Having the right speech therapy resources for the busy SLP is important. When we have the tools we need, SLPs can serve students better and more efficiently.I know my lesson planning is a lot easier because of the speech therapy resources I have found over the years. Slowly, I have been able to build my stash of helpful therapy tools.The advancements with technology have really opened the doors for helping SLPs have access to speech therapy resources they need. Back when I was first starting out in the field in 2007, there was no Pinterest. And blogs, YouTube, and Teachers Pay Teachers were just starting out, so I had no idea about these resources.
Using Online Resources Can Help You Streamline Caseload Management
Having access to so many websites has been such a blessing for me as an SLP. The job will always be hard, but I have found some websites that I use over and over again to help me be successful as an SLP. Today, I want to share 10 websites that help busy SLPs be more effective with their jobs.
FREE Speech Therapy Websites That Help SLPS
YouTube is one of my most utilized speech therapy resources. I love that it is free, and new content is always being added. YouTube allows me to plan no prep/low prep therapy and to cover a lot of different goals. Here are some of my favoriteYouTube channels.
SciShowKids – Need a YouTube channel that has LOTS of non-fiction videos that are about five minutes in length or less? There are so many great non-fiction videos to access. I have used her BEE videos in this blog post HERE.
GoNoodle – For your wiggly students, movement brain break videos are awesome! I utilize these videos when teaching my push-in lessons for my SDC K-2 classes.
Storyline Online – This is a channel that has celebrities read popular children’s books out loud. When you don’t have time to hit the library or want to use a certain book, head to YouTube. There are lots of read-aloud books on there.
2. ReadWorks is a free website providing fiction and non-fiction reading passages by grade level. It will read a passage to a student and also includes pre-picked vocabulary that you can target in the passage. You can also get comprehension questions with answer choices for each passage.
3. EdPuzzle is a free website that allows educators to add questions to videos. You can create multiple choice questions or open-ended questions that will pause the video in the moment when you want to ask a question. I use this for wh- questions, inferencing, and vocabulary.
4. VocabGrabber – Research continues to show that teaching students Tier II vocabulary words will help them grow their vocabulary skills. So, I love using this free website to get the Tier II vocabulary from textbook passages, fictional books, and non-fiction passages.
Speech Therapy Resources with Paid Subscription Websites
5. Everyday Speech – If you have students with social pragmatic disorders who are in upper elementary school and middle school, then you will LOVE Everyday Speech’s Video Library. They have over 100 videos with worksheets included for different social skill concepts you are teaching your students. Video Modeling is an evidence-based practice for children with Autism, and these video lessons are formatted that way. My social skills push-in lesson planning was a breeze using this subscription. I never felt out of ideas and always had a good video to show. You can read more about this speech therapy resource HERE.
6. The Informed SLP – SLPs are super busy. After a long day of conducting therapy and paperwork, we just don’t have the brain space or energy to stay up-to-date with the latest research articles on a monthly basis. I want the research info, but I need it in the “Cliff Notes” version so I can efficiently figure out how to apply the research to my students. Then, The Informed SLP came along, and I became a customer. Every month, the team at The Informed SLP shares reviews of the most relevant research articles. You can read the articles on your lunch break or listen in the car. I love that I don’t feel overwhelmed after I read an article and can digest the contents in friendly spans of time.
Use A Subscription That Will Help You Make Informed Clinical Decisions
The Informed SLP is now offering CEU courses that you can listen to in the car, on a walk, when you are cooking dinner or working out at the gym! You can also listen to the article reviews in the same fashion. This membership has helped build my clinical confidence and a big reason I am an affiliate for this subscription. Click the picture above and use the code: FELICE to get 20% off your yearly subscription (This 20% discount is only available for subscriptions).
Speech Therapy Websites with FREE and PAID Resources
8. Teachers Pay Teachers – When I found this speech therapy resource, I was over the moon. It had FREE lessons and affordable therapy tools that I could literally buy and use within minutes of purchasing. When my district agreed to pay for my Super Duper orders, it took like 2-3 months to actually get the materials. Even if you don’t buy anything on the site, there are TONS of valuable FREE resources. Check out the ones in my store HERE.
