Login
Free Trial

Marisha

#175: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge) and Step 2 (Reading)

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Get ready for more Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp, SLP!

Last week we discussed choosing a text (go back if you haven’t listened yet!) and in this episode, Marisha dives into steps one and two of Dr. Ukrainetz’ literacy-based therapy framework: pre-story knowledge activation and reading the text.

Pre-Story Knowledge Activation and Reading the Text

If you’re used to skill-based drill therapy, you might find yourself thinking that the steps Marisha discusses in this episode are more fluffy than effective — because that’s what she thought earlier in her practice too! It was hard to see how the exercises would be helpful or therapeutic.

But with time, research, and experience, Marisha began observing how powerful literacy-based therapy can be! (More on that when we get into the skill-based practice component of our bootcamp series. 👀)

💡 There are courses in the SLP Now Academy that cover strategies that you can use to target specific skills. For example, in the Grammar Bootcamp Course, we talk about how to use focus stimulation as you’re going through these pre story knowledge activation activities.

It’s incredibly helpful in building students’ prior knowledge and setting them up for success, while targeting their goals strategically and in a meaningful context. According to the evidence, this will help with generalization! 💡

Episode Summary

In this episode, Marisha talks about:

✅ The value of doing a book walk
✅ Using a KWL chart for pre-story activation
✅ The skepticism about the efficacy of these activities
✅ The importance of background knowledge
✅ How these steps set the stage for drill-based activities
✅ Using a story grammar organizer
✅ Keeping students engaged in the activity

This episode is short, sweet, and jam-packed with practical insights and strategies that set the foundation for literacy-based therapy, fostering engagement, and language development.

Happy listening! 🎙️✨

Links Mentioned

💛 KWL Chart (In the SLP Now Membership)
💛 SLP Now Grammar Bookcamp – Evidence-based Strategies (included in the SLP Now Membership)
💛 Ukrainetz, T. (2007). Contextualized language intervention: Scaffolding PreK–12 literacy achievement. Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications.

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

Download New Tab

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.
Welcome to day two of the Literacy-Based Therapy Challenge. Today we are focusing on step one and step two of the literacy-based therapy framework. Yesterday we spent our time talking about how to select a text.
So today we're combining the first two days in one. So if you want to open up your workbook to the page that talks about pre-story knowledge activation, that's where you can find some of our notes. But I just wanted to run through a couple quick ideas on what we can do for step one, as well as just a quick overview of the strategies that I like to use when it comes to actually reading the text and keeping students engaged.
So with the first part, for step one, pre-story knowledge activation, I really like to start with a book walk. So this is where we pull out the book or the article, we look at the cover and then some of the pages and talk about what we see. Or if we're looking at an article, we'll look at any pictures that are in the article, headings. We might skim through some of the paragraphs and have some discussion around what we know about the topic.
A really great supplement to this is using a KWL chart. So K stands for what we know, W stands for what we want to know, and then L stands for what we learned. So if we are reading a book about farm animals, we might just brainstorm all of our ideas, think about what we know about farm animals, and then what are things that we want to know about the farm animals? This can be a really good indicator. If we've got lots of conversation flowing, one of the students has a grandpa who has a farm and has lots of experience, or they grew up on a farm. We would have a very rich dialogue.
But if we're working in a inner city school and the kiddos haven't had much exposure to farms or farm animals, we would be doing a lot more background work. So if that's the case, if they indicate a need for additional background knowledge, because this is extremely, extremely important, I might take the time to do a virtual field trip. For example, we might pull up a National Geographic video or something from YouTube, maybe taking a tour of a farm just to help us build that background knowledge of that concept. That will really set students up for success as we dive into the vocabulary and the comprehension and all of those different aspects. So that's a very important component.
I thought this when I was first starting out, I was very used to doing drill based therapy and I thought this was just silly. I thought it was just fluff. There's no way that this is going to be helpful. How am I going to be therapeutic in these activities? I had all these questions running through my head, as I'm sure you do right now too. So we'll talk about this more as we get into this skill-based practice, day four. But there also are a number of courses in the SLP Now Academy where we dive into specific strategies that you can use for specific skills.
So one example in the Grammar Bootcamp course, we talk about how to use focus stimulation as you're going through these pre-story knowledge activation activities. So it's incredibly helpful in building students' prior knowledge, setting them up for success, but it also enables us to target their goals in a very strategic way and in a much more meaningful context. There's evidence in the literature to suggest that this would help with generalization, and of course, we will still take our internal data and use our internal evidence and clinical judgment to decide what makes the most sense. But I just wanted to bring that up because that is an objection that I definitely had when starting out. But we can absolutely be strategic as we're diving into these activities.
Then the last thing that I like to do in this unit is a little bit of an inferencing activity. So I grab my story grammar organizer, and I have students guess who the characters are, what the setting is, what the problem, like the initiating event and all of that. We fill in the story grammar organizer and guess what the story will be about. I think that's a really nice way, after we've done some of that. It's a great language activity. We can target all sorts of goals within it, but it's also a great way to integrate what we've learned from the KWL chart, the virtual field trip, the book walk, all of that good stuff. So it's a very language-rich, really meaningful activity.
Then once that's all done, this can take several sessions depending on the group. But once we've done that pre-story knowledge activation, we just dive in and read the book. I don't spend a ton of time here. I like to read through it and just make sure that students are engaged. This can look different depending on the age group. For my littles in person, we might have sit spots. If we're doing a virtual session, I might watch a YouTube video and then catch students being good. If it looks like they're attending to it, we'll have some rewards there or stop and ask a couple questions just to make sure they're engaged.
Then the same types of strategies could work with older students, just checking in occasionally and watching their body language to make sure that they're actually listening and taking in the story.
But that's what we've got for day two. We just talked about strategies for step one and step two of the framework, and we'll be back tomorrow with some comprehension activities.
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.

