Writing Speech and Language Goals

Are you always on time with your paperwork?

Do you get 100% on every test?

Are you always right?

You are probably saying of course not. You need to think about this when writing your goals for your students. They are having therapy because they are having difficulty with a particular skill.  The reason that you evaluate skills for a baseline is that these can assist you in both looking at the very specific skill that the client is having difficulty with as well as it allows you to determine what is a realistic percentage of improvement you could expect given the time you are working with the client. So if the student is able to do a skill at 50% and you have 10 weeks or 20 hours of therapy it would probably not be realistic that the child would be able to accomplish this goal at 100%. Writing speech and language goals can be difficult. One crucial component is being realistic in your target goal.

Accuracy: As stated above it is crucial that you have the expected accuracy. This can be done using percentages, ratios or rubrics as long as you are carefully considering what the baseline is and then what is the expected outcome given the time you have to work on the goal and the complexity of the difficulty. You should also note the mastery qualifications that you are expecting (ex.across three sessions, an average for the semester).

Measurable: The most crucial piece of your goal is that what you are working towards needs to be measurable.  Anyone picking up your goal would be able to quickly understand how they could set up a situation that they too could determine that the student had met the goal.

Complexity: You need to tell the level of expectations. What is the level of the complexity of the stimulus ( How many steps in the direction? What is the reading level?)

Context: Under what condition is the goal being achieved?  You need to say the whos, whats, whens, and wheres.

The Level of cues or supports: Are you using visuals?  Is there a graphic organizer?  Are you expecting independence?

RELATED BLOGS

• WRITING PRECISE BASELINES IEP GOALS
• Examples of Speech and Language Goals
• GOALS ARE HARD TO CREATE: ANOTHER BLOG WITH HELPFUL INFORMATION

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