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#172: 3 Steps to Easily Plan Your Speech Therapy Sessions

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Challenges — in SLP life or otherwise — can feel really big. It’s easy to think we need equally big solutions to solve them, but sometimes simplicity does the trick.

At least that’s what we’ve found when it comes to planning therapy sessions!

In her years of wrangling paperwork and caseload stress, Marisha has come up with a ton of strategies and solutions to help stressed out SLPs. For this podcast episode, we asked her to narrow it down to her top three therapy planning practices… and Marisha understood the assignment:

Marisha’s Top 3 Tips for Therapy Planning

1️⃣ Segment your caseload

2️⃣ Leverage pre-made therapy plans

3️⃣ Gather your must-have materials in advance

Let’s dive in:

1. Segment Your Caseload for Efficient Planning

Instead of planning something unique for each group, consider segmenting your caseload. This approach can drastically reduce planning overwhelm.

Marisha shares how she uses books like The Gruffalo to target multiple goals — like categories, grammar, vocabulary, and social language goals — and she gives a great example of how to segment a caseload spanning Pre-K to Grade 5.

By dividing your caseload into segments, you minimize the number of activities you need to plan. And believe it or not, using the same materials repeatedly doesn’t lead to boredom; it fosters creativity. Becoming familiar with a text helps you quickly and easily incorporate it into your sessions, no matter the group size or targets.

2. Leverage Pre-Made Therapy Plans

The internet offers a wealth of resources to streamline therapy planning, including pre-made therapy plans. Marisha admits that she may be a little biased (😜) but she highly recommends SLP Now, where you can access over 400 therapy plans tailored to different segments of your caseload.

<< Start your free trial today! >>

SLP Now follows Dr. Ukrainetz’s literacy-based therapy framework for all its units, and each unit provides a month’s worth of low-prep activity ideas. These plans are evidence-backed and meticulously organized by targets, seasons, and more — so you can map out units in minutes, saving you hours of planning (and stressing) time. 😅

3. Gather Essential Materials in Advance

Essential materials — including probes, assessment tools, and visuals or teaching aids — are crucial for effective speech therapy sessions. One of Marisha’s biggest SLP sanity savers is having these resources at her fingertips for every session.

Whether you prefer printed activities or digital versions, having essential materials ready in advance is a game-changer if you want to plan engaging and effective therapy sessions.

Use these three tips to streamline your speech therapy sessions (even when you have limited prep time!) and with all that time you save, you can focus on what really matters — celebrating your students’ achievements! 🥳

Resources + Links Mentioned:

The Gruffalo
SLP Now’s Quick probes, assessments, and visuals

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hey there, it's Marisha, and today we are going to be chatting about three tips for easy therapy planning. So let's go ahead and dive right in with tip number one. Tip number one is to split your caseload into segments. Now, this isn't how you have to or would necessarily want to do your planning longer term, but I think this is a really great starting point for SLPs who are feeling really overwhelmed and who need to create a little bit of extra margin. And it's also really great for speech therapists who are newer to literacy-based therapy and are getting used to the process. So what do I mean by splitting your caseload into segments? So instead of planning something different for every single group, you look at your caseload and decide which segments you can create. So I think it's easiest to explain this with an example.
So let's say that I am working at an elementary school and I am seeing preschool through fifth grade. So for my segments for that caseload, maybe I have preschoolers as segment one, and for them I plan a play-based unit and then I might segment my K-2 students and plan a picture book for them. And then I might segment my third through fifth grade students and do a science experiment for them. So I'm basically selecting a unit type that is appropriate for that segment of my caseload. Now we are clinicians, not technicians, and we will of course use our clinical judgment if that segmentation isn't appropriate for whatever reason, but I think it can be a really helpful strategy to decrease the overwhelm of that planning a little bit. So instead of planning 20 to 30 different activities, we're only planning three activities and there's some really cool benefits to using this approach.
So when I started using literacy-based therapy, I started doing this. So I had my preschoolers and I had play-based activities for them. Then my K-2 students, I used a picture book. And then for my older students, I would use a more age appropriate text, like a fiction article. And so I got to use that play-based unit across lots of groups, and I got to use that picture book and that article across multiple groups as well. And I feel like this was a really beneficial experience for me as a clinician because I got to use the same materials over and over and it's not boring. It's actually really cool because you start to get really creative. And I was doing this in my cf, in my cognitive load of just navigating a session was a little bit overwhelming. And so being able to use the same materials but get really creative as a clinician in terms of how to target multiple goals using that one book.
Let's get a little bit more specific. So one of the books that I used was The Gruffalo. And so I used that book across multiple groups. And it was really cool because I was working on categories and grammar goals and other types of vocabulary goals and social language. And I got to use that one book to target all of those goals. And it was just really fun to get creative and I felt like I had the space to get really creative because I wasn't trying to figure out all of the logistics of what was even happening in the text. I was really, really familiar with it and it just opened up more room for creativity. And I think over time that became easier of just grabbing a text and being able to target any goal with it. But I think that initial experience was really beneficial for me, and now I'm able to pull anything from the classroom and use it and it's really easy and efficient and I can pick it up really quickly.
But I don't think I would be able to do that if I hadn't done that caseload segmentation and practice using the same text to target tons of goals. And so my planning now looks a little bit different, but I think splitting your caseload into segments can be a really beneficial strategy to go back to. Like I said in the beginning, if you're new to literacy-based therapy and that part is feeling overwhelming, or if you just have a massive caseload or you're new to a school and you haven't built relationships with the teachers to grab those curriculum-based materials and all of that. So that is tip number one, splitting your caseload into segments and planning accordingly.
So tip number two is to use pre-made therapy plans. So there are tons and tons of resources available on the intranet to make this possible, but I have to do a plug for SLP Now. We have over 400 therapy plans that you can use for pretty much any segment of your caseload that you could come up with. So I mentioned a few of the unit types that we have in step one or tip one. So I mentioned our play-based units. I mentioned our picture book units. I mentioned the science experiment units, but we also have core vocabulary units, some of which are more play-based and some of which are literacy-based. We also have fiction and non-fiction articles, which is really great for those older students. And we also have vocational videos, which is really great for those functional communication goals. So one example of a vocational unit is a video we hired secondary students, so it's peer modeling. So secondary students are going through scripts of ordering fast food, for example, or checking out a book at the library.
So that's what we have inside SLP Now, and I'm not super familiar with how other units are set up, but with SLP Now you have access to... we use Dr. Ukrainetz's literacy-based therapy framework for all of our literacy-based units. The science experiments and videos are set up a little bit differently, but for all of those units, you have a month of activity ideas. You have a little bit of a pacing guide in terms of what you want to do in any given session. We also have activities that you can access digitally. So you can literally plan a unit as students are walking in the door. You just need to decide which text you want to use. And then you have instant access to all of the activity ideas and all of the digital resources so you don't have to do any prep.
And then for those of you who have a little bit more time or really want physical materials, we also have printable resources that go with that unit and you just click into the unit, you see all of the activities, you can click to access all the digital resources. There's another tab where you see all of the printable materials. And the best part is because one of the most challenging things about targeting all of these goals using a book is that one, it can be hard to know which targets to choose. I've talked to a lot of speech therapists who struggle with that. And so in our therapy plans, there's a tab called targets, and we've analyzed every single book and text for all of the relevant targets. And so you can just look and you can see, "Okay, these are all the categories in the book. These are all the high frequency speech sounds in the book. These are all the grammar targets in the book."
And then you can click on the target and it'll give you access to teaching materials for that specific target. And then in the main unit plan, you can also find book specific practice activities. So you would literally have everything right at your fingertips. So this is a feature that came out last summer and it's been an absolute game changer. So I used to do hour long calls with members to map out a whole unit, and now you can have it in literally seconds. That's tip number two, using pre-made therapy plans. I'm partial to the ones we have in SLP Now, but I am sure that there are other fabulous options out there. This is absolutely something you could create on your own. You can analyze the book and identify the targets and all of that.
But today we're talking about easy therapy planning for speech therapists who are overwhelmed and short on time. So I just wanted to let you know about a way to make that even easier. So that brings us to tip number three, which is to gather your essential materials ahead of time. So what do I mean by essential materials? So to me, essential materials include probes or assessment tools and visuals or teaching tools. And we've talked about how to build your materials library in previous episodes. So this was in episode 161 where I talk about tips to build that, but I just wanted to emphasize that again here, because if we have our caseload split into segments, we're just prepping three units on average. You can adjust that number, but let's just go with three because that's easy to navigate. So you pull up three units. If you're running super short on time, you just use the digital versions of everything.
If you are able to make time to print off some visuals and manipulatives, then you can do that as well. So that's your first step. Then if you're using SLP Now, that's done for you in a matter of seconds. So we have our unit and then we just need the materials that we need for the core of our therapy. We need to be able to monitor students' progress, and we need to have a way to teach them. And then the units that we've selected give us a perfect language rich context to practice these skills and start working towards generalization as well. So that's how I wrap my brain around therapy planning and make it possible to do that with very little prep time while still providing really high quality therapy. So just to recap the three tips. So tip one, split your caseload into segments.
Tip two, use pre-made therapy plans. And then tip three, gather your essentials ahead of time. Head to episode 161 if you want to see or hear more details on how to build that library of essential materials and how to do that in an easy way. And that's a wrap on this episode. I hope you enjoyed the three tips and looking forward to chatting with you again soon. Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#171: How to Structure A Speech Therapy Session

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✨Embrace the magic of routine. ✨

A Five-Step Framework to Help SLPs Structure Therapy Sessions

Having a framework to rely on can be an invaluable support for SLPs at every stage of their career and caseloads. But some folks can be a tad hesitant when it comes to routines.

They’ll say things like, “Won’t it get boring doing the same stuff over and over?” or “Aren’t the students going to lose interest?”

Marisha’s answer: Nope. You won’t get bored, and neither will your students.

This isn’t about creating a checklist and following it mindlessly; it’s about having a framework for your sessions so that your work (and life!) feels easier. And of course, there is tons of research to support the benefits of incorporating routines into therapy. 🤓

Implementing a routine frees up cognitive resources that would be spent trying to figure out what’s next in the session — and this applies to both our students and us, the SLPs!

…and let’s be real, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to conserve some brain juice? 💪

Of course, having a routine doesn’t mean every session will unfold like a carbon copy of the last.

Some days, you might spend extra time on that initial check-in phase. Others, it’s all about the teaching. And then, there are those days when theory gets a brief nod, and you’re deep into practice mode with a lightning-quick wrap-up.

Why? Because the work of an SLP is dynamic. Your students are dynamic. Your sessions are dynamic.

That’s why you’re a speech-language pathologist and not a speech-language robot. 🤖

SLPs thrive on critical thinking, analyzing the unique needs of each session, and making the best decisions for each student based on clinical judgment.

And that’s some pretty cool work. 😎

Episode Summary

Marisha’s five-step framework helps SLPs structure therapy sessions.

1️⃣ Check-in: Establish rapport with your students, connect with them on a personal level, and do a quick pulse check on where they’re at that day. Doing a check-in helps you decide any adjustments or supports are required to help students learn.

