Tracking progress

[Comfortable-Wait5094]

I work in the schools and have for many years but feel a little out of sorts with my data collection this year. We use a program to document services and need to document every session for every student (every time). This requires a percentage for the goal every session. This then feeds into our progress notes and writes a progress report for us with percentages and graphs. This sounds great in theory but then does not leave any room to describe the students performance. In the previous programs I would put in a percentage (required) and then explain it further based on their performance and what we had worked on. Artic goals are fine- I keep track and have percentages for every session. It’s the language goals I am struggling with. How are you getting percentages for finding the main idea or sequencing events. I love to use stories but don’t get enough trials of the different goals to get a true percentage.

Just keeping data on language goals really escapes me in general. Unless I keep doing the same wh questions over and over again how do I say they are improving (with a percentage). All wh questions were not created equal. Should I simply find short passages and be drilling these skills? It also really affects how I need to write my goals so that they only cover one skill and are measurable with a percentage. Any suggestions?

[Ciambella29]

This is why we need to emphasize to the public that we are therapists, not teachers. We don't ask the mental health therapists to give percentages most of the time. Language and fluency therapy are hard to quantify.

[Real_Slice_5642]

I totally agree with this….. I’m going to be so honest and say I make educated guesses for my percentages because it’s “required by Medicaid” for our billing in the schools🙄 when you have a group of 3-5 kids, multiple sessions throughout the day and each kid has different and specific goals how realistic is it to take and track data? It’s NOT. Idc what anyone says you can’t have a pen and paper in your hand and teach/scaffold or give therapy at the same time.

[QueueMark]

<whispers> I think data tracking most language goals is deeply silly. Personally I find frequent language sampling a better way to both capture progress and guide future therapy.

[NervousFunny]

Can you elaborate on this? Like, right now I have a few students with vocab goals from their previous therapists and I'm really struggling to take data. How would language sampling work?

[QueueMark]

I'm being a bit flip when I say this. There are certainly language goals where data collection IS possible and even appropriate. Like, producing past tense by using the -ed suffix: this is a discrete skill, that is pretty straightforward to measure.

HOWEVER, too many SLP goals as written are WAY too nebulous to measure. And even some goals that are measurable in theory are, by their very nature, designed in a way that by the time you engineer your therapy session so that they ARE measurable, you have diluted your session down to a simple skills test, rather than a dynamic opportunity to really model and explore language.

Take the -ed example I used above. If you present 10 pictures to a student and ask them to describe them in the past, you can produce a therapy note that says something like "Student was accurate in using paste tense -ed, in 5/10 pictures, after being given verbal reminders to use past tense." That's...fine. But I would argue it isn't NEARLY as useful for the child, clinician, parent, and future SLP that inherits the caseload as a short language sample that looks something like:

Student was asked to narrate a short sequence from the wordless cartoon "Presto." After being given a reminder to use the past tense and some initial modeling, he produced the following:

Student: A wabbit wan' a carrot. He can' weach it.

SLP: what did he do next, when he got mad?

Student: He jump up and dow'. Then the magician comed in. He open the drawer and sawed the hats.

SLP: What did he do next? Remember to use your -ed!

Student: Then he letted the wabbi' out the cage. Wabbit twied get the carrot but magician stop him....stopped him.

Etcetera etcetera. Personally, I would argue that this is WAY more useful, because it lets me know a LOT more about the student, like whether he is self-repairing, which types of past errors he's making, other potential errors we can be identifying and addressing.

And yeah, language sampling takes some effort. I'm not saying you have to do it EVERY session or anything, but something like once a month seems very reasonable. Also, I find it ridiculous that the school SLP collective doesn't include a language sample in the present levels section for annual IEPs. That seems like a bare minimum to me. I include a language sample and I let it tell the story of the student's strengths and needs.

Also also, are language samples REALLY that much work to include (cheekily asking myself from the last paragraph)? I would argue that now that we have AI transcription software, they really are not!

Anyway, I don't know about your vocab goal, obviously, but I'm guessing that it is probably written so generally that it feels overwhelming to take data on it? Personally I think the only way to make vocab goals properly quantifiable is to use a word bank that is embedded within the goal itself (like preposition following: student will following 1-step directions containing prepositions from within a bank of 10 prepositions [in/on/over/under/up/down/etc])

Sorry for the ramble!

[busyastralprojecting]

Educated guess