Facilitation Generalization: #5 Be Realistic!

One aspect of a speech language pathologist's job that is imperative to successful communication is facilitating generalization as many of our students/clients struggle with showing their classroom teachers or parents all the skills they have mastered for us in the therapy room.  This series of posts will focus on tips, that have worked for me, which can help you facilitate generalization of learned skills to new environments.

Step #5:  Be Realistic:

My final tip to facilitating generalization is to be realistic when you are asking staff or parents to use various techniques or cues to target speech and language goals.  Keep it simple.  Write down exactly what you want behavior you want them to encourage and be sure to have them focus on one task at a time.  It can be overwhelming for parents and nearly impossible for teachers to try to facilitate generalization for numerous skills but tackling one skill at a time is much easier and you have a great chance of parents or teachers having some time during their day to do so.

Provide visuals as needed.  For busy teachers or forgetful parents, try writing down the strategy or use a picture to visually remind them of the strategy they are using or the skill they are trying to facilitate.

Remember, if you are willing to help teachers with their goals, they will be willing to help you with yours.  So be a team player an ask them how you can help too!

Also remember to thank parents and staff members for their work in helping facilitate these skills to new environments.  A little acknowledgement can go a long way.

And that's it!  My five simple Steps to facilitating generalization.  If you've missed them you can begin here with Step #1.

Facilitating Generalization: #4 Be Specific!

One aspect of a speech language pathologist's job that is imperative to successful communication is facilitating generalization as many of our students/clients struggle with showing their classroom teachers or parents all the skills they have mastered for us in the therapy room.  This series of posts will focus on tips, that have worked for me, which can help you facilitate generalization of learned skills to new environments.

Step #4: Be Specific:

Praise and accolades can be as good as empty promises if we do not express the exact behaviors or skills we are positively reinforcing.  Sometimes we may need to rely on teacher or parent report to support various behaviors.  We are part of a team to support this child as a whole.  It doesn't matter if we are reinforcing a speech or language skill or another important life skill, our students must learn.  It's just important that we make our students feel supported, proud of their own actions and able to attempt to continue exhibiting them.

Remember to be very specific when giving feedback during therapy or when providing positive reinforcement.  The following are all statements I have actually used for students in the past (to honor confidentiality, names used are fictitious).  Sometimes you will have some great speech and language skills to support and sometimes, you just need to take what you can get.  See the silver lining and make your students' see it too!

For the student who is working on social skills:
"Johnny, I really like how you looked toward me and answered my question before you introduced a new topic!"

For the classic articulation case:
"Susan, I love to hear that /k/ sound at the ends of your words!  I can really understand what you are saying.  Thank you for helping me understand you."

For the student who needs some help controlling his own behavior:
"Mark, I know how hard it is for you to stay in math class.  But today, you made it through the whole class with only one break to the water fountain.  Boy your brain must have been working overtime!  I love your desire to learn!"

Remember always be supportive and be specific!  What confidence and pride we can give our students with a few simple words!

Click here is you missed Step #1, Step #2, Step #3.  Next week, I'll share my 5th and final tip!

Facilitating Generalization: #2 Share Goals AND Progress with Others!

One aspect of a speech language pathologist's job that is imperative to successful communication is facilitating generalization as many of our students/clients struggle with showing their classroom teachers or parents all the skills they have mastered for us in the therapy room.  This series of posts will focus on tips, that have worked for me, which can help you facilitate generalization of learned skills to new environments.

Step #2: Share goals and progress with others!

I know this tip also sounds obvious, yet I've been shocked over and over with the number of times I've participated in a transition meeting for an incoming preschooler whose SLPs, classroom teachers or special educators could not explain what the student was working on in speech.  I also am aware of the fact that many school districts require a snapshot IEP to be presented to classroom teachers at the beginning of the school year, but it has been my experience that the beginning of the school year is overwhelming for everyone and those snapshots go by the wayside often without a glance.  So a simple email or written reminder of the basic goals your student is working on with you will go a long way in helping the classroom teacher.

Remember your student's success is not placed solely on his/her shoulders but should be the shared responsibility of all staff and guardians involved.  So remember to share the students goals AND progress with classroom teachers, special educators, academic coaches, school social workers or psychologists and of course parents.  A simple email or paper reminder will do the trick.  When I worked in the schools, I would update teachers weekly on students progress mostly through quick classroom visits (a "drive by" so to speak) or emails.  However, there are times I needed to have something in writing for parents or other staff and a very basic update.  Some of the things I was sure to share were not just overall IEP goals but, if I needed to back track and create a short term goal to reach those IEP goals, I would be sure to share those and the techniques and methods that work best for this student. Very rarely did I have to ask a teacher or parent to follow through with using the techniques as just sharing them seemed to be enough of an invitation to support them using them.

Tip:  I also would ask teachers how I could help them reach their goals for students.  This is the best way I have found to collaborate (especially for older elementary and middle school students).  Once teachers knew I wanted to support them, they were also willing to support me!

That's Step #2 in a nutshell.  If you missed Step #1 click here.  Stay tuned for Step #3 next week.

Facilitating Generalization: #1 Know Your Goals!

One aspect of a speech language pathologist's job that is imperative to successful communication is facilitating generalization as many of our students/clients struggle with showing their classroom teachers or parents all the skills they have mastered for us in the therapy room.  This series of posts will focus on tips, that have worked for me, which can help you facilitate generalization of learned skills to new environments.

Step #1:  Know Your Goals:
I know this sounds like an obvious one but you'd be surprised how times I've asked my students at the end of a session responded to me with a blank stare when I've asked them "So what did you work on in speech therapy today?".  I knew it was time to implement a change, and goal review was just the thing I needed.

With that in mind, my first tip is to make sure both you AND your students know the speech/language goals they are working on.  When I worked in the schools I would use a lesson plan and I wrote the students goals for each student so I could demonstrate how the activity/lesson would relate to goals.  It was a daily reminder to keep me on target and to be sure to keep data on those goals every session.

It is extremely important that your student know what he/she is working on in speech. Be clear.  Be short.  Use mnemonics, gestures, pictures or whatever it takes to make your students remember what they are supposed to be working on. Simply reviewing goals quickly at the beginning of sessions will also facilitate deficit awareness, deficit identification and even deficit correction (with less and less cuing over time) which most of our students lack initially and continue to struggle with during the therapy process. In addition, as has been my personal experience, a child who knows what he worked on in speech will go home and tell his parents what he did in speech therapy.  What better way to provide reminders of speech goals for parents than to have the child do the reminding!

Here is a great sheet Speech Language Pirates created for the purpose of sharing daily progress with staff and family members.  It's short, concise and you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  You could even have your older students fill out their own.

The surprising thing I noticed about myself, when I implemented goal review at the beginning of a therapy session is that it streamlined my data collection.  What I began to do was pick only one or two goals to work on during a session.  This way I could hit those goals hard during that session and work on other goals in subsequent sessions.

Note: Sometimes I will take qualitative data on the goals I am not currently targeting to determine if there is generalization from one session to the next for my own personal information.

So that's it for Step #1.

Come back next week and I'll share Step #2.