2️⃣ Assess: Review your students’ progress and goal cards, and collect a quick probe. (More on the assessment portion in our next podcast episode!)

3️⃣ Teach: It’s important to meet your students where they’re at, then provide them with the support they need. After the check-in and assessment, you can help them understand how to practice the skills they’re working on to reach their goals.

4️⃣ Practice: This is the actual “work” of the session, when the student puts the skills they’re practicing into context. You can use targeted drills, curriculum-based therapy, or (Marisha’s favorite!) literacy-based therapy.

5️⃣ Wrap up: You can close out the session by discussing students’ progress, assigning homework, or sending out relevant links + info in parent communication apps. You can also review the plan for the next session with students, and wrap up your documentation — especially recording those student wins, because that’s therapy gold. ✨

Learn more about this framework and get some examples of the five steps in practice when you listen to the full episode!

Links Mentioned:

Speech Room Organization: Student Goals

 

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


Transcript

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Speaker 1:
Hello there, and welcome to The SLP Now Podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech-language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hello there, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we get to chat about a sample routine and how you might structure a speech therapy session. I dug into the research several years ago, trying to figure out how I could implement evidence-backed strategies within each of my therapy sessions just based on how I'm structuring things. I looked at a lot of the education literature because there wasn't a lot of super-clear structure in what I was finding in the speech therapy journals. And so I spread out a little bit and distilled what I found into this basic five-step structure. And so we'll go through the five steps. And then as we go through, we're going to chat about some of the nuances and what things might look like and what we might shift around. And then of course, within every session we are using our clinical judgment.
So this little framework that I'm going to share, it might not be a perfect fit for all of your students on your caseload, and we definitely will need to make adjustments based on our students' needs. But this little framework can help us make some clinical decisions and troubleshoot when things come up. A lot of times when I go through this structure with speech therapists, there's a lot to celebrate. There's a lot of things that we're automatically doing, and there's maybe just little teeny tiny things that we can tweak along the way. So without further ado, let's dive into step one.
So step one is check-in. The purpose of this step is to establish rapport with our students. There is a tremendous amount of research on the importance of establishing rapport. And the check-in gives us the opportunity to connect with our students on a personal level, and it allows us to do a quick pulse on where our students are at. It helps us decide if we need to make any adjustments or offer any supports so that our students are prepared to participate in the session and that they are ready to learn. So an example of what that might look like, if a student walks in and is really, really, really sad. If I just ignore that they're sad and just jump right into reviewing the goal cards, and collecting data and diving into an activity, the student might be really sad for a particular reason, and sometimes we can't do anything about that. But sometimes just asking them how they're feeling and giving them the opportunity to share, offering sympathy, can give them just a little bit of a boost, where they're able to participate a little bit more.
The same applies if a student walks in and they are just moving all over the place and they are really, really high energy. If we have a couple supports in our back pocket, maybe we can offer alternative seating, maybe we can do a quick brain break or do a quick movement activity to help bring them to a more midline level, so that they can be focused enough to participate in the activities that we have planned. So some things that we might do for the check-in is a quick temperature check, where you can have a visual or you can just ask your students how they're doing. But the temperature check, you can use a scale of one to five, 1 to 10, and they can let you know how they're doing on that number scale. If you google temperature check, there'll be tons of options on Teachers Pay Teachers, and that can be a fun way to start your session and work on a bunch of vocabulary and executive function skills, all of that. So that's one option. Also, having a visual schedule can be really helpful, so that they know what to expect.
That brings us to step two, which is assess. So we want to review our students' progress. And some activity ideas here are to review students' goals. I will talk about this in a future episode, and I'll link in the show notes to what that might look like. But I have my students review their goal cards, and for the assessment portion of my session, I will collect a quick probe. We'll have a whole episode on this assess part of the framework next week. So make sure to subscribe if you aren't subscribed already to check out that episode.
Then step three is to teach. As a young clinician, this is a step that I often missed. I don't know that I consistently collected probes. I think the students walked in, I checked in with them, I was good with that, and then we just dove into practice. I completely skipped the assess and teach steps of this framework. And if you listen to the episode next week, you'll get a really, really good feel for why assessment is important. And then in future episodes, we'll dive in more into some teaching strategies and everything, but it is important to meet our students where they're at and provide them with appropriate support. I might show them a visual for the skill that they're working on, or I might do some of that initial teaching to show them or tell them what it is that I expect them to be able to do. So for articulation, this could be some elicitation strategies. For vocabulary, it might include pre-teaching some words. For grammar, it might include some focus stimulation or some visuals to break down the skill. There's lots of options here.
Then step four is to practice the skill. And for me, this looks like a lot of literacy-based therapy, structured drill activities, all of that good stuff. And then step five is to wrap up the session. I like to close out the session by discussing student progress. I'm not the best at assigning homework, but this would be a good time to do that. I like using parent communication apps. I don't always have time to message every single parent every session, but I try to check in at least every few weeks. And some things that I might do, like if I'm doing a literacy-based therapy unit, I might send home a link to the YouTube read-aloud for the book that we're working on. And that's easy to share with everyone. I might take a quick picture of the story grammar organizer that we made during the session, so that they can practice retelling at home. There's a number of things that I can just quickly take a picture of and send off or just send a quick note on something to focus on.
And then I can review the plan with students for the next session. This is also when I wrap up my documentation and just document which supports the student benefited from, because that is therapy gold right there. And those are the five steps. One, check-in. Two, assess. Three, teach. Four practice. And five, wrap up. So check-in obviously is always at the beginning of the session, and the wrap up is always at the end. But assess, teach, practice, that's the core, the heart of your therapy sessions. The time that we spend in each of these can really vary. So maybe the assessment portion of your session is pretty consistent, maybe you just spend a couple minutes at the beginning of the session checking in where students are at, but then you administer a quick probe and the student is at 0% accuracy. We might spend the entire rest of the session teaching, and we might not even get to the practice stage.
Or maybe we'll start with assessment, we'll do some quick teaching, and then spend the rest of the session practicing. Or maybe we assess the student, that score is really high on the probe, so we jump straight to practice. But then they are struggling in context, so we need to jump back to teaching. We do a little bit of that and then jump back to practice. So you can see how this is a really dynamic process. There's not a super time-ordered agenda of, "Okay. Two minutes, assessment. Three minutes, teaching. 20 minutes, practice," is very dynamic and we adjust based on what we're seeing in the session. So hopefully that was a helpful overview. Be sure to head to slpnow.com/158 to check out the show notes for this episode, and we'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to The SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episodes sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#170: A Week of Therapy Plans for a New Semester

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Three Tips for SLPs Starting a New Semester

✨ Plus a full month of therapy plans, done for you! ✨

Returning to the speech room after a break (of the start of a new year!) can be equal parts exciting and anxiety-inducing as an SLP. 🥵

It’s great to have a little reprieve from routine and a few days that don’t require an alarm clock, but that return to normalcy can also be a little daunting after that PJ life.

That’s why our first podcast episode of this new year is super simple and actionable: A Week of Therapy for a New Semester.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Marisha talks about:

✅ The value of doing a check-in with your students.

This is a great opportunity to establish rapport, and do an informal assessment by observing how the student uses language in context.

Learn more about student check-ins:
➡ After Break Activity

✅ The importance of reviewing students’ goals.

The first week back is a great time to review students’ goals. Marisha is a huge advocate for creating goal cards that students can pick-up on their way into a session. Reviewing goals helps to reinforce goal awareness, which helps the students to connect with the work you’re doing and communicate it to others.

Reviewing students’ goals also gives you a chance to facilitate a discussion with students about why their goals matter, how the goals can help them, and how they relate to their personal goals and aspirations.

For more resources about student goals:
➡  Click here to download a free goal card template!
➡  Check out this blog post, Speech Room Organization: Student Goals

 

✅ The power of collecting data

Normally, Marisha likes to focus on data collection for one goal per session. The first week back in the speech room after a break is a little bit different though — it’s a good time to see where the students are at with all of their goals.

If you’re returning to the speech room after time off, your students have likely been able to practice some of the skills you’re working on in a real life context. That means you can observe which skills they’re getting a handle on, and which ones could use a little more focus.

You can start collecting data by doing an informal assessment from the moment your students walk through the door — especially if you’re doing a check-in! Using a probe, you can review specific goals, and use the data you collect to make a game plan for the rest of the semester.

Take your data collection to the next level:
➡ Check out this podcast episode that goes into more detail on data collection: 5 Tips to Streamline Your Data Collection as an SLP

 

If we’re going on a road trip, we want to know the destination… but we want to know where we’re starting as well. That’s why collecting probe data on students’ goals in that first week can be really helpful.”

—Marisha Mets

One more thing!

To make your return to the speech room even smoother…

Sometimes it feels like there’s a bit of a holiday hangover heading into January… one that has nothing to do with how many cookies were consumed or how much fun was had. 🤣

If you’re feeling those back-to-school blues in the back of your mind, then you’re in luck because we have the remedy!

Say good-bye to the new-year-same-overwhelm that hits after the winter break with:

✨ A month of therapy, planned for you! ✨

That’s right.

Answer a couple questions in a fun little quiz about the age group you’re working with and the goals you’re targeting, and then we’ll send you therapy plans for January. 👇

Once you comlete the quiz, check your email for recommended units based on the grades and goals you submitted — plus a quick video overview to help you put the plans to work! 💪

Hit the easy button, SLP 👇

Get your January therapy plans!

