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Marisha

#163: 3 Steps to Easily Plan Your Speech Therapy Sessions

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

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

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

Marisha’s Top 3 Tips for Therapy Planning

1️⃣ Segment your caseload

2️⃣ Leverage pre-made therapy plans

3️⃣ Gather your must-have materials in advance

Let’s dive in:

1. Segment Your Caseload for Efficient Planning

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

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

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

2. Leverage Pre-Made Therapy Plans

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

<< Start your free trial today! >>

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

3. Gather Essential Materials in Advance

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

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

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

Resources + Links Mentioned:

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

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Transcript

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

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How to Write Fluency and Stuttering Goals for School-Age Students (Stuttering Goal Bank)

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Stuttering is a multifaceted communication difference that extends beyond observable speech disruptions. While repetitions, prolongations, and blocks are commonly recognized features, it’s essential to understand the broader impact stuttering can have on an individual’s life.

Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, emphasizes the importance of viewing stuttering through a holistic lens. She advocates for assessments that consider not only the frequency and type of disfluencies but also the emotional and psychological experiences of the person who stutters. Tools like the Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering (OASES) are instrumental in capturing this comprehensive perspective.

By acknowledging the full spectrum of experiences associated with stuttering, SLPs can develop more empathetic and effective therapy plans that address both speech patterns and the individual’s confidence and comfort in communication.

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A Person-Centered Approach to Writing Stuttering Goals

Writing goals for students who stutter is often viewed as daunting, but it becomes far more manageable when we embrace a person-centered approach. Instead of defaulting to generic fluency-based objectives, we start by learning what truly matters to the student.

Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, encourages SLPs to collaborate with students as early as the assessment phase. She recommends asking reflective, open-ended questions like:

  • What would be different if things were different?
  • What feels hard or helpful when you speak?
  • What do you wish was easier in school or with friends?

By exploring these questions, we gain insights into speaking avoidances, social-emotional challenges, and academic impacts—factors that directly inform individualized goals.

Use of Rating Scales
 Ashley often uses tools like the OASES to help students identify what they wish to change. These self-ratings can then be transformed into measurable goals. For instance:

“If a student rates themselves as a 1 out of 5 on comfort speaking in class, we might set a goal to reach a 3 by the next progress review.”

Even when a student is hesitant to share, SLPs can look to teacher or caregiver questionnaires as a last resort—though it’s always ideal to prioritize the student’s voice.

You can also check out this related post on stuttering assessment for more ideas on how to gather functional information that supports goal writing.

“So goal writing definitely goes hand in hand with the assessment process and with the treatment process, because it’s most important that no matter who you’re working with, it’s going to be a person-centered approach.” 

— Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Functional and Measurable Goals: What Do They Look Like?

When it comes to writing fluency goals in speech therapy, especially for IEPs, it’s critical that goals are both functional and meaningful to the student. Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, suggests shifting the focus from simply “reducing stuttering” to fostering confident, authentic communication.

Some practical goal examples include:

  • Self-advocacy: “The student will create two statements to use when peers ask about their stuttering.”
  • Participation: “The student will raise their hand to answer a question in class once per week, moving from a 1 to a 3 on their comfort scale.”
  • Education: “The student will demonstrate knowledge of stuttering by accurately answering three hypothetical peer questions.”

These goals reflect a student’s values and communication priorities—whether it’s ordering food at a restaurant, sharing in class, or explaining stuttering to others. This not only promotes carryover but also increases buy-in and motivation.

Using rating scales (like those in the OASES or custom-made versions) allows us to measure progress even when traditional data points aren’t available. They also provide opportunities for student reflection and growth.

Check out our fluency strategies for stuttering post for additional tools to support these goals in therapy.

“Maybe they will form at least two statements that they could say to someone asking them a question about stuttering… that is a measurable goal because they’re going to do it and report that they have.” 

— Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Adapting Goals for the School Setting

School-based SLPs often face unique challenges when writing fluency goals for IEPs. While outpatient clinicians may have more flexibility, school-based goals must often align with academic and social participation.

Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, reminds us that this doesn’t mean sacrificing meaningful, student-driven goals. Instead, it’s about framing them within the educational environment. For example:

  • If a student wants to be more comfortable giving presentations, a goal might focus on increasing participation in class discussions.
  • If a student wants to stop avoiding group projects, the goal could involve initiating communication with peers during group work.

When a student isn’t ready to identify specific goals during assessment, Ashley recommends starting with something general—like increasing participation in goal planning or engaging in stuttering education. This keeps therapy meaningful while building trust and rapport.

And always consider barriers in the school environment. A lack of understanding from teachers or peers can contribute to communication avoidance. Incorporating advocacy and awareness goals can empower students and promote a supportive school climate. For more on working with families and educators, check out our guide for parents.

“Obviously there are other things to consider, right? If you’re an SLP working in the schools, your goals have got to be oriented around the academic experience… I can make them about the school. I can make them about community, social, family, friends, all the things.” 

— Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Therapy in Action: Connecting Goals to Treatment

Once you’ve written meaningful goals, therapy becomes an opportunity to explore, reflect, and take action. Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, encourages SLPs to let students guide the process. There’s no one-size-fits-all curriculum—instead, therapy is responsive to the student’s needs and interests.

Therapy activities might include:

  • Cognitive cycles: Helping students reflect on what they think, feel, and do before, during, and after communication moments.
  • Values-based work: Identifying what matters most in communication (e.g., connecting with friends, participating in class) and building goals from those values.
  • Cost-benefit analysis: Examining the impact of avoidance behaviors and exploring alternatives.
  • Rating scales and hierarchies: Mapping out which situations feel most challenging and identifying steps to increase confidence.
  • Creative tools: Using writing, drawing, or videos to explore emotions, practice self-advocacy, and understand stuttering as a communication difference.

This person-centered approach draws from frameworks like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Avoidance Reduction Therapy. You can learn more about these ideas in our post on joyful speech therapy for stuttering.

“You’re just finding what works best for somebody, right? And in treatment, you want to be as guiding as possible. But some kids really need to be led sometimes… you’re meeting them where they’re at.” 

— Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Stuttering Goals: Training and Tools for SLPs

Many SLPs didn’t receive extensive training in counseling-based approaches during graduate school. That can make person-centered stuttering therapy feel unfamiliar or intimidating. Fortunately, there are excellent ways to grow your confidence and skill set.

Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, strongly recommends engaging with the stuttering community as a first step. Following people who stutter on social media, attending local or national support groups, and exploring videos and podcasts can provide powerful insights.

For structured professional development, Ashley points to the Avoidance Reduction Therapy training by Vivian Siskin as especially impactful. This approach helps SLPs address avoidance behaviors and promote more authentic, empowered communication. The training is comprehensive and accessible online, and it integrates well with ACT and CBT frameworks already used in many therapeutic settings.

“I think I’ve learned the most from people who stutter by far. It informs everything that I do… Avoidance Reduction Therapy encapsulates the most important elements we should be addressing in therapy.” 

— Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Explore the Avoidance Reduction Training Center or look into courses by the National Stuttering Association and FRIENDS for more learning opportunities.

Conclusion

When it comes to writing stuttering and fluency goals, there’s no need to rely on rigid templates or overly narrow metrics. Instead, by centering therapy around the student’s voice, values, and lived experience, SLPs can create meaningful goals that support lifelong communication success.

Remember:

  • Start with the student: Ask what matters to them, what they wish could be different, and how they define success.
  • Use tools like rating scales to track impact and progress.
  • Incorporate education and advocacy to reduce stigma and build confidence.
  • Keep therapy flexible: Let students lead while you guide with empathy and expertise.

And above all, consider connection with the broader stuttering community. As Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP, reminds us:

“Any adult I’ve ever talked to who stutters and is involved in the stuttering community will say, ‘That’s when everything changed for me.’” — Ashley Cubberly, M.A., CCC-SLP

Resources

Explore more from SLP Now and Ashley Cubberly to support your stuttering therapy:

Related Blog Posts

Professional Development

From Ashley Cubberly

Frequently Asked Questions about Stuttering Goals

What is an example of a fluency goal?

A functional fluency goal might be:
 “The student will increase participation in classroom discussions by raising their hand to answer a question at least once per week, as measured by a self-rating scale increasing from 1 to 3.”
 This keeps the focus on real-world communication success rather than just reducing disfluencies.

What are the goals of stuttering modification strategies?

Stuttering modification goals focus on reducing the struggle and tension associated with stuttering. A goal might look like:
 “The student will demonstrate use of pull-outs in structured conversation with 80% accuracy over three sessions.”
 The emphasis is on increasing comfort and ease in speaking, not on eliminating stuttering.

What are the goals for stuttering avoidance?

Avoidance goals aim to reduce behaviors that limit participation. An example:
 “The student will identify three speaking situations they currently avoid and successfully participate in two of them over the treatment period.”
 These goals help students move toward more authentic and flexible communication.

What is the goal of voluntary stuttering?

Voluntary stuttering can reduce fear and desensitize students to stuttering moments. A sample goal:
 “The student will use voluntary stuttering in five structured speaking situations to increase comfort with moments of disfluency.”

What is the bounce technique for stuttering?

The bounce technique is a fluency shaping strategy that involves repeating the initial sound of a word in a relaxed way (e.g., “b-b-ball”). It’s often used with younger children to reduce tension. While it can be part of therapy, Ashley emphasizes that strategies should only be introduced if they align with the student’s goals and needs.

What are the IEP goals for reading fluency?

Reading fluency goals differ from stuttering goals. A reading fluency goal might be:
 “The student will read a grade-level passage aloud with 100 words per minute and 95% accuracy across three consecutive sessions.”
 It targets accuracy, rate, and expression in reading—not speech disfluency.

At SLP Now, we are hard workers… but we also like to work smarter.

That means we’re constantly improving our materials, therapy planning resources, and the ways we support SLPs like YOU — so you can skip the hard work part and just work smarter. 👇

Inside the SLP Now membership, you’ll find 400+ therapy plans and an organized library of 6,000+ (and counting!) evidence-backed speech therapy materials to help you differentiate your therapy in a matter of minutes.

How is that possible, you ask?

Because we analyzed all the books, identified the targets, and created unit plan pages that suggest activities based on the skills you’re targeting and your students’ needs. This is the one-stop shop for all your literacy-based therapy needs, including resources for virtual field trips and visuals to help those concepts stick.

We’ve talked about so many activity options during this series… but there are even more literacy-based ideas and evidence-based resources waiting for you on the other side of SLP Now. 🤗

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


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Transcript

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Marisha (00:01.171)

Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited to be wrapping up our series on stuttering. Today we have Ashley Coverley with us. She is a speech language pathologist based in Louisville, Kentucky, and she works out at an outpatient pediatric practice. And she has a special interest in working with children, teens and adults who stutter.

and she has some really great experiences and I can't her bio like my version of her bio won't do her story justice. So I'm going to turn it over to Ashley. So Ashley welcome.

Ashley (00:40.515)

Hi, thanks for having me.

Marisha (00:42.449)

Yeah, I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you. And before we dive into, so today we're going to be focusing on or chatting about goal writing and kind of a peek at treatment. But before we dive into those things, can you tell us a little bit more about your story? Kind of what led you to specialize in this area and maybe like a snapshot of kind of what that journey has looked like?

Ashley (01:08.502)

Yeah, so I first got started, you know, choosing the SLP path, which we all kind of know is a long journey. When I first got started in SLP, I kind of knew right away in college what I wanted to do was focus on that. And I always felt like I wanted to be in a helping profession because I

love to talk and love to like get real with people, all that. think if I wouldn't have been in SLP, I probably would have focused on counseling, therapeutic kind of stuff somehow. I do think that was kind of always the path that I would follow. So in my undergrad experience, I went to Central Michigan University. I'm from Michigan originally, even though I'm in Kentucky now. I went there for my undergrad and

It was towards the end, like before I graduated, you, not all schools do this, but some can give you an experience to be a clinician, not just observe even in undergrad, but you don't always get that option. But I did have that option. So I was a student clinician in undergrad and my first patient was a child who stuttered. So I had absolutely no idea what to do with that because you don't learn.

anything about stuttering in undergrad, pretty much at all. Besides, this is what this is and SLPs treat it, right? Like we work with people. So it's pretty much the extent of the knowledge I have had at that time. But I had a good mentor who did know a lot about stuttering therapy. So that was my first experience with it. And even then it was not, I don't like to say it was not good, but it was not bad. It was just what it was. And it

did also expose me to a totally different approach than what I thought SLP would be, which is really cool. And I really loved working with the person and it was extra cool because there were siblings who stuttered and they went to the same clinic and we could do some like group therapy type stuff too. It was kind of cool. So that kind of got me like introduced to it at first. And I was thinking,

Ashley (03:30.06)

wow, I love this. And by the end of it, we were doing all kinds of things together. And so by the time it came to apply to grad school, go to grad school, I went to the University of Toledo, which has a stuttering intensive. Actually, I don't think they have anymore. They had a stuttering intensive option as one of your clinical experiences there. So my mentor who's Dr. Gobble, he led the intensive and while I was going there for grad school,

That's one of the things that kind of led me there is I knew I wanted to do that if I could. And, he came up with an extra graduate certification program sort of thing where you could tack it on to your masters. And I ended up doing that. So it was. It's official title is like advanced fluency treatment kind of thing. So had to take additional classes on top of all of our normal classes and then do the intensive.

and then do some research as well. And that was a really cool experience, a little more work, but pretty much all of it was based in counseling. So I really loved it. And I knew I wanted to like keep going and take everything further. So I just ended up graduating and making, centering a huge focus in who I work with.

