Winter Data Collection

A gripe of many school SLPs is how (and when) to collect data on students who are working on language goals.  This seems to be a hot topic, one that I have struggled with too.  So I came up with this plan over winter break and tested it out last week.  I think I may have figured out something that…works.  What?  I know.  It's amazing.

I'm pretty excited about this product cause it something different than I have ever done.  Over break I sat down and gathered the types of goals I need data for and set out to create a data collection unit to cover them all.  I came up with a basic guideline, then thought, what exactly are the kids going to do while I am collecting all this data…enter my favorite kind of therapy activity:

Snowman Craftivity!  The packet includes all of the templates for your students to make one of these cute little snowmen!

There are two data collection forms, the first one (above) is tied to the craftivity.  It targets following directions (putting the snowman together), describing, WH questions, vocabulary, categories, functions, compare/contrast, synonyms, and antonyms.  It is two pages long, I copied them double sided so each student had their own page.  I didn't necessarily use each section for each student…I used what I needed for each student.  And sometimes, I just used a master copy, then took data on the students' individual data sheets.

Not interested in completing the craftivity?  That's ok too!  I created just a winter themed data collection page with targets for categories, functions, compare/contrast, synonyms, antonyms, sentence construction, describing, WH questions, and following directions.   With some of my older students (3-5), I just gave them the worksheet and said “Go to town!” and they filled it out themselves (with some guidance and reading of prompts).  For others, we did it orally.

I have tons of students working on sequencing skills and grammar, so I added a couple of activities that I could use of them to tell a sequence.  For some, I used the “How to Build A Snowman” page after they completed the craftivity for them to retell the sequence.  You can target sentence structure, vocabulary, and sequencing here.

I added another sequencing page to look at how they are able to produce sequences of activities they have seen or done before, but not during our sessions.

And of course, Story Retell because this is a super popular goal.  I used the book “Just A Snowman” by Mercer Mayer this week, which goes great with all of these activities.  We read the story, then they used this page to retell it.  I looked for beginning, middle, and end, transition words, story grammar, sentence structure, transitions, and vocabulary.  That story also works really well with the sequencing pages, since they do both activities in the story!

For some that I used the Snowman Data Collection paired with the craftivity, I used the sequencing as a teaching lesson and we did it together.  It was great!

Overall, this packet was a huge success for me, super versatile, and I got tons of great information about my students' current levels with various objectives.  I hope that you will find it just as useful!  Definitely expect more of these from me!

You can check it out in my TPT Store!

Let me know what you think!  Do you struggle with data collection too?