Kelly Vess, a seasoned speech-language pathologist with over 20 years of experience, shares her insights on setting effective preschool speech therapy goals.
With a background in research, clinical instruction, and early childhood education, Kelly has devoted her career to helping preschoolers develop essential communication skills.
In this article, we explore her recommendations for creating impactful goals in expressive language, vocabulary, and speech intelligibility, highlighting the importance of research-backed goal-setting for early intervention.
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Why Preschool Speech Therapy Goals Matter
In preschool speech therapy, well-defined goals are essential for creating meaningful progress, particularly in areas like early language development and expressive language delays.
Kelly Vess emphasizes that selecting complex, research-backed targets can lead to faster, more impactful gains. By focusing on these high-quality targets, SLPs can help children communicate effectively sooner, benefiting their social interactions and overall development.
As Kelly puts it;
“If you take a chisel to the rock and work on simpler targets, you can see progress, but a complex target will create a waterfall impact, leading to broader improvements”
Key Areas for Preschool Speech Therapy Goals
1. Expressive Language Goals
Developing narrative and storytelling skills significantly enhances expressive language abilities in young children.
By focusing on narrative development, SLPs can improve a child’s overall communication skills, setting the stage for more complex language use as they grow. According to Kelly, working on storytelling skills is transformative:
“If I work on this child’s ability to tell a story, am I changing this child’s life? Yes”.
Additionally, targeting complex sentence structures can further support children’s ability to express themselves effectively and meaningfully.
2. Vocabulary Goals for Preschool Speech Therapy
Vocabulary development is foundational for preschoolers, contributing not only to communication but also to early academic success.
Kelly emphasizes the importance of setting both receptive and expressive vocabulary goals, focusing on the words a child can understand and use. When discussing assessments, she suggests evaluating expressive vocabulary if a child often uses non-specific language, such as “this” or “that,” which can indicate a need for targeted vocabulary intervention.
3. Speech Intelligibility Goals
Enhancing speech clarity is crucial for young children to be understood by peers and adults, which supports their confidence and social interactions.
Kelly recommends structured, multimodal cueing—visual, auditory, and gestural prompts—to improve speech intelligibility.
By layering these cues, SLPs can create a supportive pathway to clearer, more independent speech, adjusting support as the child progresses.
Early Intervention Strategies for Preschoolers
Early intervention plays a pivotal role in improving the long-term outcomes for preschoolers facing speech and language delays.
Kelly recommends involving parents from the outset, using input forms and home language samples to inform therapy.
This initial input provides insights into a child’s interests and natural language use, enabling therapists to tailor their sessions.
Tips for Writing Preschool IEP Goals
When creating Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals, specific, functional, and measurable targets are key.
Collaboration between SLPs, parents, and teachers helps to ensure these goals are well-aligned with the child’s needs and classroom environment.
Kelly stresses the importance of starting with “most to least” prompting—providing full support initially and gradually reducing cues as the child gains skills.
This approach, which aims for 80% success to avoid frustration or habituation of errors, enables students to progress effectively:
“We always want to make sure it’s 80% because if we’re below that…we have habituation of errors”
Sample Preschool Speech Therapy Goals
To provide a foundation for setting measurable, impactful goals, here are examples inspired by Kelly Vess’s approach to preschool speech therapy:
Expressive Language Goal:
This goal targets the child’s ability to express ideas clearly, building narrative and storytelling skills that are essential for social and academic success.
“The child will use a complete sentence with 4-5 words to describe a familiar event with minimal verbal prompts in 80% of opportunities.”
Vocabulary Goal:
By setting both receptive and expressive vocabulary goals, SLPs can help children expand their word knowledge, which is foundational for effective communication and later academic success.
“The child will identify and name objects within four different categories with 80% accuracy.”
Speech Intelligibility Goal:
Using structured cueing techniques, this goal supports children in developing clearer speech, aiding both peer understanding and self-confidence.
“The child will increase intelligibility by producing multisyllabic words with 70% accuracy.”
