to-go?

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack includes student-friendly parts-of-speech supports and organizers that guide students through this process, without you creating sentence frames or visuals yourself.

E — Explain the Meaning (In Student-Friendly Language)

Once students have identified the correct meaning, the next step is making sure they truly understand it — not just recognize it.

That’s where student-friendly explanations come in.

Instead of repeating dictionary definitions, encourage students to:

explain the meaning in their own words
describe what’s happening in the sentence
talk through how they figured it out

This is where deeper language learning happens.

Using think-alouds to build metalinguistic awareness

Think-alouds are especially powerful with multiple meaning words.

Metalinguistic instruction (teaching students to reflect on and talk about language) has been shown to improve vocabulary and comprehension outcomes (Biemiller & Boote, 2006).

For students with language impairments, this type of awareness is particularly critical for reading comprehension (Zipke, 2007).”

Simple prompts like:

“How did you know which meaning it was?”
“What clues helped you?”
“Could this word mean something else here?”

help students reflect on their thinking — not just their answer.

Over time, students start to internalize these questions and apply them independently while reading or listening.

Why explaining meaning matters

When students explain meanings out loud, they:

strengthen vocabulary knowledge
build metalinguistic awareness
improve expressive language
become more confident explaining their thinking

This step is also incredibly effective in group therapy, because students benefit from hearing how others reason through meaning.

Next up is the step that helps everything stick: anchoring meanings with visuals.

A — Anchor With Visuals

Multiple meaning words are abstract by nature.

That’s why visual supports are such a powerful part of the CLEAR Method™.

When students can see the difference between meanings, they’re more likely to:

understand the word
remember it later
retrieve the correct meaning in new situations

How visuals support multiple meaning word instruction

Visuals help students:

break down abstract language
compare meanings side by side
reduce cognitive load

Effective visuals might include:

simple pictures for each meaning
graphic organizers that show multiple definitions
space to draw or sketch what each meaning looks like

Research on robust vocabulary instruction emphasizes the importance of explicit support for definitions, part of speech, example sentences, and imagery (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013).

For example, a graphic organizer might ask students to:

write the word
identify the part of speech
explain each meaning
draw a picture for each one

multiple-meaning-words-anchor-with-visuals multiple meaning words anchor with visuals

This anchors understanding and supports long-term retention.

Why anchoring with visuals matters

Students who struggle with language often need more than verbal explanation.

Visual supports:

give students another way to process information
support students with working memory challenges
make abstract concepts more concrete

Strong vocabulary instruction includes the use of multiple modalities to reinforce memory and comprehension (Snow, 2010)

This is especially helpful for:

younger students
students with language impairments
English learners

👉 Want Instant Access to the Multiple Meaning Words Anchor Chart?

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack includes ready-made graphic organizers and visual supports aligned to each step of the CLEAR Method™ so you don’t have to design or adapt materials yourself.

Multiple Meaning Words anchor chart example

We’re almost there. The final step is where generalization happens and where most instruction breaks down without the right materials.

R — Repeat Across Contexts (This Is Where Generalization Happens)

Most students don’t struggle with multiple meaning words because they never learned them.

They struggle because they only saw the word once.

Generalization doesn’t happen after a single sentence or activity.
It happens when students see the same word used again and again in different ways.

That’s why Repeat Across Contexts is a core part of the CLEAR Method™.

What repetition should look like (without busywork)

Effective repetition means practicing the same word across:

different sentences
different contexts
short passages or texts
student-generated examples

A simple progression might look like:

Two clear sentences with different meanings
A short paragraph or story using the word
A new context (book, article, or classroom example)
Student-created sentences or explanations

Each repetition reinforces flexibility, not memorization.

Why this step is often skipped (and why that’s a problem)

Repeat Across Contexts is the step that:

takes the most planning
requires the most materials
is hardest to sustain week after week

Without it, students may:

understand the word during therapy
struggle to apply it in reading
revert to guessing in new contexts

This is where even strong instruction can break down.

At this point, you’ve seen how the CLEAR Method™ works from start to finish.