9. Speech Therapy Resource Libraries on Blogs – Did you know that a lot of SLP bloggers have FREE resource libraries for their newsletter communities? You join their weekly or monthly newsletter and get access to speech therapy goodies that you can’t find anywhere else. If you need a good speech report template, visual supports, articulation carryover activities, and more, then join mine HERE. Some of my favorite free libraries are from Speechy Musings and The Speech Bubble SLP.
10. Home Speech Home has some of the most thorough word lists on the web that are FREE. When I need to come up with some words for language or articulation, I usually go there! They also have paid apps and resources on their site.
Bonus Speech Therapy Websites for Caseload Management
I know this post has 10 speech therapy websites for SLPs, but it is hard to just recommend ten websites when there are a lot of helpful tools you can access on the internet. If you are looking for some caseload management tools, I recommend trying SLPToolKit. I did a review a few years ago HERE, but since that time, the company has made a ton of updates to help streamline caseload management.
SLPs that want to digitally have access to goals (you can save your goals or they have tools to help you create), have present level assessments and progress monitoring tools digitally, then this website subscription is for you!
Those of you that struggle with managing all the goals your students are working on may benefit from the Swivel Scheduler. It allows you to set-up your speech schedule with your students goals. Then, you can print your schedule each week and it will automatically “swivel” your students goals, so you know exactly what you need to plan and target in a session!
Need More Caseload Management Tips?
One way that I utilize speech therapy websites is by streamlining systems. The first week back at work is when I get my caseload organized. You can see my tips HERE. I also used SLPtoolkit and TPT to help me make processes for my progress monitoring. I wrote a post with all my helpful tips HERE. I am not sure if Google Drive is considered a website, but this has been such a game changer for saving me time and re-inventing the wheel. Check out how Google Forms can help streamline your referral process HERE. This online tool has also helped me stay organized with report writing. You can grab my FREE report template HERE. I store all my templates in Google Drive now!
What Websites Have Helped You SLP?
I would love to know what speech therapy resources have been helpful for you. Please share any websites that you use on a regular basis in the comments or email me at feliceclark@thedabblingspeechie.com.
One thing that I felt my graduate program could have helped better prepare me for was teaching behavior management techniques for mixed groups. Anyone else struggle with how to create positive behavior routines in speech therapy sessions? I sure did when I first started out. I got my feet wet during my field placements when I did group therapy (aka mixed group madness). But, my real education came when I was a CFY-SLP.
The SLP Struggle With Creating Behavior Routines In Speech
Between lesson planning for all the goals in the group, managing behaviors, and trying to take data, I felt very stressed in some of my groups. Doing all those things at once was really difficult. And some days, I didn’t know how to manage a behavior. Or I was so busy trying to manage behaviors, that I didn’t get to goals/lessons that I wanted to. Then, there are days when incorporating everyone’s goals in the lesson and keeping students engaged led me to completely forget to take data.
Have you ever been there as an SLP? In my first few years, I focused on creating simple rules and expectations. I had a raffle prize box and the students could earn a jelly bean for not getting more than two reminders about behavior. This was the system my master clinician modeled for me. It worked well with keeping my groups in order as I managed a 75+ caseload. Many groups had 4-5 students, so I felt like I didn’t have time to mess around and needed tangible incentives for my students.
Why You Should Create Behavior Routines & Expectations In The Speech Room
Having behavior management techniques in your speech room increases students’ engagement, and improves participation with the lesson being taught. To be effective with implementing your therapy lesson, you need a plan containing strategies for being consistent with expectations. Furthermore, it is also important to foster a positive learning environment while minimizing unwanted behaviors.
Recommendations For How To Create A Positive Learning Environment
-Use simple rules and expectations that are consistently and fairly implemented.
-Make events and activities predictable by establishing routines. Set up cues and signals with students to let them know about transitions in the lesson and/or explain the content or length of the lesson.
