Just here for the quick lesson plans? Don’t worry, I’ve got a free lesson plan template for speech therapy for ya at the bottom of the post! But if you want my best secrets for keeping up with those lesson plans, read on.
The other day I left a question box on my Instagram and asked what things were most frustrating about working in the school system. I got TONS of responses, but ya know what most people said? Most people hated having a large caseload and not being able to individualize therapy.
A large caseload equals a large amount of paperwork that goes with each student. It’s hard to think about how to individualize therapy when we can barely keep our heads about water. Lesson planning? Forget it. Who’s got time for that?
I’ll submit to you three reasons why lesson planning can be beneficial for your students AND you.
- Planning ahead will cause you to think about your students’ individual needs.
- It will make your therapy sessions run a million times more smoothly.
- You’ll actually have more time for paperwork in the long run. Yep.
What if there was a quick way to lesson plan for speech therapy sessions that didn’t take away hours of your precious paperwork time? I got you.
Here’s the secret…quick planning. That’s it? Lemme show you how. I don’t make detailed plans for every single student on my caseload. I’ve learned to make my plans general enough that I can adapt most of my student goals to my plans.
Plan once and use it year after year
Have a yearly plan, monthly plan, and/or weekly plan. No, it doesn’t have to be a lot. Use the tips and template on this post to plan your themes for the year. Then, use those themes to come up with month-at-a-glance plans. You can do this month by month or do several months at a time. If you need a jump start, grab my monthly plans for free in my resource library!
Once you have those done, they’re done! You can use the lesson plans year after year.
Break it down by activity type for easy grabbing
For the weekly plans, take the month’s activities and jot down which activities you’ll use for the different categories of goals you have, like articulation, language, fluency, etc. This will make it quick and easy to grab what you need before each session. Again, once you have these, you can refer back to them year after year.
Jot next week’s plans during sessions
The weekly plans do not have to be detailed or involved. During my sessions each week, I may take a few notes on an activity that students’ request, an idea that pops up, or something I think an individual student may need. This will help the sessions to be a bit more tailored to the students and would incorporate activities that would help them make progress.
Use it as a quick reference for ideas
Note: I don’t always write specific weekly plans. If you’re really pressed for time, you could use only the monthly plans as a quick reference for therapy ideas. This way, you’d grab what you need based on each week inside that month’s plans. No weekly plans needed.
Clickable links
It’s super helpful if you make your plans digitally and have clickable links to later easily see the resources or activities to which you’re referring. See my monthly plan download for an example.
By having plans ready, you won’t have to scramble around and waste time during the day to figure out what you’re doing. You may even save a little extra time for your other million tasks.
Now, you need a free lesson plan template for speech therapy sessions, right? Here ya go! These include monthly plans, weekly plans, and to-do lists! Hit the button below to download.
Thank you