Next, we’ll tie it all together with:

practical examples
grade-level considerations
and the strongest AI-Builder–style CTA on the page.

SLP Multiple Meaning Words Examples: Putting the CLEAR Method™ Into Practice

The CLEAR Method™ works across grade levels because the process stays the same — only the complexity of the words and contexts changes.

Below are examples of how multiple meaning word instruction can look from kindergarten through 4th grade, using the same CLEAR steps each time.

Multiple Meaning Words for Kindergarten

At this level, the goal is helping students understand that one word can have more than one meaning.

Focus on:

very concrete words
clear visuals
short, simple sentences

Example words:

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
bat	an animal	baseball bat
park	a place to play	to stop a car

Use CLEAR by:

starting with simple sentences (Context First)
naming the meaning out loud
anchoring each meaning with pictures

Multiple Meaning Words for 1st Grade

First-grade students are ready to compare meanings more intentionally — especially with support.

Focus on:

concrete + slightly abstract meanings
sentence-level context

Example words:

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
ring	jewelry	make a sound
light	something you turn on	not heavy

Use CLEAR by:

identifying what’s happening in each sentence
labeling whether the word is a noun or describing word
anchoring meanings with pictures or drawings

Multiple Meaning Words for 2nd Grade

In second grade, students benefit from learning how parts of speech help narrow meaning.

Focus on:

noun vs. verb meanings
explaining meanings in their own words

Example words:

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
change	coins	to do something differently
watch	something you wear	to look at

Use CLEAR by:

testing meanings with sentence frames
encouraging students to explain why a meaning fits

repeating words across different sentences

👉 Want sentence frames and ready-made examples that support flexible thinking?

Start a free trial to access the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack.

Start Your Free Trial →

Multiple Meaning Words for 3rd Grade

Third grade is where multiple meaning words start to affect reading comprehension more directly.

Focus on:

sentence-level ambiguity
short passages
context clues

Example words:

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
point	a sharp end	an idea
scale	to climb	a tool for measuring

Use CLEAR by:

analyzing context before guessing
explaining how clues lead to the correct meaning
repeating words across passages and discussions

👉 Want passages, visuals, and activities that build repetition without extra prep?

Start a free trial to access the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack.

Start Your Free Trial →

Multiple Meaning Words for 4th Grade

By fourth grade, many multiple meaning words become more abstract and academic.

Focus on:

abstract meanings
academic vocabulary
generalization across texts

Example words:

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
draft	a rough version	air movement
table	furniture	data chart

Use CLEAR by:

breaking down context in longer texts
labeling part of speech to narrow meaning
repeating words across subjects and settings

Why This Works Across Grades

What changes from kindergarten to fourth grade isn’t the method — it’s:

the type of words
the complexity of context
the level of explanation expected

The CLEAR Method™ gives students a consistent way to think about meaning, while the Skill Pack gives you the materials to apply it without rebuilding lessons every week.

“This consistency aligns with research on effective vocabulary instruction, which emphasizes the importance of systematic, repeated exposure across contexts (Baumann et al., 2003).”

👉 Want examples and activities already organized by level?

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack includes leveled activities, visual supports, and practice materials that make it easy to apply the CLEAR Method™ across grades — without sorting or adapting everything yourself.

➡️ Start your free trial to access the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack

Multiple Meaning Words activities organized by grade level

Using the CLEAR Method™ Without Spending Hours Planning

At this point, you might be thinking:

“This makes sense — but setting all of this up takes time.”

And you’d be right.

To use the CLEAR Method™ consistently, you need:

carefully chosen multiple meaning words
multiple sentences and contexts for each word
visuals and graphic organizers
materials that support repetition and generalization

You can create all of that yourself…

…but most school-based SLPs end up:

planning at night
recreating the same lesson week after week
or skipping repetition because of time constraints

“This sounds great, but…”

“I’m not sure if pre-made materials will work for my students”

The Skill Pack includes leveled materials (K-4+) and flexible activities you can adapt. You’re not locked into one approach.