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


Transcript

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Speaker 1:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech-language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Happy New Year. This episode is going live on January 2nd, and hopefully most of you are enjoying your holiday breaks, but I wanted to record an episode that you can listen to as you're heading back to school after the holidays and giving you some ideas to make your first week back a little bit easier. So I just want to share some of the things that I like to do at the beginning of a new semester or a new quarter after a nice long break for that first week of therapy to hopefully make things a little easier, like I said, and to get back into the swing of things and to help students do the same. So during those first sessions with students as they're coming back, I of course like to do a check-in, and this is really important for establishing rapport, but it's also a great opportunity to observe the students in terms of how they're using their language in context or in articulation, whatever goals are relevant for the student.
It's a really nice informal assessment. And again, just to establish rapport, we of course want to give students the opportunity to share what happened and what their favorite activities were. And if you head to the show notes, we'll have some quick activities that you can pull for that initial activity. So that is idea number one is to do a check-in. And then idea number two is to review students' goals. So the show notes will also include a little template that you can use to create goal cards for students. So if you haven't done this already, the first week back is a great way to do that. And I'll also link to a podcast episode that explains how I use these and how you can set them up, all of that good stuff. So you'll find the template and the podcast episode that goes into a lot more detail, but the short version of what reviewing goals looks like.
So I have my students make goal cards. So one goal card for each of their goals. I typically have them write the goal in their own words, and I create a little packet of cards for each student and they grab them as we start our speech therapy session. And then it's just the beginning of the session, we're reviewing those goals. It's really helpful for a number of reasons. It increases student goal awareness, which helps with our SLP PR I like to call it. So when teachers or parents ask students what they're working on in speech, if we are reviewing the goals on a regular basis, then they're able to share more often than not what they're actually working on. And they don't just say, "Can we play games," they're able to identify what they actually work on in speech and what they're there for. And when I do that, especially if students, maybe there's not quite the buy-in that we'd like, I make sure to facilitate a discussion with students about why the goals matter and how the goals can help them, and how it relates to their personal goals and aspirations.
And again, the podcast episode will go into more detail on that, but that is activity idea number two, to review student goals. And then I also like to collect some data. So in a typical session, I just collect data on one goal per session, but maybe for the first week back, you get to decide what makes sense for you and your caseload. But it might be good to see where students are at with all of their different goals. So with the check-in activity, I get kind of an informal assessment of their overall language and how they're communicating. But with a probe, I can look at their specific goals. And we have episode 159 goes into more detail on my data collection process and all of that. This will also be in the show notes, but check out episode 159, if you're curious what that looks like and what I even mean by collecting probes.
But it's the beginning of the semester again, is a great time to see where our students are at and making a game plan for the rest of the school year and trying to make sure that we're able to continue making progress on the student's goals. And if we're going on a road trip, we of course want to know the destination, but we want to know where we're starting as well. And that's why I think collecting probe data on all of the students' goals in that first week can be really helpful. And it gives us lots of nice data points to use when it comes to progress reporting and all of that as well. So just a recap of the three initial activities. One is to do a check-in with students. Again, the purpose of this is informal overall review of how they're communicating, but then also it's really helpful to establish rapport.
And activity number two is to review students' goals. Again, to increase that goal awareness, increase buy-in, and just make sure we're all on the same page. And then the third activity idea is to collect data on your student's goals. I call these probes. So I'll just do a little mini assessment of each of my students' goals and run through those real quick. And that's what I would do in my first week of a new semester. And then just to keep students busy while we're doing all of that, the check-in activity might have a little drawing activity or something so that we can manage behavior and expectations and all of that as well. So those are my ideas.
And again, to check out the resources that I mentioned, head to slpnow.com/170 and check us out on Instagram @slpnow. We'll have some content related to this episode going live there as well. And I'd love to hear your comments and feedback. Feel free to send me a DM on Instagram as well, sharing your activities or if you use these activities, how they went and any questions are also welcome. So I hope you had a fabulous winter break and that your first week of a new semester. That's a wrap, and we'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#169: 5 Tips for Mixed Groups in Speech Therapy

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There are a few experiences in Marisha’s SLP life that completely changed the way that she plans and implements therapy sessions, and one of those game changers was learning how to tap the power of mixed groups.

In this week’s episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha shares her top five tips for working with mixed groups. If you — or an SLP you know — get stressed out by the prospect of mixed groups, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

Let’s dive in! 🤿

Tip one: Embrace the positives of mixed groups

Marisha highlights the importance of adjusting your mindset and embracing the positive aspects of mixed groups. She acknowledges that there are real challenges, but also underscores the benefits.

There are always going to be situations where one-on-one therapy is absolutely the best option and in those cases, we can try to figure out a way to make that happen. But when Marisha was working in the schools and had massive caseload numbers, she found that she needed to group students to be able to provide all of the services that were needed. In that kind of setting, there’s not enough time in the day to meet all of our students one-on-one. That’s why it’s so helpful to focus on the positive aspects of working with mixed groups.

Mixed groups can provide students with valuable role models and improve generalization. Moreover, students can support each other in a group setting by sharing their unique strengths. One student may have a relative strength in producing grammatically correct sentences but is working on vocabulary, whereas another student might have a relative strength in vocabulary and need support with producing grammatically correct sentences. By working together in the group, they can scaffold and support each other which is really cool to see in action — and that’s a positive aspect that we just don’t get to see in one-on-one sessions.

💪 Challenge time: Jot down a couple of things that are beneficial about mixed groups, and really focus on how it has a positive impact on students.

Tip two: Set up a data collection system.

Let’s be real, it’s easy to lose track of how students are doing without a solid data collection system. We need data to assess where students’ skills are when they begin therapy, and to ensure we’re making meaningful progress with our work.

We’ve talked about data collection many times on the podcast because it is so important. If you want to nerd out on the nitty gritty, make sure you check out the archives because there is so much practical goodness there — along with links to tools + resources that will help you get a solid system started.

🕰 Go back in time: Check out episode 159 to do a deep dive into all things data, and then try a FREE two-week trial of SLP Now’s data collection system!

Tip three: Prepare your visuals and have go-to materials ready.

Visuals are the core of my therapy sessions when it comes to mixed groups and will make the sessions run much more smoothly. They are such a great teaching support because they break down skills in a way that makes them easier to understand and integrate. The real game-changer for visuals is to have them organized so that they’re at your fingertips when you need them.

📂 Organize Your Visuals: Learn more about strategies to build your speech therapy materials and put them to work with episode 161 of the podcast, and learn more about the resources mentioned when you check out the SLP Now membership!

Tip four: Create a routine.

You know I love a good routine! They are so helpful when it comes to decreasing your students’ cognitive load — and they will make things a lot easier for you by streamlining your therapy sessions.

Again, there is a whole other podcast episode that goes into detail about the power of routines in individual therapy sessions, so make sure to give it a listen if you really want to unlock the power of creating a routine.

🔗Head to episode 158 to learn how to structure a speech therapy session.

Tip five: Plan ahead so you aren’t doing the last-minute scramble.

Planning ahead is about building an overarching structure for your therapy sessions. In past episodes, we’ve talked about how to make this happen by planning out a month-long unit up front.

With this kind of approach, the routine you’re setting up will include what you do during individual sessions, as well as a plan for tackling sessions over the course of a longer period. Planning ahead allows you to wrangle and organize all your materials and visuals up front — which will make your SLP life so much easier.

💃Challenge time: Try SLP Now’s FREE 5-day literacy-based challenge and get set up with a month of therapy plans in just five minutes per day.

We hope these tips will help you see the benefits of mixed groups and how they can foster a positive learning experience for your students — so that you can show up and do your best SLP work by working smarter, not harder. 💪

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


Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.

Hello there, and welcome to The SLP Now Podcast. I'm Marisha, and today we are going to be chatting about five tips to navigate mixed groups in speech therapy. So let's go ahead and dive right in.

So tip one is to embrace and lean into the positive aspects of mixed groups. I think just adjusting our mindset and trying to look for the positive can make this a lot easier to navigate. Of course, there are situations where one-on-one therapy is absolutely the best option, and we can try to figure out a way to make that happen for our caseload.

But I think that in the schools, we really need to group students to be able to see all of the students and provide all of the services. There's just not enough time in the day to meet all of our student services one-on-one. And I think that there are really some positive aspects for mixed groups.

I think it's a really great way for our students to have peer models. The research shows that that has an impact on generalization, and it's just really cool to see students be able to support each other, and support each other in using their skills in the classroom, and being models for each other.

So students have unique strengths and needs. And one student may have a relative strength in producing grammatically correct sentences, but they are working on vocabulary. Whereas another student might have a relative strength and vocabulary, and they need support with producing grammatically correct sentences. Just as a simple example. And by working together in the group, they can scaffold and support each other. And it's really cool to see that in action.

And so just trying to find the positive aspects that we can look for, those were just a couple examples. I'm sure you can come up with your own. But I challenge you to jot down just a couple of things that are beneficial about mixed groups, and really focusing on how that can actually have a positive impact on students versus having it be a negative thing.

And then my second tip is to set up a data-collection system. It can be easy to lose track of how students are doing if we don't have a solid data collection system. Because we need that data to assess where students are at, and to make sure that we're making meaningful progress. We've talked about data collections several times throughout the podcast. Episode 159 goes into a lot more detail. So if you're curious about that, I'd recommend checking out that episode, and that'll give you a lot more resources and ideas.

And step three is to prepare your visuals. So having your go-to materials ready to go will make mixed groups a lot easier. Because your visuals are the core of your therapy sessions, that is what you are going to use to really teach students and break down skills. And having those ready-to-go, easy to access, making sure that they're organized will make a world of a difference.

And then episode 161 talks about some strategies to build those visuals, and can keep them organized. So if you're feeling like that's an area that you'd like to work on, or that you'd like some inspiration for, head to episode 161.

And then the fourth tip that I have is to create a routine. It'll decrease your students' cognitive load, but it'll also make things a lot easier for you. And I'm linking to a lot of podcast episodes in this episode because it's really a recap of all of the strategies that we've been talking about. But in episode 158, I talk about how you can structure an individual speech therapy session. So that's a great place to start in how you're building any individual session.

And then we also have a podcast episode on planning larger units of therapy, and you can hear more about that in episode 163.

And then the last tip is planning ahead. So building more of an overarching structure to your therapy sessions. So 163 will also touch on that in terms of building out a month-long unit for your sessions. Because the routine would include what you do in an individual session and how you approach therapy overall. But being able to plan ahead, and gather your materials, and make it easier to implement therapy for all of your groups and all of your students can make a massive difference.

So to recap those tips, tip one, embrace and lean into the positive aspects of mixed groups. Two, set up a strong data collection system. Three, prepare your visuals. Four, create a routine for your sessions. And five, plan ahead so that you're not scrambling and putting together resources at the last minute.

If you want a recap of these steps, as well as easy links to all of the relevant resources for all of these tips, head to the show notes at slpnow.com/169. Again, that's slpnow.com/169. I hope you enjoyed these, tips and we'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share with your SLP friends, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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How to Use SLP Now’s Goal Bank to Write Your Speech Students’ IEPs

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In this blog post, Rachel at SLP Now discusses how to use SLP Now’s Goal Bank to write your IEPs!

As a speech-language pathologist, the SLP Now Goal Bank is an awesome resource to have in your toolbox 🧰

How do we use the speech goal targets in the SLP Now Goal Bank to write goals for IEPs that are specific to our students? In this article, I am going to review the types of speech goals included in the SLP Now Goal Bank, and how you can use it to write your students’ speech IEP goals! 👏

What Types of Goals Are Included in the SLP Now Goal Bank?

We have 14 speech and language goal areas for you to explore in the SLP Now Goal Bank 👇

▸ AAC Goals

▸ Articulation Goals

▸ Critical Thinking Goals

▸ Fact & Opinion Goals

▸ Fluency Goals

▸ Functional Communication Goals

▸ Grammar Goals

▸ Narratives Goals

▸ Phonological Awareness Goals

▸ Phonology Goals

▸ Receptive Language Goals

▸ Social Language Goals

▸ Summarizing Goals

▸ Vocabulary Goals

Write SMART Goals to Help Make Your IEP Goals as Clear as Possible

Before we get into choosing targets for our speech and language goals, let’s start with a refresher on how to write SMART goals. 

SMART Goals are:

S – Specific: Is your speech goal specific? Did you talk about the setting? Are you putting too many things in one goal?

M – Measurable: Can you measure this speech goal with data? Consider a rubric for some of those harder-to-measure speech therapy goals.

A – Attainable: Is this speech goal attainable in a year for this particular student? Goals are individual, make sure it’s feasible for this student.

R – Realistic: Is this speech goal something that will generalize to the classroom/school environment and help the student succeed at school? Have you considered the whole EBP triangle with research, clinical judgment, and information from the student and their family?

T- Timely: Can the student achieve the speech goal in the amount of service time you are recommending for the IEP?