Scroll back to top

 

[SLP Summit Q&A] How to Easily Plan a Month of Therapy

by Leave a Comment

At the SLP Summit on January 30th, I presented 3 simple routines to streamline your therapy planning!

Missed us live? The replay is available until February 19th!

There were a lot of questions, so let’s take some time to answer them here! 💛

Literacy-Based Therapy Framework

First, we reviewed Dr. Ukrainetz’s 5-step literacy-based therapy framework.

Check out this Instagram post for a quick overview of literacy-based therapy.

And now let’s dive into the questions…

Do you write goals specific to this framework? 
I don’t! I write goals based on the skills that my students need support with. Any goal can be targeted using a literacy-based approach.

What ages do you use this with?
This framework applies to school-age children (preschool through 12th grade)!

How would you use the literacy based framework for preschool students as they are not totally equipped with literacy knowledge or letters?
Literacy knowledge is not required! The activity throughout the framework can be done 100% verbally. No reading is required!

Would you collect data in Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)?
The activities in Step 1 (and Steps 3, 4, and 5) are language rich. We can target any goal using these activities.

Where do you find virtual fields trips for Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge Activation)?
I find my virtual field trips on YouTube!

How would you use a KWL Chart with younger childrens (ages 3-5) in Step 1?
A KWL chart might not be appropriate for all ages. Semantic mappingcould be a better activity choice!

Do you pause during Step 2 (Reading) to make comments and ask questions to keep them engaged? 
Absolutely! I don’t specifically target goals during this step, but I do use whatever strategies needed to keep students engaged!

During Step 2, do you read the whole book in one day or only a specific number of pages per session? 
I read the whole book in one session! I select picture books/texts that can be read in 5 minutes or less.

During Step 3, do you teach how to answer questions appropriately? 
I use comprehension activities to target the students’ goals. That may or may not include appropriate responses to questions!

During Step 3, do you have any recommendations for older students who struggle with reading?
I may support literacy in my therapy sessions, but being able to read a text is not a necessary step! The text may be read aloud (by me or another student), and all activities can be completed using only oral language.

During Step 4 (Focused Skill Activities), do you go through the book to find vocabulary words?
SLP Now does this for you! All of the vocabulary targets are listed in the “Targets” tab for any given unit.