Marisha (04:52.295)

That's amazing. And how cool that you had the opportunity to get like to earn a certificate with additional training. And like, because it sounds like you had additional courses and clinical work and research too. that's awesome. Really cool.

Ashley (04:58.126)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (05:08.876)

Yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool.

Marisha (05:13.991)

Yeah, and I got excited when you said you had extra counseling classes. I feel like we could all use a little bit more counseling, like coursework in our graduate programs.

Ashley (05:25.806)

Totally agree. I've heard of some programs saying they're adding like a counseling course in those shorter, usually over summer courses that are like six weeks. And I know some are looking into adding that into the coursework, which I think is amazing because I've used the skills I have with all the kids I work with, not just those who stutter. There's so many opportunities to use those approaches. It's really, really helpful.

Marisha (05:54.545)

Yeah. Well, we might have to have a follow-up podcast episode about that. We do have a counseling episode in this series, but I feel like there's one episode won't cover all the things. So that could be really cool. Okay.

Ashley (05:57.376)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Ashley (06:05.42)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (06:09.381)

Awesome. And I love that story. So thank you so much for sharing your journey with us. then so let's transition into some of the content. And I feel like one of the questions that everyone asks when we talk about stuttering is goal writing. So what and I this is just going to be like a conversation where we'll get to start talking about things. It definitely won't be a comprehensive. But actually, what like tips or strategies or what do you think about when

Ashley (06:12.898)

Yeah.

Marisha (06:39.355)

when you're considering like goals for students. And I know that there's so much that goes into it. And we have an episode on assessment. So yeah, assuming we have a good foundation with those things, what would you recommend?

Ashley (06:49.198)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (06:53.102)

So it's funny because it's something that seems tricky, but once you really dive in, it's not as tricky as it seems like it could be. Right. So goal writing definitely goes hand in hand with the assessment process and with the treatment process, because it's most important that no matter who you're working with, it's going to be a person centered approach. So there's a lot of research that supports.

Working with the person to create goals leads to better outcomes. They're more motivated to meet those goals. They're going to pick the things that are important to them. Therefore they might actually try to create change. Right. We all probably have that personal experience too. So you talked about assessment. So typically if I can, I'm making these goals with a child during the assessment process or

if I can maybe the next few sessions, which is tricky because you have to have a plan of care in some way, right? And obviously there are other things to consider, right? If you're an SLP working in the schools, your goals have got to be oriented around the academic experience. I work in an outpatient setting, so I can be a little more flexible with my goals. I can make them about the school. I can make them about community, social, family, friends, all the things.

So I have little more flexibility compared to an SFB in school. So I think the biggest thing is back to assessment a little bit. During that evaluation, I try to answer at least one of these questions, right? I'm asking or probing, you don't have to directly ask even though I usually do directly ask, what would be different if...

things were different, right? If you could do the things you wanted to, what would they look like? I'm trying to find out maybe what avoidances are happening, speaking avoidances, stuttering avoidances, what do those look like? I want to know what feels helpful to the person. That's going to look different for everybody. I want to know what would help. So for example, I might

Ashley (09:17.4)

kind of give a rundown of something that a speech therapist could help with. Could teach you more about stuttering. We could find out how stuttering affects you more, all those things. Maybe I'm kind of giving a breakdown of what speech therapy can look like so that I know what would be helpful, what of these things could be helpful. And then overall impact, academic versus social impact for them.

So let's say you get a child who doesn't really want to open up during that process. That's where it can get tricky. I haven't had too much trouble like making at least one goal with a child, but I have had some where I came close to like, are we going to figure something out? I'm not sure if we can during the evaluation. So then I would refer back to maybe a teacher questionnaire, what they're observing in the classroom or a parent questionnaire, what they're observing now.

That being said, that's my last resort because what a teacher and a caregiver might perceive to be happening with the child could not be true at all, or could be a misplaced judgment, something like that. And that's usually why I defer to that or have it as evidence towards my assessment too, of course. But I might then make goals with the kid.

right then and there if they've given me some information. So I tell them, you know, I'm your speech therapist and we have to have goals when we're working together. We have to have something we're working towards and let's figure those things out together because I want it to be what's important to you. So there's different ways you can make some goals. think one of the most straightforward ways that I want to talk about is rating skills. One of, I'm not sure if assessment was talked about the Oasis.

That's when I use a lot, because it can give you a valid impact rating that you can use for your assessment. So within that assessment, there are rating skills. They're reading all kinds of things on there. So maybe we'll flip back through that and I'll say what really stuck out to you is something you wish was different on here. You rated it and you wished it was different. And we might just take that statement that was in there.

Ashley (11:40.096)

And figure out how to turn it into a goal. So if it was just maybe something to do with an avoidance, avoiding speaking, asking questions in class or something, it's very specific, but they really want to be able to ask questions in class. So I'll just write a goal that we started at a four on this writing scale and we want to end up at a five. started at a three. want to achieve a five, that type of thing. So reading skills can be super helpful. And.

You don't have to use something like the Oasis to create a rating scale goal. could, after having conversations about what would be different, what avoidances are happening, what feels helpful, you could have them rate some things regarding the conversations you're having and then create your goal that way. Another helpful thing to do is if they told you what they want to be different, maybe you're creating a goal that increases

them doing that specific thing, right? They really want to order food for themselves at a restaurant. They're going to do that two times during the treatment period or something like that. You can decide on that frequency with the kid you're working with, but that is a measurable goal because they're going to do it and report that they have two, three, four times, whatever it is by this end date. And that's the goal you're working towards. Maybe they've expressed wanting to.

learn more about stuttering, which happens that comes up a lot. Usually that's a big killer that we want to try to address right away. And sometimes people might write a goal like that they're able to answer questions about stuttering, things like that, which I think is helpful, but I think it could be even more helpful and like really practical, especially at school. And that you can actually apply, right? Maybe

they will form at least two statements that they could say to someone asking them a question about stuttering. And then you would have done all the education and use the stuff you learned to create some kind of statement you could tell someone or how you would answer their question. Or maybe they'll be able to answer, you know, three hypothetical questions about stuttering that a peer or adult may ask them something like that. So, so many ways to approach the goal writing.

Ashley (14:06.676)

But I think the most important thing is focusing on what's important to the child and figuring out where they can see the change. You know, what would be maybe what would feel the easiest to change? What's going to feel the hardest? Let's start with something easier in the middle and work our way up that kind of thing. But

Marisha (14:28.615)

Yeah, I love how functional and practical that is. It's just like, cause I feel like sometimes goal writing can feel really difficult, but you just broke it down in a really easy to understand way. Like we just speak, like have conversations with the child, figure out what's important and write goals to help them achieve what's important to them.

Ashley (14:32.398)

Okay.

Ashley (14:40.846)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (14:48.206)

here.

Ashley (14:53.73)

Yeah. And I think for those ones who you're not getting a whole lot of information, they just met you at this evaluation. It's tricky. You don't have that report yet. You can always, you know, use those questionnaires to kind of inform maybe the smallest goal you can, or maybe you write a goal based on the education stuff, because you know that is important. And then you write another goal that they're going to participate in goal planning somehow, finagle that in that way.

you can work on medical planning in your treatment sessions and add in some more goals if you need to.

Marisha (15:27.035)

Yeah, that's great. And that makes a lot of sense. And I love what you said too about the the stuttering education and like being able to form statements, maybe like to tell someone else about stuttering, because that could be like a cool dual function with some advocacy too. I love it. Like working smarter, not harder, tackling all the things. I love it.

Ashley (15:29.87)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (15:40.31)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (15:45.28)

Yes, exactly. I really like that one. Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

Marisha (15:54.931)

So is there anything else that you wanted to touch on in terms of goal writing before we kind of chat a little bit about like how we can transform that into therapy?

Ashley (16:06.178)

I think just the focus again on making sure it's what the child wants and explaining why you've chosen those goals to caregivers can also be tricky sometimes. But I think your plan of care, those goals can show a caregiver why this is important and keep that in mind too. Especially if your child has expressed that it's

Marisha (16:12.467)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (16:35.094)

important to them. That's why we're choosing this. We want it to be motivating those types of things and being like flexible in your goal writing because it's going to be a lot different than an articulation goal or a language goal. They're just a lot more. It's this idea of being broad and narrow at the same time and writing that line.

so that the goal is measurable and readable, but can be a little more open and flexible as you're working with some of the starters.

Marisha (17:13.137)

Yeah, and I think the use of rating scales is a great way to capture that, like those things that aren't necessarily super quantifiable, like if we use the rating scale, that gives us that, like the opportunity to target those types of things and still have good data for them. Awesome. So shall we dive into some treatment? Okay.

Ashley (17:23.957)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (17:33.163)

Yeah, definitely.

Ashley (17:40.174)

Yes.

Marisha (17:41.541)

So what can you tell us about treatment?

Ashley (17:44.334)

So we're back to this person-centered approach. We're always, I mean, everything we do as SLPs should be a person-centered approach, right? If you're working with a child who has a praxia, you're creating a functional word list and making that person-centered. But when it comes to stuttering, there's not really a linear plan you can follow, you know, and other things in speech there aren't either. But I feel like you at least can say, I'll try.

the complexity approach and I'll try cycles and figure out which one's better, whatever. This is more following child's lead, which puts you in the position of not having a plan, which for many SLPs can be a challenge. I know even for me that is. So in the approach to stuttering therapy, we're

following a child's lead, we're meeting them where they're at, right? So a lot of counseling approaches, Rebecca, counseling, right? I'm usually even pulling from different therapeutic approaches, Cognitive behavioral therapy, solution-focused brief therapy, avoidance reduction therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy. I'm trying to pull from those.

different approaches to find whatever resonates with someone better. Because I know for me, if I'm being counseled, I want somebody to like find what I like best. And that might mean I like this part of this and that part of that. And I want to try those together. And it's kind of like little melting pot approaches, which is cool. And I feel like all those things can create a like,

good foundation for following more of an identity model when it comes to stuttering. The stuttering community has really expressed how impactful it can be when you consider stuttering as part of your identity. Now, some people might disagree with that, which is completely fine. So you don't want to push that on anybody, but you want to know that there is an element of identity that can really impact a person. addressing that.

Ashley (20:02.958)

is important. And as long as you're meeting somebody where they're at, you can start to really explore that. So you're just finding what works best for somebody, right? And in treatment, you want to be as guiding as possible. But some kids really need to be led sometimes, which is tricky, because sometimes you have to know when it's okay with

to just have some awkward silence until we're going to find some kind of answer. Or maybe we need to just like get something and paper out and you can write if you can't, you know, have this conversation yet or do this back and forth. Maybe we can break it down in a different way so that at least we're some thoughts out, maybe not even feelings yet, stuff like that. So I think it's important to try to set the precedent.

early on that they're in charge of all of this kind of they're the ones who are leading where everything goes. You can obviously provide that education. think that's a big area, right? Another big area to consider is can we expose to the stuttering community anyway, if there isn't any in-person

you know, community available. Is there an online community? Is there just videos we can watch of people who started talking about it, incorporating that anyway? You know, just exploring and identifying thoughts and feelings and actions, avoidances. And then again, that acceptance and identity piece. What self perceptions does this person have exploring those? And then

what are their communication experiences and are there any barriers that exist? I think that kind of gets overlooked sometimes. Barriers could be a teacher not understanding stuttering fully, a caregiver not understanding stuttering fully, extended family, know, like aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, that can be a barrier too. And figuring out what

Ashley (22:27.63)

types of activities can help with all of that. some children might just like sitting there and talking it all out and writing stuff down as you go. Sometimes the only like activity I bring into the session is different colored pens and a bunch of paper so we can kind of like get it all out and get it down. Other times I might have like a little worksheet printed off that's going to explore this, this and this and I'm not going to

into the session being like, today we're going to do a rating scale all about feeling worried, right? It's not like that, but I'm going to have maybe a bunch of stuff printed based on other conversations we've had before, and if that comes up again, I might be like, okay, what's going to be helpful? If they're not sure, maybe I offer, we could do this to talk about it, we can do this, we could do this, like what feels like it would actually be helpful for you? And I would roll with that.

Or maybe I would based on the conversation we're having without the different colored pens and just write down everything and kind of look it over and be like, okay, what do we see here? What's sticking out based on everything we just talked about? I do have a lot of therapeutic activities that are go-tos for

someone, you know, when this comes up, we might use this activity. If this comes up, we're going to use this activity. Rating scales, of course, like always are helpful. And it doesn't even have to be a numbered rating scale. We might just make a scale of

the hard communication experiences, the communication experiences that feel easy, who I'm most comfortable talking to, who least comfortable talking to, all the different scales, all those kind of hierarchical activities. Those might also include like, like a zones sort of activity where you make like the circles and you have little comfort zones and the idea is try to move everybody in the middle zone where they're most comfortable. Or you could do any topic.

Ashley (24:37.55)

hierarchies are also helpful with the goal planning because if this is our goal, we can't just tomorrow do this thing. So what are the steps we'll take to get there? We don't have to identify every step, maybe just like the first two steps. And then we keep adding onto it. I'm doing a lot with any cognitive cycles, right? You're feeling something, you're thinking something, you're acting away because of that.

