Here are Some of the Speech-Language Therapy Goals I Use

These IEP goals have been my go-tos for the past few years

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Why does it always feel like my brain breaks every time I have to write IEP goals for my speech-language therapy students?

I have some guesses.

• Writing IEP goals is usually the last step I have to do in the lengthy process of assessing a student and writing a detailed report. By the time I have to generate speech-language goals, my brain is tired!

• It can feel daunting to decide on the very best two or three measurable skills that will make a meaningful impact on the student's progress overall in the next school year.

• While I see the value of SMART goals, they can feel oppressive due to their required/expected level of specificity. I prefer to go broad and have some wiggle room to adjust, based on how the student does as the school year unfolds.

Truth be told, I've avoided writing this post for a long time. I think it's because I have some lurking doubts that the way I write my speech-language IEP goals is somehow wrong. And this feeling that I somehow do things differently gets reinforced every time I inherit IEP goals from another SLP!

But, here goes. The following is a list of goals that have been some of my go-tos for the types of elementary-aged kids I typically see with speech and language needs. Please note that they are not listed in a developmental order:

Speech-language therapy goals for receptive language (oral and written):

In one year, [student] will: apply strategies such as chunking, graphic organizers, and knowledge of text structure types in order to respond to critical thinking questions (summarize, compare/contrast, analyze, evaluate) about orally presented information and reading passages.

Criteria: with 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Within one academic school year, using a variety of developmentally appropriate materials, [student] will: develop strategies to remember and follow increasingly complex 2-3 step directions during language-based games and structured language tasks.

Criteria: with 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve his receptive language skills by: implementing active listening strategies to attend to orally presented information of increasing length and complexity.

Criteria: 3/5 trials with faded supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Within one academic school year, [student] will demonstrate comprehension of: sentences of increasing length and complexity; age-expected target vocabulary; and prepositional phrases during language-based games, joint book reading, and structured language tasks.

Criteria: with 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will use reading comprehension strategies, such as annotation and highlighting relevant passages, in order to respond to questions about the text using information directly from the text.

Criteria: 90% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will demonstrate comprehension of: sentences of increasing length and complexity during language-based games, joint book reading, and structured language tasks.

Criteria: with 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Speech-language therapy goals for expressive language (oral and written):

In one year, [student] will increase his expressive language skills as evidenced by: producing narratives that include age-expected syntax and morphology/grammatical structures (verb tenses, pronouns, etc.), as well as specific target vocabulary.

Criteria: 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Within one academic school year, using a variety of developmentally appropriate materials, [student] will formulate oral and written narratives using story grammar structures (including characters, setting, problem, internal states, attempts to solve the problem, and resolution) to describe story events and his own personal experiences.

Criteria: with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve his written expression skills as evidenced by combining simple sentences into complex and compound sentences, and using correct capitalization and punctuation rules.

Criteria: 90% accuracy

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will employ graphic organizers to both brainstorm before he writes and to recall all relevant details while he writes.

Criteria: with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Within one academic school year, [student] will produce a set of personalized phrases that will help him during moments of dysregulation, such as “I need a break”, “I said that”, “I want to do it myself”, etc.

Criteria: in 3 out of 4 opportunities with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve her expressive language skills as evidenced by: producing procedural narratives - both orally and in writing - that include age-expected syntax and morphology/grammatical structures (verb tenses, prepositions, pronouns, etc.), as well as specific target vocabulary.

Criteria: 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Speech-language therapy goals for vocabulary:

In one year, when a curriculum unit-based non-fiction passage is read aloud to [student], she will identify 5 unfamiliar vocabulary words by expressing that she didn't understand the words’ meanings, define the words using strategies such as using context clues, finding definitions and pictures on the internet, and prefix/suffix knowledge, and collect them in a personal dictionary.

Criteria: 90% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will increase his expressive vocabulary and word-retrieval as evidenced by: labeling curriculum-specific tier 2 and tier 3 words after engaging in word study by completing word webs, by analyzing affixes and roots, and by generating and recalling definitions/associated images.

Criteria: 90% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, given 20 common nouns, 20 verbs, and 20 adjectives, [student] will identify the correct word by pointing to the appropriate picture.

Criteria: 90% accuracy

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Speech-language therapy goals for articulation/phonological awareness/phonics:

In one year, [student] will improve her phonological awareness skills as evidenced by: substituting, deleting, and/or adding syllables or phonemes to orally presented words to form new words or non-words.

Criteria: 90% accuracy

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve her articulation skills and intelligibility by: eliminating the phonological processes of stopping and consonant cluster reduction at the word level.

Criteria: with 90% accuracy

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Within one academic school year, using both oral and written, phonics-based tasks, [student] will correctly articulate, read, and spell the /sh/ (as in “shy) and /dz/ (as in “edge”) phonemes at the morpheme (prefix, suffix, root/base) and phrase levels.

Criteria: with 80% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will produce all sounds in CV, VC, CVC, and CVCV words to label pictures or for highly functional words as determined by his teachers and support team.

Criteria: on 80% of attempts

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve his articulation and phonological awareness skills by: correctly articulating /s/, /z/, and /l/ at the word level and phrase levels; and correctly encoding /s/, /z/, and /l/ sounds in both real and non-words.

Criteria: with 90% accuracy

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Speech-language therapy goals for pragmatic language/social communication:

In one year, [student] will improve his social communication skills by: initiating and sustaining social interactions with both adults and peers by producing novel and specific questions and comments for at least three speaker turns; engaging in a structured turn-taking game for at least three turns.

Criteria: 3/5 trials with faded supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

In one year, [student] will improve her processing of social situations by using a graphic organizer to use the “STOP and Read the Room” strategy by making logical guesses to label the Space, the Time, the important Objects, and the People (their roles and feelings based on body language cues) when examining both pictures and real scenes throughout her school.

Criteria: with 90% accuracy with faded verbal and visual supports

Method: data tracking/observation

Schedule: One time per quarter

Please feel free to add your go-to goals in the comments!

And if you need ideas for therapy materials that help you tackle many of these goals...

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Enjoy!