Do you have a template for Step 5 (Parallel Story)?
Yes! If you are a member, click here to access the template.

Is there a trick to use this with mixed groups when some in the group attend more sessions per week than others in the same group?
The students who are being seen multiple times a week likely need more support! I would use those sessions to dive into the skills that those students need more support with.

What are your favorite picture books?
Here is a list of my favorite picture books!

Do you use the same book the teacher is using in class for that unit?
That is a fabulous idea, and I have had a lot of success incorporating classroom texts in my therapy sessions.

Do you have any recommendations for texts for older students?
Yes! I love using ReadWorks for fiction and nonfiction articles.

What about students you see multiple years? Do you use the same books for multiple years?
I tend to choose different units. SLP Now has over 400 literacy-based therapy units, so you have plenty to choose from!

When working with mixed groups, how do you hit the appropriate number of articulation trials with this model? 
I like to target articulation goals separately (whenever possible) using a “quick articulation” model. (One example of this is 5-Minute Kids.) If that isn’t possible, I get creative! Click here for 6 activity ideas to target articulation using books. SLP Now also has articulation cards (with words from the text) to make this even easier!

I have a bunch of students with social/behavioral goals. How do I target those goals if they are grouped with kids with different goals?
This is the ideal set up! Having access to peer models is one of my favorite benefits of mixed groups. I would target social language just like I would any other goal! I would take time to teach as needed–including the use of visual supports. Students then have the opportunity to apply the skill throughout the unit and across language-rich activities.

What is your favorite way to target grammar when using books?
I have a 3-hour course on grammar in the SLP Now Academy!

You can also check out these grammar blog posts.

How long should sessions be when using this framework? 
The ideal session length (based on my experience) is at least 20 minutes!

Does this framework apply to one-on one or group settings?
You can use literacy-based therapy with individual students or groups. I’ve found that I do best with groups of 3 (or fewer).

Data Collection

Do you collect data each session for each child? 
I do! My goal is to collect data on one goal per student per session.

How long do you spend on the probe during the session?
I have a very streamlined system, so it shouldn’t take more than a minute per goal. Here’s a quick video of the process to collect a probe.

Do you give the same probe every time?
I do! This helps me measure progress in a consistent manner. I rotate through the goals. If a student has 4 goals, each goal would be probed every 4 weeks. I also don’t provide any feedback while administering the probe, which helps reduce “learning” of the probe items.

What are the other students doing when you’re doing the probe with one student?
I recorded a podcast episode about how I like to start my sessions.

Do you give students the same probe? How do you control for them hearing the others’ responses?
If the students have the same goal, I may administer the same probe.

Do you provide feedback when giving probes?
I do not!

What would a daily SOAP note look like in SLP Now?
Here’s one example:
Amelia Bones participated in a literacy-based therapy unit (A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee) on 01/08/2024 from 9:00 AM to 9:30 AM in a group.
Goal: answer questions about narrative elements (character, setting, events)
When given a probe, Amelia achieved 20% accuracy (1/5 trials).
When given visual cues, Amelia achieved 80% accuracy.
Plan: Step 3

Everything was automatically populated. I just filled in the plan at the very end.

You can also customize your note template! Click here to see how that works.

SLP Now

Does SLP Now have Spanish resources?
Yes! We have a few Spanish units and handouts. We are working on adding more!

Does SLP Now have materials for all ages?
Yes! This article lists all of the goals and units that we offer for various ages.

How many therapy plans does SLP Now have?
We have over 400 units, including picture books, reading passages, fiction articles, nonfiction articles, vocational videos, and science experiments.

Where can I find the visuals for teaching story grammar?
If you are an SLP Now member, click here to access the visuals.

How do you use the SLP Now Sentence Pack?
An SLP posted a tutorial video in our member community.

Does SLP Now have a goal bank?
We do! It is built into our site.

Does SLP Now have virtual materials for virtual learning?
Yes! If you are a member, click here to access them.

Does SLP Now have activities for home/carryover?
Yes! If you are a member, click here to access them.

Is there somewhere in the SLP Now program that I would be able to enter the students’ exact goals from their IEP?
Yes! You can copy and paste your students’ goals into the platform. Here is a quick tutorial.