And is this cycle helpful? What is a more helpful cycle look like? Are you change? What part of that are you changing to make it more helpful? What can you try? Maybe there's like two different things you can try and see if there's a different outcome for you. See if you like that better. That can be really helpful to just break down one situation.

and you're figuring out what happens, how do you think, and act before, during, and then after. And then you can kind of start to see patterns. Maybe you're doing that for tons of situations. Finding the pattern together and figuring out what would, if we change something, would it help? What's gonna change? Another really helpful activity that I like to do that comes from the acceptance and commitment therapy is

actually writing down what someone's communication values are. So what do you value about communication? You know, getting close to friends, making new friends. Maybe you love talking about video games with your dad. Like what kind of communication values do you have and reframing, you know, if I'm meeting my communication values, then that's

the most important thing I can be doing and making sure those communication values are being met, which another is a great, also a great way to approach goals. because picking one of those communication values, maybe that the child doesn't feel like they're meeting. How do we help with that communication value? and then just identifying different solutions. love to do cost benefit analysis.

Ashley (27:00.054)

which we take, you know, one situation, maybe it's something they avoid. Maybe it's, a particular thing, like a class presentation, whatever it is. What are the costs? What are the benefits of doing X, Y, Z and breaking it down? And then, you know, are there any consequences of doing something this way? Are there benefits of doing something this way? What does that look like? What do you want to try?

Are you fine with things being like this? Because sometimes the answer is yes. And I'm like, all right, let's focus on something different. It's focused on something that matters to you right now. So, and within that, you're usually focusing on a lot of self advocating and brainstorming and figuring out actual actionable things that someone can do. Because I think sometimes we can talk a lot about something, but

What will the action look like? How will you know you feel better about this? How will you know this is different? What would, what evidence would lead you there? You're like changing something, you're thinking differently. How is it going to be different? And that can be really helpful. And then you can overlook just like some emotional learning in general too. Some kids have never gotten to talk about their feelings about this. So.

we're just talking about feelings. You're talking about the difference between, you know, feeling guilty and feeling shame. Like you're kind of breaking down what these feelings are and maybe other ways you felt them so you can kind of compare it to the experience that you might be having with stuttering. The classic iceberg, most people do know that it's still a great way to talk about those things and what

Again, listeners might perceive versus the speaker's actual experience. Everything you do in the therapy room, and you can talk to a child about this, is going to be about the speaker's experience and the way to change that iceberg and make it look different, make the feelings under the surface a better.

Ashley (29:24.692)

experience for the speaker. So I think just being able to set the precedent that these are the things we're working on in therapy can be really helpful. And we're trying all kinds of different solutions to create change that's meaningful.

Marisha (29:47.325)

So many options. I love it. And so a lot of questions are coming up that I think I'm going to ask two follow up questions if that's okay. So, because you shared a lot of kind of counseling approaches and like you had that amazing training in your graduate program, but have you come across or like if you

Ashley (29:48.654)

So many.

Ashley (29:57.518)

Okay, yes.

Ashley (30:04.12)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (30:11.635)

Like what would you recommend to an SLP who didn't have that in their graduate program? Like have you come across any favorite like trainings or like books or resources? Because I feel like a lot of this, like to do this well, we really need to have that background knowledge.

Ashley (30:29.28)

Yeah. think that firstly, not an official training or anything, but engaging with the stuttering community. You will learn an incredible amount. And I know you talked with Ezra and they gave so many great insights. but Instagram is full of people who stutter, who are just sharing their experiences and providing that level of.

Marisha (30:37.651)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (30:58.302)

advocacy for the community. think I've learned the most from people who stutter by far. It informs everything that I do or talk about or work on with kids. It's just extremely impactful. And also by exploring that community, you're seeing different things you might be able to show the kids you work with too, which is a great and helpful thing as well as send to caregivers, teachers, anything like that. You can kind of

say things that you think are helpful and all of that. But I think the training I'd recommend the most, which I've done, is the avoidance reduction therapy with Vivian Siskin and her team. It is extremely comprehensive, extremely helpful for SLPs who

aren't quite versed with stuttering approaches and it kind of encapsulates the most important elements that we should be addressing in therapy. It's probably the biggest thing I focus on in my therapy. know, avoidances are typically what are impacting kids, teens, adults who stutter the most. And it can help with

all age ranges too. So I feel like it is a really valuable training.

Marisha (32:27.941)

Yeah, and do you can you tell us a little bit about like what the training looks like?

Ashley (32:32.942)

Mm I did mine online. They have some in person as well. So it's a long one. I can't actually remember two days, three days. No, two and a half. Actually can't remember now. Um, but it kind of starts from the foundation into what therapy looks like assessment goals, all the things. So that's why it's very comprehensive. And it's just focusing the most on

how you can talk about avoidances, how you can explore avoidances, how you can reduce the avoidances, not you, but the person you're working with, how you can help too. And it also does incorporate these other therapy approaches, right? Because the cognitive behavioral stuff, the solution focused stuff, the acceptance and commitment really goes along with avoidances because you're

typically avoiding something because you're perceiving it to be helpful to avoid that thing. And there are more helpful things you can do like that with any type of thing we experience as humans typically. So it's just very phenomenal. And they have people who stutter who are there to talk about their experiences too, which is really awesome. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Marisha (33:56.935)

And that's through the Siskins-Saturn Center, right? Okay, yeah, I'll link to that in the show notes. And so for anyone listening, you can just click the link attached to the episode and then I'll have like a recap of the whole episode. I'll include a link to where you can find out more information about the training and then also anything else that we've discussed as well as.

Ashley (34:00.11)

Correct.

Ashley (34:03.79)

Awesome.

Marisha (34:22.957)

links to follow Ashley on Instagram too. but then, okay. So that was super helpful. and then is it okay if I ask my second question? So I'm curious if we can walk through just because you did a really nice job of outlining like the goals and bunch of different options for how we can approach.

Ashley (34:35.34)

Yes.

Marisha (34:48.773)

treatment and like the biggest takeaway I think is like Even if we have a specific goal that we want to target It's really child blood and it'll depend on how the child comes into the session It's not like okay, if you have this goal you have this worksheet and this worksheet So I love how you Explained that and then gave some examples of things that we can have like in our toolbox so to speak But I'm curious if you could give an example

Ashley (35:04.382)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Marisha (35:18.649)

And it can be a hypothetical kiddo, but maybe an example of like a goal that you wrote with a student and then an example of like an activity you did in therapy just to like connect those two. If this was a whole day workshop, we could go through like more things, but I'm curious if we can just get like one example of what it might look like.

Ashley (35:40.904)

Yeah, definitely. Let's do like a rating scale one since we talked a lot about that. So what's a good hypothetical? Maybe a child has had expressed they wanted to not, you know, avoid we'll go back to like the asking questions or maybe answering questions kind of either one, asking or answering questions in class. And they're saying right now they never ever do it like they will absolutely not.

answer or raise their hand, nothing. So we wrote the goal that they're going to do it. You know, they were at like a one, which is a never, they never ever do it. Maybe they just want to get to like a two or a three. That's what we wrote the goal for. So when they come in, this is super multifaceted because they're avoiding doing that in class. So first I would, you know,

talk them about it in general. Like, tell me more about it. We're just talking it through, talking it through. And then I'm thinking, let's say it's going in this direction. That way you can kind of have a good scene in your mind. Let's say they're really talking about how anxious they feel beforehand, that kind of thing, whatever the feeling is. So maybe I would, I have like a nice little printout of this, but you can just write it down to where you're looking at

how they're thinking, how they're feeling and how they're acting or like the sensations too. I think that can be overlooked. Like what does your body feel like when you maybe it's this we're thinking of the time where like they knew they had to answer a question. It was like a teacher requirement or something. Like everybody has to answer at least one question today or something like that. So we're going through before you did that, what were you thinking, feeling, doing, what sensations were there when you did it.

You answered it, you've spoken for the class. Same thing, what were you thinking? What are you feeling? What are the sensations? What do you do? It could be multiple things in all of those sections and then afterwards, same thing. So we're breaking it all down and figuring out where was everything more intense, most intense for you? Was it before you went to talk? Was it while you were or was it afterwards or more than one? And then from there,

Ashley (38:07.596)

this might be something we're working on for multiple sessions going forward, but we kind of have it all mapped out. So going forward, we might start working on thought reframing. We might start working on some acceptance-based work about, you know, what is it going to feel like if I sit her in front of the class? What's going to happen if I just do it?

You know, what are, what do I think people are thinking? What are they probably thinking if it was realistic? Even if they are thinking that thing, does it change anything about me? You know, we're breaking all those things down. Maybe we're working on then the steps to asking the question, right? Maybe they're going to talk to the teacher and they're going to start raising their hand when they know the answer to the question, but they don't want to be called on yet. Right? Maybe that's one of our steps.

Maybe we're doing, you know, kind of like picking and choosing what we're answering. If it's like a really short answer, like you're in math and all you have to do is, you know, answer an equation or something. I don't know if it's like a one word, two word answer. Does that make you feel more confident to answer the question? If so, maybe we can start there. And then the more you do of that, we can do more.

of those longer answers, right? We're brainstorming. Maybe we're doing cost benefit analysis. Like, what is it costing? What are the benefits of answering and stuttering when you answer? What does that cost? What are the benefits? Are there consequences? Are there outcomes you like? Breaking it down, right? So it's just...

finding whatever works best too because that might look different for everybody. A kid might not like the cost benefit analysis kind of bad. Maybe they like something else better. breaking all that down.

Marisha (40:09.329)

No, that's super helpful to have just like a more narrowed down example because there's so many goals we could target and so many approaches we could use. So it was really nice just to be able to hear like you kind of brainstorm. Okay, if we're like, if we have this example of a goal, like here are some things that I might consider for that student. But again, not all the approaches will be a good fit for all students. So we get to meet them where they're at.

Ashley (40:14.274)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Ashley (40:30.381)

Yeah.

Ashley (40:38.83)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (40:39.047)

So yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. Was there anything else you wanted to add or any last thoughts around this conversation?

Ashley (40:45.742)

I think just I want to reiterate again how important the stuttering community is. If you can get kids involved, you know, I talk with lots of adults who stutter and I think any adult I've ever talked to who stutters who's involved in the stuttering community at whatever age they got involved, they will say, that's when everything changed for me. That's when I saw this differently. That's when I could do this, this and this. That's when things were different.

in a positive way, very, very seldom negative experiences. And I think even, and this was in research, I'm not making this up, even the people who had, you know, I don't want to say negative experiences, but didn't feel it was a positive experience. They didn't have any negativity towards it. It was more neutral, like not for me versus, you know, that didn't make things any worse. didn't impact me negatively. The data didn't really.

show that. So stuttering community involvement is huge and you know there's so many virtual ways to do that now which is really cool.

Marisha (41:55.345)

Yeah, and Ezra shared her experience or shared their experience about that. And so that was a few episodes ago also. And that can be a good resource to get some ideas. And I feel like we've talked about some of those aspects as well in terms of the stuttering community. yeah. then, yeah, but this was so helpful. Thank you so much, Ashley. And

Ashley (42:12.365)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley (42:22.734)

Thank God.

Marisha (42:24.593)

Yeah, I hope that those of you listening got some good takeaways as well. And then this is officially a wrap on the Stuttering Series. So thanks for helping us close this out, Ashley.

Ashley (42:36.504)

Thank you for having me. It was so fun.

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#162: How to Build Your Speech Therapy Book Library

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Streamline Your Speech Sessions with Literacy-Based Therapy

This week, we’re continuing our series about organization strategies for SLPs.

We’ve already covered data collection, paperwork, and therapy materials, and now we’re diving into the world of building your speech therapy book library with three of Marisha’s top tips. 🤓

Let’s dive in!

When Marisha discovered the power of literacy-based therapy, her sessions were transformed. 🪄

Literacy-based therapy provided Marisha with a framework to follow, giving her sessions structure and flexibility. This approach not only transformed how she organized her sessions but also made it incredibly efficient to target multiple goals — even in mixed groups.

Books: A Speech Therapists’ Best Friends

When it comes to speech therapy, books are Marisha’s besties! But she understands that building a book library can be a daunting task, especially considering the potential costs involved. 😅

Fortunately, Marisha has spent years perfecting the art of creating a robust book library without breaking the bank, and she’s sharing her best tips in this episode of the podcast!

From making the most of your book selections to maintaining an organized collection that’s always at your fingertips, this episode promises to set you up for literacy-based therapy success in just 10 minutes. 💪

Three Tips to Help SLPs Build a Speech Therapy Book Library

Keep in mind that just like a buffet, you can select the tips that work best for you — and leave what doesn’t! 

1️⃣ Be Strategic with Book Selection

Marisha recommends looking for books that are easy to read and let you target multiple goals with one unit. Remember: You want efficiency, which means getting the most for your speech targeting buck.

If you want a curated list of books to help you make that literacy-based magic happen, head over to Marisha’s booklist on Amazon. She’s put together a solid selection of books that might not cover every target, but they’ll definitely provide an excellent starting point for your collection.

2️⃣ Diversity and Context Matter

This is super important because we want to select texts that are relevant to our students. Many children’s books feature animals as characters, but Marisha suggests including books that your students can more easily relate to.