Each goal is designed to be functional and measurable, enabling SLPs to track progress while addressing critical communication skills for preschoolers.
Frequently Asked Questions on Preschool Speech Therapy Goals
Here are some common questions related to preschool speech therapy goals:
What are typical speech goals for a 4-year-old?
Speech goals for a 4-year-old often target foundational communication skills such as expressive language, vocabulary development, and intelligibility. Examples include goals for expanding sentence length, using specific vocabulary, and producing multisyllabic words with clarity.
What is an example of a speech therapy goal for preschoolers?
A goal might focus on expressive language, such as: “The child will describe events using a complete 4-5 word sentence in 80% of opportunities.” This target supports sentence formation and storytelling skills.
How do you write IEP goals for preschool speech therapy?
Effective IEP goals are specific, measurable, and functional. They should reflect the child’s unique needs and be written in collaboration with teachers and parents. For example, a goal might specify the number of prompts needed, a target success rate, and a clear skill to be achieved, like “naming objects across four categories with 80% accuracy.”
What are the IEP goals for preschool apraxia?
For children with apraxia, goals might include improving speech intelligibility through structured practice of multisyllabic words and phrases, using layered cueing methods that support motor planning and production.
What are some effective early intervention goals for speech therapy?
Early intervention goals often focus on foundational language skills, including building expressive and receptive vocabulary, enhancing intelligibility, and developing narrative abilities through age-appropriate stories and conversation.
Conclusion
Setting meaningful, research-backed goals is crucial in preschool speech therapy to foster essential communication skills that benefit children well beyond the therapy room.
By focusing on expressive language, vocabulary, and intelligibility, SLPs can support preschoolers in developing skills that will enhance their social interactions, confidence, and readiness for academic challenges. As Kelly Vess illustrates, structured, layered support tailored to each child’s needs ensures that goals are not only achievable but transformative.
Encouraging SLPs to incorporate these insights into their practice, Kelly emphasizes that small adjustments in goal-setting can make a significant impact, empowering children with foundational communication skills that open doors to future success.
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Transcript
Marisha (00:00)
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited for today's interview. We have Kelly Vess joining us. She has over 20 years of experience as a preschool speech language pathologist, researcher, and clinical instructor. She's presented at ASHA and is just generally a very sought after speaker. And so I'm very, very excited to have her today. She's also an author and just
Kelly Vess (00:22)
Mm -hmm.
Marisha (00:29)
a wealth of knowledge and expertise and experience. She shares a lot of that on her Instagram, kellyvesslp. And she has amazing YouTube videos. so we'll link to all of her platforms because I know you're just going to want to learn more from her after we're done. our chat today, I reached out to Kelly because I really wanted to chat about preschool goals.
And so that's what she's here to chat about. So welcome, Kelly.
Kelly Vess (00:59)
Well, thank you for having me Marisha. This is such an important topic. I am kind of drooling to talk and discuss this topic. I think that when I think about the preschool goals, I think of it as kind of the intervention plan. If you go to a dietician or a personal trainer or a naturopath, they're only as good as their intervention plan.
And that's what we're talking about today. So I couldn't be more excited. This is a wonderful topic that you've selected. Thank you so much for having me.
Marisha (01:30)
Yeah, and it'll be a relatively short discussion. And so there's, we're just going to touch the very tip of the iceberg, but I'm really excited to, for SLPs who have some questions in this area, hopefully you'll walk away with some really good initial tips and then some additional resources, or like direction and where else to go. So we'll come up with our own intervention plans in a way. So.
Kelly, I read off a little bit of your bio, but I'm curious to hear from you and I'd love to hear a little bit of your story. Like how did you end up learning so much about preschool? Like how did you end up specializing in that area and what has that journey looked like for you?
Kelly Vess (02:11)
Yeah, thank you for asking because I think that this is why the goal, this is all based on the intervention plan, it's based on who you are. And I'm a researcher and in my undergraduate studies and my master's studies, I was a researcher throughout all of that. And what I learned as a researcher is that details matter. So your treatment target matters, which I know Marisha, you talk about a lot in narratives and complex syntax.