If you are an SLPA working under an SLP, is there a way to share this data together?
Yes! We added a new feature that allows you to share a caseload between an SLP and an SLPA.

Is SLP Now HIPAA compliant?
Yes! You can read more details here.

Is there a way to trial SLP Now?
Yes! You can sign up for a free trial here.

How do I access the Digital Binders?
When you sign up for an annual membership to SLP Now, you will receive the digital binders as a bonus!

If you are already an annual member who attended the SLP Summit, check your email for a link to redeem your binder!

As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Email us at [email protected].

#174: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: How to Pick a Book

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

What keeps an SLP from becoming a tutor? This framework. 👇

Okay, that’s not totally true — using a framework is not the only thing that distinguishes a tutor from an SLP! But it can definitely help, and that’s what we’re talking about in this week’s episode of the SLP Now Podcast:

Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: How to Choose a Book

We want to be really clear that being a tutor is amazing, and being an SLP is amazing. This is not a conversation about one profession being better than another, it’s about understanding the role each person plays in helping a student succeed.

A tutor’s job is to help students learn the material from the curriculum and keep up in the classroom.

As an SLP, our job is to focus on the language underpinnings: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

That’s what we do best, and it’s how we help our students build the skills and strategies that they need to be successful beyond the classroom.

Literacy-based therapy offers a great framework to support the development of language underpinnings, and at SLP Now, we like to talk about one that was developed by Dr. Ukrainetz. Her framework for literacy-based therapy includes five steps:

1️⃣ Pre-story knowledge activation
2️⃣ Read
3️⃣ Post-story comprehension
4️⃣ Focused skill activities
5️⃣ Parallel story

Using this framework, you can target almost any goal — but it’s really important to be strategic when you’re selecting a text. (Especially if you want to create a whole month of therapy plans using just one book!)

If there’s language involved, we can make it happen. 💪

Episode Summary

In this episode, Marisha talks about:

✅ Criteria to select texts that can be used in a functional and therapeutic way
✅ The best length of book to use
✅ What happened when she didn’t follow these criteria
✅ Targeting multiple goals with one book
✅ When to use an expository text versus narrative structure
✅ What to do if the text you’ve selected doesn’t have appropriate targets
✅ Aligning texts with the curriculum

Links + Resources Mentioned

Join our free Literacy-Based Therapy Challenge After you’ve joined, keep an eye out for an email from us and don’t forget to download your workbook! 📕

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

Download New Tab

Speaker 1:
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, I am really excited for this next series of podcast episodes. We are going to be doing a literacy-based therapy challenge. This is the challenge that we've had thousands of speech-language pathologists run through with us. And the goal of the challenge is to help you, either if you're new to literacy-based therapy, come up with a nice easy system and boost your confidence when using literacy in your therapy sessions. And then for SLPs who are already using books and articles, and using some literacy-based therapy strategies, this is a really great way to step up what you're doing and streamline and, again, boost your confidence. So to access the resources, I've created a really beautiful workbook that goes along with this challenge. So if you went to head to slpnow.com/challenge, you'll be able to just pop in your email and we'll send you the workbook so you can follow along with the challenge as we go through.

So that's your first action step. Go ahead and hit pause, go to slpnow.com/challenge and download that workbook. And then before we dive into selecting a book to use and going through the five steps of the literacy-based therapy framework, this challenge is much more helpful when you are able to work with a specific group. It just makes it that much more concrete and actionable. So I suggest that you think of one group that you would like to try this with. So jot down the name of the group or just keep it in your head, which group are you wanting to practice this with, then we'll also talk through selecting a text. And if you need some inspiration and you're not sure which book you'd like to use, just send us a DM on Instagram, message us on Instagram, and we'd love to help you with that step. And if you have any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to reach out. Instagram is a great way to do that. Or you can email us at [email protected]. And without further ado, let's dive into the challenge.