Choose books with characters resembling the students in your groups, and settings that mirror their experiences. This approach will make your therapy materials more engaging and relevant, with themes, vocabulary, and concepts that resonate with your students.

3️⃣ Keep Your Collection Organized

The very best libraries are organized, and your speech books are no exception! Staying organized will make a huge difference, which is why Marisha shares a few methods for keeping track of your book collection.

Organization doesn’t have to be complicated either. Keep is simple, SLP! Many SLPs maintain a list of books on the Notes app in their phones because it allows you to enter book names as you collect them, and you can add notes about the targets or themes each book covers. This helps you avoid buying duplicate books, and find the ones you need when planning your sessions.

For a more sophisticated solution, Marisha suggests exploring apps like “Book Buddy,” which enable you to scan your books, add tags, and efficiently manage your collection.

As for storage, bookshelves are a classic choice — but Marisha’s personal preference is craft organizers! They’re sorted by theme, making it easy to switch out books for different units. This strategy not only caters to your students’ interests but also keeps your therapy room clutter-free.

Organize books by theme.

⭐ Here’s a bonus tip —If the idea of purchasing physical books feels overwhelming, remember there are digital options! You can find read-aloud versions of nearly any book on YouTube, providing quick and easy access. Many libraries also offer digital books, eliminating the need for physical copies.

And that’s a wrap on this week’s episode. See you next time, when we start another series chock-full of speech tips to make your life as an SLP easier… and more fun!

Resources + Links Mentioned:

SLP Now Booklist
Book Buddy App
Notes App
Craft Organizers for Books
Cube bookshelf from Target

Subscribe

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha:
Hey there, it's Marisha, and today we are chatting about how to build your speech therapy library and how to build your book collection. So I have three tips for you, and again, like anything that I share, this is a buffet of options, so you can decide what feels relevant for you and your caseload. But the first tip is to be strategic with the books that you are choosing. So you want to find books that can easily be read and that include multiple targets that we can use to target our students' goals. And in the show notes I have an Amazon page with all of the books that I've created materials for, and they can be easily read, and they do include a number of targets. I can't guarantee that they're going to include all of the targets that your students need, but that can be a really great starting point and just having some recommended books. So that's my first tip is just finding books so that it can be easily read and include multiple targets.
And then, oh, to access the list, if you want some inspiration, you can go to SLPnow.com/162. Again, that's SLPnow.com/162. And that brings us to tip two. A lot of children's books include animals as characters, which is nice, but I like to include books that my students can relate to. And I think it's nice to select different contexts for our books. So including children that look like the children in our groups, and including settings that our students will encounter. Because depending on where we live, they might not be near a forest or an ocean or whatnot. They might have a much more urban setting. And having books that incorporate those elements can be really impactful for our students, and it'll just make the units that much more relevant, and they're likely to include more relevant themes and vocabulary and concepts. And so just considering those aspects when you're building out your library can be really impactful for the students on your caseload.
And then the third tip is keeping it all organized. Of course, I have an organization tip in this book library podcast episode. So some ideas to keep things organized. I know a number of SLPs who keep a list on their phone just in the [inaudible 00:03:21] Notes app. And you can just type in the names of the books as you acquire them. And you can jot down if you loved using the book for a specific theme or a specific target, you can add a note next to that too. And then if you're considering buying a book, or if you're trying to find a book that has a specific target, it's like, "Oh, I used this book last year to target categories, and it was beautiful for categories." If you typed it into the note and made that categories note, when you search your note, you can easily find the name of that book and that's really helpful.
I also really like this too, because it lets me avoid purchasing duplicate books. I really like buying books at Goodwill, and sometimes I forget which books I've just seen on Instagram a million times versus which books I actually own. And so having that list can be a really nice way to kind of see what we have. And my Notes app has a way to make checklists, and so you can also make a note of where you put the books. So that can be a helpful way to help you find the books. And I'll talk a little bit about why that might matter too.
And then if you want something a little bit fancier, you can use an app like BookBuddy. It lets you scan in the books and you can add tags and all sorts of things, but that is just a little bit fancier. And then in terms of storing the books, obviously you can put them on a bookshelf. That's a great way to do things. I love that. But I use these craft organizers, and I'll put a link in the show notes, maybe even add in a little picture. Oh, and the show notes will be at SLPnow.com/162. So again, that's SLPnow.com/162.
But I like to keep my books in these craft boxes, and I keep them sorted by theme because that's how I use the books. I will pick a theme to cover, and I have a shelf to highlight just a handful of books versus having a massive bookshelf. And I keep the boxes in a separate location. And then my therapy room has just the highlighted books. And I really like it because then I can see which books students are drawn to if they're like, "Ooh, can we read that one?" So I can cater the units for the month based on the books that they are most interested in.
But I change out the books on a monthly basis. And then I will pull them based on just the themes that are relevant. So I am a major book collector, so I have a lot of bins, but maybe you have one for each month of the school year and you want to rotate through the books that way. Or you just have fall, winter, spring, summer kind of box, or maybe you have a fairytale box or however you want to want to think about your books, you can organize them in whatever way.
But I really like the box system because then I can easily store the books, keep them nice and crisp and clean. And then it also makes it really easy for me to pull them and not forget about certain books because that's part of my routine. Every month I change out the books and pull out the relevant box for the next month. And then we go from there, or whatever theme I decide I want to target. And if you're using the Notes kind of system, you can type the names of your boxes as the header and then type in the books under each section.
So if you're searching for a specific book, like, oh, I really want to do a unit on Mooseltoe, for example, you'd probably know which box that is in, but you can search the note. And then if it wasn't in the December box, maybe it was actually in the forest animal box or whatever. If you couldn't remember where you put it, that would be an easy way to find it. So those are the three main tips. Select books that can be easily read and include multiple targets, so they're great for therapy. Make sure that you're using books that are relevant for your caseload. And then we just got to chat about some organization strategies to avoid purchasing five copies of the same book, because I have done that.
And then also just making it easy to find the books that are relevant. And then also, if you're feeling overwhelmed with purchasing a bunch of books, don't forget about your digital books. You can find Read Alouds for almost any book on YouTube, and that's a really great way to access books within seconds. And then your library, you can also get access to digital books through your library, and that can be a really nice way to get access to books where you can swipe through the pages without having to do either Read Aloud if that's not a great fit for your students. So those are three tips, and just the bonus one on accessing digital books. And yeah, that's a wrap. We'll see you in the next episode.

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A Speech-Language Pathologist’s Guide to Writing Articulation Goals

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If you’re a speech-language pathologist, I am willing to bet you have a student (or 20) with articulation goals on your caseload. With numbers like that, we are writing a lot of articulation goals over the course of the year. This can feel overwhelming, but don’t worry, we’ve got you!  

Let’s dive into writing awesome articulation goals for your speech therapy students!

Understanding Typical Speech Sound Development

Before you can determine which speech sound goals to target, it is important to understand typical speech sound development. We don’t want to base all of our recommendations on these norms, but they are something to have in your toolbox as you evaluate and write your speech articulation goals.

Articulation Norms   

Research has shown there is an age of acquisition for speech sound development.  Click here for a free cheat sheet for articulation norms, and even more information on speech sound development based on age of acquisition. 

Contextual Factors 

There are other factors to consider when diagnosing a student with a speech sound disorder, such as students’ capacity for speech perception and production, overall intelligibility, stimulability, phonological awareness, academic/social impact, and student/family insights (Storkel, 2019).

Dialectal Considerations 

Consider the factors for culturally/linguistically diverse speakers. Click here for ASHA’s list of Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages.

What is the Difference Between an Articulation Disorder and a Phonological Disorder?

According to ASHA, articulation disorders are speech sound errors that occur due to difficulty producing the sound on a motoric level, and phonological disorders occur in students who linguistically have difficulty organizing sounds. In IEP meetings, I would often explain that a speech student with an articulation disorder has a difficult time using articulators to produce the sounds, whereas phonological disorders can be a “pattern of errors” such as stopping, fronting, etc.  

Determining whether our student has an articulation disorder or a phonological disorder is an important distinction, as it can impact the approach we choose and how we write our goals. 

Here is a list of ways to distinguish between articulation disorders and phonological disorders:

Articulation disorders vs Phonological disorders

Articulation Disorders:

🗣️ Errors at the phonetic/motoric level (difficulty producing sounds)
🗣️ 1-2 errors that are substituted or distorted, typically in a predictable way
🗣️ More common in older students

Phonological Disorders:

🗣️ Errors at the phonemic/linguistic level (difficulty organizing sounds)
🗣️ Groups of sounds or types of syllable structures are omitted, swapped, or simplified, which can be consistent or inconsistent
🗣️ More common in younger students

Write SMART Goals to Help Your Speech Students and Make your IEP Articulation Goals as Clear as Possible

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

S.M.A.R.T. articulation Goals are:

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

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

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

R – Realistic: Is this articulation 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 articulation goal in the amount of service time you are recommending for the IEP?

5 Factors to Consider When Writing Articulation Goals 

1. Complete a comprehensive formal and informal articulation evaluation. (Be sure to target any other areas of concern.)

2. Consider the impact the student’s speech articulation has on the student. Be sure to get feedback from the students, teachers, and parents. If possible, you can observe the student in different settings.

3. If they already qualify for speech therapy services, review data from your student’s speech sessions.

4. Identify your student’s strengths, and build from there.

5. Based on your evaluations, feedback, and observations, identify your student’s articulation challenges.

Articulation Goals for Speech-Language Pathologists & Articulation Goal Bank

Congratulations! You’ve performed a comprehensive speech articulation evaluation and determined your student qualifies for speech therapy. Now it is time to write your student’s articulation goals. 

SLP Now’s Speech Therapy Articulation Goal Bank 

If you’re wondering where you should start for your articulation goals, the SLP Now Goal Bank is full of articulation goal ideas that can help you create individualized speech therapy goals based on your student’s strengths and needs. 

Examples of Goal Targets and Goal Levels for Articulation Goals

When writing your speech articulation goals for your student’s IEP, you want to determine which speech sound you want your student to target, as well as which level they will be targeting the goal. 

You will choose your goal targets based on the results of your evaluation, goal data, etc.  Examples of potential articulation goal targets include (but are definitely not limited to) targeting speech sounds such as /r/, /k/, /l/, /s/, /f/, /p/, and /t/. 

After choosing the goal target, we will want to be more specific and list out which level we want our student to achieve their articulation goal by the end of the IEP period. Examples of goal levels for your articulation goals can include the following: in isolation, in syllables, in all positions of words, in phrases, in structured sentences, in spontaneous sentences, in oral reading tasks, in structured conversation, in spontaneous speech

3 Examples of Speech Articulation Goals for IEPs

Goal 1: By next IEP period, given a word or image, Student will increase intelligibility by producing /l/ at the beginning of words, in the speech classroom, given no more than 1 verbal prompt, with 75% accuracy across 3 consecutive sessions.

Goal 2: By next IEP period, given a word or image, Student will increase intelligibility by producing /f/ across all positions of words at the independent sentence level, in the speech classroom,  given no more than 1 verbal prompt, with 80% accuracy across 3 consecutive sessions.

Goal 3: By next IEP period, during structured conversational tasks, Student will produce /r/ across all positions of words in spontaneous speech, in the speech classroom, given no more than 1 visual prompt, with 70% accuracy across 3 consecutive sessions. 

Head to the SLP Now Goal Bank to brainstorm articulation IEP goal targets and levels for your speech therapy IEP goals!

What are the Different Approaches for Speech Sound Disorders?

You’ve written awesome speech therapy goals for your articulation students, and now it is time to start treatment. 

For now, I will list the different speech sound disorder approaches, as well as a short description of each. However, SLP Now has an article that provides an in-depth breakdown of articulation approaches for your students. 

Traditional Articulation Therapy 

Traditional Articulation Therapy uses the developmental approach to target selection, where speech sounds are targeted based on order of acquisition (Tambyraja, 2014).

Complexity Approach 

The Complexity Approach is a non-developmental approach to target selection, where sounds are targeted based on the level of complexity. Research shows that children acquire skills needed for less complex sounds while working on complex sounds, and that articulatory skills trickle down to foundational sounds (Strokel, 2017).

Cycles Approach 

For the Cycles Approach, Phonological patterns are treated in cycles of 5 to 16 weeks. The error patterns are targeted in each cycle (Hassink, 2010).

References

Hassink, J. M., & Wendt, O. (2010). Remediation of Phonological Disorders in Preschool Age Children: Evidence for the Cycles Approach. EBP Briefs, 5(2), 1-7.

“Speech Sound Disorders-Articulation and Phonology.” ASHA, www.asha.org/practice-portal/clinical-topics/articulation-and-phonology/. Accessed 25 Sep. 2023. 

Strokel, H. L. (2017). The Complexity Approach to Phonological Treatment: How to Select Treatment Targets. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.

Storkel, H. L. (2019) Using Developmental Norms for Speech Sounds as a Means of Determining Treatment Eligibility in Schools. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, Vol. 4, 67-75.

Tambyraja, S. R., & Dunkle, J. T. (2014). Target Selection in Speech Therapy: Is a Non-Developmental Approach More Efficient Than a Developmental Approach? EBP Briefs, 8(5), 1-9.