You're going to get better gains if you have a more complex treatment target. So the years of research that we did in my studies was showing that the target is so important. It's kind of like the food that you eat. The food that you eat is going to account for 80 % or more of how healthy you are. And the treatment target is no different. It's what you take in, your client takes in.
and how complex and how rich is that treatment target will have such an impact on the gains you're going to see in these children. So that background as a researcher is one piece, but another piece is I was a preschool teacher before, and now I'm completing my doctorate in early childhood education. So I'm all about treating the whole child and not treating the mouth. So that goes into how the goals are
And lastly, being a fitness instructor. And having that background as a fitness instructor really plays a role because you realize if you only have 30 to 45 minutes a week to create change, you're going to need to make that challenging. So challenging targets are going to create change, and speech pathologists really need to be frugal with the limited time they have.
So there's no time for fluff. There's no time for busy work. Every minute counts. So I think all of that, in over 20 years of being a speech pathologist in the schools, you also learn from being effective and being ineffective. So you have to do something different when you're doing something that's not working, and you have to do more of what is working. So then the goals change over time. But I think that that background
in being a researcher, in being an early childhood educator, not just treating a mouth, and in being a fitness instructor where it's like, what are you going to do if you only have 45 minutes a week and you need to create change in that amount of time? And then lastly, that experience of 20 years being in the field and failing and succeeding that really guides what that intervention plan is going to look like at the end of the day.
So the who is really important to what your intervention is going to look like, and that's the goals. So that's a great question.
Marisha (05:06)
so many amazing takeaways. The one thing that's many, but one thing that's really standing out to me is, so I just attended a course by Jennifer Taps Richards where she was teaching about the complexity approach. And she was so, and I haven't heard this in the context of like preschool goals. So I'm really excited to you chat more about this. But one thing that she said in her presentation was that implementing
Kelly Vess (05:08)
Mm
Okay.
Marisha (05:34)
complexity approach for her speech sound disorders increased her batting average as a speech language psychologist. So yeah, there's another approach where we might see progress with the other approaches, but there could be a way to make faster progress, which benefits students in multiple ways because they are then able to communicate effectively that much faster and all of that. So is that what you're talking about in?
Kelly Vess (05:41)
Mm -hmm.
Marisha (06:04)
kind of a way of increasing our batting average with strategically selected ones.
Kelly Vess (06:07)
Yes, Jennifer Taps, yeah, I see she was just on the SLP summit. She has led the way. She was leading the way in the 90s, telling all of the speech pathologists, hey, look at what I'm doing over here and her grassroots effort. She's kind of ahead of her time. And then people tried it out and they saw the amazing gains for themselves. So she is a pioneer in the field that you had speaking.
And I like how Lynn Williams describes it. You can take a chisel to the rock and work on simpler targets, or you can take a complex target and that'll take fireworks to that rock. It'll blow it up. There'll be a cascading impact. And I like the way she describes it, a waterfall impact in which you're working on an S blend and you get for free the P, B, T, D, N, those
Earlier developing sounds are going to naturally develop and I like what she says It doesn't develop like a geyser if you work on P and B, you're not gonna get the R You're not gonna get the S. You're not gonna get the F. It doesn't work that way So yeah, that is Jennifer taps is such an amazing pioneer in our field and spreading the word about this approach and through word of mouth school speech pathologists tried it out and they looked at the gains and they
This is working. And now the field is catching up and the research and the publications are saying, well, the more complex target is getting better gains. the clinicians kind of led the research. We're ahead of the research.
Marisha (07:48)
Yeah, I love that. And so I'm really excited to chat about what that might look like for other preschool targets, because I'm aware of a handful of different articles, but I'm just sitting at the edge of my seat. I want to learn about this ASAP. But before we dive into goals, because writing goals and selecting targets is actually a very tiny part of the puzzle.
Kelly Vess (07:50)
Mm -hmm.
Marisha (08:12)
There's so much that comes before that, like a high quality assessment. And we want to make sure that we're choosing evidence -based treatments. although we don't have time to dive into all of that, because we're going to do kind of a quick breeze through some of the target selection ideas.