5 Areas to Consider When Choosing Speech and Language Goal Targets

Student Case History

Understanding a speech student’s case history is a huge part of understanding the whole student. Gaining background on the student’s family history, home environment, and previous medical history is very important. 

Teacher Input

If you are a speech-language pathologist in the schools, it is critical that you get teacher input! In most (if not all) states, there must be an area of educational impact to determine a student qualifies for school-based speech services. Speaking with the student’s teacher gives you relevant information on where the student struggles, which in turn helps you determine your goal targets.

Student Input

Have a discussion with your student on what they perceive as their areas of strength and their areas of need.

Student input can have a huge impact on your goal writing process. If there is a speech-related area the student identifies as creating a negative impact on their life (academic or social), this could be an indication that this would be a great speech goal to target (given that it is an area they show a need for).

Student buy-in can really change the game when it comes to making progress toward their goals!

Standardized Speech and Language Assessments

Standardized assessments are a tool to identify how a student compares to other students from similar ages/grades. It also is a resource for us to see specifically which areas the student struggles. 

When selecting standardized assessments, keep in mind diagnostic accuracy, reliability, and validity. This is especially important when working with students from different cultures.

Diagnostic Accuracy – how well does a test identify the presence/absence of a disorder?

Reliability – if you repeat a test, will you get the same results?

Validity – does the test measure what it is supposed to?

Informal Speech and Language Assessments

Standardized tests can give us important information, however, informal assessments allow us to get even more! For example, a standardized assessment may only offer a few different items focusing on past-tense verbs, so informal assessments provide us an opportunity to look into that area further.

Examples of Informal Assessments:

Language Samples

Classroom Observations

Work Samples

Putting It All Together – Using SLP Now’s Goal Bank to Write a Speech IEP Goal

So far, we have discussed how to use SLP Now’s Goal Bank to write speech IEPs by looking at goal targets in the SLP Now Goal Bank, areas to consider when writing goals, as well as how to write a SMART goal. Now, let’s practice actually writing the goal keeping this information in mind.

1. Using the formal and informal evaluation information, determine if there is a speech and/or language impairment.

▸ Student exhibited the phonological disorder of fronting /k/ and /g/ during the standardized assessment and  informal language sample, and qualifies for speech services.

2. Identify goal targets that impact the student academically/socially.

▸ Parent and teacher report that Student replaces /k/ with /t/ (e.g. “cat” is spelled “tat”)  in their spelling. It is also hard to understand what the student is asking or commenting when talking with the teacher and peers in the classroom.

3. Determine which level to target the goal at based on student’s baseline data performance. While determining your student’s baseline for a goal, observe which kind of supports your student benefits from, and, if applicable, include it in your goal!

▸ Student demonstrated the phonological process of fronting in 75% of instances in words. Verbal prompts for tongue placement to produce /k/ increased accuracy.

4. Refer to the SMART goal writing format to ensure that your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, and realistic. If a student produces /k/ with 0% accuracy, it may not be attainable or realistic to mark mastery as 100%.

▸ Based on this information, a SMART goal for Student could be “By the end of the IEP, Student will decrease the phonological process of fronting from 75% to 40% by producing /k/ and /g/ in the initial position of words, given no more than 2 verbal prompts, across 3 consecutive sessions.”

5. Create goal objectives (optional).

▸ When writing goals, it can be useful to create objectives. For example, this goal could have objectives that change the amount of support provided, eventually leading to independence. The first objective could be “given no more than 2 verbal prompts”, and the next objective could be “given no more than 1 verbal prompt.” That way, you are actively tracking data on the parameters set by your objectives during the timeframes they are assigned to.

 

With an SLP Now membership, the goal bank and objectives are included, making it easy to create goals and track student data!

#168: 3 Tips to Make the Most of an SLP Conference

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Welcome to another episode of The SLP Now Podcast, where we explore practical strategies and tactics for SLPs to enhance their skills and level up in their career. Today, we’re diving into a topic near and dear to our hearts:

Making the most of your next SLP conference

If you’ve been a podcast listener for a while, you may already know that Marisha is passionate about learning and staying up-to-date with the latest in the world of speech pathology. Whether it’s new research, innovative interventions, or creative caseload management techniques, she’s always eager to learn more.

One of Marisha’s favorite ways to learn and connect with fellow SLPs is by attending conferences. She loves how conferences offer a perfect blend of learning opportunities and the chance to connect with incredible SLPs like you!

But even with all her experience attending conferences, Marisha knows that the amount of options and information can sometimes be overwhelming.

Should I learn something new, or should I focus on perfecting what I already know?

Questions like this can cause some serious stress. That’s why Marisha started developing systems to make the most of these fantastic (albeit sometimes overwhelming and expensive 😅) learning opportunities.

In today’s episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha shares her top tips to help you make the most of your next SLP conference. 👇

Tip 1: Select Courses that Align with Your Caseload

When it comes to choosing conference courses, Marisha encourages a thoughtful and strategic approach. She recommends that you start by reflecting on your current caseload. Jot down areas where you feel you could level up or areas that need improvement because these reflections will guide your course selections.

Instead of filling your conference schedule willy-nilly, build your agenda around courses that reflect your current caseload and the opportunities for growth. Marisha’s secret weapon for this step is her caseload-at-a-glance sheet, a practical tool she explains in the episode.

💡 Download your free copy of the caseload-at-a-glance sheet!

Tip 2: Set Up a Smart Note-Taking System

At SLP conferences, you gather a wealth of information and it’s crucial to capture it for later use. Marisha’s solution is a strategic note-taking system. She prefers using Notability, an app that combines flexibility and organization for comprehensive note-taking.

In the episode, Marisha shares how she uses Notability for conference notes. But the real treat is a video on the blog that demonstrates Notability in action. So you can choose the note-taking system that suits your needs.

📝 Check out this blog post: Easy Conference Notes for SLPs

📹 Check out this video tutorial for a step-by-step guide to using Notability:

Notability Tutorial from SLP Now on Vimeo.

Tip 3: Manage Your CEUs Like a Pro

For those dealing with Continuing Education Units (CEUs), Marisha offers advice on managing your hours effectively. There are various methods for this, but Marisha prefers using Google sheets. It’s super accessible, simplifies the tracking process, and provides a stress-free way to track your CEUs.

In the episode, Marisha covers the essential details of setting up and using a Google form to track your hours. The benefit? Peace of mind, especially in the event of an ASHA audit, knowing you have all the required information at your fingertips. 🥳

Discover more time and sanity-saving tools + resources to help you unlock your best SLP life with a 14-day free trial of the SLP Now membership!

We hope this episode teaches you a tip or two (or three!) to make your SLP conference experience as valuable and enjoyable as possible. And, as always, we’d love to hear from you!

Come say “hi” on Instagram, and share your best practices with a vibrant community of over 24,000 SLPs dedicated to working smarter. 💪

Happy conferencing!

Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello, there. And welcome to the SLP Now Podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.

Hello, there. It's Marisha, and today I'm going to share three tips to make the most of an SLP conference. So let's go ahead and start with tip one, and that is to select courses that will be applicable for your caseload. And I like to do this by making a caseload-at-a-glance sheet. You don't have to do this if you have a good grasp on your caseload. And you probably have a good feel for which areas you are struggling with a little bit more. So you could just simply think about your sessions and jot down any areas where you feel like you are struggling a little bit or where you would like to show up as a next level of yourself.

And so just jot down those areas. And then when you are going through the courses at the conference and looking at the agenda and building your plan, you can look for the courses that would actually address what you need for your caseload, versus just filling in your schedule. I think it's a way just to be a little bit more strategic and to help get that practical impact. Of course, you can look through the course catalog and pick things that sound interesting, but I think selecting courses with an eye for what your immediate caseload needs can be really impactful. So that's one way to tackle it, just jotting down what comes to mind as you're going through your caseload.

Another strategy is to use a caseload-at-a-glance sheet. I'll link this in the show notes. I use this when I'm feeling overwhelmed by my caseload, and I just take an inventory of the goals that I am targeting across my caseload. And so for the purpose of planning out professional development, I would jot down all of the grades that I'm seeing. I like to do this by grade, but you can also do it by class or some other age band. So I fill in the rows with all of the grades, and then in the columns I put rough areas. So maybe grammar, vocabulary, social language, whatever types of goals I am writing. You could do speech sound disorders too. And you can just pull out a blank piece of paper, but I also have a template if you want one.

And so I fill in the grades in the rows, and then the broad areas in the columns, and then I go through all of my goals and jot down really shorthand versions of what the goals are. So if it's ... main item is in categories. I would just write categories and then put a one next to it because one student has that goal. And then maybe if a student is working on K, I would just put K under the speech sound disorders and put a one. I would just go through all of the goals and plug in really short titles for each goal, and then I would just continue to add tallies.

So then when I'm done doing this ... if another student also has a goal to produce K, instead of writing K again, I would just add a tally. Then when I'm done going through all of my students' goals, I can see which goals are coming up most often. And that can facilitate my reflection of, "Okay, what am I feeling really good about?" Maybe I can highlight those in green. And then I can highlight in red or pink potentially which areas I'm not feeling as good about. And then I can prioritize based on how many students have that goal, all of that. I also use this caseload-at-a-glance to make sure that I have assessments for all of my students' goals, that I have teaching tools like visuals and strategies. So I tend to make multiple copies of this and use that to inventory across my caseload planning and all of that.

So that is tip one, select courses that are applicable. And I shared two ways that you can do that. Then step two is to set up your note-taking system. And I wrote a blog post about this several years ago. It looks like it was in 2017. And I have a little tutorial video for how I use Notability to take notes, but Notability is my app of choice. You can access it on your computer or on a tablet. And I use that when I'm attending a conference. I'll import all of the slides to Notability. And if they don't have slides, I'll just create a blank document. But then I can type in notes or I can hand write notes. I have an iPad and I use the Apple Pencil with it, so I can draw on the slides or write down things as we're going through or draw little visual organizers, graphic organizers, all of that.

And that's my favorite way to take notes. And I'll link to the blog post with the video so you can actually see it in action. And you can see me showing up for a video six years ago, which is kind of funny. But like I said, that's my note-taking system of choice. It's nice because especially if you're traveling, then you don't have to bring a bunch of papers. And the slides always change last minute, so it's easy to load in the newest slides. And there's not always great internet access at these conventions and conferences. So because I load it ahead of time, I know that I'll have access to the slides and I'll be able to take notes.

And I really like Notability too because I can organize all of the slides, and I can easily search for information later. Because I attend these conferences with the goal of picking up strategies that I can use with my current caseload. And so I want to be able to access that information so that I can apply it once I am back with my caseload. So having the notes in a digital format is really helpful because I know that I take all of my notes in Notability, and then I can search all of the current notes and past notes to help me implement what I'm learning at these expensive conferences.

And then step three is to have a plan to track your CEUs. So if you use the ASHA Registry, then you just need to follow the steps to submit your attendance to the conference. But if you are not paying for that service ... and even if you are, maybe you'd want to do this. It's probably a little bit too much work, but I have a little Google form that I like to use. And I just fill that out for every course that I complete. So I fill that out for every course. And then when I self-report my hours to ASHA, if I am ever randomly chosen for an audit, because I've been filling out this form, after I complete every single course, I will have all of the information that they require for the audit. And I just have to pull up that document, copy and paste in the information, and then submit it to them.