Okay, let's do this. We officially get to get started with day one of the literacy-based therapy challenge. So I've got my workbook printed and ready to go. And our goal for today, hopefully yesterday we picked a group, so if you haven't picked your group yet, open up to this page in the workbook day zero where you just pick your group, write down their goals. That'll be super important. And the next thing that we want to do is to select a text. We are going to pick a book to use for our literacy-based therapy unit. And so I gave you some suggestions in the workbook if you want to check those out, but I wanted to chat about some quick criteria for selecting a book. So the whole framework that we're talking about was developed by Dr. Ukrainetz, and she has a fabulous textbook that breaks down that approach and gives us tons and tons of practical tips and resources.

But one thing that she talks about is selecting a book and being strategic in how we select that book. So she talks about three main criteria that allow us to select texts that we can use in a very functional and therapeutic way. And she talks a lot about her framework to help us be therapeutic instead of tutors. So these criteria, if we're selecting texts in this way, we can select essentially any text and make it work for our students, and we can use a text to target virtually any goal. If there's language involved, we can make it happen and we'll share lots and lots of ideas on how to do that throughout the week. But the three criteria are, one, select a text that can be read in 10 minutes or less.

So when I was starting with literacy-based therapy, I got a little bit ambitious and I selected some chapter books for my older students and I was like, "Yes, this is going to be amazing, we're going to keep up with the classroom, and then with this grade I'm going to help them read their social studies textbook. It's going to be fabulous." But it ended up not being so fabulous. I was turning into a tutor because I was trying so hard to keep up with what they were doing in the classroom. And I found that picking smaller subset of texts, so something that can be read in 10 minutes or less, was much more effective. It let me implement the framework that we'll be diving into this week, and it allowed me to slow things down and really focus on the language underpinnings. That's what our job is. We are helping our students build the skills and strategies that they need to be successful because we aren't going to follow them around forever, even though we would love to do that with some of our students, but we really ultimately want them to be independent.

So that's criteria one, select a text that can be read in 10 minutes or less. The second strategy, or the second tip, is to find a text that has multiple demonstrations of targets. And I feel like we can make a text work with pretty much any goal. Of course, if there's something really specific that we want to target, like if we're targeting summarizing, we probably want to have a text that is an expository text. Or if we really want to target story grammar, we probably want to select a fiction text, but beyond the overarching categories, there's very few exceptions. If I really want to target past tense verbs, even if the book is written in present tense, that still gives me the opportunity. It has verbs in it, so I can still set up some contrastive imitation and use that evidence back strategy even if those past tense verbs aren't directly written in the text.

Or if I really want to target some specific prefixes or suffixes, even if it doesn't have those specific prefixes or in the text, we can create sentences using those words and apply them to the text, but it does help a little bit. So I have gone through and analyzed hundreds of books, and quite a few non-fiction and fiction articles as well, and pulled out their targets. One example is irregular plural nouns. There aren't that many of them. And if a student has a goal to work on irregular plural nouns, I would really like to see them in context. So that's something that I'll look through my book guide to see and to find those targets.

And then the third criteria that Dr. Ukrainetz recommends is that the text aligns with the curriculum. We can simply align the topic to what they're discussing in the classroom, or we can pull from something directly that they're actually using in the classroom. And we'll dive into that a little bit more later. I would recommend just focusing on those first two criteria. You've got your students' goals, pick something that will allow you to target those goals, and select something that's not too long. And if you've got that, you'll be good to go and will learn more along the way.

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.

Scroll back to top

 

#173: My February Therapy Plans

by 2 Comments

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Stress-Free Monthly Therapy Planning for SLPs

In this episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha delves into the process she uses to plan a month’s worth of speech therapy sessions. Her goal: to simplify the planning process for SLPs, and make it less daunting.

Let’s dive in and talk about therapy plans for February!

Quick Probes and Visuals: Simplifying with SLP Now

To kick things off, Marisha pulls together the probes and visuals that she needs to target her students’ goals.

Because she uses SLP Now, Marisha takes advantage of a handy feature that allows you to administer present level assessments, helps you to identify goals for your students, then automagically links goals to relevant assessments, visuals, and teaching activities. ✨

If you’re not a member of SLP Now, you can manually gather your assessments and visuals — or use whichever tool you prefer! The point is that you have the materials that you need gathered in advance instead of scrambling for them right before a session.

