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I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about using rubrics in speech therapy. How exactly do I make it work? Well, today I am sharing my secrets with you! I guess if I’m sharing them, I can’t really call them secrets anymore. 😉 Nevertheless, here are my tips for using rubrics in speech therapy to track data and show progress.

how to use rubrics in speech therapy the speech bubble slp

You may be familiar with my Social Language and Pragmatic Rubrics and/or my Language Rubrics. These are the ones that I use to collect data on students, but I feel this advice could be used for most rubrics.

Who Do I Use rubrics With?

I use rubrics to collect data on students with that hard to quantify social language/skill goals, students who are working on carry-over or maintence of skills, and students who I push into their classroom.

What Do I Do With Them?

For students working on social language/skills:

I keep a bin of my kid’s rubrics next to my table. After we finish our session, I take out their rubric and immediately mark down the day’s data. This takes a whole five seconds. I write the number that corresponds to the correct percentage range, make any relevant notes, and plot their day on the graph.

For students working on carry-over or maintenance (language, articulation, fluency, social skills, etc.):

These are typically my students with consult minutes or low direct minutes. After I work with them, I speak with their teacher. These students will have two rubrics. I record my data on one and the teacher’s impression on the other. This helps me see whether they’re bringing the skills they are using with me into the classroom, or whether they may need some reminders, reteaching, etc.

For students whose classes I push into:

I bring their rubrics with me to their room. After we finish our session, I mark my data.

how to use rubrics in speech therapy example rubric the speech bubble slp

*Tip: I like to use a different color pen each time I record data. Personally, it helps me find the information fast on the sheet. Bonus, your graph is really pretty. I like to use Papermate Flair pens.

The short version is, I use rubrics in speech therapy to record data quickly and effectively.

It also gives me a number to reference. Each rubric value has a description and percentage range that it relates to. I feel a lot of people like the description but understand a percentage better, especially parents. Plus, the graph on the rubric provides a nice visual to keep everything in perspective.

If you are interested in the rubrics I mentioned in the beginning of the post, you can check them out and read what other people think about them at my TpT store.
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Meet Maureen

Hey there! I’m Maureen Wilson, a school-base SLP who is data driven and caffeine powered. My passion is supporting other pediatric SLPs by teaching them how to harness the power of literacy and data to help their students achieve their goals…without sacrificing time they don’t have.

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21 Responses

  1. Too funny; I use different colors and flairs also. Especially at progress report writing time. I have your social-pragmatic rubrics, but think I should get the language set as well!

    1. Hi, I’m just curious to how you would graph a child’s progress for a particular session if he/she had different prompting for one objective during a session?
      Thanks!!

      1. During sessions I am typically focusing on one objective per student due to my time parameters. When it comes to assigned the child a rating for the day to graph, I reflect back on A) how much prompting over all was needed, B) what type was used the most ( visual/verbal ) and C) how accurate were they with the support. Then I look at the rating scale for that goal and see what aligns the best with the amount of support for that session. Once I assign a rating for that day, I graph it on the chart. If you are working on different objectives in one session then you would have different rubrics, one per objective is how I like to do it. I hope I answered your question! If not drop me an email and we can discuss it further 🙂

  2. Just curious, would you post a blank template to purchase on TPT? I am an OT and would like to make forms for OT skills. Thanks for considering.

    1. Hi Chris,
      Thanks for the great suggestion. Let me play around with how I can make this more functional for other specialists and hopefully I can create something beyond just a template for you 🙂

  3. Hi Maureen,

    Could you give me an example of what a goal would look like when you use a rubric to measure? Are you giving the percentage range within the goal (80-100% mastery) or listing a number (4 out of 5 on the xxx rubric)?

    1. I would recommend a not doing a trial measure as it would be more difficult with a rubric. I write my goals with a percentage and list rubric as method of data collection in out IEP system. You enter a range in your goal if you do not have the option to list a data collection or simply add the phrase ‘or better’ after your minimum percentage for mastery. The ‘or better’ implies a range. So here are some examples for an annual or long term goal: ” By February of 2018, Susy will make progress towards improving her receptive language skills by following directions with 80% accuracy or better and no more than two verbal or visual prompts/cues from the clinician. ” or ” By February of 2018, Susy will make progress towards improving her receptive language skills by following directions with 80% accuracy or better as determined by a rubric measure and no more than two verbal or visual prompts/cues from the clinician. “

      1. Could you give an example of a social language rubric goal? I’m having trouble wording a goal to be measure by these rubrics.

          1. In the rubrics on TpT I have included a free e-book all about how to write your own rubrics and goals for rubrics 🙂 Basically you want your criteria for the rubric to match the goal, ie. not have them reach 80% but ‘will achieve a rating of 4 for three consecutive scoring sessions etc

          1. In the rubrics on TpT I have included a free e-book all about how to write your own rubrics and goals for rubrics 🙂 Basically you want your criteria for the rubric to match the goal, ie. not have them reach 80% but ‘will achieve a rating of 4 for three consecutive scoring sessions etc

  4. I purchased your language rubrics and social language rubrics from TpT. You mentioned that there were rubrics for articulation, but I am not seeing them.

    1. Hi Marcie,

      The ARTICULATION rubric is in the Language set as a bonus. It is a general articulation one but if you need something more specific you can always use the editable one.

  5. I am very new with rubrics and have been doing research on using these instead of traditional data collection and progress monitoring. Would the annual goal be the number 4 and then the scaffolding numbers 1, 2 and 3 be the objectives for that goal?

    Trying to figure out how to write goals for these rubrics and what the objectives would look like.

  6. Is rubric scoring available on SWIVEL? I’m looking into a data collection program and like the simplistic of SWIVEL.

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