#161: How to Build Your Speech Therapy Materials Library

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In this episode of the SLP Now Podcast, we’re talking about building your speech therapy materials library. And spoiler alert:

You don’t need a ton of materials to be an effective SLP!

In fact, sometimes less is more — which is what Marisha learned when she had to move away from a very well-stocked speech room to a very sparsely stocked speech room. She was apprehensive about losing access to her beloved materials, but ultimately, having less to work with made her a more effective clinician.

Marisha took to the podcast to share her story about finding more with less, and, her top three therapy essentials for SLPs creating a well-rounded materials library. 👇

Three Therapy Essentials Every SLP Needs:

1. Probes for Assessment:
Probes are quick assessments that allow you to monitor student progress on specific goals. Having a clear way to measure progress for each goal is crucial for effective therapy.

2. Visuals or Teaching Materials
Marisha emphasizes the importance of having visuals or teaching materials for each goal. Whether it’s articulation placements, cheat sheets, or other resources, they’re essential for teaching skills effectively.

3. Therapy Units for Practice
If you’ve been following SLP Now for a while, you know that Marisha is a huge advocate for embedded practice, basing units on books, science experiments, or the curriculum. Choosing rich activities that are relevant increases their effectiveness, and offers multiple opportunities or contexts to target various language goals.

Feeling overwhelmed by the prospect revamping your routine?

Take a deep breath, and remember that you can start small.

Marisha recommends that you pick one group, and start with one student. Gather assessments and visuals for their goals, and find a suitable unit to support the targets. Then, rinse and repeat.

It’s okay to take baby steps to build your materials library. Work gradually, and make meaningful progress instead of trying to fill your space with all the things you think you need — because keeping it simple can save you so much time, energy, and sanity. 🙏

Assess. Teach. Practice.

And remember: You are your best therapy tool.

Links Mentioned:

How to Structure a Speech Session

🔍 Searching for Low-Prep, Evidence-Backed Therapy Units? 🔎

The SLP Now membership offers a library of 6,000+ materials — including assessment and teaching tools — and 400+ therapy plans, making it easier for SLPs to find the right materials and resources.

Whether you’re a digital diva or a lamination queen, SLP Now has you covered with activities, visuals, data collection tools, and more.

Learn more about SLP Now, or start your free 14 day trial today! Your first 5 downloads are free!

Subscribe

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha :
Hey there and welcome back. Today we get to chat about building your speech therapy materials library, and I have three essentials that you'll want to build out your library. And this is coming from an SLP who moved to a new school out of state. The move was a little bit chaotic and I didn't move all of my stuff with me right away, and I went into a very minimal speech therapy room. And so I got to learn how to do speech therapy without a ton of materials, and it was so nice. I had come from a speech therapy room that was filled, and I'm not ungrateful for it. It was really nice to have access to a lot of different resources, but it's also a little bit overwhelming and it's like walking into a closet where you feel like you have nothing to wear because there's just too many options. So having a really streamlined set of materials was really, really nice for me, and I got to really focus on the essentials. So without further ado, let's dive into those three essentials.
We've talked about this on the podcast already, but the first essential is our probes. Just in case you're not familiar, a probe is just a quick assessment that you can use to monitor your student's progress on a goal. And a probe is meant to be given without support, and we're just seeing how the student is doing on that skill without support. And we want to make sure that we, whether you call it a probe or something else, we want to make sure that we have a way to measure every goal that we write for students. So that should be a process of when we're writing an IEP, any goal that we add, we should have a very clear way to measure that goal. Whether it's a rubric or a little probe or whatever it might be, we want to be really clear on how we're measuring progress towards that goal. So that is our first essential, is making sure that we have all of our probes.
Our second essential is visuals or teaching materials. So I like to go through all of my students' goals, and again, I like to make sure that I have a probe or a way to assess each goal. And then I also want to make sure that I have a visual or a way to teach that skill to each student. So for an articulation goal, I might have some placement visuals, and then I might also have some, whether it's in my brain or on a cheat sheet or a piece of paper, elicitation strategies for that sound, maybe facilitative concepts. Whatever will help me teach that skill to the student, I want to make sure that I have those resources. So far, we have a way to assess, and then we also have a way to teach the skills. And if you listen to the podcast on how to structure a session, this might sound a little familiar because the heart of your speech therapy session is assess, teach, practice. So we have tools to assess, tools to teach.
And then the third one, the core of a therapy session is practice, and so then we need materials to practice skills. And what this looks like for me are therapy units. I am a huge fan of embedded practice. There's a lot of research supporting the use of literacy based therapy in just functional contexts to target our students' skills. So I like to use a lot of books. I do science experiments. I have vocational videos that I like to use with students working on more functional language like ordering food at a restaurant, for example. So those are the types of units that I like to use. And one, they're very relevant for my students, and then they also are language-rich, and I'm able to target all of my students' goals using those language-rich activities.
And a lot of the podcast episodes in the archive will have more of those therapy strategies, but just to recap the core materials that we want to have, so we want to have our assessment tools. We want to have the tools that we're using to teach skills. And for me, this is typically some visuals. And then our third essential is to have our therapy units, so whether they're book units, article units, whatever that might look like. And the cool thing is that SLP Now has a library of over 6,000 materials, and you can easily find all of the assessment tools in one place, all of your teaching tools in one place.
And for the therapy units, we have a whole therapy plans feature. We have over 400 therapy plans where you can filter for it by a specific group or a specific type of unit, and then it'll give you all of your activity ideas, and then it'll also give you supplementary materials. There's digital versions so that you can click and go if you don't have time to prep, but you can also access materials if you want to print and/or laminate anything to use in your sessions. SLP Now is not required to implement this. I've built my own probes by just writing the questions on a piece of paper and putting it in a binder or adding it to my student's goal card. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but if you are feeling overwhelmed starting to navigate this, or what visuals would I use? Or how do I build my cheat sheet for how to teach basic concepts? Or how do I put together a book unit? or whatever it might look like, SLP Now has all of those resources ready to go and organized for you.
So yeah, those are our three essentials and what it looks like, and I would recommend, if you're feeling overwhelmed, maybe just pick one student and then maybe pick one group to start with. Start with one student, graph assessments and visuals for their goals, and then repeat for each student in the group, and then try and find a unit that would work well for them. And then just rinse and repeat, but taking baby steps is the best way to do things. I think that's the only way to really make meaningful progress, so just start small and start building those materials. And especially if you listen to episode 158 on structuring a therapy session, you can see how much easier your sessions will feel and how much less prep and planning you'll have to do with a really simple system. So I hope that this little recap was really helpful. Do let us know if you have any questions, and we'll see you in the next episode. Hope you have a fabulous week.

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#160: How to Build Your Paperwork System as an SLP

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Paperwork System for SLPs

In this episode of The SLP Now Podcast, Marisha delves into the often-dreaded subject of paperwork. As a self-proclaimed organization enthusiast, she’s excited to share her insights, tips, and resources with you.

Time Management Magic: Marisha emphasizes the importance of managing your time effectively when dealing with the ever-growing pile of paperwork. She suggests creating a spreadsheet to sort caseload information by IEP due dates. This helps visualize workload patterns and plan accordingly. By setting realistic monthly goals and being strategic with scheduling, you can prevent feeling overwhelmed.

Tame the Paperwork Beast: To tackle the paperwork beast, Marisha recommends using a checklist to ensure you don’t miss any crucial details.  Additionally, she discusses the value of a hanging file organizer. Each student gets a designated pocket for all relevant documents, with the checklist placed upfront, creating a streamlined process for managing paperwork.

Be a Time-Saving Pro: In this segment, Marisha shares time-saving strategies. Building templates for repetitive IEP and evaluation sections can significantly speed up the process. To take it further, she introduces the concept of a text expander tool, which allows you to input shortcuts that expand into complete sections, complete with placeholders. Lastly, Marisha highlights the “find and replace” tool, an invaluable resource to ensure accuracy in your paperwork.

Marisha’s three-pronged approach to paperwork—time management, organization, and time-saving tools—can revolutionize your workflow. 💫

Links Mentioned:

How to Manage Your Paperwork
Editable Checklists for SLPs (FREE instant download!)
Hanging Organizer (Amazon link)
Tools: Text Expander + Find and Replace

Subscribe

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

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

Transcript

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Marisha 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,
Welcome back and I am really looking forward to chatting about paperwork with you today. I am a major systems organization nerd, and I absolutely love talking about this. So thanks for joining me, and I hope you walk away with some helpful tips and resources.
So I am going to cover three tips and resources that you can use to streamline your paperwork. And the first tip is just to organize your time and set yourself up for success in managing all of the paperwork that's on your plate. So how I like to do this is I like to map out my due dates for my IEPs and evaluations. And of course this is going to shift. We'll have students transfer in, we'll need to expedite evaluations. There's a number of things that will change, but it's really helpful to get a rough estimate of what we have coming up.
So what I do is I have a spreadsheet with all of my caseload information, and I will sort by the IEP due date. So I'll sort my information and then I will be able to see how many IEPs I have due in the upcoming months. And you might want to just grab a sheet just so you have a quick reference that you can look at. But let's say I have 8 IEPs due in August, 7 in September, and 10 in October. And then you would just jot down how many you have in each of the months of the school year, and then you can do the same for your evaluations.
But this is really helpful for a number of reasons because I know that I have roughly the same amount of IEPs due every month, but I have more due in October. I've 10 in October and then only 8 and 7 in the previous months. So I know that October is going to be a little bit of a heavier month, and so I might try and front load my work a little bit so that October doesn't have to feel that much heavier compared to the other months. And you might have a bigger discrepancy than just two or three between each month.
But what I would do, maybe just by the quarter, you can add up all of those numbers. So 8 plus 7 plus 10 is 25, if I'm doing my math right, my mental math. And then I would do 25 divided by 3, and then that's roughly, it's 8 point something. So maybe my goal would be, I'll just set a goal to finish 9 IEPs every month.
And then I think this is helpful just to time yourself on the first handful of IEPs that you do, just to get a rough estimate of how long it actually takes you. And so I would go ahead and figure out how many IEPs I need to get done in a given month, how many evaluations, how long each of those things takes me, and then I just want to make sure that I have time to get those things done. So I would look at my schedule and see if it takes me an hour to do each IEP and I'm trying to get 9 done in a month, which is roughly 2 a week, do I have two hours of paperwork time in a week to get those done? If I don't, I will make a plan to make sure that that is doable so that I set realistic expectations for myself. And I just might need to get a little bit strategic with how I navigate my scheduling and all of that.
And sometimes it might mean if there's absolutely no wiggle room in your schedule, I'm a strong, strong advocate for getting work done during the school day. Absolutely do everything that you can to maximize the time that you have there. But sometimes we are just at a spot where for whatever reason, that's not doable. And so I will just think ahead and it's like, "Okay, what would I prefer to do? Would I prefer to catch up on paperwork on a Sunday night or do I want to be proactive and maybe just come to school 30 minutes early, two days a week, or whatever it looks like to just get to knock that out and make sure that I am keeping up with my paperwork?"
So that is tip one, is just to map out your due dates and make sure that you have a way to actually keep up with the paperwork demands. And that can involve speaking with administrators or making changes to your schedule, whatever that might look like.
Then tip two is to use an organizer to manage the process and to manage your papers. So this is a two for one. So I have a checklist that I really like to use. If you check out the show notes for this episode, it'll be slpnow.com/160. Again, that's slpnow.com/160. I'll include a link to a little template that you can use. But I built out a checklist for my IEPs, and I did this with a couple of speech therapists in my district just to make sure that none of us were missing anything. It does take a little bit of time to build out that process, but I just made a checklist with all of the things that I need to do for an IEP to be considered complete and the same for an evaluation.
And so I just write those things down. Then I print off the checklist and I laminated it so that I could use wet erase markers and then check things off as I completed them. And then when I finished an IEP, I would just wet a Kleenex and reuse the laminated sheet for the next IEP. But I would keep this in front with the sack of papers, all the pending paperwork for that IEP. And every time I work on an IEP, I have the checklist and I can just cross off the next step on the list.
Then the other tip to organize those papers, so the checklist is a nice way to manage the process, and then I really like using a hanging file organizer to keep the papers organized, all of the physical papers. So the organizer that I like, I believe it has 7 pockets, which I try to not have that many IEPs pending at any time if I can help it. So I use the hanging file organizer. And you can check out the show notes again, slpnow.com/160 to see what that looks like.
But it has seven pockets in it, and each IEP that I'm working on gets a pocket. So I put all the relevant papers, like any parent report, teacher report, any work samples, any data sheets or whatever papers I might have. I keep them in that folder. And then I keep the checklist at the front of that folder. And so when I'm sitting down to work, when I have my paperwork block, I'll pull out the first file in the organizer, because that's the one that's coming due soonest. And so I'll pull that out, look at the checklist and see what I need to do next. And I will just knock out as many items as I can, and check them off as I go through, which is super, super satisfying. I don't know about you, but I love checking things off.
So I'll go through, check off as many things as I can, and if I still have time in my paperwork block, but I am stuck on some steps, like I'm not able to complete some of the checklist just yet because I'm waiting on information or whatever it might be, then I just put that folder back, grab the next folder, start checking off as many of the items as I can, and then just kind of rinse and repeat. As long as I have paperwork time or if my time is up, then I just put things away. And so that's how, tip two of just keeping things organized.
And then tip three is to use time-saving tools. So I won't go into a ton of detail on the techy-ness of this, but a couple of things that you can do, because in step one we mentioned mapping out your due dates and making sure that you have enough time to actually get the paperwork done. But one kind of solution I mentioned, potentially coming into work a little bit early, or figuring out if you're not able to get things done during the school year or school day, navigating that scheduling. Or a better option is to find a way to get these things done more quickly.
I have just a couple time saving tips that we can consider. And again, anything that I share, it's just a buffet of options. You get to choose what makes the most sense. So one strategy that's really, really helpful is to start building templates. When we write IEPs, there are a lot of things that we write over and over and over and over. Every time we write an IEP, we write a very similar variation of the same thing, for some of the elements. So instead of reinventing the wheel every single time, what if we had templates for those common phrases or the common things that we write?
So when I started doing this, I just went, as a CF I had no idea what to write in an IEP. So I asked my mentor for some examples of reports, and I went through her reports and looked for examples of terminology. And this was really helpful for me because I didn't know what to write. But even for a more seasoned SLP, it's nice to figure out, okay, what does my ideal IEP look like? What would I write? What details would I include? And then making a template for that. So you would just list the different sections of the IEP and then copy and paste examples of texts that you think are really good. And then anytime you're writing an IEP, you can go back to that template and copy and paste, and of course adjust it for the student.
So that's my first time saver that you can use. And this can be really fun to do with a group of SLPs and you can brainstorm, and collaborate, and write really awesome IEPs together. So I started by building out those templates. It was awesome, but there's a lot of components to an IEP, and there's a lot of potential options. And my documents started to get really, really long. And it started to take me longer to find the thing that I wanted to copy and paste than it would have to actually write out the statement. So we want to make sure that the templates that we're creating are really easy to use and find.
So a tool that I really love is a text expander. So if you check out the show notes, slpnow.com/160, you can see there's a link to a post that goes into more detail on the text expander. But basically, I plug in all of my templates into this software and I make shortcuts for all of them. So if I administer the tills, I can make a shortcut for the tills. So it might just be ".tills". And when I type that into my IEP software, it expands into the whole summary of the tills/ and it has all of the placeholders for all of the things/ and examples of analysis, all of that. And then I can just go through and edit all of the placeholders and make it appropriate for that particular student. But a lot of that initial thinking and outline is laid out for me. And then I can use all of my brain space to write an awesome IEP that is super customized for that student.
And then the third resource that can save you some time is the find and replace tool. So if you type command F or control F on your computer, then that launches the find feature. And so in my little templates, I would have placeholders for the student's name and for pronouns. And so I can go through. So I usually use three asterisks for the student's name. So I do command F or control F, depending if you're on a Mac or a PC, then I would type in three asterisks, and then I would search for all of the asterisk.
And then you can use the replace feature to replace those asterisks with the student's names. And then you can go ahead and do search for the two asterisks and replace all of the asterisks with the student's pronoun. Because that's one of the pitfalls of using templates, is that if you have the wrong student's name, or the wrong pronouns, or there's just nothing worse than having that in your paperwork. So this makes it so that you don't have that mistake and then you don't have to worry about that as much when you're doing your editing, and proofing, and all of that.
So just to recap, the three strategies is to map out your due dates and block off your time to make sure that your paperwork goals are reasonable, and doable, and set yourself up for success. Two is to use organization tools to manage the process in the form of checklists and file organizers. And then the third tip is to use time-saving tools like templates, text expanders, and the find and replace tool. And so those are our three paperwork tips. Head to slpnow.com/160 to check out all of the related resources. And I can't wait to see you next week.
Thanks for listening to the SLP Now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#159: 5 Tips to Streamline Your Data Collection as an SLP