💡In SLP Now, we’ve built a tool to make it easy for you to create your assessment binder and visuals binder. If you sign up for a trial of SLP Now, you get that tool as part of your onboarding — so make sure you check it out!

Once those materials are assembled, your bases are covered for assessing and teaching your students’ goals. Check and check! ✅ ✅

Next up is…

Segmentation: Adding Variety to Speech Therapy

Marisha advocates for segmenting the caseload into manageable chunks instead of trying to tackle every individual case on its own. This makes it easier to wrap your head around therapy planning, and identify a context to practice the skills.

She stresses the importance of using your clinical judgment — because you know your caseload best — and reminds listeners that each session will still be tailored to the goals and needs of each student.

Marisha gives examples using a caseload that spans preschool through sixth grade. She decides to use a play-based unit for her preschoolers, a picture book for the K-2 students, and a science experiment for the students in grades 3-6.

If you’re overwhelmed, segmenting your caseload simplifies the planning process, gives context to practice skills, and helps you add variety to speech therapy sessions without planning 5 million activities. 💃

Now that we gathered our essential materials and segmented our caseload, it’s time for…

The Magic: Unveiling Your Therapy Plans

When it comes to planning a month of therapy, the materials you need are just a couple clicks away thanks to SLP Now’s search and filter features — and in this episode, Marisha walks you through the exact process she uses to pull up the plans she needs.

SLP Now’s pre-made therapy plans are Marisha’s (not so) secret weapon.

The first step is to log in to SLP Now, then head to the therapy plan page and find the sidebar that lets you create filters for your search — like theme, age, targets, and more.

For the preschoolers, Marisha chooses some early language books she’d like to use, then sets a filter for play-based units. She decides to go with a transportation theme, and the book “The Little Blue Truck” shows up in the results.

Then… PRESTO PLANS-O — Marisha clicks a button to open the plans. There, she finds a month’s worth of activities, including suggested targets and linked related teaching materials like visuals and interactive decks. One more click adds the plans to her favorites for easy access all month long, and that’s it for the first segment of her caseload!

Whenever Marisha needs to access plans for her preschool groups, she can click into that unit and find everything she needs. Easy breezy SLPeasy! 💅

She repeats the process for her K-2 and 3-6 students, using “The Day it Rained Hearts” and a lava lamp science experiment for those groups. Each time, she finds a month’s worth of activities plus all the resources she needs to implement the therapy and target a wide range of goals.

Structuring Speech Therapy Sessions: Where The Magic Unfolds

Transitioning to actual sessions, Marisha outlines the steps – goal review, quick probes, teaching, and practicing within the chosen activity’s context.

💡For more about how to structure a speech session, check out episode 158

Because you’ve been planning ahead, you should have the assessments you need ready to go at the start of the session — and with SLP Now, you can link the relevant tools and materials to your students’ profiles so they’re super easy to find.

The first thing students do when they walk into the session is grab their goal cards and review their goals. While they do that, Marisha will pull up her probes, select one goal per student, and run through a probe for each student quickly. She uses the data collected from that probe to inform the structure of the rest of the session.

💡To learn more about quick and efficient data collection, check out episode 159.

Once Marisha has given the appropriate level of teaching, she dives into the first set of activities — which are designed to target all of her students’ goals — and then practices the goals in context.

Remember: Speech therapy is a very dynamic process. If your student is struggling with the practice component, you can always go back to teaching as needed! The goal is to meet our students where they’re at.

Rinse and Repeat: Consistency is the Key

This process is repeated throughout the month, bringing a sense of routine and structure to the planning and the execution. Marisha has observed that students thrive on this systemized approach, allowing them to focus on their goals with a clear understanding of what to expect.

And there you have it!

Planning a month’s worth of therapy doesn’t have to be a daunting task. With the right tools and structured planning, it becomes a stress-free and effective process.