Do you have any favorite like resources or suggestions for speech -language pathologists if they're listening to this and they're like, I need a little bit more of the backstory first.
Kelly Vess (08:47)
Yeah, great question. What we want to do is we want to front load the before we meet that child, we want to send that parent input form out. And that parent input form is going to most importantly tell us what does the child like? What are the child's favorite toys? What are the child's favorite movies? The favorite songs? Getting that input is going to be crucial among all other input. Another thing we're going to want to do is get a language sample from the parents phone.
So what I suggest is the meal time, because the meal at the table, a 10 minute language sample, a meal time, because in the past, I've had just a 10 minute language sample within play. And what's happened is I've seen the back of the child's head walk into every room like a real estate agent. I felt like a real estate agent seeing every room in the house. have no idea what the child's saying. I have no idea what the context is that the soundtrack.
could be dun -dun -dun -dun -dun -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. So it was pretty chaotic. It was very hard to transcribe. But what I found is a 10 -minute snack time or meal time language sample. And I get that from the parents' phone in advance. So that is what I like to get before I meet the child. So then after that, when I meet the child, I can bring my flowers, which means
I meet them, I have my bin of dinosaurs in my hand. This is a dinosaur party, their favorite toy. That's not a coincidence. So we really, yeah, we want to set up for success. And I also know which tests I want to use. If the child's using this, that, here, it, a lot, I want to look at their expressive vocabulary. So if the child is only answering questions when there's a visual reference, I'm going to want to look at the auditory processing.
So that video language sample tells me so much. So from home, that has been a real game changer. And the parent input form.
Marisha (10:51)
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so are you ready to chat about some goals? Okay, let's do that. So let's pretend I'm a super fresh, like SLP working with preschoolers for the first time. Like what would we chat about when we're looking at those
Kelly Vess (10:56)
of course, yeah. Let's talk about some of the things.
Thank you.
This is really great. So when we're looking at goals, I like to go back in time and I'm going to go back in time to John Rosen back in 1973. He worked with adults that had strokes and he developed dynamic tactile temporal cueing at 80 % accuracy level. Let me explain what that is. He developed a method in which you give all of the cues you have, every cue in your toolbox as a starting
And then you pull away the cues, the auditory goes first, the talking cue, and you pull away the cues, always ensuring at a moment to moment basis, the individual is at an 80 % accuracy rate. So we want to think about that in terms of the goals. Now, he did that for language for people with aphasia. Edith Strand, many years later, said, let's use this approach with children with apraxia.
So she used the dynamic tactile temporal cueing approach with apraxia. Then we have Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson and their story champs, which is a highly effective intervention. And they said, let's use dynamic tactile temporal cueing with story champs for literacy. So they're all using a highly effective evidence -based approach on different populations.
And that approach is, I'm gonna give you multimodal cueing. I'm gonna give you the speech, I'm gonna give you the visual, I'm gonna give you the print, I'm gonna give you gestures, I'm gonna give you every cue I have, and then we're gonna do it together. We're gonna talk together in choral speech, and then I'm gonna stop talking. But I'm gonna do the visuals, the gesturals, the print, I'm gonna give you everything else.
and then I'm gonna pull a different tool away and I'm gonna pull a different, so it's that scaffolding as you've talked about a lot. And most scaffolds to least scaffolds at the end is where you're headed. And we always wanna make sure it's 80 % because if we're below that, we have frustration and we have habituation of errors. If we're above that, it's just too easy.
So that is the challenge point that the research across disciplines, that 80 % is a magic number, and that most to least prompting hierarchy is simply more effective than at least to most prompting hierarchy. So that is what we're going to do when we write those goals, whether they're speech goals, whether they're language goals, whether they're augmentative communication goals at the preschool level.
We're going to write them in. I'm gonna give you everything in my toolbox and I'm gonna take tools away, but I'm not gonna drop you. I'm gonna keep you supportive. And I like the word is dynamic, because it's moment to moment. So sometimes children need no cues. And the next minute they're like, I'm kind of distractable, I'm losing interest. They need every cue, right? So it's a dance. It's
Today's session, we're going to give you this level of cueing. It's this moment, it's this level of cueing.