So I never get stressed ... I would never be stressed. I haven't been chosen for an audit. But I wouldn't feel stressed about an audit because I know that I have all of that information right at my fingertips. And it also helps me keep track of my hours so I can make sure that I'm actually on track. So it serves a couple purposes. If you want to access my note-taking system, blog post, or the link to the blog post where I talk about how to keep track of your own hours, head to slpnow.com/168. Again, that's S-L-P-N-O-W.com/168. And that'll have a recap of the tips, as well as links to the relevant resources.

And just one more verbal recap of the three tips. So one, select courses that are applicable to your caseload. Two, set up a note-taking system. And you don't have to do it my way, but just think about how you want to take your notes ahead of time. And think about what can set your future self up for success. How can you take notes that's easily accessible? And then three, have a plan to track your hours as you're going through these courses.

So those are my three tips to make the most of a conference. I'd love to connect with you on Instagram. So if you have any favorite tips that you like to use when you're attending conferences, I'd love to hear. And head to SLP Now on Instagram, and I'd love to hear from you there. Hope you have a fabulous week.

Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#167: My Favorite Speech Therapy Apps (Part 2)

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Are you ready for round two of Marisha’s favorite apps for speech therapy?

Last week we talked about using Notability, Cookie Doodle, and Toca Tea Party. (Head to slpnow.com/166 if you missed the episode!)

This week we’re following up with part two, sharing more apps that can be absolute game changers for speech therapy.

The speech therapy apps Marisha talks about in this episode are:

1️⃣ Cough Drop

Cough drop is an AAC app that Marisha learned about years ago at an ASHA conference. What really stood out to her at the time was the founder’s story — he has a daughter who uses AAC, and they were struggling to find a system that would work well for her. They couldn’t find one, which led him to create this app! (What a cool story, right?)

This app is great if you need visual supports in a session, even if students are not using AAC as a mode of communication. Cough Drop is a really nice support because it’s accessible, they make it easy to put together vocabulary sets, they have tons of templates that are really easy to customize, and the data tracking is awesome.

Check out Marisha’s blog post about Cough Drop

2️⃣ Articulation Station

This is a fabulous app to use with speech sound disorders. You can open up the app, select any sound, and choose your target. The app makes it really easy to build decks of cards to work on with your students and target those sounds at various levels.

It’s really easy to move up and down the speech ladder, and offers a fun + engaging way to target all of your goals without having to prep a million different materials.

Check out Marisha’s blog post about Articulation Station

3️⃣ SLP Now!

To be fair, SLP Now isn’t an iPad app — it’s a web application, which means that you can access it on any device that has a web browser. A lot of SLPs use SLP Now on their computer, but you can also access it on your iPad, any other tablet, or your phone.

Even though it isn’t technically a mobile app, SLP Now made this list because it has saved SLPs (Marisha included!) a ton of time, it helps streamline your workload, and it gives you easy access to therapy materials.

That sounds like a win/win/win situation!

From AAC to speech sound disorders to therapy planning and data collection, we’ve got you covered when it comes to apps that will make your SLP life easier.

Make sure you listen to this week’s episode to get all the app-y goodness, then come say hi on Instagram and let us know your favorite speech therapy apps!

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Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hey there, it's Marcia, and today I'm continuing to share some of my favorite apps to use in speech therapy. So let's go ahead and dive right in.
So this first one is another very versatile app and it is called CoughDrop. So I tend to use it on my iPad, but they also have a web version, so you can use it on your computer. But CoughDrop is an AAC app, and I first learned about them years and years ago at an ASHA conference, and was just really impressed with the founder story. He has a daughter who uses AAC and they were just struggling to find a system that would work well for her, and that's what led him to create this app. So just a really cool story.
And this is an app that I like to use. It's nice just if I need some visual supports in a session, even if students are not using AAC as a mode of communication. I just think it's a really nice support to use in sessions in a variety of ways. But it's also really accessible, it's easy for me to put together vocabulary sets. They have tons of templates and it's really easy to customize. So I've been able to put together AAC boards and little systems for students just for testing purposes in a really easy and efficient way.
And I have a whole blog post on CoughDrop, so I'll add that to the show notes, as well. But this is just one that I'd love to shout out, I think it's really helpful. And they have some really amazing features. I've used it with some of my students, and you can see how often ... like it makes it easy to track data on a lot of goals because it gives you data on which vocabulary words have been used, how often it's being used, lots of really cool data. So that is a really neat one that I like to use just, again, as visual supports for students. But then also to trial AAC in an easy, low cost way. So that is the first recommendation.
Then my second app for the list in no particular order is Articulation Station. So this is a fabulous app to use with speech sound disorders. You can just open up the app and you can select any sound, and you can choose if you're working on initial, medial, final or any combination of those sounds. And it makes it really easy to build decks of cards to work on with your students, and you can target the sounds at various levels. It's really easy to move up and down the speech ladder, and it's just a fun and engaging way to target all of those goals without having to prep a million different materials.
I'd love it too because you can customize decks, as well. If you're using a core vocabulary approach, you can create your own set of decks in the app, as well. And there's just tons of ways to use it to target a number of goals. I also wrote a blog post very long time ago about Articulation Station, so I will link that in the show notes. That's my second recommendation for today.
The third recommendation that I have is a little bit of self-promotion, but one of my go-to resources to use in therapy is SLP Now. So it is not an iPad app, SLP Now is a web application. Which means that you can access it on any device that has a web browser. So a lot of SLPs use SLP Now on their computer, but you can also access it on your iPad or any other tablet or your phone. I am adding it to this list because I know that it saved SLPs a ton of time and resources, and it helps streamline a lot of the workload and gives you easy access to therapy materials.
So to recap, our three apps are CoughDrop, Articulation Station, and SLP Now. And if you'd like the list of all the apps and links, you can head to SLPNow.com/167. That's a wrap.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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How to Write Vocabulary Goals for Speech Language Pathologists with Vocabulary Goal Bank

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When it comes to supporting students in their communication journey, vocabulary goals are an essential part of a speech-language pathologist’s toolkit. 

These goals help build a student’s ability to understand and use words effectively across different contexts, paving the way for academic success and social connection.

In this post, we’ll dive into strategies for writing vocabulary goals that are specific, measurable, and impactful. We’ll explore key areas to target in therapy, provide sample goals, and share tips for teaching vocabulary in fun and meaningful ways. 

Along the way, you’ll get fresh insights from Marisha Mets’ latest podcast series on writing effective vocabulary goals, including practical advice that you can use in your sessions right away.

Along the way, you’ll get fresh insights from Marisha Mets’ latest podcast series on writing effective vocabulary goals, including practical advice that you can use in your sessions right away:

Let’s dig in!

Why Vocabulary?

Vocabulary is central to a child’s ability to comprehend and use language. Research has shown that vocabulary deficits can create a significant barrier to academic success, often creating a cycle of falling behind for students who struggle to learn new words.

“The Matthew Effect demonstrates that students who read more tend to learn more words, which improves comprehension, while struggling readers fall behind.”

— Stanovich, 1986.

This cyclical effect highlights the need for direct vocabulary instruction, especially for students with special needs. 

Children with language impairments often require more direct instruction and repeated exposure to new words than their peers. Research by Pence & Justice (2004) underscores the importance of direct vocabulary teaching, noting that many students do not learn words indirectly through conversations, reading, or listening.

“Average children need 15 meaningful exposures for a word to become automatic, but children with language impairments require even more.” — Marzano, 2004; Pence & Justice, 2004.

Additionally, vocabulary is a key factor in the achievement gap between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Children from low-income families often know significantly fewer words when they enter school, which can hinder their academic progress (Snell, Hindman, & Wasik, 2015).

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary for Improved Comprehension

In her latest podcast episode, Marisha Mets emphasizes the importance of pre-teaching vocabulary to improve comprehension, particularly for Tier 2 words. 

Pre-teaching vocabulary allows students to familiarize themselves with key terms before encountering them in context. This strategy is especially effective for older students who are working on more complex vocabulary.

“We found that comprehension improves if we pre-teach vocabulary words… Students are seeing those words in context multiple times.” 

– Marisha Mets​

Incorporating pre-teaching into your therapy sessions ensures that students encounter key vocabulary in a structured way, which enhances their ability to retain and use new words effectively.

SLP Now’s Vocabulary Goal Bank

Feeling stuck as a speech therapist when it comes to writing vocabulary goals? 

SLP Now has a Vocabulary Goal Bank with a ton of vocabulary goal ideas for you to get inspiration from!

7 Areas to Target When Writing Vocabulary Goals for Speech Students

When setting vocabulary goals for speech students, it’s important to focus on a range of language skills that will help them not only understand words but use them functionally. Below are five key areas to target when writing vocabulary goals, each designed to support students’ language development across different contexts.

Before writing your vocabulary speech goals, be sure to review how to write SMART goals to help your students and make your IEP as clear as possible!

Let’s get into it..

1. Core Vocabulary

Core vocabulary refers to high-frequency words that students use across a wide range of situations. These words are versatile and form the foundation of language, making them a great place to start when setting vocabulary goals. 

Targeting core vocabulary ensures that students can communicate in a variety of settings, whether they’re in the classroom, on the playground, or at home.

Example Goal:

The student will use total communication to produce selected core vocabulary words (e.g., go, want, help) at least 20 times throughout the school week.

2. Basic Concepts

Understanding basic concepts like size, quantity, and spatial relationships is critical for language development and academic success. These foundational skills help students follow instructions and engage in more complex tasks later on.

“Basic concepts provide the scaffolding that allows students to access more complex language down the road.” 

— Marisha Mets

Assessing Basic Concepts

To set effective goals, use multiple data points such as:

  • Classroom Observations: Monitor how the student follows directions involving basic concepts.
  • Teacher/Parent Reports: Gather input on areas where the student may struggle.
  • Dynamic Assessments: Interactive assessments that reveal how well the student grasps concepts.
  • Formal Assessments: Tools like the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts can provide structured insights.

Example Goals:

The student will follow one-step directions with spatial concepts (e.g., up, down, in, out, on, off, above, below, next to, between) with 80% accuracy.

The student will use 10 basic concepts (e.g., up, down, in, out, on, off, above, below, next to, between) to describe his/her/their play across at least 3 sessions (for each concept).

Types of Concepts to Target:

  • Qualitative: big/little, hot/cold
  • Temporal: before/after, early/late
  • Quantitative: full/empty, more/less
  • Position: pn/off, front/back

By targeting basic concepts, students build the foundation for more complex language tasks.

3. Describing/Association

As our students increase their vocabulary, we want them to be able to describe the words they are learning, as well as make associations between them. 

The Expanding Expressions Tool is a good resource for this goal. This tool focuses on describing vocabulary based on group, function, appearance, composition, parts, and location.

Example Goal:
The student will describe objects using 2-3 attributes (e.g., color, size, function) with minimal prompting in 4 out of 5 opportunities.

4. Tier 2 Vocabulary

Tier 2 words are high-frequency academic words that appear across different subjects and are crucial for academic success. These words often require direct instruction, as they are less common in everyday conversation but essential for understanding classroom texts and instructions.