Until next time, happy planning, SLP superheroes! 🚀✨

Links + Resources Mentioned

Sign up for a free trial of SLP Now
Episode 163: 3 Steps to Easily Plan Your Speech Therapy Sessions
Episode 158: How to structure a speech therapy session
Episode 159: Tips to streamline your data collection as an SLP

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

Download New Tab

Marisha Mets:
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 put all of the things that we've talked about over the last few episodes and put them into practice and share what my planning process would look like if I had a preschool through sixth grade caseload planning for the month of February. In the previous episode, 163, we talked about three tips for easy therapy planning. So we talked about splitting your caseload into segments using pre-made therapy plans and then gathering the essentials. So just to recap what that would look like for my February plans, I would just want to make sure that I have quick probes and visuals ready to go for all of my students' goals.
And SLP Now makes that incredibly easy. We have a feature where you can administer Present Levels assessments to your students, and this helps you identify goals for your students. All of those goals already have probes/assessments linked to them, as well as visuals and teaching activities, as well as structured practice, all of the things. So if you're using SLP Now, that whole process is incredibly simple and easy and pretty much done for you. If you're not, you can still implement this, it's just a little bit more manual because you'll be working on gathering your assessments for your students as well as their visuals. And we've built a tool to make it easy for you to build your assessment binder as well as your visual binder. And if you sign up for a free trial of SLP Now, that is one of your welcome onboarding tools, so definitely go check that out.
We're making sure that we have all of the basic materials that we need, so we've got our bases covered in terms of what we need to assess and teach our students' goals. So we're good to go. Got that. Check. Then the next step is to split my caseload into segments. So let's say I'm working with preschool through sixth grade. I may decide to split my caseload. I'm just going to give one example, but use your clinical judgment for your caseload. You know your caseload best, so just that caveat. But let's say I am planning to use a play-based unit for my preschool students. I'd like to use a picture book for my K-2 students, and then for my third through sixth graders, I'd like to use a science experiment.
So I have split my caseload into segments, that make sense. And as you're looking at a group, just because you've set the segment doesn't mean you can't change up the activity. But the purpose of splitting our caseload into segments is just to make it a little bit easier to wrap our head around therapy planning. And I mentioned this in the episode, but if you're feeling overwhelmed, just make those segments. Use that as your guideline for beginning your therapy. The segments, they help you identify a context to practice your students' skills.
Because we gathered all of our essential materials ahead of time, we have our probes/assessments as well as our visuals and teaching tools. Every single session is going to be individualized for every single student. We're still going to be targeting the goals that they need. The segments just help make it easier to identify that context, and then we're not planning five million different activities for our caseload. We make sure we have the essentials, and then we grab the context.
So we've split our caseload into segments. We know we want a play-based unit, a picture book, and a science experiment. In episode 159, I recommended using SLP Now for the pre-made therapy plans. So I would go onto the therapy plan page inside the SLP Now site. There's a sidebar that lets you filter. So I would just start by filtering for the play-based units. So I would just grab the early language books, I think, are what I would like to use. And then if I want it to be seasonal, I can select a specific month, or I can try and connect with whatever they're working on in the preschool classroom. So let's say they're doing a transportation theme. So I'm looking through the books. I can filter by transportation in the sidebar, and then if I just scroll through the list of all of our early language books, Little Blue Truck shows up, and that's tagged as a transportation book. So I can click into that unit, and then I would just add it to my favorites so that I have easy access.
So those are my plans for my preschool groups, and I can click back into the plan. It gives me activity ideas for a whole month of therapy. It analyzes the book and tells me all of the targets that I can work on, and there's teaching materials linked for each target as well. And then there's a bunch of materials that I can use, like interactive decks and visuals and all sorts of things that I can use. So those are my plans for February. They're saved to my account, we're ready to go. So then next I would look for a picture book, and let's just look at the books for February. If there is a specific skill that I know a lot of my students are working on, I can use the sidebar to filter for specific skills. Or if it's an election year, I might want to do something more election-based or whatnot.
So let's just go with The Day It Rained Hearts because it'll be Valentine's Day, and then we can do some work. It'll be relevant leading up to Valentine's Day, and then we can wrap up the month with our parallel stories and all of that, talking about things that happened on Valentine's Day. So I, again, can click into that unit. I'll just add it to my favorites so that I can remember that's the one that I picked. And then again, it has tons of activity ideas that I can just click and grab for the whole month. It analyzes the book for all of the targets, and there are a handful of materials linked that I can just, again, click and grab, or I can print and prep ahead of time. But that is my planning for my second segment of my caseload.