So that is what we're looking at when we write those goals.
Marisha (14:30)
Awesome. then, so if we're looking at the different, so let's say you, we did our evaluation, like we worked with our kiddo, we got like the parent feedback, teacher feedback if applicable, which it would be for school -based SLPs. And then we got the language sample, we kind of did our assessments. And so I think that like the DTTC,
dynamic temporal tactile cueing approach makes a lot of sense in terms of approaching the intervention. But how do we decide which areas we're going to focus on? Because we could do, and maybe we can focus a little bit more on language and letters, but how do we select those targets and how do we get more specific with the goals that we're writing?
Kelly Vess (15:21)
I love that question because there's so much you can work on and their goals are not all created equally. If I work on grammatical morphemes, am I changing this child's life? No. And also the research indicates grammatical morphemes will naturally develop over time. But as you are always emphasizing, if I work on this child's ability to tell a story, am I changing this child's life? Yes.
So when we work on, as you know, I feel silly talking to you about your area of expertise, but when we work on storytelling, we're improving all aspects of communication. Where if you work on grammatical morphemes, you're kind of like, let's strengthen your grip, and we're gonna work on grip strength, and you're not changing this child's life. So not all goals are created equally, and I think if the child has a language impairment, well, first of I'm gonna go a little bit back in time in the research.
In 2004, James Law, he wrote a meta -analysis of speech therapy. And he kind of, I think it was the Wizard of Oz study, because he took the curtain and he pulled it back and he said, you know, I'm going to tell you what's working and what's not working. He said, speech therapists, they're improving articulation. They're improving expressive vocabulary. Are they improving language comprehension? He's like, they're not.
I looked at all the studies, you guys are really not doing a good job in this area. He's like, are you improving the child's ability to express themselves syntactically? What you focus on. It's mixed, not really. So what he showed us is he's like, you guys are really very ineffective in this area. And then we had Triner Spencer and Douglas Peterson come out with story choms and narrative interventions.
which Marisha I know is your middle name, Marisha Narratives Intervention Mets, is like, I'm here to change lives here. And what they showed is we improve language expression, language comprehension, all of these areas, stories telling, literacy skills, look what our intervention is doing, and they're saying, and it's doing for preschool age children.
It's working for school -aged children. It's working for children with cognitive impairments. It's working for children with autism. It's working with children who speaking other languages that are English language learners. So they showed that we can improve language comprehension, and they did it in replicated studies. And they said through storytelling, story -viewtelling, Marisha, I'm speaking your language here, and learning the elements of the story and through syntax.
the focus on syntax, which they call the proto story, the child's first story, right? So the research today does show that speech pathologists can improve language comprehension. It's not gonna be done by doing multi -step directions. It's not gonna be done by WH bingo. It's not gonna be done by grammar. I'm thinking of the grammatical cards, preposition work. It's going to be done.
through stories. that is one reason the stories are really important. But another reason the stories are really important is sadly, we know that children that have developmental language delays are much more likely to have peer rejection. They're much more likely to suffer from sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. They're much more likely to have behavioral challenges. We're talking about exponentially more likely.
So these children, have stories to tell. And unfortunately, as you know, Marisha, they lack the ability to tell the stories. So they're very locked in. So if you want to change these children's lives, what are you going to do? It's like you're going to work on narratives. You're going to work on narrative development. If you want to change their lives in terms of improve their communication skills,
That's what you're gonna wanna do if you wanna change their lives and in terms of improving their emotional well -being and their social well -being, that's what you're going to wanna do. So I think that I really respect, I know that you did on SLP Summit, I saw the wonderful presentation you did on narratives last year and this year on syntax, which is exactly where you wanna be if you wanna change lives. So another study.
that came out in 2017 was, and this is syntax, which is another area that you focus on, which is Amanda Owen Van Horn and Mark Fay. Mark Fay, we've heard of his name because he's the king of, in our field of grammatical morphemes, he's studied it for years. They found in 2017, they had an article said, do the hard things first. And they found that if you focus on complex syntax,
you're going to get better gains and more themes than if you focus on more themes. So once again, it's support for the complexity approach when it comes to language. So instead of working on inged, plural, as you might find many things in teacher paid teachers to download and use for your lessons, that's like working on the grip and strengthening a child's grip to improve their overall health.