“I’ve tried therapy resources before and they weren’t evidence-based”

Every activity in the CLEAR Method™ Skill Pack is grounded in research (Baumann et al., 2003; Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013; Snow, 2010) and aligned to best practices.

“What if I don’t like it?”

Start with a free trial. Use the materials in your actual sessions. If it doesn’t save you time or improve your therapy, you haven’t lost anything.

That’s exactly why we built the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack inside SLP Now.

The Skill Pack = The CLEAR Method™ (Already Built for You)

The Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack is the ready-to-use version of the CLEAR Method™.

Instead of planning from scratch, you can:

open a session
select a target word
use pre-written contexts and visuals
and guide students through each CLEAR step with confidence

Everything is designed to work together, so you’re not piecing resources together from multiple places.

👉 Want to try it in your next session?

You can access the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack with a free trial to SLP Now.

That means you can:

explore the materials
use them with your students
and see how CLEAR works in real therapy sessions

Final Thought

Multiple meaning words don’t have to feel confusing for you or your students.

With a simple framework and materials that support it, you can:

teach vocabulary more effectively
support reading comprehension
and protect your time and energy

The CLEAR Method™ gives you the structure.
The Skill Pack gives you the speed.

References

Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E., Olejnik, S., & Kame’enui, E. J. (2003). Vocabulary tricks: Effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth-grade students’ ability to derive and infer word meanings. American Educational Research Journal.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Biemiller, A., & Boote, C. (2006). An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in primary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology.

Nagy, W., & Anderson, R. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly.

Snow, C. (2010). Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science.

Zipke, M. (2007). The role of metalinguistic awareness in reading comprehension for students with language impairments. Topics in Language Disorders.

Transcript

Let's chat about strategies to target multiple meaning words, shall we? Before we dive into the practical strategies you can use in your next session, I want to lay some groundwork. When I started looking into the research almost a decade ago, I was surprised to learn that 50% of English words have multiple meanings.

Many of our students, especially those with language impairments, have difficulty inferring the meanings of those words. And that can really impact vocabulary development in general, but also comprehension, because if we are not able to analyze words and look at context to understand what they mean, then that can really impact our comprehension.

So we will dive into the strategies that we can use from introducing multiple meaning words to working towards generalization. The first thing I want to do is make sure students understand that words can have multiple meanings. We might just start off the discussion and say words can have multiple meanings, like one word can mean different things. The example I always start with is the animal that flies and the wooden stick used to hit a ball in baseball. That would be kind of my initial teaching so that we can wrap our heads around what we're working on.

Then the second step is having students practice identifying the meaning and looking at the context. In my initial teaching, we would've talked about like a bat the animal as well as the baseball bat. And I might give them some sentences. I like to have the pictures and start with really concrete examples and then we can get more complex.

But I first wanna make sure that they're really understanding the concept, so I might give them two sentences, like the bat flew into the cave, and we would look at that sentence and which bat is that talking about? And just having some specific examples and then using images to help.

Because we are building that imagery, that can be a way to get in some errorless learning and help students understand the context. For our third strategy, something we can do while completing that activity is to think out loud and help students build that meta linguistic awareness.

This is easier with concrete examples. we can ask questions like, how did you know which meaning it was, could it mean something else in that sentence, and kind of having some discussion around that.

And they could practice saying I knew it was the animal because bats live in caves, so that could be the example for the sentence we talked about. And if we're doing this as a group activity, this will be a beautiful language, rich activity. Even if not all of the students are working on multiple meaning words, they can be working on syntax, creating sentences, grammar, vocabulary, all of those things, in the context of these activities. So those are our first three strategies. The fourth strategy is to use a graphic organizer. We have lots of graphic organizers built into SLP Now, that help students kinda break down the meaning and give them robust vocabulary practice with these words.

We have blank graphic organizers in our skill pack for multiple meaning words. For our books and articles, we've identified multiple meaning words in the text. For each word, we give three sentences with the target word in it, and then the students find the word, work through the graphic organizer to identify the part of speech, the meaning, and draw a picture to help with imagery. That type of graphic organizer can be really helpful. One of the strategies that has helped my students the most is helping them understand how parts of speech work.

