Grad School: Progress Report Tips

In my clinic,  we are in the process of wrapping up our clients’ progress reports. Writing a quality progress report is so reliant on the organized and efficient data collection that you have completed throughout the last semester. Here is an outline of how my reports have been organized over the last two clinic semesters. All supervisors want different information, of course, but this general outline provides some guidance of what information should be included.

Background information. Describe the client in terms of their diagnosis. Include data from the most recent evaluations and assessments, the most recent IEP and any relevant school reports. Also include parent or caregiver information that might be helpful.

Observations of client’s behavior. Describe the client in terms of their rapport with the clinician, how responsive they are to feedback (and what type of feedback is most helpful for them), and how resistive they are to completing tasks. You can also discuss any social behaviors or observations, unusual behaviors, or anything that supports their background info, such as behaviors consistent with their diagnosis.

Initial assessment. If you have assessed the client using a formal evaluation tool, describe that here. Give the baseline data for this assessment. If you are not using a formal assessment, just provide baseline data on your informal assessment. If you want to include a recent evaluation or diagnostic report, reference the data of that report and briefly summarize the results.

Treatment approach. Discuss the research based intervention approach that you focused your treatment on. For example, a traditional articulation therapy, the Cycles approach for phonological processing disorders, or the SCERTS program for autism.

 

Progress.  List your goals and objectives here. Summarize the procedures you used to address each objective. Also discuss how you collected and organized your data for each session and how you organized the baseline and new data for the semester. Finally, state whether the client has met or not met their goals and why. You may want to state that if the goal has not been met, the client’s goal is still in progress. This provides and opening for the next clinician to continue treatment if the progress shows an improvement, and it provides a nice segue into the recommendations section of your report.

Home program. Did you provide the client or their caregiver any specific home training or carryover tasks? List them here. It might be a good idea to discuss whether or not the carryover program was successful (i.e., did you see improvement on weeks when the client practiced at home?). Also include any caregiver feedback about the types of home programming that the client was most responsive to and that fit best into their daily schedule.

Final assessment. This is where you can list any post-treatment assessment data, the dates of the formal testing, and the names of the test(s).

Current impressions and status. In this section, start by stating the current diagnosis and severity. Here you want to talk about additional behavioral observations that you have noticed over the treatment term. You can list things such as the client’s developmental expectations, strengths, challenges in therapy, home issues, academic and social functioning, and any other factors that are impeding or facilitating progress. End this section by discussing your thoughts on the client’s prognosis for improvement, based on treatment progress, family or home support, the age of the client, their attendance in therapy, and their motivation for improvement.

Recommendations. In this section, you can list where the client’s treatment may continue over the next treatment term or semester. Should the client’s treatment continue? If so, how often? A list of targets that the next clinician can focus on would also be helpful. Write this section as though you do not know who the next clinician or therapist is, because the client may not continue to receive therapy in the same location.

In my recommendations section, I also included any tips I thought might be helpful for the child’s caregivers to facilitate their goals at home. I based these tips on things that I noticed worked for the client in our therapy sessions, such as using a pointer finger when reading, or offering to help sound out the initial phoneme of unfamiliar words.

Happy writing!

Free Download - Initial /sh/ Articulation Story

Stories that you can create with your articulation target in mind can help a child stay on track with their speech. More unstructured activities, such as free play, can help when trying to elicit certain sounds, but lack the visual aspect of written words and images. For younger children who are just learning to recognize words in print, this can be especially important.

Here's a short story I created for working on the initial /sh/ sound in one and two-syllable words.

 

 

You can download it free at my Tpt store here!

Free Download - Back to School Articulation Story using Final /s/

Going back to school can be fun!

Children are still getting back into the swing of school after a long summer. Here is a simple, short story for young readers that targets /s/ in the final position in both one and two-syllable words.

I created this piece for my pre-first grade client who was working on correcting a lateralized /s/ and beginning to read, with some direction.

Page 1

A short story should be targeted in traditional articulation therapy when the child has mastered the sound at the isolation, syllable, word and sentence level. It can be a fun home carryover task as well. Sometimes I would use the story sentences and have him cut out images to match with the target word. You would need to have the images separate in order to do that.

Page 2

I listed the target words at the bottom of the story for easier identification and scoring purposes.

Download the FREE two-page final /s/ articulation story for back to school in my TpT store here.

Enjoy!

My First Experience as a Speech Clinician

This summer I had my first three speech clinic clients at my university's speech clinic. We had a 10-week session where I worked with children with articulation problems and phonological disorders. Here are just a few of the things I'd like to share about what I learned.

1. Allow much more time for scoring, double-checking, and thoughtfully evaluating language tests. I administered my first evaluation (the Hodson Assessment of Phonological Patterns) this semester to a school-aged child. The test itself is very hands-on, almost fun to administer. I did find it more difficult than I thought to be able to transcribe it as I was administering it. All the things I learned a year ago in Phonetics came flooding back as I read the test manual, however. Suddenly I was transcribing a mile a minute, looking for patterns, admiring my diphthongs, and making notes in my notebook about missing phonemes. I first used a "test" page and then fully transcribed the final information in the formal scoring paperwork. It took me several days to then add up all the instances of specific phonological patterns, and then, to make recommendations for therapy based on the results.
2. Always know what’s in that materials closet in your clinic. I did look through the games, cards, and activities before my clinics began and had a general idea of what it contained. But I purchased much more "stuff" than I ended up using. I can only attribute that to being excited and wanting my clients to like me. Many of my friends in the program who are further along have told me that they created their own materials closet at home to be able to use in the future.
3. Ask prior clinicians about their experience with the client. I discovered some great ideas from them and gained insight I wouldn’t have otherwise. I also learned some of the games that children in specific age ranges enjoyed most. But give the child a new experience with your clinic – I felt like I had other things to offer, and I wanted to switch up the therapy styles a bit, too.
4. When it comes to parent conferences and meetings, keep it brief and simple. My clinic supervisor told me that parents often get lost when their clinician is rattling off percentages and scores. Basically, they want to be assured that you know what you’re doing, that their child is well-liked, and that their child is making gains with your intervention. Focusing on the children’s positive gains and giving the parents simple ideas for home carryover, including websites, games and word lists, worked best for me. Parents seem to want to help, and they put their trust in us, so don’t let them scare you away from showing what you’ve learned in all those courses you worked so hard in completing.
5. Share your clinic experiences with others in the graduate program. Many of my friends have children of their own and were wonderful sources of information about basic behavior and learning styles.
6. Your supervisor is there to help you! Ask for help early on if things get tough. Your success means they are doing something right. They have years of experience doing what they do, and they’ve all been where we are and remember how difficult it can be. My supervisor encouraged me to explore the Teachers Pay Teachers site and I opened my Tpt store this summer.

 

I’ve just purchased the materials for my fall courses and am awaiting information on my new clinic this semester. I’m hoping to streamline this year with a smaller clinic notebook and an accordion file for important paperwork, for which I can assign a client to each file. Last semester I used individual folders which worked well, and the children enjoyed "decorating" them with stickers. But by the end of the summer the folders were full and falling apart. Maybe it’s time to try the accordion file method.
It’s my first week of fall clinic this week…..I’m excited to see who I will be working with!