
The goals, therapy ideas, resources, and content on my website are just examples and should be modified to fit your specific client’s goals, needs, family desires, and your clinic expertise.
The goals, therapy ideas, information, and content on both my website and in my resources only represent a very small portion of the goals you might target in speech and language therapy.
They are heavily biased by the types of workplaces I’ve personally worked in, my personal background, and my interests in the field of SLP.
In addition, you need to follow the guidelines, laws, and rules of your facility, your state, and all federal rules when writing goals of your own.
See goal bankHere’s a few other thoughts of mine related to goal writing… ⬇️
Goals, goals, goals! There’s a lot to think about when it comes to writing speech and language therapy goals. I share examples of different goals in the goal bank and skill sections throughout my website.
The general structure I follow for writing goals is:
- Given ___________ (supports)
- when ____________ (conditions, activity)
- NAME will ____________ (skill)
- ______________ (measurement – with % accuracy, in #/# opportunities, # of times in a 20 minute session, across # of sessions, etc…)
Your facility might require additional components including baseline data, etc..
Of course, all of the above variables can and should be adjusted for each student’s needs, baseline skills, preferred supports, and historical rate of progress/learning.
And avoid writing too many goals at any given time. Here’s why I’m always advocating for writing fewer goals:

Let’s say you have 4 students in a group. Each student has 4 language goals and they are all slightly different.
Honestly, this isn’t even the most challenging group you’ll have in your career… am I right??
So, you’re balancing 16 goals per school year for that specific group. Now, let’s assume you’re seeing them twice a week and that a school year is 40 weeks long.
That means you’ll see that group 80 times during a school year. We all know this is the real world and students are often sick, they go on field trips, and you know, you might be in a meeting once and a while. But… let’s just go with 80.
If you divide 80 (sessions per year) by 16 (goals per group), you get….. FIVE.
I personally think for many of the students we work with, expecting major progress on difficult skills that require our expertise in only (a max of) FIVE sessions a school year sessions is just setting yourself up for disappointment, frustration, and exhaustion.
And for me personally, providing direct teaching and support on 4 different goals during a 20-30 minute session with 4 students with differing needs sounds equally as challenging.
Writing fewer goals allows you to find the specific place where a breakdown is occurring (for me, it’s often with vocabulary, syntax, or morphology) and target it directly.
For tons of goal ideas and incredible tools for data tracking and progress monitoring, I’d highly recommend SLP Toolkit. I’m not an affiliate or anything – just a big fan of the tool and Sarah and Lisa, the SLPs behind it.
To see more goal ideas for speech and language therapy, check out my FREE GOAL BANK!
And to read more about goal writing, data collection, or progress monitoring, click here.
Hope these thoughts on goals are helpful!