I have a graphic organizer that lists noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and it gives a student friendly definition of what a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb are. It also has some sentence frames that can help them understand what part of speech something is.

A noun is a person placer thing, and the sentence frames are, I have a blank and I see blank. I have a bat. I see a bat. For the example with bat, the animal and the wooden stick, those are both nouns so that strategy wouldn't help us differentiate the meaning.

We can use that to help students generate different definitions for words. They can use that as a strategy to help them understand what the word might mean. If we know it's a noun, that'll help narrow down how we are going to define that word.

And if we know it's a verb and an action. That'll help us narrow down the definition as well. We have a little cheat sheet that students can use. We can have them look at the context of the sentence and then put the word in their own sentence. For example, if we are looking at change, we can say, I have change.

And then that might spark, oh, change. That means like coins of money. And then if the verb is, I am changing, maybe they think, oh, that means putting on new clothes. And so that helps them generate definitions for this word. It helps them practice to think more flexibly because if you ask them what are two meanings for the word change?

They might only think of one and they have a hard time thinking flexibly of what else could change mean? I found that using those sentence frames can be really helpful and throughout the entire process we'll leverage the strategies of using visuals and graphic organizers and pictography or acting things out to help students build that picture in their heads.

Using the cheat sheet for parts of speech can help give them a framework to start thinking more flexibly about what words mean. So those are our strategies for today. If you want to check out the Multiple Meaning Words Skill Pack or any of the activity sheets for picture books, articles, and science experiments, we have lots of activities based on these evidence backed strategies that you can use in your sessions without having to reinvent the wheel.

You can literally just click. Into something as students are walking in the door and be ready to go. I hope these strategies were super helpful and we'll see you in the next one.

How to Teach Describing: Evidence-Based Strategies SLPs Can Use Tomorrow

November 18, 2025 by Marisha Leave a Comment

Teaching describing skills is foundational for our students’ success in writing, classroom discussions, and overall expressive language. If you’re managing a massive caseload and scrambling for effective ways to target these skills, the research points to two core, game-changing strategies: explicitly teaching attribute categories and using contrastive examples. By combining these evidence-based approaches with visual supports and vocabulary journals, we can give our students a predictable framework to access and share what they know—without working harder than we already are.

Why Teaching Describing Matters

We know the drill: progress reports are looming, mixed groups are chaotic, and we need strategies we can use tomorrow. Students who struggle with describing often lack the underlying vocabulary or the organizational structure to share their thoughts. When we explicitly teach them how to organize their ideas and select meaningful attributes, we give them a reliable structure to describe any object or concept. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Evidence-Backed Strategies for Describing

Strategy #1: Explicitly Teach Attribute Categories

Research shows that teaching students to use consistent attribute categories—such as category, function, parts, size, shape, color, and location—helps them build highly organized semantic networks. Once students internalize these categories, they have a mental filing system for any new vocabulary word.

How to Use This Strategy in Therapy:

Introduce each attribute category explicitly.
Model with real objects or storybook vocabulary.
Use visual anchors to support comprehension.
Provide multiple, varied practice opportunities across sessions.

SLP Now Tool to Support This Strategy: The Describing Helper provides visual supports for categories, colors, shapes, functions, locations, and more, giving students the exact scaffolding they need. Sign up for a free trial to download the Describing Helper for free today!

Strategy #2: Teach Through Contrastive Examples

Contrastive learning occurs when we pair examples with non-examples. When students compare items that differ in one or more attributes, it strengthens their understanding of what the concept actually is—and what it isn’t.

For example, if we are focusing on apples:
Is an apple a fruit? Yes.
Is a bee a fruit? No.

These simple comparisons promote deeper semantic processing and increase student accuracy in categorization.

How to Use This Strategy in Therapy:

Present pairs or small sets of contrasting items.
Ask yes/no questions about category membership.
Highlight the similarities and differences across attributes.
Embed this practice across your therapy units or storybook reading.