“Targeting Tier 2 vocabulary is especially important because it’s relevant to students across their entire school experience.”

— Marisha Mets

Goal Setting for Tier 2 Vocabulary

Tier 2 vocabulary goals should focus on helping students understand, define, and use these words in context, ensuring they can apply them in various academic settings.

Example Goal:
The student will define and use 10 Tier 2 vocabulary words (e.g., analyze, compare, explain) with 80% accuracy during classroom discussions.

Common Tier 2 Words to Target:

  • Analyze
  • Compare
  • Predict
  • Evaluate

By focusing on Tier 2 words, students are better prepared to navigate academic texts and discussions, improving both their comprehension and expression.

5. Affixes

Teaching students to understand prefixes and suffixes is crucial for improving their ability to decode unfamiliar words. Affix instruction helps students break down complex vocabulary, particularly in academic settings, and enhances reading comprehension.

“Teaching students to identify prefixes and suffixes gives them powerful tools to decode new words.”

— Marisha Mets

Goal Setting for Affixes

Affix-related goals should focus on helping students recognize common prefixes and suffixes and apply their meanings in various contexts.

Example Goal:
The student will identify and explain the meaning of 5 common prefixes (e.g., re-, un-) and 5 common suffixes (e.g., -ing, -ed) with 80% accuracy during reading comprehension tasks.

Common Affixes to Target:

  • Prefixes: re-, un-, pre-, dis-
  • Suffixes: -ing, -ed, -ful, -less

Integrating affixes into vocabulary instruction helps students build a stronger understanding of word structure, boosting their overall language proficiency.

6. Comparing and Contrasting

Comparing and contrasting is an important skill for academic and social success. 

As stated in a previous post on selecting vocabulary targets, it’s all about the building blocks and building a solid foundation!

By teaching students to notice similarities and differences between objects or ideas, we’re helping them deepen their understanding of vocabulary. Start with familiar objects and gradually introduce more abstract concepts as students progress.

“Comparing and contrasting should be scaffolded from the familiar to the more abstract to support learning.”

 – Marisha Mets

Example Goal:
The student will compare and contrast objects using appropriate vocabulary (e.g., bigger, smaller, same, different) with 80% accuracy.

7. Multiple-Meaning Words

Multiple-meaning words can be particularly challenging for students with language delays, but mastering them is essential for improving both comprehension and vocabulary flexibility. 

These words have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used (e.g., “bat” as a flying mammal vs. “bat” as a piece of sports equipment).

“Students with language impairments need at least 20-30 meaningful exposures to multiple-meaning words before they fully grasp their nuances.” — Marisha Mets

Targeting multiple-meaning words in therapy can provide significant benefits, especially for students who struggle with reading comprehension. 

By teaching these words directly and providing repeated exposures in different contexts, you help students better understand how words can change meaning based on usage.

Research on Multiple-Meaning Words

Research shows that explicit teaching of multiple-meaning words leads to improved comprehension, as students become better equipped to use context clues to determine word meaning (Biemiller & Boote, 2006). Marisha emphasizes that students who receive direct explanations of multiple-meaning words are more likely to retain their meanings, compared to exposure alone.

“Evidence has shown that targeting multiple-meaning words is one of the best ways to get a ‘bang for your buck’ in vocabulary instruction.”

— Marisha Mets

Goal Setting for Multiple-Meaning Words

Example Goal:
The student will identify and use multiple-meaning words (e.g., bat, bark, tie) with appropriate meanings in context with 75% accuracy.

Examples of Multiple-Meaning Words:

  • Light
  • Pupil
  • Space
  • Saw
  • Trunk

By explicitly targeting multiple-meaning words in therapy, students can improve both their comprehension of written texts and their ability to navigate conversations where words take on different meanings.

Bonus: SLP Now’s Therapy Plan Vocabulary Activities include multiple-meaning word vocabulary activities!

Early Stage Vocabulary Goals in Speech Therapy

For younger students, especially in preschool and early elementary years, vocabulary goals should focus on building foundational language skills. Early-stage vocabulary instruction is most effective when it targets core vocabulary—high-frequency words that students encounter daily. These words form the basis of their communication and comprehension abilities.

“Students have greater comprehension if we pre-teach key vocabulary before engaging in reading or other activities.” — Marisha Mets

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary for Early Learners

Pre-teaching is a powerful technique for early-stage vocabulary development. By introducing key vocabulary before students engage in an activity or story, you give them multiple opportunities to encounter and use the words in context. This is especially important for preschoolers, who benefit from structured exposure to new words.

Example Goal:

The student will use 5-10 core vocabulary words (e.g., go, stop, help) during structured play activities with 80% accuracy.

Strategies for Early Stage Vocabulary Instruction

  1. Play-Based Learning: Use toys, games, and other interactive tools to introduce new words in a fun, engaging way.
  2. Visual Supports: Incorporate pictures, flashcards, or objects to reinforce vocabulary learning.
  3. Repetition: Provide students with repeated exposure to the target words in different contexts to ensure retention.

By focusing on pre-teaching and core vocabulary, you help young students build a strong foundation for future language learning. As students become familiar with these early-stage words, they are better equipped to transition into more complex vocabulary.

Vocabulary Goal Examples

Writing goals that are both functional and specific to your student’s needs is key to helping them make meaningful progress in therapy. Below are a few additional vocabulary goal examples that can be adapted for students at different language levels.

For Early Language Learners:

  • Example Goal:
    The student will independently use 10 core vocabulary words (e.g., go, stop, more) during structured play activities in 80% of opportunities.

For Elementary Students:

  • Example Goal:
    The student will define 10 high-frequency Tier 2 vocabulary words (e.g., compare, explain, analyze) with 80% accuracy during reading comprehension activities.

For Older Students:

  • Example Goal:
    The student will identify and use prefixes and suffixes to determine the meanings of 10 unfamiliar vocabulary words in 4 out of 5 trials.

As mentioned in Part 2 of Marisha’s podcast, focusing on Tier 2 vocabulary words is particularly important for older students to enhance their academic success.

These examples offer a range of goals to target core vocabulary, academic vocabulary, and more advanced language skills, giving you a solid foundation to build from when crafting personalized goals for your students.

How to Teach Vocabulary Goals to Speech Therapy Students

Setting vocabulary goals is just the first step. The real progress happens when we effectively teach those vocabulary skills in a way that resonates with our students. Here are a few strategies to make vocabulary learning fun, engaging, and meaningful for your students.

1. Repeated Meaningful Exposure

Students with language impairments need many exposures to new words before they fully understand and use them. Marisha explains in Part 2 of her podcast that repeated, meaningful exposure across different activities is essential for vocabulary retention. This means using the target words during play, reading, and structured activities to solidify their understanding.

“Students need to hear and use vocabulary words across multiple activities before those words become a meaningful part of their vocabulary.”

 – Marisha Mets

2. Use Visuals and Gestures

Incorporating visuals and gestures can help make abstract vocabulary more concrete for your students. For younger children, using pictures, physical objects, and hand motions can boost understanding and memory. For older students, using graphic organizers and visual aids can help them see how words relate to each other.

3. Teach Vocabulary in Context

It’s important to teach vocabulary in context so that students can learn how words function in everyday language. Whether you’re working on core vocabulary or academic vocabulary, practicing these words in natural, meaningful contexts—like classroom discussions, play activities, or reading comprehension—helps students generalize the skills they’ve learned.

4. Scaffold Instruction

When teaching new vocabulary, scaffold your instruction by starting with high levels of support and gradually reducing it as the student gains confidence. For example, when first introducing a new word, provide a model and a visual cue. As the student becomes more familiar with the word, slowly reduce the level of support to encourage independent use.

By using these strategies, you can create a more dynamic and engaging therapy environment that helps students internalize and use their new vocabulary effectively.

How to Incorporate Emotional Vocabulary in Speech Therapy

In addition to academic vocabulary, it’s important to focus on emotional vocabulary—helping students recognize, express, and understand their feelings. Emotional vocabulary goals are particularly valuable for students with social communication challenges, as they can enhance their ability to navigate social situations and improve peer relationships.

Why Emotional Vocabulary Matters

Emotional vocabulary helps students put their feelings into words, which is a critical skill for self-regulation and communication. Marisha highlights the importance of incorporating emotional vocabulary into therapy sessions in Part 2 of her podcast, explaining that understanding and expressing emotions can have a huge impact on a student’s social interactions.

“Emotional vocabulary is key to helping students express their feelings and navigate social situations.”

 – Marisha Mets

Strategies for Teaching Emotional Vocabulary

  • Labeling Emotions: Start by teaching students to label basic emotions such as happy, sad, mad, and scared. Visual aids, like emotion cards or faces, can be helpful tools to teach the vocabulary and reinforce understanding.
  • Role-Playing: Create role-playing activities where students practice using emotional vocabulary in different social situations. This helps them connect the words to real-life experiences.
  • Contextual Learning: Teach emotional vocabulary in context, integrating it into daily activities or during play. For instance, when reading a book, pause to discuss how the characters might be feeling and encourage students to use appropriate emotional vocabulary.

Example Emotional Vocabulary Goal:

The student will correctly identify and label five emotions during structured activities with 80% accuracy.

By targeting emotional vocabulary, you’re helping students better understand their own emotions and giving them the language they need to express their feelings appropriately in social interactions.

Conclusion

Writing effective vocabulary goals is essential for helping students build strong language skills that carry over into the classroom and beyond.

By targeting core vocabulary, basic concepts, multiple-meaning words, and even emotional vocabulary, you can create well-rounded goals that cater to your students’ unique needs. 

With the strategies and examples provided in this article—and the expert insights from Marisha Mets’ podcasts—you’re equipped to set your students up for success in their vocabulary learning journey.

References:

Rutherford, M., Baxter, J., Grayson, Z., Johnston, L., & O’Hare, A. (2020). Visual supports at home and in the community for individuals with autism spectrum disorders: A scoping review. Autism, 24(2), 447–469. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319871756

Witkowski, D., & Baker, B. (2012). Addressing the Content Vocabulary With Core: Theory and Practice for Nonliterate or Emerging Literate Students. Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication, 21(3), 74–81. https://doi.org/10.1044/aac21.3.74

#166: My Favorite Speech Therapy Apps (Part 1)

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Technology can be a bit of a double-edged sword, right? 😅

In the years Marisha has been an SLP, she has watched a ton of apps come in and out of vogue. But there are a few (aside from SLP Now! 🥲) that have stood the test of time, and are a regular part of her speech session rotation — which is what we’re talking about on the latest episode of the podcast!

From increasing student engagement to sharing PDFs to repetitive practice, these three apps can make your life as an SLP so much easier:

Here’s an overview of the apps Marisha talks about:

1️⃣ Notability

Notability is a really cool app that you can use to draw, type in text, and import + draw on PDFs. For older students, it’s an instant engagement booster if you import the text you’re reading into Notability because the students have and opportunity to highlight or read from the iPad.

Notability is also great for PDF graphic organizers. One of Marisha’s favorites to use is a story grammar graphic organizer. She has a template (available in SLP Now!) and in Notability she can duplicate the page over and over and over. It’s really a really fun way to work on story grammar!