You're doing very little work with very little time that you have. Instead, what you're going to want to do is focus on narratives or syntax, and the research very much supports it. So that's where I would definitely put all of my eggs in that 30 to 45 minute basket that I have, which is a very small basket.
Marisha (21:12)
Yeah, it's unfortunately small, but we can do some pretty awesome work with that basket. Awesome. And so how would, so for SLP, cause this could be a pretty significant paradigm shift for some SLP. I'm trying to think of some of the types of questions that they might ask. So, cause especially with preschoolers, I feel like they might be thinking, well, that sounds too hard. Like how do I?
Kelly Vess (21:14)
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Yeah.
Marisha (21:40)
And I think using, like you were talking about the scaffolding and the DTTC and making sure that we have appropriate supports. But what would that look like in a goal? And maybe, I guess this is two part, like what would you say to the SLPs who are like, but isn't that too hard? And maybe we can walk through an example of what it would look like and how we make it not too hard for those preschoolers.
Kelly Vess (22:07)
I think this is a wonderful question because a lot of SLPs are like, where is the who, what, where, yes, no question, what, doing? Why aren't you working on that? I gave them the test. I said, who is that? They couldn't say farmer. I said, where is that? They didn't answer that question, right? So why are you working on how? So what I would do with a child that doesn't have who, what, where, yes, no, because of the cascading impact, I know that this is scary.
Marisha (22:16)
Bye.
Kelly Vess (22:36)
I'm going to work on how. And what happens is when I give them the test at the end of the year, the who, what, where, yes, no, ing, what are they doing questions naturally develop. Is that what you find as well? Marisha, you have a cascading impact in which this child you're working with narratives on, you're working at a higher level, the wh questions naturally developed.
So that is what is happening in my clinical experience and that is what is happening for Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson. They're showing that we are getting this stuff for free. And that's what happened with Amanda, she has such a long name, Amanda Owen Van Horn and Mark Faiz research. They said, we're getting the small stuff for free. Do the hard stuff first, which is focusing on complex sentences. And you're gonna get the grammatical morphemes.
So you have to, it is a paradigm shift. And the way it works, I'm just going to give you an example of a goal, okay, of how I would write this. So for instance, the goal is that the child will respond to how questions with a minimal level of prompting. This would consist of a visual reference. So they see the picture there when you ask the question how, for instance, or something like that, okay? So where would start
On day one, and this is really important, I'm just gonna take a break for background, I only see, have 50 children in my caseload in a school, I only see the parents at the IEPs. I see grandma and grandpa drop the child off for speech, and nanny. So I need to use that time to tell the parent, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Here's a game plan and this is how we're gonna do it. This is my parent coaching time. This is the only time I have.
to coach the parent on how we're going to go through this. So for instance, I will take my bottle of water that I have at the table at the IEP, and I will explain this is how we're going to do it. In the beginning, I'm going to give them a maximum level of prompt. That means we're going to talk together in slow, choral speech on how to pour a cup of water. For instance, I'll give them an example of that. So I'll say, we'll say, first.
Get the bottle. And I'll touch my nose and I'll show them all at it. Next. And then we'll do it together slowly. Screw and charades and act it out. Screw off the cap. Then I'll say, then, and I'm speaking slowly in choral with the child. Then pour it in a cup. And I'll say, lastly, drink it. And I will tell them we are going to speak in choral echoed speech together.
I'm gonna charade, just like you're playing charades, every single step, and I'm gonna use the same terms. I'm gonna say first, next, then lastly, to develop that automaticity. So that becomes automatic for them. Every time I'm gonna use the same terms. And then I'll tell them the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop talking. Wherever I can, I'm going to use my gestures and they're gonna use the words. And I'm gonna say, you're the teacher now.
