Speech and language during a school closure, Part 1: How to find your child's IEP speech goals

Many parents and caregivers worry that their child’s communication skills could plateau or even regress during a school closure. As a speech-language pathologist, I share your concerns.  My clients have worked hard to improve their articulation, master new vocabulary and grammatical forms, and develop their social communication skills. The last thing that any therapist or caregiver wants is to see these skills lost because a child is away from therapy for a few weeks or months. 

Today’s post will focus on school-age children and teens, but I’m aware that others are also being affected by clinic closures and cancelations of outpatient hospital services. Future blog posts will include strategies for supporting communication among those groups, so stay tuned!

So on to today’s post...

How to find your child’s speech and language goals

Today I will be helping parents of school-age kids to find the answer to the question:
​What are my child’s speech and language goals at school?

Some of you may already be aware of the specific goals your child was working on during speech and language sessions at school. But if it’s been a while since your last IEP and you can’t quite recall what the most recent goals were, don’t worry! Here’s what you can do:

1. Track down your child’s most recent IEP. If you don’t have a copy on hand, you could call/email your child’s therapist or your district’s special education office and they should be able to provide a copy. Older students might even be able to tell you what they have recently worked on during speech/language sessions. 
2. Find the “Goals” section of the IEP. There may be old goals in there, too, but that’s okay. You can find the current goals by their date. You’ll be looking for goals with a future date. For example, a current goal written in February 2020 would say “By February 2021, the student will…..”
3. If your child receives other services besides speech and language, those goals will be listed here, too. You’ll probably want to think about supporting your child in those goals, as well, but for the purposes of finding speech goals, you’re looking for goals with titles such as:

                              Communication
                              Speech/Articulation/Phonology
                              Language
                              Expressive/Receptive Language
                              Semantics
                              Syntax
                              Morphology
                              Pragmatics/Social Language
                              Fluency
                              Functional Communication/AAC
​
If you find a goal with a name that sounds like one of these, it’s most likely a speech-language goal!

Once you find your child’s current IEP goals, you are ready to start thinking about ways to help your child maintain their skills in those particular areas. My next post will give you some ideas for supporting your child in specific types of goals.