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Data collection can be a real beast for SLPs.

In this episode of the SLP Now podcast, Marisha shares her best five practices to help you tame that beast — and build a data collection system that works for you.

From setting up intuitive routines to collecting probes to putting the data to work, Marisha’s tips will make data collection easy breezy SLPeasy! 💅

 

Marisha’s Top 5 Data Collection Tips for SLPs:

1. Develop a Data Collection Routine: By working through the same process in each session, you can find ways to collect the data you need in a really organic and efficient way.

For example, if you are doing a pull-out session, this could mean a quick check-in with students while walking to the speech room or while they get settled in for a session. You can also do things like place their goal cards by the door, so that you can grab them as you walk in and dive right in!

2. Determine How to Use The Data: Marisha recommends making data collection happen at the beginning of the session because it informs her clinical decision making and expectations. It allows her to structure the therapy session around the student’s need, and make better decisions about next steps. In the case of a student targeting an articulation goal, that intial data collection can help you decide if the student needs more teaching or practice — you can tailor the session to meet them where they’re at.

3. Gather Your Probes: The routine Marisha talks about would be difficult to implement without a way to quickly measure your students’ goals. She recommends doing an audit of their goals to make sure you have a way to measure them.

There are so many options for collecting data, and Marisha offers a buffet to consider in this episode! That’s why it’s beneficial to review the goals, and choose probes that make the most sense for the goal you’re targeting.


4. Organize Your Probes: There are so many ways to organize your probes, and Marisha has tried them all! From fancy binder systems with numbered tabs to the digital system she set up in SLP Now, Marisha has tried it all.

In SLP Now, the probes are attached to the goals in the goal bank. When you’re going into a session, the probe you need is just a click (or two) away!

5. Practice Your Routine: Practice makes progress! To really integrate data collection into your session seamlessly takes some time, and that’s okay — you can start slowly, building that routine one step at a time.

Approach your data collection routine with a growth mindset, and scaffold those skills the way you do with your students! It will get easier the more you practice, and soon you won’t have to give data collection a second thought.

✨ Remember: There is no single perfect way to structure a therapy session, and that’s a good thing! It means that you can get creative and be strategic about how you shape your systems and processes. ✨

This episode will give you some ideas to get started, or maybe optimize some of the practices you’ve already got in the works!

And most importantly, have fun! 🙃

 

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

Transcript

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

Hey there, it's Marisha, and I'm really excited to talk about five tips to streamline your data collection. We will run through the five tips, so let's go ahead and dive right in. The first tip is to develop a routine around your data collection. An example of what that could look like, let's say we're doing pullout therapy, so the students walk in the door and maybe as we're walking to the speech room, we might be doing a quick check-in, or we do that as the students are arriving if they're transitioning independently, and we'll just check in with them to see how they're doing, establish that rapport, all of that. And then I always have goal cards right by the door, and so students also grab their goal cards as they walk into the room. And if I'm seeing students in the classroom, I'll just make sure that I have their goal cards in a folder or just an easy-to-access place where they know where to grab them.

So then every student has a set of goal cards and the students learn that that's just how we start a speech therapy session. They walk in, they grab their cards, they sit down and they start going through their goals. We'll have another episode on this, but their goal cards would include their goal, and this will look different based on the age of the students and the types of goals that they're working on, but they would be able to see what their goal was. It might include why it's important to them, whatever we decide is most relevant, and so they would just be walking through their goal cards, and while they're doing that, I would go ahead and administer a quick probe per student. A probe is just, if you're not familiar with that terminology, it's just a quick little assessment. I typically just include five items.

So, if the student is working on an articulation goal, like initial K for example, I would give the student a little probe where I ask them to say five words that start with the K sound, and then I would just score their accuracy, and that would be student one's goal. Then I would turn to student two, do a quick probe for whatever their target goal is that for that session, and then I would turn to student three, grab their quick probe, and then we would be done with that initial data collection.

That would be an example of my routine. There's not one single way to set up your sessions for successful data collection, but that's what that would look like. We do a quick check-in, the students grab their goal cards, they review them while I collect quick data for one goal per student. Then we would transition into the therapy session, do some awesome therapy, and at the end of the session, I would just recap, I would describe which supports were beneficial. I would describe if I had to do some initial teaching, whatever that might be. So, that's an example of my data collection routine.

Then step two is to determine how you're going to use the data that you collect. I really like to collect my data at the beginning of the session because it really informs me as to how I can best set up the students for success, and it really informs my clinical decision-making. So, for example, the example that I gave of the administering the probe for initial K, if a student is at 0% accuracy with initial K at the word level, I'm not going to expect them to produce K in conversation. I'm not even going to expect them to produce K in words, like using an articulation deck. I'm going to back way up and do some teaching, and I'm going to work on shaping the sound using elicitation techniques.

So, I'm going to back way up, and that feels super, super obvious when it comes to articulation. How nice is it to have that information within the first minute or two of your therapy session and then know exactly how to set up whatever activity you had planned to set up the student for success? This also applies for different goals. So, if we're working on naming items in categories for example, or syntax goals, if we know how a student is performing, we can use that to decide what we do next. So, the example that I gave with 0% accuracy, that would let me know that I need to do some teaching.

This is just a rough range, but let's just say zero to 30% accuracy, more often than not, if that's the accuracy that the student is at, I would start the session with some teaching. Then if they're between maybe 30 to 70% accuracy, that skill is emerging, so I might do a quick review and then give the students the opportunity to practice. Whereas if they're at greater than 70% accuracy on the probe, I want to give them the opportunity to practice. I'm not going to waste time with teaching if they're already starting to demonstrate mastery of the skill. And having this information right off the bat is really helpful because it reminds us to take the time to actually teach and break down skills, and this benefits students because it will reduce that frustration. We're not expecting them to do something that's really difficult. We're meeting them where they're at and giving them the appropriate supports.

But on the other hand, if a student, we might be surprised, we might expect that a student is not making progress on the goal and we might come in, if we don't collect a probe and we just start the session with some teaching and a bunch of review when the student doesn't need it. If we had given them a probe and they'd been at 80% accuracy, we would know that that's essentially a waste of time and the student might get bored. So, having that data right off the bat, again, helps us meet the student where they're at. We're giving the appropriate level of supports, but we're also giving them appropriate opportunities to generalize that skill and demonstrate the ability to do it on their own and facilitate that generalization, because we don't want to have them become dependent on our prompting and support to demonstrate the skill. So, that was step two, just determining how you're going to use that data and how it'll drive your session.

The third tip is to gather your probes. So, the routine that I mentioned would be really difficult to implement if you did not have a way to quickly measure each of your students' goals, and these are just things to consider, so you don't have to implement all of the things that I mention, obviously. Consider it buffet, and you can decide which tips or strategies make the most sense to you. But if you heard me mention tip number three and you're like, "Hmm, I don't know if I have a good way to measure my students' goals," it might be beneficial to take some time to review your students' goals, and maybe even just you don't have to tackle your whole caseload at once.

Maybe if there's a group that feels extra challenging or that you're struggling with more, maybe just start with them. Go through their goals, make sure you have an easy way to measure each of the goals, and then start implementing whatever else makes sense out of these tips. So, that's the third tip, is just to do a quick audit and start making sure that you have a way to assess students' progress towards each of the goals.

Then the fourth tip is to organize your probes. I've seen this be done in a number of ways. I've set up fancy binder systems in the past where I had number tabs for and I kept all of the probes in the binder, and the way that I knew which tab to turn to was, on all of the goal cards, I would write a number. So as the students were creating their goal cards, I would make sure that I had a probe for that specific goal card. Again, I would just write the appropriate number on the goal card, and we would go from there. Whatever goal we're focusing on, I look at that goal card, turn to that tab, and that's how I find the appropriate probe.

In SLP Now, we have probes attached to the goals in our goal bank, so when you go into a session and you click the Data Collection button, you can just click to access a probe. I love that feature because I automatically have probes attached to all of my goals, but the only thing is that a lot of the probes can be administered just with a verbal prompt given the nature of what we do, but some of them do require visual stimulus items, so I still have that binder that I use to keep the visuals and keep those organized. So, you get to decide what makes sense for you in organizing your probes.

Then the fifth tip is just to practice the routine. So, kind of just building that initial routine. Maybe you're not ready to start collecting probes right at the beginning of every session. Maybe that feels a little bit overwhelming, but you can implement having students create their goal cards and reviewing them at the beginning of the session, so that that becomes a known part of the routine, and then you can stack the probes on top of that once that becomes more automatic for you and for them. And when I mention my routine of doing one quick probe per student, I know that a lot of speech therapists, if you're feeling overwhelmed by that and if you're questioning whether that's possible, you're not alone. And that also takes some practice in navigating that. There's some setting expectations with students, there's also making sure that your probes are really organized and that they're easy to access, and that you have one for each of the goals. But this all gets easier and you start to develop resources and strategies to do this in a very, very efficient way.

So, just to recap the five tips. One, develop a routine, then two, determine how you're going to use your data. Then three, gather the probes, four, organize the probes, and five, practice your routine and give yourself grace as you're figuring this out and navigating the process. And then we'll have show notes and resources. There's some visuals and examples at slpnow.com/159. Again, that's slpnow.com/159. That's where you can find the show notes and some supplementary resources.

So, that is a wrap on today's episode. I hope that it was helpful. I'd love to hear from you, and yeah, let us know if you're implementing any of this or if you have any questions. We'd love to hear from you, and we will see you in next week's episode. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to The SLP Now Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode sent directly to you. See you next time.

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#158: How to Structure a Speech Therapy Session

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Embrace the magic of routine. ✨

A Five Step Framework to Help SLPs Structure Therapy Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s some pretty cool work. 😎

Episode Summary

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

✅ 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.

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

✅ 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.

✅ 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.

