Why Use Rubrics to Measure Communication Goals?

How do you generate and measure communication goals for your students? If speech-language pathologists need to focus on a communication area with black-and-white criteria such as articulation—correct versus incorrect production of a target sound, for example—we usually find it simple to generate goals and measure results. But what about goals for communication areas in gray areas, such as those for pragmatic language skills? Try rubrics as one option to set and measure social language goals. Instead of measuring a skill with a correct/incorrect scoring criterion, rubrics let us describe skills in a more holistic and natural context. In addition, rubrics offer the chance to incorporate quantitative and qualitative data, including: Frequency of skill: Determination of the number of times the skill was used correctly. Hierarchy of skill development: Task analysis identifying the intermediate steps needed to achieve the skill. Level of support: Cues needed for successful demonstration of the skill. Setting: Where the skill successfully gets used. Traditionally, SLPs write goals measurable by data alone. For example: “Mia will independently initiate a conversation on four out of five opportunities as measured by SLP data over the last five opportunities of the grading period.” When developing and using rubrics, we write a goal measured by the rubric’s criteria. For example: “Mia will start a conversation with a peer scoring 14 out of 16 on an ‘Init...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Language Disorders Schools social skils Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs