Welcome to the last day of my Back to School with Speech Therapy series. The past five days has included a few tips on how I survive that first week back as I plan for students. Today, I’m focusing on Back to School with Speech Therapy: Therapy Planning.
Once the school year is in full-swing, you’ll inevitably have days where you’re struggling to keep up those promises you made to yourself over the summer about staying organizing and planning ahead. There are weeks where I’m on top of planning and weeks where I’m just winging it. I believe being a master of both is crucial to your success as a school-based SLP!
No Lesson Plans for Me
Unlike some other SLPs in my county, I’m not required to turn in lesson plans. This is great news for me, but others may prefer turning them in. The truth is, I do “theme or concept planning,” but not as much “this is exactly what we’re going to do today” planning. I enjoy the freedom of changing my mind last minute or occasionally asking the kids what they want to do. Plus, there are days when we scratch everything I had planned for a more important “teachable moment” that arose on the way back to the therapy room!
Preparing for the Inevitable
When I supervise graduate students, I start them off by giving them my themed calendar and letting them pick and choose activities that go with that theme. But about midway through the semester, I think it’s important to have them NOT plan every single part of the lesson ahead of time. I want them to get used to switching gears if a lesson isn’t going as planned or pulling activities last minute because something more important came up. I want my grad students to learn flexibility. Whether they decide one day to plan out every activity or they choose to just have their targets in mind with flexibility in their activities, I want them to feel confident when the time comes that things don’t go as planned, or they take a job somewhere with zero materials, or their student(s) refuse to play that game because it’s too loud. Because there is no doubt that those times will come.
But Know Your Targets
My planning and the exactness of it depends on lots of things. The group, the day, the goals, the kids’ behavior, and at times, my energy level are all deciding factors. I always know ahead of time the goals we are going to address, though. Just the way I address them is not always written down ahead of time. This works for me. However, I know a lot of SLPs (I used to be one of them) that like to write everything down. And that’s ok too. As SLPs, we have to be flexible when things come up. But if it makes you feel better to plan it all, go for it. You do you!
Themed-Based Therapy
At the beginning of the school year, I go through our school calendar and plan out my themes for the year. Some themes take longer than others, so I spend 2-3 weeks on those. I plan my themes around holidays, special school-wide functions, and seasons. Then, I fill in empty weeks with other themes that go along with what the students are learning in the classroom.
I often lead circle times for my preschool and Pre-K groups. I pick a book and activity that matches the theme they are currently on. The Pre-K teachers and I often collaborate on our plans, which makes it very easy. I tailor the activities to the goals my kiddos have. For the older grades, I still use a lot of literacy and language-based activities, even for articulation and fluency. I’ve found that even my 4th and 5th grade students love learning about the themes.
What’s Most Important:
Whether you like to plan everything out or not, the most important thing is that you are working on their goals and tailoring the lessons to meet their needs and abilities. If everything doesn’t go just as planned, I’ve learned it’s ok. The kids rarely notice!
Back to School with Speech Therapy: Student Folders