2️⃣ Cookie Doodle

This is an app that has really stood the test of time. It’s really simple app, but can be used to target so many goals — and Marisha hasn’t met a student who doesn’t love Cookie Doodle!

In it, students get to choose a cookie to make. The app gives them a recipe, then they have to put all of the ingredients in the bowl, mix them, bake the cookies, and decorate them!

You may not get to eat real cookies at the end, but this app is great because it provides repetitive practice of targets like following directions, identifying objects, and targeting grammar goals.

3️⃣ Toca Tea Party

Like Cookie Doodle, Toca Tea Party (a Toca Boca App) is a great reinforcer, and it offers the opportunity for some errorless learning. In it, the student chooses a cake and plates, sets up the table, then sings Happy Birthday and serves the guests!

There is (unfortunately) no real cake consumption involved, but students get structured and repetitive practice for targets like following directions, sequencing, and grammar goals.

These aren’t the only apps that Marisha uses, but they’re the first three we’re going to talk about… you’ll have to wait for the next episode for the rest! 👀

Now, we’d love to hear from you! 👇

What are your favorite apps to use in speech therapy, and how are you using them? Come say hi on Instagram and share your answers so that we can all learn together. 🤓

 💡 Not a member of SLP Now yet? Not a problem!

Sign up for a free trial and give the SLP Now system a go.

Subscribe

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Wrap your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hey there, it's Marisha. This week I wanted to share three of my favorite apps to use in speech therapy. So let's go ahead and dive right in. My first favorite app is Notability. I use this for a lot of things. It's very versatile, so I used it in grad school. I also use it anytime I attend a conference. It's my note-taking app of choice. We'll have an episode in a couple weeks about how to make the most of conferences and I'll dive into how I use Notability a lot more in that episode, but today I wanted to share how I use it in my therapy sessions.
So all of the apps that I'm sharing are iPad apps, or I use them on the iPad. Notability is a really cool app that you can use to draw or you can use it as to type and text and you can also import PDFs and draw on the PDFs or add text and emojis and all of that good stuff. So I'll give you a couple examples of how I like to use Notability in my sessions.
So the first way is for older students if we're reading a text, an instant engagement booster is if we import the text into Notability and then the students have the opportunity to highlight or just to read from the iPad. They think that's really fun. But then we can also highlight text, add emojis, and use a bunch of comprehension strategies in a digital format. And that's just, again, a really fun engagement booster and a nice low prep way to read a text. You can even take a picture of a page and a textbook or a page in a book if you're using materials from the classroom. And then again, you can highlight them, add emojis, all of that good stuff.
Another way that I like to use Notability is I have a lot of PDF graphic organizers. One of my favorite graphic organizers to use is a story grammar graphic organizer. So that's one that I have a template of and I duplicate that page over and over and over. A really fun way to work on story grammar, I also have a summarizing one that I like to use and you can use it in the same way, if you're reading a picture book or watching a YouTube video that has a narrative structure, you can take pictures of the different components and add those to the story grammar organizer. For the students who need that one-to-one correspondence and support, you can also draw on the graphic organizer and use pictography. You can type in text, you can add emojis. And so it's just a fun way to leverage technology and avoid having to print a bunch of pages and students just love getting to type and add the emojis and the pictures and all of that.
Another cool benefit is that you can easily share the PDF. So you can print it if you want, or you can email it or text it to a parent so that they can use that for practice at home. I've also shared the organizers with teachers and all of that. So it's just a fun tool again to boost that engagement and support students skills and then also easily share it because it is digital in nature. So those are just some examples of how I like to use Notability.
My second favorite, and this is in no particular order, but another app that I really like to use in my speech therapy sessions is Cookie Doodle. So this has just stood the test of time. It's a really simple app, but I love it because I can target so many goals and I haven't met a student who doesn't love Cookie Doodle. So what it is, is the students get to choose which kind of cookie they want to make and then the app gives them a recipe and then they have to put all of the ingredients in the bowl and they mix it and they bake it. And then once the cookies are baked, they get to decorate it.
I love this as an activity because it's really repetitive. You can target following directions with this app, you can target identification of objects as an example. It's really great to target grammar goals because of that repetitive nature. It includes a lot of actions, so we can target verbs and pronouns and sentence structure and all sorts of goals in that context. And it's also just a really great reinforcer. I just gave a couple examples of the goals that I've targeted using it, but the options are really endless, I feel like. So that is one that I love to use.
The third app that I'm sharing today is Toca Party. So this is a birthday party app essentially. So the setup is that the student chooses a cake and plates and they set up the table and then you get to sing Happy Birthday, and then you eat the cake. So you serve the cake and eat it and then you can pour juice and drink it. And then you also get to clean up the table at the end. This is another really fun reinforcer, but it's also another repetitive app just like Cookie Doodle where there's a lot of actions involved and we can use it to start teaching those grammar goals. It's a really nice way to get that structured, repetitive practice, some errorless learning going on. It's also just a fun one to use as a reinforcer when needed and I can still target lots of goals as I'm going through.
So the three apps that I share today, I think my favorite one and the most versatile one is Notability, and then Cookie Doodle, and Toca Kitchen are really nice to target some of those grammar goals and to use as reinforcers. These are more for the younger students. I'll share some other app ideas next week, but these are just some of the ones that I've loved to use over the years and I thought I would share the love and just tell you about them.
So I'd love to hear what your favorite apps are, if you have any favorites and how you use them. So Instagram would be a really fun way to connect. I'd love to hear from you there. You can find us @slpnow. And if you would like links or a list to all of the apps mentioned today, you can find that at slpnow.com/166. Again, that's slpnow.com/166, and we'll see you next week for part two of some more speech therapy apps.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#165: 3 Steps for Easy Progress Reports for SLPs

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Let’s talk about something that scares many SLPs… progress reports. 😱

Progress reports may make some SLPs sweat, but hopefully there are others (like Marisha!) who think of it as a fun opportunity to celebrate student progress.

After all, the point of working smarter is to have more time for the fun stuff, right?!

If you ask Marisha, she would tell you that she thinks it’s kind of cool to look back at the data and realize how far her students have come. Getting to write up all the progress goodness and share it with the students’ parents is just the sprinkles on the progress cake. 🥳

At the same time, Marisha knows that the process can be a little bit overwhelming. That’s why she wanted to share an easier way to do progress reports and notes on this week’s episode of the podcast.

Marisha’s progress report process lives in SLP Now.

This doesn’t mean that you can only use SLP Now to create a progress report system, because you can create templates and systems in whatever way works for you. But. Marisha’s goal with this episode is to share the easiest way that she knows to do progress reports, and that’s SLP Now.

SLP Now was designed with the goal of making the lives of SLPs easier, which means building features that do things like automagically turn your data into beautiful graphs or create progress notes at the tap of a button! It’s super easy to visually see your students’ progress, and customization is just a click away.

 💡 Not a member of SLP Now yet? Not a problem!

Sign up for a free trial and give the SLP Now system a go.

Marisha’s progress reporting process:

1️⃣ Collect your session data

2️⃣ Set up your progress note template

3️⃣ Review goal progress and fill out the report

 


Then you’re just a simple copy + paste (or print out) away from delivering your progress report, hold the stress.

It’s super easy, and then you can focus your precious energy on celebrating your students’ successes! 💪

Get all the progress reporting goods on this episode of the SLP Now podcast. 👇

Subscribe

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hey there, it's Marisha, and let's chat about progress reporting. I know that this is something that a lot of speech therapists dread, and hopefully there's some of us out there listening who think of it as a fun opportunity to celebrate student progress. I always thought it was kind of cool to look back at my data and just sit back and realize the progress that students are making and getting to write that up and share that with parents. I think that's really awesome. But at the same time, the process can be a little bit overwhelming, and that's why I wanted to share an easier way to do progress reports or progress notes.
And yeah, so let's dive in. One of the things that I love about SLP Now is that it makes things way easier and things that I dreaded as a school-based SLP, are actually really fun now. When I first started building SLP Now, the bane of my existence was Medicaid billing. I had a hard time finding the joy in that process, and I would always put it off. It would take me so much time to get caught up, and it just didn't feel fun at all. And so, when I started building SLP Now, that was one of the first things that I wanted to make easier for myself, and we accomplished that.
And then, a feature that is a little bit newer is the feature that streamlines progress notes, which is what we're talking about today. So, I'm really excited to tell you how this works and how progress reporting could look for you. So, there's three steps to implement this. So, this is what it would look like if you were using SLP Now.
And so, the first step is, of course, to collect your session data using SLP Now, and the setup process is really easy. If you're curious what it looks like, you're absolutely welcome to sign up for a free trial to SLP Now. You can do that at slpnow.com/trial, or S-L-P-N-O-W.com/trial. That's an easy way to poke around and see what that data collection process would look like. We also have some reels on Instagram showing you what that setup process would look like and what it would look like to actually collect data.
But basically what my data collection routine looks like is I start a session, the students review their goal cards, and I pull up SLP Now on my phone, and I use the live data collection button. So, I have probes attached to my goal, so I have easy access to them. So, I click into the goal that I want to target. I have the stimulus items to read off or show the student, and then I just tap to take that accuracy and then SLP logs that in the system for me. I hit save, and then I continue the rest of the session. At the end of the session, I'll log back into SLP Now and just enter a summary of the supports that were helpful for the student. But that's my basic process. You don't have to do things exactly the way that I do them. There's tons of ways to enter data in SLP Now, but that's just one example.
So, step one would be to use SLP Now to collect your session data. And that, in and of itself, is a time saver and it's really cool because the data automatically gets graphed. It's really easy to monitor student progress. You have easy access to your assessments or probes to monitor progress towards the goal. The whole system is pretty awesome.
So, that brings us to step two, assuming that it's progress note time, and you've been collecting your data in SLP Now, on your caseload page, there's a button to create a progress note for your students. So, then you click that button and you can customize your template. There's a couple of things that you can change so that the progress note looks the way that you want it to. So, you just set up that template and you do it once, and then it applies to all of your students.
And then, step three is to go through your student's goals. So, what this looks like is it lists the student goal, and then at the bottom of the page, you can see the graph with all of the data that you've taken for that grading period or that reporting period. So, you can see how the student has been progressing. And then there's a dropdown menu where you can choose ... You can describe their progress. Have they met the goal? Are they making slow progress, fast progress? Whatever descriptor you want to use, just click that from the dropdown and then SLP Now pulls in all of the information and makes a beautiful progress statement for that goal.
And then you just click through each goal and SLP Now pulls all of your data for you, and then you just choose which statement describes the student's progress. And so, you click and then choose from the dropdown, click drop down, click drop down. And then when you're done going through all of the goals, you just hit finish, and then your progress note for that student is done.
It's as easy as that. All of the data's all organized. You don't have to go flipping through a bunch of pages and digging through sticky notes to find the progress or realizing that you didn't take data for a specific goal. It's all there, organized for you. SLP Now, of course, gives you a way to print off all of your progress notes or reference them for each student. We have that taken care of for you.
But that's what progress reporting could look like. The process is super fun and easy and streamlined, and it would take you a lot less time using this process. And if there's ever any question about why you describe the progress in a certain way, you have easy access to the graphs that you referenced. So, you have really, really clear data supporting what you wrote.
So, just to recap the three steps. One, collect your session data using SLP Now, then you set up your progress note template, and then you use our process to review goal progress. And then SLP Now takes care of the rest. It creates nice notes for you and then you can either copy and paste into your district system or just print out all of the notes for your students, if you're able to just hand them a progress note. And that's the whole process. That's all that it requires. It's super easy. And then you can focus on all of the joy of celebrating your students' progress and not have any of those logistics and challenges that normally come with progress reporting.
So, I hope that was a helpful overview of what things could look like. And that's a wrap. So, if you want to access the show notes for this episode, go to slpnow.com/165, and you'll have access to other resources and links and quick summary. So again, that's S-L-P-N-O-W.com/165. See you next week.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#164: How to Increase Goal Awareness in Speech Therapy

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You set the goal, then what?

