Back to School Speech Therapy Goal Setting Build a Backpack SMART Goals Activity

Turn the first week of speech therapy into a meaningful goal-setting activity with an editable back to school resource that helps students understand and build their own SMART speech goals, one backpack-shaped page at a time.

Goal setting can feel abstract for students, especially when they are simply told what they are working on. This resource breaks the process into clear, student-friendly steps. Students work through each part of a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound), then cut out their finished pages, stack them behind the cover and staple them into a backpack they keep all year.

What’s included, in 4 versions:

• Level 1 (Guided): guided examples, checkboxes and simple sentence frames for younger students, with a cover, all 5 SMART letter pages and a complete-goal end page
• Level 2 (Open-Ended): open brainstorming space and longer sentence frames for extended thinking, with the same cover, 5 letter pages and complete-goal end page
• Black and white version: an ink-friendly version of every page that doubles as a coloring activity
• Digital Google Slides version: students type their answers on any device, and on page 2 they drag and drop colorful letters to spell their name on the backpack

Plus a sheet of colorful letters students can cut out and glue onto the printed cover to spell their name, and a step-by-step instruction guide with clickable links and a 5-minute quick-start plan.

Help students own their goals

Instead of a goal that only lives in the IEP, students name what they want to work on, decide how they will measure progress, check that the goal is a good challenge, connect it to their own life and pick a timeline. The final page pulls all 5 steps into one complete goal statement they can read out loud.

2 levels, 1 activity

Start younger students in Level 1, where guided examples and checkboxes do the heavy lifting. Move students up to Level 2 when they are ready to brainstorm on their own. Because both levels share the same structure, you can run mixed groups on the same activity at 2 different levels.

Ways to use this resource:

• Introduce speech therapy goals during the first week of school
• Turn dense IEP wording into student-friendly “I am working on ___” statements
• Practice self-advocacy by having students share their goal and what helps them
• Display finished backpacks as speech room decor that doubles as a goal reminder
• Send the finished backpack home so families know exactly what their child is working on
• Use the Google Slides version in teletherapy and build a goal together on screen
• Revisit the backpack all year to track progress against the goal

Start the school year with clearer goals, stronger student ownership and a backpack full of skills your students are ready to build.