-Provide frequent use of praise (non-verbal and verbal) that is specific and descriptive of the behavior being executed. For example, “Thank you, Desmond, for keeping your hands to yourself. That is very respectful.”
-Make adjustments and accommodations to help all students access the lesson and successfully engage in the content (this may mean shortening the assignment, creating visuals, or answering choices to help participation).
-Give opportunities to respond and participate in the activities and materials with all the children in the group/class.
For more research-based classroom management strategies, readthis blog postwith helpful tips to use with students.
Evidenced Based Practice For Using Visual Cues To Establish Behavior Routines
During a lesson, your students have to follow the set rules, transition to a new activity, and participate in the session. That can be overwhelming for our SLP friends. Some of our students struggle with following our complex directions. For example, Devon may remember to raise his hand to speak, but is constantly getting out of his chair during instruction. This causes a lot of distraction for you and the group. He knew the expectation to raise his hand to speak, but his body was struggling to follow the expectation that during reading time, we all have to sit in our chairs.
Research has shown that children who are exhibiting less problem behavior show bigger gains in language skills. So, teaching behavior expectations is very important for speech pathologists. If we can decrease the presence of unwanted behaviors, we will increase the opportunities for meaningful participations in the session.
Our students on the Autism Spectrum process information better when given visual supports paired with verbal directions or expectations.
Visual supports are picture/written word cues that are paired with a verbal cue. This helps your student process information about the behavior routines, skill, or activity. Visual supports you may use with your students could be: pictures, written words, objects, arrangement of the environment, visual boundaries, schedules, maps, labels, organization systems, timelines, and scripts.
Furthermore, visual supports meets the evidence-based practice criteria set by National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder with 18 single case design studies. You can learn more about this evidence-based practiceHERE.
Ideas For Creating Behavior Routines In Speech
My best piece of advice that you can do to improve your behavior routines in speech is to have a plan. Know what your expectations are for students. You also need to know how you will respond when your students ARE doing the expected skill. (Or when they aren’t.)
I would also suggest following the school or classroom behavior management system. By using our own elaborate system, we could be confusing our students. Remember, the best practice is to be consistent! So, I have my own behavior routines for my small groups that I follow.
But when my students need more support, I follow the behaviorist’s/teacher’s recommendations. For example, I have some students using “Working For” charts for “First/Then” charts. I don’t use those supports with my whole caseload. You can find some handy behavior visuals with these charts in myBehavior Visuals resource.
Because I have a large caseload and not always the time to visually write out my therapy lessons on the board, I use a generic therapy structure that I can reference every session. This allows me to change things up, but still follow a consistent, predictable routine.
Use Visual Supports to Reinforce Positive Behaviors
The other important tip is to have visual supports that break down the skills you want your students to use. During a book activity, you have to teach your students how to answer questions while you are reading the book, what their bodies should look like, and the voice volume they need to have while listening to the book.
I use my behavior visuals to teach expectations for transitions, playing a game, and doing a group activity. We even work on the expectations for classroom activities too.
These behavior visuals have been really helpful for teaching the routines of my push-in lessons when students have to move to a new station.
I use the visual supports to reinforce skills that I am seeing such as, “Thanks, Thalia, for being respectful by raising your hand,” or, “I like how Juan is being safe, sitting in his chair.”
When I use the visual supports to share the positive things I am seeing, it naturally helps me ignore the unwanted behaviors. A long time ago, I used a speech reward system with raffle tickets, prize boxes, and earning a jelly bean for each session. It was a LOT to manage. The past few years, I made a goal to focus on teaching routines and making my lessons engaging. I got rid of my prize box about four years ago because it stressed me out, trying to keep it filled. You can hear more about why I got rid of my prize box on a facebook LIVE video I did HERE.
I am happy to report that when you put the efforts into teaching behavior routines and bring in materials that motivate your students, the unwanted behaviors GO AWAY.
Share Your Behavior Management Strategies
What behavior strategies do you use in the therapy room? I would love to know the tools and resources that have been helping your students. Share in the comments or email me at feliceclark@thedabblingspeechie.com.
