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After covering paperwork, data collection, and progress reports, it’s time to wrap up our March podcast series and dive into one of Marisha’s very favorite topics…
How to Use Probe Data!
Before getting into the nitty gritty of this topic, it’s important that we make sure we’re on the same page when we say “probe data”:
A probe is a quick assessment that you administer in a session.
You can do a probe at any point, but Marisha tends to collect probe data at the beginning of the session. She also does the probe without offering any support so that she can get a clear assessment of how the student is able to perform on any given skill.
For example, if the student is working on articulation goals and targeting a specific sound, Marisha may administer a probe that involves giving the student five pictures with initial key words, then ask them to produce the words. She’ll take some notes about how the student performs, and then use that data during the session.
It’s worth noting that while doing the probe, Marisha holds off on offering support and feedback in the moment. This keeps the probes short and sweet so she can collect a couple of quick data points to inform her decision making over the course of the session — without taking up too much of the session time, or taking so long that the student gets bored or frustrated.
Remember: Use your clinical judgement. It’s a very important tool for SLPs!
We’ve talked about collecting probe data a few times on the SLP Now podcast, so if you want a refresher about the collection process be sure to check out this episode: SLP Data Collection 101 – Why Collect Probes.
In today’s episode, we’re going to focus on how to use the probe data you collect, how it can help you in your session, and how it can help you better support your students. 💪
Administer a quick probe at the beginning of the session to set yourself—and your students—up for success.
Let’s bring this to life with the articulation example mentioned above, using a student who is trying to produce a /k/ sound.
When assessing probe data, Marisha tends to split student performance into three categories.
If the probe is five questions, and the student is unable to produce the /k/ sound independently four or five times, it means the student is at less than 30% accuracy. We need to take a step back and teach the skill so that the student can consistently produce the sound.
Remember: It’s important to do more than one probe because it’s possible that the student was able to produce the sound by luck or chance instead of actual skill mastery. And if a student does actually score that low, they’re unable to produce any initial key or they only produce one key, then you need to do some shaping and teaching.
The same applies if you’re addressing categories or producing plural nouns; regardless of the skill, collecting probe data allows you to get a snapshot of where the student is—and the support they need to achieve their goals.
💡 We have a ton of previous episodes of the SLP Now Podcast about specific supports you can use to target different skills, so make sure you check out the archives to brush up on those skills!
If the student demonstrates some mastery of the skill—like they’re able to produce two or three initial key words, or they score 30 to 70% accuracy—it tells you that the student is starting to progress towards mastery of the skill, but they still need a little bit of support.
It may be helpful to review the skill again, but you likely don’t have to spend the entire session teaching because they’ve demonstrated a grasp of it. In this case, it’s reasonable to assume that with a little bit of review, they’ll be ready and able to practice this in context.
Then finally, the third subgroup: if the student is able to produce four or five out of five initial key words, then they’re starting to demonstrate mastery of that skill.
As the student approaches mastery, you want to give them as many opportunities as possible to practice that skill independently. That means you’ll spend less time teaching and trying to break the skill down—otherwise the student is likely to get bored!
⚠️ Remember: If we’re not in that zone of proximal development—the space between what a student is capable of doing unsupported, and what they cannot do even with support—we risk hindering their progress because we aren’t giving them the opportunity to practice the skill independently and demonstrate that mastery.
On the other hand, if we know that the student is at a lower accuracy, then we’re able to go in with the right level of support right off the bat and avoid that frustration.
Collecting probe data helps us find the sweet spot of where the student needs to start a session, which is why Marisha really likes to administer those probes at the beginning. It gives her valuable information about how to best support the student, which minimizes the student’s frustration if there isn’t enough support — or boredom if there is too much!
Of course, it’s important to consider the data within the session and continue adjusting as needed—but having this really quick data point at the beginning of the session really helps to set you up for success.
Even if you’re working with mixed groups, it’s super simple to collect probes efficiently… especially if you use SLP Now like we do!
