Do you struggle to write goals that are easy to take data on?  Maureen Wilson from The Speech Bubble SLP joins us to discuss the best ways to write goals and the best way to collect data on goals that are not easily measured.

Below are the links to the products that were talked about in the Speechie show:

• The Speech Bubble SLP Website: www.TheSpeechBubbleSLP.com
• Social Language and Pragmatics Rubrics: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Social-Language-and-Pragmatic-Rubrics-Data-Tracking-and-Progress-Monitoring-1214075?aref=8lzkuojo
• Language Rubrics: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Language-Rubrics-A-Progress-Monitoring-and-Data-Tracking-Tool-1448115?aref=8lzkuojo

If you’d rather listen to the audio version of the Speechie Show, click here:

Or you can read the full transcript here:

Welcome to the Speechie Show! Being a speech language pathologist often means having too much work and not enough planning time. To beat the overwhelm, we’re bringing you the tricks and tools that will make your job a little bit easier.

Carrie:  Hey everybody welcome to the Speechie show. Today we are here with Maureen Wilson from thespeechbubbleslp.com and we are talking about smart goals and goal writing. How are you today Maureen?

Maureen:  I am good how you are doing.

Carrie:  Doing good. I’m really hoping that this is working so. If you are watching…oh no it says we don’t have any watchers yet. Ok were doing this on a new platform. We’re using the be live.tv platform so hopefully you can see both of us and we will be asking some questions and getting some input soon. But today we’re going to be talking about how to make your goal writing easier and better so that you can track your goals more easily as well. Ooh it says we have some people, ok. So, the three of you that are watching right now, I need you to do something. We want to make sure that you can see both of us. Can you see Maureen and me, Carrie? If you can go ahead and type a comment in just saying that you can see us because we want to know if it’s working.

Alright so while we’re doing that, I am Carrie Clark from SpeechandLanguageKids.com. If you haven’t watched the show before, this is The Speechie Show. We do this once a week where I interview another speech-language pathologist and we talk about a topic of interest. Alright, Michelle said she can hear us, thank you Michelle.

So today of course we are here with Maureen Wilson. She is going to introduce herself in just a moment but for those of you who are watching, go ahead and write in a comment, what is the hardest type of goal or type of skill for you to write goals for. Which goals/skills are you struggling the most with your goal writing? Write that in as a comment so that we can address those as we go along.

Maureen:  Yes definitely.

Carrie:  Alright, Maureen, tell us about yourself and what you got to give away today.

Maureen:  Well I am Maureen Wilson and I author the blog TheSpeechBubbleSLP.com. I also have a teacher pay teachers store where I sell products that I create to help other speech-language pathology professionals make their life easier and today I’m going to give away my rubrics bundle. So, it’s a method of data collection and the bundle includes language and social language rubrics to help make your data tracking life easier.

Carrie:  Yay, I love rubrics. We’re going to talk about that more here in just a little bit and I’m giving away two free months in my membership program which is called The Speech Therapy Solution and it is videos and support and answering questions and all kinds of help for your job as a speech language pathologist. Alright, I see Natasha is on here too, welcome Natasha. Ok so we’re going to go ahead and talk about the 5 points that we’re going to get to today which will help you make your goal writing easier.

So, the first one we’re going to talk about today is thinking about your goal in terms of what happens if a student moves to a new speech language pathologist. Maureen, tell us how that is important for goal writing.

Maureen:  So when you’re writing your goals, something to always be cognizant of is what happens if your student moves away. That means that someone else is going to read this goal, understand what you’re trying to track, understand what the cut off is for mastery, understand what cut off is for correct and incorrect response. When I first started out I wrote goals for me to understand and then I did have a student moving and I got a phone call saying “what were you looking to do here?”. So being the young fresh out of grad school SLP I was like Oh no, I didn’t think about another SLP if they moved. So, when I write a goal I always read it back to myself. I did not know this student. I did not know their test scores. I didn’t know what they were being put in therapy for. So be cognizant of how someone else looks at it, helps you realize if it is a good goal or not. If it is well defined or not.

Carrie:  Perfect, I love that. So, the first thing we want to think about is your goal good enough that someone else could pick it up and do exactly what you are intending to do and know all that information, so that is perfect.  Ok so if you guys have questions as we go along or if there is a skill that you have trouble writing goals for and you want us to give you some tips on that, go ahead and type those in the comments. Type in what kinds of skills you’re struggling with, any questions you have and also don’t forget to share this Facebook live with anyone that you think needs some help with goal writing. Or just share it on your personal timeline so that other people can find us as well.

Alright so the next point we’re going to talk about is trying to make sure that your goal is not too complex. Maureen tell us more about that.

Maureen:  So, when we’re writing goals we tend to want to make sure that we’re targeting everything that we need too and sometimes what happens is what I call goal smashing. Mash two or three objectives into one goal and then you’re left with a goal that has…TheSpeechieShowEp7.

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