SLP Now Tool to Support This Strategy: Our Vocabulary Pages for Categories and Object Functions include exemplars, non-exemplars, and blank sections to add new examples over time. Sign up for a free trial to download the vocabulary pages for free today!

Tools to Implement These Evidence-Backed Strategies

Use Visuals to Scaffold Describing Skills

Many of our students need visual anchors when learning new vocabulary. Tools like the Expanding Expression Tool (EET) offer a fantastic tactile and visual way to teach attributes. Similarly, The Describing Helper inside SLP Now was designed to provide students with specific visual options for colors, shapes, and locations, making it easier for them to access the exact language they need.

Build Vocabulary With Journals for Long-Term Retention

Vocabulary journals deepen semantic knowledge over time, especially when tied to literacy-based therapy. Each Vocabulary Page includes:

A student-friendly definition.
Pictures of exemplars and non-exemplars.
Blank space to add new examples from books or real-life contexts.

As students revisit these same categories across different books, their semantic networks become incredibly rich and flexible.

Support Generalization With Sentence Frames

Once your students can successfully identify attributes, the next step is helping them communicate those descriptions in full, meaningful sentences. Sentence frames encourage generalization and align beautifully with classroom expectations.

Examples include:

“It is a type of…” (category)
“We find it…” (location)
“It is used for…” (function)

If you’re ready to implement these strategies and take the overwhelm out of your planning, Click here to access the Describing Skill Pack (for FREE)!

Explicit teaching, contrastive examples, vocabulary journals, and visual supports all work beautifully together to help students build describing skills that carry over into storytelling, academic tasks, and real-life communication. If you want to download The Describing Helper and access thousands of evidence-backed therapy materials to make your SLP life easier, sign up for the free trial!

References

Ebbels, S. (2014). Effectiveness of intervention for grammar in school-aged children with primary language impairments: A review of the evidence. Child Language Teaching and Therapy.

Nagy, W., & Townsend, D. (2012). Words as tools: Learning academic vocabulary as language acquisition. Reading Research Quarterly.

Ukrainetz, T. (2015). Contextualized Language Intervention: Scaffolding PreK–12 Students to Promote Academic Success.

Transcript

Hey there and welcome back to the podcast. Today we are diving into strategies related to describing. And this is an area that I think we all do pretty well with. We have a strong foundation on how to target describing, but I'm excited to share a couple strategies and then dive into some tools that we can use to make it easier to implement those strategies.

So there's two core strategies that emerge in the research. One is explicitly teaching attribute categories, like size, shape, function, location, parts, category, all of those things. Teaching those categories give students a clear framework and helps them organize their ideas.

And then we also want to make sure that we're systematically teaching those and helping students build that framework. The second strategy is teaching through contrastive examples. When we show pairs of examples that differ in one or more attributes, like an apple and a pear.

They're both fruits, sweet, and have stemsbut have different colors, shapes, and tastesContrasting can be really helpful. In practice, one tool that we all know about is the Expanding Expression Tool.

It is a visual and tactile way to teach those attribute categories. You can make a little song about the attributes and it's a tactile thing. If they're looking at the apple, they can be like, okay, green group, and do that.

Definitely look at the resources from Expanding Expression Tool. They have a bunch of amazing resources and handbooks so I'm not teaching how to use that. I wanted to give a nod to that tool because it can be very helpful. Some other tools that we can use. I personally use the Expanding Expression Tool.It's really helpful to teach them like, what group is it in?

But sometimes they don't have that vocabulary of like, oh, these are all the groups that I can think of. And these are all of the colors and shapes. Sometimes we need a little bit more visual support. So I created, it's called a Describing Helper.

and it has a page for the different attributes that we might use when describing. So it has pages for the different attribute categories, and then it has pictures of a bunch of examples. On the colors page it shows different colors. On the shape page, it shows different shapes.

And then we have a bunch of locations and categories and all of that. I find that if we are doing a describing activity, it's really helpful to have those visual choices. even as a scaffolding tool, if we ask a student what category it's in, we can pull up the Describing Helper and be like, is it a fruit or a toy?