We’re big fans of working smarter around here, whether it’s implementing routines to free up mental bandwidth, or using tools like SLP Now to make paperwork and data collection easy peasy.
Because Marisha’s students are familiar with her speech routine and know what to expect, it’s easy to move through probes quickly—especially if they have an activity to keep busy, like reviewing their goal cards!
During a session, Marisha rotates between the students in the group. She administers probes, jots down some data based on her observations, then uses the data to come up with a game plan for the session.
If they’re doing a literacy-based unit with one student at 0% accuracy, and another student at 80% accuracy with a different goal, they might start off the session with a quick review of the first student’s goal, followed by some teaching to give them the extra support they need.
Even if the teaching component isn’t directly related to a goal on every students’ IEP, it can be a really beneficial activity for everyone in the group because it’s a language rich with plenty of opportunities for generalization and pure modeling.
Then, Marisha will get into the more contextualized activity so the students can practice their skills independently or use them during the teaching activity.
For example: If one student has a goal to name items and categories, and another student has a goal to produce grammatically correct sentences, Marisha will break down categories for the first student, and give the second student an opportunity to produce sentences in the context of the same activity.
And of course, she loves having easy to grab visuals prepped and ready to go so that she can scaffold and offer support when needed. 🥰
That’s it for our overview of how to use probe data, especially when you’re working with mixed groups, and why it’s so beneficial to collect data at the beginning of the session.
Stay tuned for our next episode, because we’re going to switch gears from data collection to therapy planning—so you can see exactly how to target multiple goals in one session with literacy-based therapy. 👀
Links and Additional Resources
#174: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: How to Pick a Book
#175: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: Step 1 (Pre-Story Knowledge) and Step 2 (Reading)
#176: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: Step 3 (Post-Story Comprehension)
#177: Literacy-Based Therapy Bootcamp: Step 4 (Focused Skill Activities)
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Transcript
00:00 Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.
00:19 Hello there, and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I'm really excited to dive into one of my very favorite topics, and that is how to use probe data. And so just a quick refresher and just the terminology, making sure we're on the same page. A probe is a quick assessment that you administer in a session. I personally do this at the beginning of the session, but it's without any support, and it's just seeing how the student is able to perform on any given skill. So, for example, at the beginning of a session, if a student is working on articulation goals and they're working on the k sound, I might administer a probe where I give the student five pictures with initial k words, and I ask them to produce those words, and I don't give any support.
01:20 I just jot down how the student performs, and that gives me some really helpful data to use within the session. So two of the factors here are that I don't give the student support. I just want to see how they do independently, and I also don't give any feedback. And that's why I like to keep the probes short and sweet, very quick and to the point. Just get a couple of quick data points, enough of a sample to help me make some decision making, but not too much where it takes up a huge chunk of the session. The student gets bored, frustrated, et cetera. So that's what that looks like. And we've talked about this a lot throughout the podcast, but today I wanted to just talk a little bit about how to use that data and how it can help you in your session and how it can help you better support your students. So, like I said, I like to administer that quick probe right at the beginning of the session, and it gives me information that I can use to set myself and the student up for success within the session. So if we go back to that initial k example, if the student really struggles, and you'll come up with your own kind of guidelines over time, and you'll use your clinical judgment, it might vary based on the student, based on the goal. There's all sorts of factors that you can use, but I'm just going to give you some rough examples. So for the purposes of this illustration, I split student performance kind of into three categories. So if the student misses, like, if we're doing five questions.
03:06 If the student misses four or five of these questions, or maybe between zero to 20 or zero to 30% accuracy, if you have more stimulus items, then I know that I need to take a step back and teach the skill because the student is not producing k independently, and maybe the one that they produce was just by luck and not a true representation of actual mastery, and maybe they're beginning to master the skill and that happened to be a facilitative context, and we can use that information as well. So if the student scores that low, like if they aren't able to produce any initial k, or if they produce one initial K, I know that I need to take a major step back and we're going to do some shaping and teaching.