So this is just like they're doing in story champs. They fade out the verbal, they still provide the physical cues, they still provide the visual cues, they still provide the print even, but now you're the teacher, the child's the teacher, not you Marisha, the child's the teacher. So then after that, we're going to take out another cue. So, and then finally at the end of the year, the child just has the visual cues and you say, how do we get water? And they're telling the story from beginning to end.
So that is what it looks like it's a most level prompting to least and we're always at 80 % or four out of five times for the session. But I walk the parents through me opening the bottle of water and what's hard for me is taking the time to actually go through each of the goals and model it. Because I grew up in a family of six children and we learned that kids are to be seen and not heard.
and you take as little time as possible and keep your mouth closed, you know. so in here, it's like you have to take the stage and you have to take time and give yourself space and time so that the parent can do this at home. And I give examples. So if the child wants something from the fridge, a snack from the fridge, what are you going to do? We're going to make it a story. The child wants a toy. You're going to make it a story. How are we going to do this? So we have to take
advantage of the IEP time because parents, 90 % of them or more are dual income. They can't meet with you during the school day. You need to take advantage of that one meeting you have a year to get them on board with this is how we're going to do this. This is the method. So I hope that's helpful to your audience, but that's what it looks like when it's language based.
Marisha (27:52)
Yeah, I love that. for, because I think it's good to have like a level of skepticism and especially with that paradigm shift. It's like, but that's how I've always done it or that's how I learned in school and all of that. because I, in the show notes for this episode, I'll gather some of the research articles that Kelly has mentioned. And I'll see, I know there's
Kelly Vess (27:54)
Mm -hmm.
Thank you.
Marisha (28:18)
like a handful more that I could probably pull too. But just showing, because I think it helps to see examples of this in like the types of goals that we would be writing, like for narratives and for syntax and all of that. So yeah, we'll pull that together so that you have, because maybe you don't, you might not want to change this for your entire caseload right off the bat, but maybe just give it a try with one student and
Have that research to back you up and be like, okay, this is a good decision. This is a good thing to try. And then kind of go from there. Do you have any other feedback or suggestions?
Kelly Vess (28:57)
And I think that is a great plan. And I think that that is the way we have to think is I think oftentimes, and this is what I learned in graduate school 20 years ago, but many still practice this today, is they base their goals on what's next. So instead of, you create your goals, instead of saying, if the child can do it, being a gatekeeper and saying, the child can do this, this is the next step, that's how I'm gonna decide my goals.
You need to instead focus on how can the child do this complex goal. And I think that takes believing in yourself as a speech pathologist, as well as believing in a child. You need self -efficacy. You need to believe that your toolbox, you've got what it takes to build the Eiffel Tower, to put that sky -fold and take that child to the sky and then pull away your support. You need to believe in the child and believe in yourself.
But yeah, I think that that is the question every time you need to ask is not, can the child do this? But how can the child do this? And then I think that people will be amazed just like with Jennifer Tapps, which she did is she went out there and said, hey, here's some research from Judith Garrett, try it out. And people are like, my goodness. And now everyone's working on three element S blends.
they're ahead of the researchers and the researchers are like, yeah, they're right. This is working. The clinicians are ahead of the research. And I think the same thing here with Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson's story champs, people are like, wow. And the work you're doing as well in narrative intervention, people are doing it and they're seeing these incredible gains that they weren't making using the old fashioned, I picked what was next, the plus one.
what they were doing in the testing and what they got is they got plus one results. Where when they did your approach, when they did the Story Champ approach, they were seeing plus 10 of results. They were seeing that spontaneous, the spontaneous gains.
Marisha (31:04)
And so we've talked about some examples of those more complex targets, like the how questions, like skipping the who, what, when, jumping to how, and then writing goals for narratives. And I'm curious, what would your syntax goals look like for your preschoolers? Can we maybe talk through one example there?
