Killing Two Birds with One Stone

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There has been a lot of talk lately in the SLP world about how to do "mixed therapy": therapy when you have artic, language, and fluency students in the same group. It takes some getting used to, but it can be done. After you do it for a while, it will come naturally to you and you should have no big problems. But that's not what this post is about.
Just as you have to tap into your creativity to work with mixed groups, you can work with more than one objective with your language students. Very often, it happens by accident with me. I don't have plans to work on a couple of objectives during an activity, it just happens. Those "aha moments" are quite inspiring.

Be familiar with your students' objectives

Obviously, it's very important to know what each student's objectives are. It's okay to have it written in front of you to refer back to. If a student has 10 objectives, you definitely will want to have them written down, but the issue of 10 objectives will be saved for another day. Refer to those objectives often, daily if necessary. That will make working seamlessly on more than 1 objective a lot easier.

Don't force it

Now that you have your students' objectives in your head, it's time to get to work. It's important not to force it. Be natural with the mesh of objectives. If the objectives aren't remotely related, don't attempt to work on them at the same time. You can work on one objective at a time.

Some examples

The other day I was working with a student on beginning inferences. She read a passage and identified the keywords. As she was doing that, it occurred to me that she was working on describing at the same time. So, I pulled down my "Desi" (the name for my EET beads), reviewed them with her, and pulled in her describing objective with the inferencing. 

Thanks to The Speech Owl for her No Print Receptive and Expressive Language-Winter Edition

With my students who are working on "wh" questions and yes/no questions, it's pretty simple. Just turn the "wh" question into a yes/no question, and you have it! For example: If you're reading a story and you ask "Where did Steve go?" following the answer, you could ask "Did Steve go to the store?" You can ask for verification of how he/she answered with the yes/no question. Or, if the student has difficulty answering the "wh" question, turn it into a yes/no question then ask the "wh" question again. 

Those are just 2 ways to pull in more than one objective. The main thing is to become familiar with your students' objectives. From then on, it's a piece of cake!