It’s articulation assessment time! In the schools, it’s not just about the errors, but about how those sound errors are impacting the student in the classroom.
Standardized Articulation Assessment
I always give the GFTA-3 even though our eligibility is based more on overall intelligibility and impact anyways. I find that it’s nice to use something consistently throughout a student’s education to gauge progress!
Update Current Therapy Information for Reevaluations
Then, I always summarize current therapy info including data from sessions, stimulability info, previous sounds targeted, overall rate of progress, and motivation.
Articulation Impact in the Classroom
Next, I gather teacher input. I do this using Google forms that I’ve created or just by stopping by their room and asking them a few questions face to face. I ask things like “Are you able to understand them in the classroom?”, “Do peers ever have trouble understanding them?”, and “Do they seem self-conscious about their speech?”. This gives me a really good idea of whether or not their articulation/intelligibility impacts them in the classroom!
Text to Speech Sample
For most students, I do a quick voice to text articulation assessment because so many of my students use voice to text when doing longer writing assignments in class. I usually play a Pixar short video on YouTube and then have them retell the whole story using voice to text (on a Google doc). I video tape the whole thing so I can go back and see what was transcribed incorrectly. For a recent student I evaled, the software typed “bood” for “bird” which was super helpful when reporting on functional concerns for his /r/ sound!
Classroom Observations and Interview
I always do classroom observations AND a student interview to better understand how they participate in class, to ask them how they feel about speech, and again, to gauge motivation.
Intelligibility Ratings
Last, I do intelligibility ratings in a variety of settings. At minimum, I do them in a quiet, 1:1 setting and in the classroom!
Once we’ve identified those target sounds, make sure to check out my articulation visuals, activities, games, worksheets, and more!
Do you follow a similar protocol for your articulation assessment? Are sharing little systems like this helpful for you?!⠀
What does your intelligibility rating look like? Do you use a specific rating form or procedure?
Just a simple language sample, and find a percentage of intelligible words vs. total words. You can also do percentage consonants correct (PCC) (add up total consonants and total number of correct correct consonants and multiple by 100 to get a percentage.
I do it very similar except I’ve never done speech to text and I think that is a brilliant addition for articulation! Thank you for sharing.
Yes, your system is similar to mine. I do love your speech-to-text step. I will have to try that. Interviewing students are a valuable piece of the assessments for me.
Speech to text… GENIUS!