School based SLPs have to assess a LOT of different disorders across a large span of ages. During the course of my career, I have assessed students at the preschool level all the way to high school. Feeling confident with speech assessments in so many speech and language areas is overwhelming. Have you also noticed the increasing demands to add more assessments to your reports, so that they are legally defensible? That makes doing them extra scary. Because, one, I fear that I won’t have enough time. Secondly, I want to make sure I have covered all the areas of concern. Which takes more time. That I don’t always have. Today, I want to share about how SLPs can feel more confident when conducting social language assessments. I know they can feel scary, and time consuming. Knowing how to map out what you need can make doing them less intimidating.
Social Language Assessments May Not Be Your Strength
Let me just clarify this for anyone looking for time hacks and ways to make these assessment go quicker: social language assessments take a lot of time. End of story. The best practices I am going to share today are going to feel like more work. I know you are probably thinking, “Girl, I don’t have time for all this extra stuff.” And guess what, I know you don’t have time. Especially if your workload is out of control.
So, if you are not comfortable with social language assessments, and this info feels like a lot, just take it one step at a time. There are still areas in the field of social language assessment that I would love to feel more confident about, like apraxia assessments for example. I have never really had a student with suspected apraxia, so I would be looking to all you SLPs for help in this area. Even though I have gained an understanding for the framework for social language assessments, it still feels overwhelming at times.
Tips For Defeating Overwhelm When Doing Social Language Assessments
Start planning out and doing your social language assessment early. Do not wait until the week before the IEP to start these assessments. Your stress will skyrocket and you will be scrambling for information that you need. Additionally, the chances that you forget valuable information will increase too.
Pencil in when you are going to do different parts of the assessment in your calendar. If you have a 15 minute chunk of time, pencil in that you are going to observe that student in class. Or review the case history and/or call the parent for concerns they see at home. If it isn’t on your schedule, you will find something else to do.
Ask for help. I rely on my SLP colleagues and the student’s teacher to help guide my assessment tools. When I have completely a large bulk of the assessment, I will consult with other SLPs about eligibility, goals and how to word observations in my report. Along with the assessment results, the student’s teachers and parents help me determine what goals would help impact the student the most in the classroom setting. With social language, there are so many skills to assess and work on. When there are too many to choose from, I struggle with nailing down what is impacting the student the most. That’s why I rely on my team’s expertise to help me feel confident with my assessment conclusions.
Tips For Feeling Confident With Your Assessment Findings
Get familiar with understanding characteristics of social pragmatic deficits and characteristics of students with a diagnosis of Autism. This will help you when describing the specific deficits as well as the skills the student has.
Know what is typical. When you have a “moment,” go into a general education classroom for the different ages and see what is typical for the developmental age group. Hang out at recess and lunch and see what typically developing students do with each other. This will help you know what to look for when assessing. If you don’t have that time, at lunch, sit in the staff room and ask your teachers to share what is typical for their students.
Use your Student Study Team (SST) or gen ed RTI process to streamline these social language assessment referrals. I typically will attend all language-concern SST meetings. At those meetings, I will try to collect as much background information from the teacher and parent as possible. This is when I will have them fill out a background questionnaire, so I have it from day one. If you need more tips about my referral process, check out my blog post HERE.
What To Look For In Interviews With Parents & Teachers
In your background section, you want to include information about the child’s developmental milestones. You also want to include previous assessments conducted as well as any other pertinent information relevant to the child’s background. If you want more tips on what should be included in this section of your assessment, check out this blog post. Here are a few things to ask and look out for during these interviews:
-Reports of language regression after normal language onset. This is unique to Autism and not found among children with other developmental delays (Lord, Shulman, et. al. 2004).
-Listen for report with concerns with the child’s early developmental milestones.
-Listen for the child having strong interests and enjoying to talk about perseverative topics (only want to talk about trains with everyone). Furthermore, other red flags may also be the student exhibiting restricted interests (really likes penguins or only plays with cars).
What other red flags do you look and listen for when collecting parent interviews?
Speech & Language Areas To Cover In Your Assessment
Based on the background section, you will know the main areas of concern. The bulk of your assessments should be focused on the main areas of concern. It is best to document informal and/or formal assessment findings in all areas even if the team doesn’t express concern. For example, if the team has expressed concerns with having conversations with peers and understanding social language, your report should mostly be addressing the areas of concern. However, you still need to document skills observed with articulation, language, fluency, etc.
It is important to include standardized language and social pragmatic assessments in your testing, but equally important to do dynamic assessment. Furthermore, documenting observations of the child in natural settings demonstrates how the student is applying social pragmatic language in real life situations.
Assessing Receptive & Expressive Language Considerations
There are a lot of standardized assessments available to help you gather information about the student’s performance. Typically, I will do a language screener if I do not have concerns with vocabulary and grammar. If receptive and expressive language abilities are a significant concern, then I do a full battery of tests in that area.
Pragmatic Language Assessment Tools
Here are some standardized assessments I have used to formally evaluate social pragmatic language understanding and use:
The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – 5th Edition (CELF-5) has a Pragmatic Profile checklist that you can fill out with parents and teachers. It also has a Pragmatic Activities Checklist that provides the clinician with a criterion reference score. I prefer to do the Pragmatic Activities Checklist because you get to see how the student applies his/her language skills in real time social interactions. The Pragmatic Profile checklist has a lot of great descriptive information to help you narrow down the child’s strengths and weaknesses.
The Clinical Assessment of Spoken Language – 2nd Edition (CASL-2) has several subtests that look at figurative language in the areas of Inferences, Pragmatic Language, Meaning From Context, Nonliteral Language, and Double Meaning. These subtests can help you determine if the student struggles with using context clues to figure out the language meaning.
The Test Of Narrative Language – 2nd Edition (TNL -2) assesses how a student can comprehend a story and tell a story. Based on the results from this assessment it can tell me if they can shift perspective and explain the character’s thoughts, motives, and actions. It also allows me to evaluate how well the student can see the big picture of the story or if they lack important details about the story. When the student is missing big chunks of the story, this can also demonstrate how or why the student has weaknesses with following the main idea of a conversation.
Receptive, Expressive & Social Language Assessment – Elementary looks at understanding and expressive use of language in the areas of vocabulary and syntax. It also has a social language component that gives you good information and is relatively quickly to give. The RESCA – E has a social communication observation scale to help determine how the student is performing in naturalistic settings.
Standardized Social Language Assessments
Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics test battery is a video-based assessment tool that elicits responses from the student about real-life social situations. You can obtain information about what the student’s ability to pick up on perspective taking, non-verbal and verbal cues from these video based situations. I learned about this standardized measure at CSHA 2018. This year, I am using it with a few students.
You can download a free assessment report template for how to write up your findings in your report. For your students that may “know” the right answers for social situations, this assessment may be able to elicit the weaknesses with applying social pragmatic language in a real life context.
Social Language Development Test – Elementary measures the language needed to make inferences about how someone is thinking or feeling based on the social context. This assessment also measures how well the student can make multiple interpretations of situation, if they can take on the perspective of others in problem situations and negotiate and support their peers. There is also the Social Language Development Test – Adolescent for older students.
Test of Pragmatic Language – Second Edition is a standardized measure that evaluates social communication in context, telling you how well students listen, choose appropriate content, express feelings, make requests, and handle other aspects of pragmatic language. If you do have to use formal assessments, this one is great because it tests language skills up to the age of 18.
Informal Pragmatic Language Assessment Resources
Social Thinking has an informal assessment framework called the ILAUGH model. It provides a framework for how you can report informal assessments to explain the skills a student is or is not exhibiting. The following is the acronym for ILAUGH: Initiating communication, Listening with the eyes and brain, Abstracting and inferencing, Understanding perspective, Getting the big picture (gestalt), and Humor and human relationship.
One powerful informal assessment is completing the Double Interview that I learned about from the book by Social Thinking – Thinking About YOU, Thinking about ME. Using this method, you conduct an interview with the student and observe how they respond to your questions. Then, you let the student interview you and see what types of questions they ask and what social behaviors they exhibit. One time, I showed a picture of my dad and myself on my wedding day. The student thought he was my husband. The double interview helps with figuring out if students can use background knowledge/cues to make social inferences and so many more skills! You can get a free checklist to use while doing the double interview and sample questions to ask HERE.
To informally evaluate a child’s theory of mind, you can administer the Sally – Anne Test to see if the child can shift perspectives and has a strong theory of mind.
Classroom Observations of the Student
I would recommend that you perform at least two observations of the student during naturally occurring situations. I like to watch the student at recess or lunch. Another good time to watch the student is during a collaborative instruction time. Here are some other times when you can observe the student:
Structured vs. unstructured times
Desired vs. undesired activities
Adult-directed vs. student-directed
Easy vs. difficult activities
Familiar vs. unfamiliar
In small groups, large groups
With family and peers
Here are some things to look for when observing the student
Use of eye contact (be mindful of the student’s cultural background and customs)
Topic maintenance and conversation
Language flexibility (understanding non-literal language)
Gestures and non-verbal language
Prosodic differences
Stereotyped, perseverative speech and echolalia
Ability to initiate, and close a conversation
If you are short on time and can’t observe the child. I recommend getting feedback of observations that the teacher is seeing in the classroom. Furthermore, I would also rely on the parent’s observations at home. That said, it I highly recommend doing observations of the student in a natural environment. You are the clinician that can determine the child’s social pragmatic understanding and use.
Social Pragmatic Checklists To Help You Identify Presence Of Skills
There is a checklist on the RESCA -E and the CELF – 5. Another comprehensive checklist to look into is the The Social Skills Checklist (Quill 2000).
If you are conducting social language assessments for minimally verbal students, I highly recommend using The Communication Matrix to informally assess the student’s functional communication. What checklists have been helpful for you to determine presence of skills?
What Assessment Tools & Resources Do You Use For Your Social Language Assessments?
I would love to hear about your expertise in conducting social language assessments. Share below resources that you have found helpful! I would love to know how you streamline your social language assessments too.
How many times a year do you progress monitor speech goals? I have to do it 3 times in California and then for the annual IEP. In some states, I have heard of SLPs having to do it 8 times a year! Share in the comments how many times your state/district makes you progress monitor.
Progress reports are like cleaning your bathroom. You know the bathroom needs to be cleaned. Each day you walk past that bathroom thinking about all the germs that have started to build up in that toilet. You want your bathroom to be germ free (who doesn’t!?). But the thought of going in there to clean your bathroom after working all day makes you want to cry. So, you just close the bathroom door and use the guest bathroom for a few days. Then, when you know that you can’t stand the idea of a germy bathroom, you slide on those yellow gloves, get the cleaning supplies out and start scrubbing. While you are cleaning, you think to yourself “if only I cleaned the bathroom last week. I wouldn’t have to be here for 30 minutes deep cleaning everything”.
Who doesn’t want a squeaky clean bathroom all the time!? We just wished someone else would do it for us, right? Progress reports are one of those necessary chores we have to do as speech pathologists. We try to avoid them, but they never go away. As much as I have tried to get better at doing them, I still don’t like them. I know why I have to do them. I see how it can be helpful when communicating with families about their child’s progress. And, it is definitely an important part of tracking the progress my students are making towards their goals. They just take a long time (insert dreadful, complaining face).
Maybe it is my caseload of 55 students that makes it such an unwanted task? Hmmmm….. or maybe it is those students that come to me with goals that I didn’t write, and I am wondering how on earth am I supposed to measure this goal??
Progress Monitor Speech Goals With A Checklist (save your sanity)
To stay organized and make sure I don’t miss a step in the process, I made a progress monitoring checklist. That way if I have a 20 minute opening between therapy groups, I will know exactly where I left off with progress reports. When you are organized with the process, it is easier to navigate. Download the free checklist by clicking the pink button below.