Kelly Vess (31:28)
That's a good question. With the syntax goals, I do think the complex sentence is so important. So what I do is I do focus on that how question. I always go there. And then at the end of it, I would like to say within a spontaneous language sample, I'd like to see the emergence of complex sentences in a spontaneous language sample. And that's the final goal. But of course, to get there, I do use the how questions to get there with the
of that. So that's a wonderful question. Thank you for asking that.
Marisha (32:02)
And then do you have any other like goals just since we're cause SLPs love it. So it was like, I always have to ask, like, there anything else that you would, and I know it's kind of hard because it's, it's always individualized and everything too. I'm just curious if you had any other favorites that are top of
Kelly Vess (32:06)
Yeah. Good. Yes.
I think this is, I know this is another area that you work on that I think is crucially important and Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson have shown this is crucially important is the elements of the story. So when working on the elements of the story, the reason that's so important is because, well, first of all, this is where I think Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson are very impressive. That used to be something that was worked on in third and fourth grade.
So in third and fourth grade, children were introduced to what is the setting, who is the character. These are the elements of the story, which I'm sure your listeners know, but what is the emotion, the action, the consequence. So that used to be third and fourth grade. And then Trina Spencer and Douglas Peterson said, if we teach this in a multimodal manner in which the children are using gestures, if they're saying in choral speech with us, if we have visual references for
if we have a symbol for it as well, a visual icon, then these preschoolers can learn this concept. And they showed this is highly effective in improving, once again, literacy skills, language comprehension, language expression. So that is another skill that is worthy of that little basket we have, putting our eggs in that 45 to 30 minute basket we have to create change.
And that is another goal. So the way I would typically write that is, once again, I would say that, for instance, this is an example. The child that currently is unable to tell a story that includes the six elements of story grammar, I'm going with six. Some could go through eight, some could go through four, depending on how complex you want it and the age you're working with. So for instance, I said the character, the setting, the problem, and emotion, action, and consequence. So I'm going to say
By next year, the child will be able to tell a story provided auditory cues. So this is where we'd say, what is the setting? Print cues, gestural cues, visual reference, and word retrieval cues. So this is giving all of this support to a preschooler so that they're actually able to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. So that would be an example in which we're focusing on the elements of the story.
And then what we're going to do is we're going to take away the auditory. So the next level of cueing is we're giving that with gestural cues. I'm not saying who is the character. Instead, I'm just tapping my head to say character. So we're going to get rid of auditory, just like we did with our language, just like we do with our speech. It's the dynamic, tactile, temporal cueing. We always want to get rid of the auditory.
is early and as soon as possible because it's the hardest to fade. The children become dependent upon it. So, and we always want to be like, you're the teacher now, I wasn't even talking. That pass of the baton is really important.
Marisha (35:15)
Yeah, I love that. And that was a really helpful example. think the examples that we went through hopefully will give SLP some good resources to start trying this out. And this was just like the tip of the iceberg discussion. I feel like we could chat for hours and hours about all of this. So yeah, but just to be mindful of time and all of that, we'll just start to wrap up. But I'm curious if
and SLP was really enjoying this conversation and on the edge of their seat like I was. What do you think would be the best place to learn more from you or connect with you? Because I know you've got Instagram, YouTube, your website, and I'll share links to all of them, but I just want to give you the opportunity to share what you would think.
Kelly Vess (36:04)
Thank you, Marisha. You're so kind. I think the preschool SLP, CaliVest SLP on YouTube is basically the best place to connect. But thank you so much for having me. is, and thank you for the amazing work you do. I know about your work and you're focusing on all of the life -changing areas and syntax and storytelling and doing such creative, amazing work in that realm. So I'm excited for all the lives you're changing. Thank you for having
Marisha (36:32)
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. And I feel like I need to just turn it all of that right back on you. Because you've got like lots of amazing content out there and you're doing the exact same changing lots and lots of lives with all of this great work that you're doing. So thank you for continuing to show up and do that. And yeah, like I said,
We'll share the show notes with all of the resources, all the links we mentioned. And I hope everyone has a fabulous rest of their day.
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