03:58 And if instead of articulation, I was looking at naming items in categories or producing regular plural nouns, the same applies regardless of the skill. I'm just going to take a step back and make sure that I do some teaching and do some really structured practice in just meeting the student where they're at. And we have lots of previous episodes about specific supports that you can use for different types of goals. So I would reference those when it comes to figuring out how to teach those skills and break things down. Then if the student demonstrates some mastery of the skill, so maybe if they're able to produce two or three initial k words, or if they score 40 to 60 or 30% to 70% accuracy. Again, these are very rough numbers, and it kind of depends on how many items you give the student.
04:54
But that's telling me that the student is starting to master the skill, but they need a little bit of support. They're not quite at mastery, and we need to continue, maybe review the skill.
05:09
And back up a little bit, but.
05:13
We don't need to spend the whole session teaching. They're already demonstrating some of that mastery. So it's reasonable to assume that with a little bit of quick review, they'll be ready to practice this in context. And then the third kind of subgroup is if the student is able to produce four out of five or all five initial k words, then they're starting to demonstrate mastery of that skill. And I want to give the student as many opportunities as possible to practice that skill independently. If I spend a ton of time teaching and trying to break things down, the student already has demonstrated mastery of it, then they'll be really bored. And we're also not in that zone of proximal development. We're hindering that student's progress because we're not giving them the opportunity to practice the skill independently and really demonstrate that mastery and context.
06:15 And on the other hand, if we know that the student is at a lower accuracy, then we're able to go in with the right level of support right off the bat and avoid that frustration. So it really helps us find the sweet spot for where the student needs to start in a session. So this is why I really like to administer those probes right at the beginning of the session. It tells me how I can best support the student. It helps me minimize frustration by making sure that I'm providing enough support, and it also minimizes boredom by helping me make sure that I'm not providing too much support. And of course, I'm going to consider the data within the session to continue adjusting. But having this really quick data point at the beginning of the session really helps set me up for success.
07:11 And I just alternate between. If I have a group of three students, I'll pull up the probes super efficiently.
07:20 SLP Now makes that really easy, but then I'll just rotate between the students. They know the routine, they know what the expectations are. The probes move very quickly and they have a quick activity to keep them busy. That activity, more often than not, is reviewing all of their goals. So they have goal cards that they'll go through. But, yeah, so I'll just alternate between or rotate between the three students, or however many students are in the group, and then I collect the data and use that to come up with a game plan for the session. So if one student is at 0% accuracy and then another student is at 80% accuracy with a different goal, and we're doing a literacy based unit, we might start off the session with a quick review of the other student's goal and do some teaching.
08:16 And these are all, they'll all be language rich activities. So there's still opportunities for generalization, and there's also opportunities for peer modeling.
08:26 Even if that it's not a goal.
08:30 On every student's IEP, it can still be a really beneficial activity. So I may spend some time teaching that one goal, and then when we get to the more contextualized activity for the day, then this other student will have the opportunity to really practice their skill independently, and they can even use it independently during the teaching activity. So if one student has the goal to name items in categories, student A's goal is to name items in categories, and student B has a goal to produce grammatically correct sentences. When I'm teaching the categories and breaking that down for the student. Student B still has the opportunity to produce sentences because it's language rich and there are going to be opportunities to target all of these skills throughout a variety of activities.
09:31 And yeah, I like to have visuals ready to go so that it is easy to scaffold and support when needed, and it's easy to keep track of which goal we're focusing on within any activity. So yeah, that is an overview of how I use probe data, especially in terms of mixed groups and the rationale for collecting data at the beginning of the session, how I analyze the students performance and what decisions I make in the session based on that. So hopefully that was helpful.
10:05 Overview thanks for listening to the SLP now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your SLP friends. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episodes sent directly to you.
10:19 See you next time!
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