How I Use Rubrics to Track Progress in Child-Led Speech Therapy
If you’ve ever sat down to write progress notes after a child-led therapy session and thought, “How am I supposed to document all the beautiful, messy, in-the-moment communication that just happened?” You’re not alone.
Traditional data collection-counting trials, scoring correct responses, or putting pluses and minuses down on a sticky note just doesn’t always fit in child-led, neuroaffirming sessions.
That’s where rubrics come in.
I use rubrics with most of my clients to track authentic progress, even when no two sessions look the same.
What is a rubric?
A rubric is a chart or table that tracks progress by assigning a numerical score to how much support a child needs to use a specific skill. For many of my clients, the rubric tracks progress with specific communication functions like requesting, protesting, or initiating interactions.
Each skill is scored on a scale, typically from 0 to 4, with higher scores meaning the child uses the skill more independently, and lower scores meaning they need more support.
The scores for each skill are added up, giving you a total score out of a set number (like 20), which helps track progress over time in a way that works with natural, child-led interactions, not just structured drills.
I typically fill out a rubric at the end of each session to depict how my client used their communication.
Why Rubrics Work in Child-Led Speech Therapy
Rubrics are flexible, functional, and neuroaffirming, because Instead of treating every communication moment as a pass/fail trial, rubrics allow you to document:
What kind of support the child needed to use a communication function.
How consistently they used that skill across different activities.
Whether they needed less support over time, showing real, meaningful progress.
This approach fits perfectly into child-led sessions, where the child’s interests and regulation guide the flow, because you’re capturing what naturally happens, instead of interrupting to run trials or contrive interactions for the sake of documenting data.
What a Rubric Actually Looks Like
Here’s a real example of a rubric-style goal I might use with an autistic child who needs to expand their communication functions:
Goal: When provided unlimited access to regulating sensory input, Client will use a variety of communication functions (initiating, requesting, protesting, and directing actions) in natural play and daily routines, to achieve a 16/20 on their communication rubric across 3 consecutive sessions.
Rubric Example:
What This Actually Tracks
This isn’t about counting how many times a child either does or doesn’t do something.
It’s about documenting:
How independently they used communication: did they do it on their own, or did they need support?
How much support they needed: a subtle pause vs. a direct model tells you a lot about where they are.
The range of communication functions they’re using across different activities — not just labeling objects or answering questions, but initiating, requesting, protesting, and directing.
This gives you a much richer, more complete picture of how their communication is developing, and that’s data you can actually use to write progress notes, update goals, and advocate for child-led therapy in IEP meetings.
Another reason I love rubrics is because they leave room for the human side of therapy. If we create goals that are very rigid, we may end up collecting data that makes it seem like a child is not progressing. For example, if the goal states that the child will make 5 requests during a session, what happens if the session didn’t offer opportunities to request? What if they communicated in a variety of other ways, which were more natural for the experience, but only requested twice?
Rubrics allow us to truly analyze progress flexibly, and some sessions they might use one communication function more than the others, and that’s okay. In fact, that’s a lot more natural and authentic.
How I Use Rubrics in Real Sessions
During the session, I’m not glued to a clipboard. I use a short observation block, maybe 5-10 minutes, where I’m actively collecting data and noting how the child communicates.
For the rest of the session, I’m fully in the moment, following their lead, modeling language, and co-regulating.
After the session, I can easily score the rubric based on what I observed, and that data is both flexible and functional. It fits the reality of child-led sessions, not some outdated idea of how therapy “should” look.
Also, I’ll let you in on a little secret…some sessions, I don’t collect data, and that’s okay. Some sessions, we’re introducing new models, supporting the acquisition of new skills, or teaching something….so data isn’t collected on the rubric! For those sessions, a qualitative session note is more effective as we can describe exactly what we did.
Why Rubrics Make Advocacy Easier
If you’re tired of justifying child-led therapy to admins, insurance companies, or IEP teams, rubrics are your best friend.
They show clear progress over time, even if the child’s language doesn’t follow a typical, linear path. They also demonstrate that meaningful communication isn’t just requesting or labeling.
When you can show how a child moves from needing full support to initiating on their own, you’re documenting something far more valuable than 80% accuracy on isolated tasks.