✅ 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

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

Transcript

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

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#157: Easy Scheduling Tips for School-Based SLPs

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Are you ready to party? Because we’re all about partying around here today… and not just any party, a scheduling party!

Believe it or not, this just might be the best start-of-the-school-year advice you can receive as an SLP. In this episode, Marisha takes the mic to share what she considers to be one of the best-kept SLP secrets — and it has the potential to transform your entire outlook on scheduling.

Get ready to learn how to plan a scheduling party, and turn scheduling into a more collaborative, efficient, and dare we say… enjoyable experience for school-based SLPs.

In this episode, Marisha shares how scheduling parties can revolutionize the way SLPs handle scheduling in a school environment. From highlighting the benefits of teacher involvement to providing step-by-step insights on hosting a scheduling party, Marisha ensures that listeners leave with a fresh perspective and the tools to implement this game-changing strategy.

The Benefits of a Schedule Party for SLPs

✓ Efficiency: Picture this – a completed schedule in a matter of minutes. That’s right, it’s that easy! A scheduling party will save you countless hours of scheduling stress.

✓ Teacher Involvement: Give teachers the power to choose their preferred time slots. This collaborative process wipes out the guesswork and significantly reduces scheduling conflicts. Plus, when teachers actively participate in scheduling, they feel a sense of ownership which leads to better adherence and fewer last-minute changes.

✓Positive Start: Hosting a scheduling party isn’t just about scheduling; it’s a fun way to kick off the school year. You can even throw in some treats and coffee to create a positive atmosphere that sets the tone for a productive year ahead.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Marisha talks about:

💛 Making a Paradigm Shift. Marisha introduces the concept of the scheduling party, which might change the way you approach scheduling forever. Get ready to take back control and actually enjoy the process!

💛 The Scheduling Party Unveiled. Discover the logistics of hosting a scheduling party. Marisha explains how she brings teachers together to collaboratively create a schedule that benefits everyone involved.

💛 Why It Works. Find out how this approach empowers teachers to choose their preferred time slots, fostering a sense of ownership and making sticking to the schedule a breeze. Say goodbye to the dreaded Tetris-style scheduling nightmares!

💛Preparing For a Successful Party. Marisha breaks down the essentials you’ll need for a successful scheduling party. From poster boards to sticky notes, she’s got you covered with practical tips.

💛 Creating a Positive Start. Learn why the scheduling party isn’t just about organizing your calendar – it’s also a fantastic opportunity to connect with teachers and kick off the school year on a positive note.

By offering teachers the power to choose their time slots, fostering smoother coordination, and setting a positive tone for the school year, Marisha’s approach offers more than just an efficient solution – it creates a more connected and productive school ecosystem.

Click here to download the scheduling party packet. It includes an overview of the process, a calendar template, and a printable letter to send out to teachers.

 

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

Transcript

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

Hey there, it's Marisha and welcome back to the podcast. I am really excited to be chatting about scheduling today. I know it's a topic that a lot of school-based SLPs don't particularly love, or maybe we love to complain about it, but I am really excited to share how I learn to navigate scheduling and scheduling has actually been something that I enjoy and look forward to in the school year. So I'm going to go ahead and share what that looks like for me. And I learned this from a more seasoned SLP who was in my first district when I was a CF, and she shared this with me and I'm excited to pass it along and share it with you.

So how I do my scheduling is I use a scheduling party and I'll walk through exactly what the party looks like, what you need to prepare for it, and just some quick logistics and everything. And if you go to SLPNow.com/157, so again, that's SLPNow.com/157, those are the show notes for today's episode, and you'll find a free template and just like a quick recap of what we're talking about. So that is a great resource to reference.

Okay, first, scheduling party, what is it? So when I do my scheduling, I invite all of the teachers at a designated time. It's typically just a little bit before school starts and you'll maybe just want to do a little bit of sleuthing to see what time would actually be feasible for the teachers at your school. But I just kind of asked around and it's like, what would be a reasonable time to expect everyone to be there? And so I went ahead and set that up. It would've been awesome to be able to do this before school even started, but I never had my caseload list in time to do it before school started and then I couldn't schedule my students until SPED and all the other things were scheduled.

So I did this just the morning before school started on a school day and the teachers come in and I have a poster board schedule and I have any blocks of time blocked off. I was working in a preschool serving students in a preschool, so I had that whole time blocked off and lunch paperwork, whatever you want to block off, go ahead and do that. But then each teacher has sticky notes for all of the groups that I was seeing, and I'll go into a little bit more of the details, but basically each teacher has a stack of sticky notes that they're responsible for putting on the poster board, and then they get to walk up to the poster board and put down their sticky notes and then the schedule is made.

I know it sounds like it can be a little bit chaotic and complicated, but it's actually been really, really easy each time I've done it. And the schedule has always been made in a matter of minutes. And the cool thing is the teachers get to choose their time, so they're really happy with their time. I've heard of a lot of speech therapists who will do that whole Tetris thing where they send out a form and then the teachers select which times would work, and then the speech therapist is spending hours and hours trying to figure out how to get everyone seen. But with this way, the teachers get to see what the options are, and they do some troubleshooting together, which there hasn't had to be a lot anytime that I've done this. But then they can talk to each other of like, "I'd really like the 12 o'clock slot," but I know that they kind of adjust with each other and figure things out that way.

And it's really cool because then the teachers, again have a say in the schedule and they feel good about it. It ends up making it a lot easier to stick to the schedule because I'm not giving them a time that they don't really like. And even if they choose a time that is not their a hundred percent ideal time, they chose it. And that helps a lot with that rapport and all of that. And so the benefits of that scheduling party are one, your schedule is made in a matter of minutes. The teachers get to choose this schedule and they just have a little bit more buy-in and ownership over it, which makes it a lot easier to actually pull the kids because they pick the time and all of that. So that's what that looks like.

So we're going to chat about what you would need to do to prep for the scheduling party, and then just some notes for things that you want to do might want to do as a follow-up in terms of what you need to prep. I think it's really nice to have a poster board and butcher paper could work too. I just bought a poster board and I drew out time blocks on there, and then I was able to use it year after year. So whatever works, but I would just map out the times that I'm available to see students. And so there would be rows with all of the times and then columns with all of the days of the week, and you just grab a big ruler and draw those lines.

The next step would be to make a set of sticky notes and you would just write the students' names on each sticky note. To make this easier to implement, I did try to see students within a classroom, so I tried to group my students at least with the same teacher if possible. Or maybe for an older grade there were some classrooms with only one student or whatnot. I might group students across a grade level, but that's how I try to do my scheduling. This works out well. It makes it easier to schedule. It makes it easier to pick up the students, and it also makes it easier to implement curriculum-based therapy because the students in the same classroom or the same grade are encountering the same curriculum during their school day. And that's something that's really important to me.

So I make the sticky notes and each sticky note just has the names of the students in the group. That's all that I write. So I just quickly go through and if I'm seeing a student two or three or more times a week, then I would just go ahead and make multiple sticky notes and maybe I have some 30 minute sessions and some 60 minute sessions or whatever variation. And so you can adjust the size of the sticky note based on the time interval that you're using. So that's the second step.

So we have our poster board, we have our sticky notes, then we need to invite the teachers. And so I have the show notes that I mentioned. Again, SLPNow.com/157. I have a template for the email. So the template explains what a scheduling party is and what the teachers need to bring, like their schedule and that's basically all that they need. So then it invites them to the scheduling party, then they know what to expect. So I will email that out and I might also print out a hard copy and put it in their box. So I send out the invite. Then we have the scheduling party. And when the scheduling party is happening, I just have the poster board and one thing, so teachers will try and get their before the official start time, and they'll be like, "Ooh, I think I can get in a little bit early and get the best times."

But I always had it start, my mentor recommended this, but to have it start at the exact start time, and all of the teachers showed up on time when I did it. So they were all there at the same time. They all got equal access to the schedule, and that's how we did it. And I just felt like that was a fair thing to do, and the invite mentions that. So then, yeah, that's how it works. So that's what you need to do to prep. That's what it looks like to actually implement it.

Like I said before, this is a cool way to give teachers ownership of the schedule, but it's also a fun way to kick off the year, especially if you are new to a building. It's a nice way to meet everyone. And I usually bring some coffee and some quick pastries or whatnot so that I'll bribe them with food, of course. And then if they get there a little bit early, then they can pour themselves some coffee, have a little treat, and then it's just a really fun way to kick things off. So that's what my scheduling looks like. I'd love to hear if you've implemented this and how it's worked for you, or if you have any questions, feel free to head to the show notes and leave a comment there. But again, the link to check that out is SLPNow.com/157, and that's where you can grab the templates and there's a picture of the poster board and all of that good stuff, all the resources you need to implement this. So that's a wrap and I'll see you next week.

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

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#156: 5 Tips for SLPs Going Back to School

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Ready to step into the new school year with confidence and ease, SLP?

If you’re ready to tackle the unique challenges that speech language pathologists face in the first weeks of a new school year, then you’re in the right place!

In this episode of The SLP Now Podcast, Marisha shares her top tips and actionable strategies to help you start your school year on the right foot.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Marisha talks about:

 ✅Navigating the First Week. Discover strategies to set a strong foundation for the entire school year. Marisha shares actionable tips to ensure a successful start that reverberates through the months to come.

 ✅ Efficiency Unleashed. Ever wondered how to accomplish five crucial tasks in your first week while maintaining your sanity? Marisha breaks it down with practical suggestions to tackle your to-do list effectively.

 ✅ The Power of Relationships. Building connections isn’t just a buzzword. Marisha emphasizes the significance of forming strong bonds with colleagues and parents, ultimately enhancing your impact as an SLP.

✅ Mastering Caseload Management. Caseload organization can be a puzzle, but fear not. Marisha dives into her best practices to ensure no student goes unnoticed, providing a seamless experience for you and your students.

✅ Scheduling Simplified. Tackling paperwork and scheduling with finesse is a challenge, but Marisha has your back. Learn how to streamline your schedule and effortlessly review students’ files, setting yourself up for a smoother year.

If you’re ready to make the most out of your return to the classroom, this episode is an absolute must-listen. With Marisha’s expert guidance, you can transform potential stress into confidence + enthusiasm as you kick off a new academic year.

Tune in now to The SLP Now Podcast and set yourself up your best year yet!

“Start building those relationships because we are not an island, and we depend on our team to be effective in our roles.” — Marisha Mets

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In this episode, I share strategies for success in your first week, and I share five things that you want to do as well as tips for success in getting those done efficiently and without too much overwhelm.

So without further ado, let's dive in.

We want to introduce ourselves. We'll say hi to the office staff and the teachers, start building those relationships because we are not an island and we depend on our team to be effective in our roles.

Another strategy that's really helpful is to send out a form to parents. Because it's really hard to be able to connect with them, especially if we have a caseload of 60, 70, 80 plus students. And if there is a meet the teacher night or a back to school night, I will participate in that.

So now for step three, we get to start gathering our caseload information. We don't get it in just a nice little package. As you know, it comes from a lot of different sources. Hopefully your district has a list of students prepared for you. This is often found in whichever IEP system you're using, and you can log into that and you should have a caseload assigned to you. I go through that and that's my starting point, but then I just double check and reference any list that the previous SLP might've left behind, or if I'm at the same school district, the list from last year, just to make sure that no one's being missed. I start to build my caseload off of that, and then I just keep the feelers out there to make sure that no one is being missed.

Oh, have any of you ever had the nightmare that you had a student on your caseload that you didn't know about? That hasn't actually happened to me in real life, but I have had some nightmares where John Smith was on your caseload since July, but you never saw him. So just taking these steps at the beginning of the year, we'll make sure that that does not happen.

And then the next thing. We're starting to get ready for the scheduling component of our school year. So we want to ask for a class list. And typically whoever's in the front office is the person who will have that. It always takes them some time to get that put together, so that's why it's really important to introduce yourself to that office staff person and establish some rapport.

And then once we have those pieces of information put together, this is when we get to start diving in. What I typically do is once I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of my caseload, I will take some time to go through that list of students so that I can prepare myself for the year. All of the districts that I've been in have a way to print an IEP at a Glance. I use this for myself, but then also to share with teachers. I would strongly suggest to see if your system allows you to export a quick summary of the student's IEP 'cause that can save you a lot of time in compiling all of that information. If not, there are a lot of different templates available on sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. And I use that to do a file review, and I make sure that I have a general idea of what they're working on, make any notes of things that are really important in their history. This is also when I start to collect the information that's really important in terms of starting to manage the paperwork and all of those other components. So I make sure that I have a list of the students' names, the teachers and their contact information, parents and their contact information, the IEP dates, evaluation dates, and all of that information because that's what I need to get set up for success when it comes to getting started with all of the paperwork, like the IEPs and the evaluations, as well as just scheduling students out. I would strongly recommend trying to use like a spreadsheet or a Word document and then print if you want that hard copy. The SLP Now system lets me enter the students' names. At a glance I can see who their teachers are, what grade they're in, the IEP dates and the evaluation dates, their service time. And because it's at the beginning of the school year, none of my students have minutes yet, but it lets me track the cumulative amount of time that I've seen them, so that can be really helpful.