Tips On How To Progress Monitor Speech Goals Efficiently
I have come to accept that progress reports are not going away. In an effort to bring calm to the chaos, I am always in search of strategies to make them feel less overwhelming. I share a lot of my tips on how I progress monitor speech goals efficiently in my blog post HERE.
One of the best strategies I have found to progress monitor speech goals is to write better goals. Taking the time to really think about those areas of need and make sure my goals are S.M.A.R.T. simplifies my therapy planning. It also helps me to take better data in a session. I usually picture my therapy sessions and think about how I am going to take data in a mixed group. When I have more data, I can write up my progress notes a lot easier.
Plan progress monitoring days where you have individual worksheets or activities for everyone in the group. During the session, have each student come work with you, so you can progress monitor any goals that you need.
Resources To Help Progress Monitoring Speech Goals With Ease
Here are some resources I have found to be helpful with progress monitoring :
Read Works has free non-fiction and fictional passages sorted by grade level and even have comprehension questions included for your students working on listening comprehension.
Use rubrics on those therapy days (I like the ones from The Speech Bubble SLP HERE) when trying to manage a group’s behavior–teaching an engaging lesson and writing down data on each student just isn’t going to work.
Invest in progress monitoring tools that will help you collect information about your student’s performance. I use SLPtoolkit (they have some criterion referenced assessments and a daily data feature) and Language Progress Monitoring Tool from Natalie Snyders SLP. My Data Sheets also help organize your data for lots of different goals, and my Articulation Carryover Activity sets have reading passages as well as structured language activities that are organized by articulation sound to take data on articulation and language.
Here is my FREE Articulation Data Sheet that can help you with progress monitoring students when they are doing tasks that are more conversational or multiple sentences and taking tally data can be cumbersome.
Find resources that have pictures with the skills you need to progress monitor. Put all the tools in a binder for that skill such as pronouns or noun-verb agreement. Then, pull out those tools during progress monitor time to see how your students are doing. I like to administer 5 stimulus items with minimal prompting to see how they work independently. Then, I will add in visual cues/prompts or give answer choices to know exactly where the student is with his/her level of independence.
What progress monitoring tools do you use in your speech room? Share in the comments with resources and tools that help you with progress monitoring in the comments.
If you work as a school based SLP, getting speech therapy referrals for the R sound is pretty common. The /r/ distortions are pretty noticeable by teachers, parents and staff. Have you ever gotten that referral from a preschooler or kindergarten teacher and think, “I should probably get that teacher a developmental norms chart ASAP.”
A couple of years ago, our SLP Professional Learning Community discussed how to handle speech therapy referrals for /r/. Guess what happened…..there were a lot of varying answers and viewpoints. It stirred up a hot debate (all friendly discussion). And we left the PLC without a clear direction with how to handle /r/ speech therapy referrals.
What I learned after the Professional Learning Community Discussion
The perspectives of the /r/ referral varied from SLP to SLP. Some felt that you should take them younger (6-7 years of age) if they are stimuable. Other SLPs felt that the student wouldn’t meet eligibility for an articulation disorder based on educational code, but the student would receive support via Response To Intervention (RTI) with speech improvement. There were some SLPs that didn’t feel comfortable with providing RTI because of potential legal ramifications for seeing gen ed students without an IEP.
I decided to send out a survey on Speech Therapy Referrals
The discussion with other SLPs in the room was helpful in learning about different perspectives regarding an /r/ referral. However, I didn’t leave the discussion with a clearer understanding of what our district was supporting SLPs to do. Everyone had valid points and reasons for how they handled /r/ referrals, but we lacked a cohesive game plan for /r/.
My biggest question to the SLPs in the group was “when do you consider an /r/ error outside normal development?” I also wanted to know when SLPs took students with /r/ distortions on their IEP caseload or if they treated it through RTI.
Again, answers varied from SLPs. This prompted me to wonder what other SLPs thought across the United States. I figured I could get a bigger perspective by surveying a larger group.