And then I'll do the same thing. I decided I wanted to do a science experiment for my older students, so I searched for a science experiment in the therapy plans. Then I get to pick which one I want to use. So the one that's standing out to me right now is making a lava lamp. And so when I click into that therapy plan, again, I'm going to add it to my favorites so it shows up in my list every time. Again, it has activities and suggestions for the whole month of therapy. It breaks down all of the targets. And then there's a video of me actually conducting the experiment. There's also steps to actually implement the experiment and tons of supplementary activities to target a wide range of goals. And so that, again, is all of my therapy prepped just with one click for my older students' caseload segment, and I'm ready to go with them.
And then in terms of what the actual sessions look like, we talked about this in episode 158 on how to structure a speech therapy session. So I'll give an example of just one of the groups. So let's stick with the older group, the third through sixth graders. So I have their assessments ready to go, and I have them just linked to their accounts in SLP Now, so they're easy to grab. Then I also have my visuals and teaching tools organized, ready to go, easy to grab for my therapy table, and I have my therapy plans all loaded into the app, or maybe I have some things printed off, but that is the overall setup and what I have.
So then let's say it's the first session in February. The students walk in the door. The first thing that they'll do is they'll grab their goal cards, because that's part of their routine. They'll review their goals. As they're reviewing their goals, I'm going to pull up those quick probes, and I'll select one goal per student and run through a probe for each student super quickly, and then I will use that data to decide how I'm going to structure the rest of the session. So we talked about this a lot in the data collection episode, which is episode 159. If you want more details on the structure, I don't want this episode to get too too long, but I will use the data that I collected to determine which students need teaching on a specific goal before we dive into context.
And then once I give the appropriate level of teaching, then we'll dive into the first set of activities for the experiment. And so it involves more executive functioning, sequencing types of things. It's, again, a very language-rich activity, so I can use that. It'll give me plenty of opportunities to target all of my students' goals within that activity. So we spend as much time as we need practicing our goals in context. I started this session with some assessment, then I do some teaching, then we move into practice. And if we're really struggling with the practice side of things, we can always move back to teaching, and it's a very dynamic process.
But then at the end of the session, we'll wrap things up, and then I would just document in SLP Now super quick how the session went and which supports the student needed. And then I can check off which steps we completed out of the plan, and so when the students walk in next time, we kind of rinse and repeat. We'll rotate through to another goal, and we will then continue on to the next step in the experiment unit. And then again, we just continue to rinse and repeat throughout the whole month.
And this whole process makes for really easy therapy planning. It provides the students with some nice consistency and structure so they know what to expect. And because they're not having to figure out all of the details of what's happening in the session, and this is my hypothesis or my observation just from personal experience, but I find that students have a little bit more cognitive capacity and they're able to use a little bit higher level language and step up a little bit more in their goals because they're not having to figure out all of the things. They know what to expect, and they're able to allocate lots of resources to just doing the best that they can with their goals.
And so that is a wrap on how I would navigate my February therapy planning. I hope that this was helpful, and I hope that it helps you feel relieved that it doesn't have to be a very difficult and time-consuming process. I could have done all of my planning in the duration of this episode, maybe even less. And so that's a wrap on this week, and 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.

Scroll back to top

 

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

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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

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

Download New Tab

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

Scroll back to top

 

#171: How to Structure A Speech Therapy Session

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

✨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

Download New Tab

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.

Scroll back to top

 

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

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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

Download New Tab

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.

Scroll back to top

 

#169: 5 Tips for Mixed Groups in Speech Therapy

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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

Download New Tab

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

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.

Scroll back to top

 

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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

Download New Tab

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

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.

Scroll back to top

 

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

by Leave a Comment

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

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!

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

Download New Tab

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

Scroll back to top

 

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

by Leave a Comment

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