Okay, so let's dive into the schedule in terms of the paperwork that's coming up. Hopefully the previous SLP took care of things, but I've walked into schools where I had to do IEPs and evaluations right off that first week. And I just wanna make sure that I'm not missing any of that and that I'm also setting myself up for success for the future due dates that are coming up. So what I do, this is just a simple example. We will probably have more than three IEPs due in any given month, but I know that when I walk in, I feel really overwhelmed with thought of tackling 50, 60, 70, 80 plus IEPs in a school year, plus maybe 30 evaluations, like how in the world am I going to get that done? This also helps, again, reduce that overwhelm and gives me a plan of action. What I like to do is I map out all of the IEPs due this year, and then I look for trends. Okay, there's four due in August, 10 due in September, five due in November, two due in December. Then I would distribute that because I don't want to be drowning in the month that I have 10 IEPs and just be twiddling my thumbs the other month. For my work life balance and sanity, I wanna distribute that over the year. So I split them into chunks and distribute the work evenly throughout the school year, and that might mean that I'm writing an IEP for December in November, or maybe even a little bit sooner, but I just continue to work through the paperwork process. The meeting might still happen in December, but the worst part of it, for me at least, is getting all of those components together and updating all the baselines and figuring out which goals to write and meeting all of those check boxes for the actual paperwork process. The meeting in itself is fun getting to connect with the parents and do some problem solving and figure all of that out. That's a little mindset shift there in trying to enjoy those meetings, but it makes it so that I'm a little more sane throughout the school year.

And those are our five steps. So just to recap, step one, introduce yourself to the school staff. Two, send out a form introducing yourself to parents. Three, gather your caseload information. Four, review your student's files, and five, map out your IEP and evaluation dates.

Tune in to the next few episodes because we are going to talk about paperwork strategies, data collection strategies, even more detail on some of the items that we discussed today.

I can't wait to see you in the next episode!

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#155: Dreading Back to School? A Strategy for SLPs

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Start Your School Year with the Right Mindset

Join Marisha as she kicks off a four-part series filled with valuable back-to-school tips to make your school year smoother. 💪

In this episode, Marisha introduces SLPs to the foundation of a successful year: mindset. She understands the struggles that SLPs face when heading back to school — with the changes in routine and the upcoming challenges on our caseloads, there’s no shortage of excitement in the months to come.

Marisha shares the magic of creating a personal manifesto to empower and inspire you, and we hope the advice in this episode will help you embrace your role as an SLP with confidence.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

💛 Starting on the Right Foot. Marisha introduces the exciting series, starting with the key ingredient: mindset.

💛 Facing the Challenges. Understand the shared struggles SLPs face, and how a positive mindset can be your ultimate tool.

💛 Crafting Your ‘Why’ Statement. Discover the power of creating a personal manifesto.

💛  Embrace Your Unique Strengths. Learn how to overcome comparison and self-doubt.

Resources Mentioned

An SLP Manifesto 
A Midset Shift for SLPs

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Hey there! It's Marisha, and I am so excited to be starting up the podcast again. We are kicking off an epic series with tons of back to school tips to help make the school year just a little bit easier. Today we're starting things off with a little chat about mindset. I don't know about you, but I know a lot of SLPs struggle to head back to school. Just the change in the routine and also knowing that there will be challenges that we inevitably will come across and getting ready to navigate those because being a school-based SLP is not an easy job. So I'm really excited to kick things off with just an itty-bitty talk about mindset and then we'll talk about tips to navigate the first few weeks of school, scheduling, paperwork, data collection, all of the good things. Building up your resources to navigate your school year with as much confidence and calm as possible. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive right in.

We want to talk about your why.

This is what will keep us going when we are drowning in paperwork or we're getting spit on, or dealing with other accidents, and navigating all of the challenges that inevitably come our way as speech language pathologists.

If we have a really strong why behind why we're doing the things that we do and why we decided to become an SLP in the first place, why we decided to work in the schools, it'll make it that much more doable and a lot less stressful if we know what we're working towards and what we want to make happen. We can choose to feel overwhelmed or we can choose to tackle things with a positive mindset.

I wrote a blog post when I was feeling a little bit hesitant to head back to work and feeling in a little bit of a rutt.

But there's actually research around creating some statements for yourself. And if you want a fancy name for it, you can call it a manifesto. Some of the statements that I put together, just in case you're looking for some inspiration, are that *I make a difference in the lives of my students.*

When I talk to pretty much any SLP, that's why they do what they do. They do it for the students. And we can hone in and get a little bit more specific. We can say that *we help students find their voice.* *We enable students to communicate when they otherwise might not be able to.*

And we play such an important role in the schools. We can empower students to communicate when they might not otherwise be able to.

*I'm a voice for students with disabilities and will speak up.* Some of our students don't have a voice yet and we need to speak up for them, and sometimes it's scary to do that advocacy and jump into that role.

That's one thing that I had in my personal manifesto, and we won't go through all of the different things. A lot of it is about what I do for my students and how I see myself as an SLP. *I'm constantly learning and improving. I'm a problem solver. *

The last statement is the one that I wanted to end off with before we dive into all the nitty gritty strategies.

But the last one is, *I am exactly who I need to be.* So it's easy to compare yourself to the other SLPs out there. You might be looking at what other SLPs are sharing on Instagram or other speech therapists in your district. You might see what they're doing and think, "oh, I'm not as good as Sally. Or I don't have this like she does." And it's easy to fall into that comparison trap. "Oh, maybe I'm not the SLP that I need to be to serve this student." But we are there for a reason. There's a reason why we get those students. There's a reason why we're at the school that we're at, and we can play a very important role. You have everything that you need to make that happen. And it's just a matter of continuing to work at it and be a problem solver and work through those challenges. But you have exactly what you need to solve those problems, and we get really good at problem solving.

And that's a wrap. Be sure to head to SLPnow.com/155 to check out the show notes for this episode, which will include a link to a blog post that goes into even more detail on all things mindset. And also make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can hear all of the other episodes in this series. We're going to be talking about tips to navigate the first few weeks of school, therapy planning tips, data collection, paperwork, parent and teacher communication, all of the things. I cannot wait to see you in the next episode!

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[SLP Summit Q&A] Narrative Intervention in Action

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I just got to present at the SLP Summit and had the. best. time!

Missed us live? The replay is available until August 7th!

I presented 5 simple tools that SLPs can use to step up their narrative intervention.

There were a lot of questions, so I’m going to take some time to answer them here! 💛

Narrative Intervention Strategies

Do you only use stories that have all of the story grammar elements in that order?
I may start with simpler stories that are structured “perfectly”, but I like to teach students to identify the story grammar elements in real picture books. I do skim the story to make sure that the character, setting, initiating event, emotions, plan, action/attempt, and consequence are clear.

Do you start with all of the story grammar markers or do you just start with a few? If so, which do you start with?
I typically start with Characters, Setting, Initiating Event, Internal Response, Plan, Action/Attempt, and Consequence.

Before you start the unit, do you introduce each grammar icon?
I introduce the icons in the context of the story (e.g., “The setting tells us when and where the story happened. Where did this story happen?”).

Do you reread the story at the beginning of every session?
I do not! It really depends on the group. I do like to share the YouTube video with the teacher and/or parents so that the students have a chance to get multiple exposures to the story in between sessions.

Do you draw the pictographs and fill in story maps? Or do you have the student do it?
This also depends on the dynamic of the group! I do like to have students take ownership whenever possible.

How do you fade the visual support?
Here’s one example of what that could look like:
In the first retell of a story, provide the story grammar icons and pictographs.
On the second retell, provide the story grammar icons. Show the pictographs as needed (or when a verbal cue does not work).
Only the fourth retell, don’t provide any visual supports unless the student gets stuck.

Do you move from pictures to icons (and then to faded prompts) within one session or over multiple sessions?
This also depends on the student and what they need! My goal is to provide just the right amount of support. I want to challenge the student for optimal learning, but I don’t want them to be frustrated in the process.

I find students can pick up the story elements and identify them relatively easily with direct instruction. However, I see a lot of breakdowns with them being able to independently put it all together to tell a story without statements like “The character’s in the story are…” and The setting is…” Any input?
I found that modeling alternative sentences does the trick! Especially if they’re consistently able to produce the narrative using their “template” sentences.

Narrative Intervention Across Your Caseload

What does this look like at the kindergarten level?
I would use a picture book (versus a fiction article). The five tools I shared would absolutely still apply though! The fundamentals are still the same!

Is narrative intervention utilized with older students as well?
Absolutely! Check out this article for a really cool example of what this could look like.
Gurney, D., Gersten, R., Dimino, J., & Carnine, D. (1990). Story grammar: Effective literature instruction for high school students with learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 23(6), 335–342.

Any thoughts on targeting narratives with children who use AAC?
Do it! One of my professors in grad school harped on the importance of exposing students who use AAC to literacy and narratives. Meet the student where they’re at (of course), but I love modeling narratives using AAC.

Any suggestions for targeting these goals with students who have attention difficulties?
I’d recommend checking out Tera Sumpter’s resources. I’m not the best SLP to explain this!

Do you have examples of teletherapy?
I don’t, but the tools and strategies would still apply! You’d simply use digital versions of the icons/graphic organizer. And yes! We do have this in the SLP Now library.

Narrative Goals

How do you address non-narrative goals within this framework?
Narratives are language rich and are prime content to target virtually any goal. For example, if I’m targeting a grammar goal (e.g., past tense verbs), the student will have the opportunity to produce past tense verbs throughout the unit. If I’m targeting a vocabulary goal (e.g., naming items in categories), the student will have the opportunity to identify items in categories throughout the unit. Want more detail? Check out this free challenge!

How do you write goals?
I don’t change my goals for a narrative approach! I write goals based on the skills that my students need support with. Any goal can be targeted using a narrative and/or literacy-based approach.

Narrative Materials

Where can we obtain these icons?
They are available in the SLP Now membership!

Where can I obtain a graphic organizer like yours?
They are available in the SLP Now membership!

Are the sentence starters with the graphic organizer in your membership?
Yes!

What are you using that is captioning what your students say during the videos? It would be a great way to look at a student’s responses later or for students to “see” what they are saying as well as hear it. I love the color and the larger words.
I’ve never used the captioning with students! I just created the captions to make it easier for you to understand the students’ stories. The app that I used is called Descript.

Expository Texts

How could you use these with expository texts?
I use a different set of strategies/techniques when targeting expository texts with students!

How do we bridge fictional narratives (with characters, settings, etc.) with expository texts?
I typically just switch to teaching expository texts once the students no longer demonstrate a need for narrative support. I’m not aware of any research-backed strategies to bridge from narratives to expository texts.

Data Collection

What is the best way to take data during narrative intervention?
I have a FREE bootcamp/challenge that dives into my data collection system. Check it out here!

Are the probes related to the story or not?
If I’m probing their ability to retell a story, I typically do just use the story. I tend to use unrelated probes for other skills. (The bootcamp that I mentioned explains that in more detail!)

How would you probe wh-questions without reading a full text? Wouldn’t that take a long time in a mixed group?
It depends on how the goal is written! If the goal is written in that way, I may pull the student separately, set up the session to allow for an extended probe (e.g., by giving the students another activity to work on), or ask the questions right after reading the text for the current unit.

What data did you collect when doing the parallel story?
The Digital Data Bootcamp goes into more detail, but I collect probe data at the very beginning of the session. I then collect data on how the students perform in context. For example, if they have a goal to produce past tense verbs, I will keep track of the level of support that they need to produce past tense verbs in this context.

Literacy-Based Therapy

Any tips for introducing or pivoting to more narrative-based therapy with groups/students who are used to games?
Bring the excitement! If you’re excited about the activities, your students will be too! Communication is naturally reinforcing. It might also be beneficial to start with a very high-interest story, select texts that include the students’ interest, and/or incorporate technology (e.g., YouTube videos, drawing on the iPad).

How long does a unit last?
My literacy-based therapy units typically last a month. If you want to learn more about how I structure a unit, I’d highly recommend this free challenge. You’ll get to see examples of units and build your own!

How do you handle student absences? Are they behind if they miss the previous session?
That is a great question! It depends on so many factors (where we were in the unit, the student’s strengths/needs). I may re-read the text with the group if I think that would be beneficial. Another option is to have the student listen to the YouTube video of the book prior to the session or while I collect probe data.

What are some of your favorite books to use for lower grade levels? Upper grade levels?
Here is a list of my favorite picture books, and I love using ReadWork’s fiction articles for my older students.

Are parallel stories written/drawn by students (mini books), just verbal, or written in a graphic organizer with everyone’s ideas (small group school sessions)?
All of the above! There aren’t any set rules, and you get to decide what works best for your group and the goals you’re trying to target.

SLP Now

Does SLP Now mostly focus on narrative intervention? Are there any screening/evaluation tools?
We do have hundreds of resources to support you with narrative intervention, but we offer a wide range of materials–including assessments, visuals to teach a variety of skills, articulation activities, social language units, function communication units, and more! Feel free to sign up for a free trial to check out the entire library of materials!

Does your membership have an outline to help you with a month-long literacy-based therapy unit?
Yes! We built out Therapy Plans to do just that! Here’s a quick overview.

Will SLP Now help address goals for older students?
Yes! This article lists all of the goals and units that we offer for various ages.

Will SLP Now help address social skills goals?
Yes! We do offer social language units.

Do you have any bilingual (Spanish) materials available?
Yes! We currently have two book units and are working with a bilingual SLP to create more!