As SLPs, we implicitly “know” the importance of goal awareness, but it’s also something that’s really easy to take for granted. You set the goal, talk about it with the student, and then keep it in mind when you’re in session, right?

Here’s a question for you to think about:

After you set the goal, how do you keep it top of mind—for yourself, and your student?

Marisha shares her answer to that question in this week’s episode of the podcast, all about increasing goal awareness with your students.

There is so much research to support goal awareness promoting better outcomes in therapy, and it’s something Marisha has noticed in her own practice too!

When she makes a habit of reviewing and talking about students’ goals, she’s fascinated by the impact that goal awareness has on their session engagement and progress.

And — one of the best things about increasing goal awareness is that when parents and teachers ask what the students do in speech therapy, they don’t just say “we play games.” They’re actually able to share the goal and how they’re working on it! 😅

Three tips to help SLPs increase goal awareness:

1️⃣ Involve students in the goal-creation process
This may not work with every student on every caseload, but it can be so helpful in deciding on a goal to target, and getting students invested in their own progress. Keep it simple: Ask students what some of their long-term goals are, or what they struggle with throughout the school day, and go from there.

2️⃣ Make goal cards for (or with!) your students
I do this with almost all of my students! I either type up the goal card and print it out, or I have them write out the goal in their own words. Sometimes they draw a picture that represents the goal and why it’s important to them. Have fun with this!  Click here to download a free goal card template! 

3️⃣ Incorporate the goal cards into your speech routine
This may seem obvious, but once you’ve created the goal cards, make sure they get put to use! I like to keep the goal cards organized using anonymous stickers or symbols (to honor the students’ privacy!) so they know how to identify their packet and pick it up as part of their speech routine.

Marisha’s tips will help you enroll your students in the goal-setting process, and make a huge difference in the progress they’re making—especially if you review, review, review.

Learn more about how to make more goal-awareness magic happen in your speech sessions when you listen to this episode of the SLP Now podcast.

Resources + Links Mentioned:

Click here to download a free goal card template!
Calendar pocket chart on Amazon
Speech Room Organization: Student Goals

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Transcript

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Marisha:
Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
Hey there, and welcome back to the SLP Now Podcast. Today we get to chat about some strategies to increase student goal awareness, and we are going to dive into three tips to make that happen. And just a little bit of context as to why we might even want to chat about this. I think we implicitly know the importance of goal awareness, but I just wanted to share a quick experience that I've had with incorporating this with my caseload.
So, it's really fascinating to see the impact that targeting goal awareness can have on students' engagement and progress. And there's a lot of research to support this. We won't go into all of those details in this podcast. I'm just sharing a little bit of personal experience just in the difference that I've seen. And one of my favorite impacts of targeting goal awareness is that when teachers or parents ask students, "What do you do in speech therapy?" Instead of saying, "We play games." They're actually able to say what we work on, which is the best feeling ever when I see that happening. So, let's go ahead and dive into the three tips.
So, tip number one is to involve students in the goal creation process, and of course, this will vary depending on the details of a particular caseload, and it might not work with every single student. If we can involve them as much as possible, I think that can have a really meaningful impact. And just even just asking them what feels hard during the school day or what's important to them. So, even with my younger students, I would ask them what they wanted to be when they grow up, and we always get some interesting answers, especially in the younger grades. A lot of kids say they want to be YouTubers. One of my students said that he wanted to be a dad. And so, I was able to acknowledge and hear and celebrate the goals that they have for themselves, and then tie their goals to how that would help them with that in the future.
So, that's tip number one. Involve students in the goal creation process as much as possible. And asking students what their longer term goals are is a great easy way to start. And then, even asking them what they struggle with throughout the school day or as you're going through the assessment process, asking them some questions and getting feedback on how they're perceiving different activities and whatnot.
And then that brings us to tip number two on how to actually increase that goal awareness from session to session. So, the strategy that I've come up with is to create goal cards. And again, this looks really different depending on the students that I'm working with. With almost all of my students, I'll make little goal cards, and sometimes I'll type out the goal and just print the cards with the goal written on it, or I will have the students write out the goal in their own words if that's appropriate. And/or I'll have them draw a picture to represent that goal and to represent what that goal means to them. And so, the goal cards are just literally little pieces of paper and they have a stack of cards depending on how many goals they have. And at the beginning of every session, we'll reference those goal cards.
Which brings us to tip number three, which is to incorporate those goal cards in your daily routine. So, what that looks like, and assuming that if the students are coming to the speech room, then I have a calendar pocket chart that I really like to use. And I have a template for the goal cards that fit into that calendar pocket chart. So, if you want to see my pocket chart, and if you want to download the template that I use, you can go to slpnow.com/164. Again, that's S-L-P-N-O-W.com/164. You can find the link to the pocket chart and the goal card template and also just see it for some inspiration.
So, I have the pocket chart with the students' goal cards, and I just put a colored piece of paper on top of the packet of goal cards, and then the students get to pick a sticker. Because I used to write the students' names on the front of their packet, but the other students were a little bit too curious about who was in speech, and I wanted to protect that confidentiality a little bit more. So, I decided to use anonymous stickers. And that was a really fun activity for students. They really liked getting to pick their sticker. Older students could draw a symbol if they wanted to, if stickers are a little bit too juvenile.
So, they would walk in, they'd immediately recognize their packet, and they would grab the set of goal cards and then go to the therapy table. If I was doing this in the classroom, I would just bring the goal cards with me, and that would be the first things that we do. And the students know to open up their packet and look through the cards and just review their goals. And like I said, it might have the goal typed out, written in the student's words, a picture. We might have a note about the why or why the goal is important, but they get to look at that visual representation at the beginning of every session and review their goals.
So, those are the three tips that I use to increase goal awareness in my sessions. So, one, involve students in the goal creation process. Two, create goal cards. And then three, incorporate those goal cards in your daily routine. And there's lots of fun things that we can do with the goal cards. We can have little challenges to see if they're able to memorize their goals and just list them off. And this gets really easy for students to do if we're constantly reviewing them. So, that can be a fun challenge to see who has their goals memorized by the end of the first quarter or semester or whatnot.
But yeah, those are the three tips to increase goal awareness. I hope this was helpful. I'd love to hear how you implement this or what this looks like in your speech room. And that's a wrap. We'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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SLP’s Guide to Teaching Stuttering Modification and Fluency Strategies for School-Age Students

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This is a guest blog post by Rachel at SLP Now, talking about how to teach stuttering modification and fluency strategies for school-age students during speech therapy sessions. 

As a speech-language pathologist, you may be asking yourself, “Now that I’ve written these awesome fluency goals, how do I teach stuttering and fluency strategies to my speech student?”

In this blog post, we are going to dive into what it can look like when teaching fluency strategies during your speech therapy sessions.

How Can Speech Language Pathologists Help a Student Who Stutters?

As SLPs, we can play an important role in the life of our students who stutter. According to ASHA, there are several indicators of positive change for those who receive speech therapy for their stutter. Some of those on the list include:

✓ Increased self-confidence

✓ More positive identity and congruence

✓ Advocating for oneself

✓ Reporting decreased anxiety while communicating

✓ Increased social communication participation (Manning & DiLollo, 2018).

From this list alone, you can see the critical role you play as an SLP working with your students who stutter.

How to Teach Stuttering Modification and Fluency Strategies to Students Who Stutter

Here are 3 steps you can follow when teaching a fluency technique to your students.

1. Introduce the Fluency Technique 

Before starting a new fluency modification technique, you’ll want to start by explaining what it is, and how it will help them. 

For example, if you decide to teach the reduced rate technique, you can explain that this is a technique that has them slow down their speech, which will give them/their brain more time to slow down and figure out what they want to say, and how they’re going to say it.

2. Provide Demonstrations of the Fluency Technique

To provide an example of the fluency technique, you can verbally explain how the technique works. After, you can provide examples of you or someone else (SLP Stephen is always an amazing resource) actually implementing the strategy. 

If you have an SLP Now Membership, handouts and videos of Stephen Groner explaining different fluency techniques are included! They are incredible resources to have. 

3. Give Your Student a Safe Place to Practice New Fluency Techniques

I don’t know about you, but for me, trying new things can be hard and takes a lot of vulnerability.

This can be the same for our speech students who may be struggling with their confidence due to stuttering. That is why it is so, so important to provide our students who stutter a place where they can express themselves freely without feeling any of the judgment they might feel in other areas of their lives.

Speech Fluency Techniques and Stuttering Modification Strategies for Speech Language Pathologists

There is no one-size-fits-all fluency strategy, so it is important to see which fluency techniques your speech student prefers and which fluency techniques helps their fluency the most. 

Stephen Groner, aka SLP Stephen, does an amazing job explaining fluency techniques in videos he created, and provides demonstrations for each technique.

With an SLP Now membership, you have unlimited access to these videos! He also has a blog post where he describes a ton of different fluency techniques in amazing detail.

SLP's Guide to Teaching Stuttering Modification and Fluency Strategies for School-Age Students

What Does Success Look Like When Teaching Stuttering Modification and Fluency Strategies?

As speech-language pathologists, we want to see our speech students who stutter succeed. But what does “success” look like? Below are a list of some of the indicators found that show our fluency students are making progress (T.K. Anderson & Falsenfeld, 2003; Plexico et al. 2005).

👏 More open and willing to disclose and talk about their stuttering

👏 Experiences reduced impact from stuttering

👏 Generalizes attitudes, beliefs and behaviors across contexts

👏 Reports feeling more authentic and enjoying social conversations

👏 Reports effectively modulating anxiety

Like I mentioned before, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to fluency therapy. However, we do want to see these positive outcomes for all of our speech fluency students.

For more information and materials on stuttering, head to SLP Now, where there are 20+ videos on fluency techniques and stuttering modification strategies, as well as handouts, activities, and more!

Stuttering Modification and Fluency Strategy Resources

Anderson, T. K., & Felsenfeld, S. (2003). A thematic analysis of late recovery from stuttering. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 12(2), 243–253. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2003/070)

Manning, W. H., & DiLollo, A. (2018). Clinical decision making in fluency disorders. Plural.

Plexico, L. W., Manning, W. H., & DiLollo, A. (2005). A phenomenological understanding of successful stuttering management. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 30(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfludis.2004.12.001