And have that be a way to scaffold. This can give us some practice with a contrastive examples If we're looking at the apple, we can say, is the apple a person? No. An apple is not a person. And so that gives us that contrast. Is an apple a place? No. That helps give us practice opportunities, with one simple visual. Another thing that's really helpful, 'cause sometimes teaching the attribute categories is really helpful, like size, shape, color, all of that. Sometimes our students are missing the vocabulary for those. I have a bunch of activities in my library to help teach categories, object functions, and basic concepts

Sometimes we need to break it down and maybe describing is a good longer term goal, but we really need to focus on building vocabulary in the subcategories, and the Describing Helper helps with that. we can also do it more systematically. For categories and object functions, I like to build vocabulary journals for students.

So we have vocabulary journal pages attached to all of the therapy plans in SLP Now, So let's say we're using Apple Trouble, 'cause I'm fixating on apples today. But if we're reading Apple Trouble, we can go to the Targets section in the Therapy Plan for Apple Trouble.

We'll go to the targets tab and see all of the categories and object functions identified in the story. You can click on that and download the vocabulary page. It's just a one pager and it has the title, so it would be like fruit.

First we come up with a definition of what a fruit is .It would have like 10 pictures of exemplars and non exemplars and we can go through. Is a bee a fruit?

A bee is not a fruit. We cross that one out. And then is a grape of fruit. Oh yeah, grape is a fruit and we can circle that. We get lots of repetition and lots of practice. The first section is a quick definition of what a category or what the fruit is. Then we have little pictures to go through what's an exemplar and a non exemplar.

And then the third section on the page is blank. And then we get to add exemplars from the books and the activities that we're doing. So as we're going through Apple Trouble, we can add the apple and the pear. I don't remember if there's any other fruits in that story. But then let's say the next month we read the book about the Hungry Bear and the Strawberry.

We can add a strawberry to the page and then let's say during lunch, they're eating like they have different fruits, then we can add that to their page.We can continue to build on that journal.

And so they'll always have that quick definition, the reminders of the exemplars and non exemplars, and then they get to continue adding their own. And as we're doing the virtual field trip, we continue to add examples and it'll build over units and units. And that just helps them build that vocabulary organize that information and get some really meaningful practice. So we talked about, in terms of the tools that we've covered so far, the Expanding Expression Tool. I'll include a link in the show notes, but if you Google it, you'll find all the resources around that.

In SLP Now we have a Describing Helper, which includes visual choices for different attribute categories. That just came from a need of my students. They knew they needed to give me a group but they needed some foundational support, so having that is a good starting point.

We also want to provide explicit instruction on the attributes within each attribute category. Because sometimes they don't have that vocabulary of like the colors and the shapes and the categories and the functions and all of that. And so we wanna make sure that we're doing some explicit practice there.

And then another thing that has been really helpful. This is in the Describing Helper as well. The first page has sentence frames that we can use to help students. They can give us a list of attributes, but we want them

to create sentences to describe something. That's what they're gonna have to do in the classroom when they're writing and having discussions. There are sentence frames for each of the attribute categories, to help them do that describing activity.

So that's what that looks like. An example for location, the sentence frame would be we find it and it could be like inside, at the store, whatever it might be. Those are the tools that I use to help me in my describing intervention and link to a quick review of some of the research, that helped me decide how I want to do that. So yeah, there's lots of tools that we can use to help us, whether it is EET, the Describing Helper, the categories and object functions vocabulary pages. These are evidence-based activities for basic concepts as well. We have those to help fill in that vocabulary.

Andit's based on the units that we have for those also embed the contrastive examples So if students are struggling with those, like the location words, the sizes, and all of that, the basic concepts, units can really help too. The last thing we talked about was sentence frames in helping students with generalization, so that they're not just listing, we're embedding it into real sentences. That's a quick recap of my strategies and the tools that we use. If you're interested in accessing the tools in SLP Now, I'll include a link in the show notes so you can check out all of the things. Thanks for joining me.

I hope this was helpful, and we'll see you in the next one.