Here is the situation I shared with SLPs
You have a 7 year old in second grade with a distorted /r/ in all positions. The teacher shares that at times it is difficult to understand the student. The parent also has concerns about his articulation. The parent signed a screening form for you to do a quick observation of his speech. You noticed that the /r/ is pretty distorted and he is not stimuable for /r/ when given prompts.
These were the results from the survey on how SLPs would handle /r/ referral:
Speech Therapy Referrals – Considerations about /r/
Many SLP’s commented that they would do an RTI model for this student; however, their district does not allow them to see students without an IEP.
Some SLP’s shared that they would not get an assessment plan signed until after age 8 because their district eligibility guidelines would not allow them to take a student for /r/ at age 7. Interestingly, some SLP’s shared that their district would not deem a single sound error of /r/ to meet eligibility for speech services. (There is an argument that /r/ is not a single sound error among some SLPs).
Many SLP’s also shared that because the teacher and SLP are observing reduced intelligibility, this may warrant a full assessment of articulation.
What I learned from being in the school setting & doing this survey
In certain districts where I have worked, I would not be able to get a signed assessment plan until the student turned 8. I was also told that I could not serve students in an RTI model because this would impact legalities with my job.
When looking at an /r/ referral, I have to determine if the articulation disorder is adversely impacting the student’s academic progress. This is where we ask ourselves if the student’s /r/ distortion is adversely impacting the student’s ability to meet the speaking and listening standards. We would also want to determine if the student’s intelligibility is below 80% intelligible. If it isn’t affecting academics or intelligibility, it is highly likely that the student will not meet eligibility for an IEP under an articulation disorder. That being said, if you feel that the /r/ distortion is adversely impacting those two areas, it is very important to make distinct mention of that in your report findings.
A few SLP’s shared that the classroom teacher must do 6-8 weeks of general education intervention before moving towards an assessment.
Many SLP’s shared that when the student’s /r/ is addressed earlier than 7.5-8 years in a “speech improvement model”, the /r/ improves. Furthermore, many have found when they monitor the student’s growth just by checking in with the gen ed teacher, that most develop the /r/ in third grade without intervention.
We must also consider our professional judgment with dealing with these referrals. We use the developmental norms as a guideline and really need to look at educational impact when looking at a student with articulation errors.
How I handled /r/ referrals in my previous job
Based on some reading that I did on ASHA’s website, federal law may impact an SLP’s ability to take students with /r/ on an IEP. Serving students in an RTI model may also lead use to legal implications. ASHA recommends SLPs not label intervention as RTI, but rather call it a “speech club.” I call my intervention “speech improvement class.”
Here is a link to RTI information on ASHA. This could be a great discussion piece to have with your districts and speech departments. I also found the Speech Sound Disorders page on the ASHA website helpful.
At the time of this survey, my speech department was having a lot of discussions about implementing a “speech improvement program” or seeing students on an IEP for /r/. There was not a final discussion. So, I did see a couple of students in speech improvement class that have noticeable /r/ distortions. The students were in second grade and between 7 or 7 1/2 years of age. Parent permission was obtained and the speech improvement class was for 6-8 weeks.
What are your thoughts about the /r/ referral or single sound error referrals?
How does your SLP department and district handle speech therapy referrals for /r/? What are your thoughts on taking an /r/ student in the school setting? I would love to hear your expertise. Feel free to email me at feliceclark@thedabblingspeechie.com or share in the comments below.
Helpful Blog Posts For Articulation & Treating R
Once your student has the /r/ phoneme established at the word level, you need therapy materials to treat /r/! Here are 10 resources you can use to treat /r/ in therapy.
Do you have students that are at the generalization level with their articulation? I have some articulation carryover therapy resources that will help you plan therapy that also go well with mixed groups!
Need some free visuals to support self awareness and functional practice of your student’s articulation sounds? This blog post has FREE printables and ideas for how to organize your articulation therapy.
To stay organized and make sure I don’t miss a step in the process, I made a progress monitoring checklist. That way if I have a 20 minute opening between therapy groups, I will know exactly where I left off with progress reports. When you are organized with the process, it is easier to navigate. Download the free checklist by clicking the pink button below.
