Ever notice how kids of every age AND adults tend to love a good routine? Routines offer predictability, clear expectations and make everything run more smoothly. What’s not to love?
I wish someone had shared this wisdom with me back when I first started working as an SLP.
With that in mind, today I’m sharing my 3 favorite speech therapy routines that YOU can use with your students this school year!
1. Use Exit Slips
What are exit slips, you ask? This routine is quite simple, yet it is supported by research! (Cross, 1998).
This routine occurs at the end of every session:
- Write questions on single strips of paper (or have these exit slips printed and ready to go)
- Ask students to take a slip and answer the question before they leave (or exit!)
Exit slips are terrific for reinforcing what you’ve worked on, adding a quick and easy assessment and facilitating carryover!
(You can read all the things about using exit slips in speech therapy here!)
2. Use Graphic Organizers the First Week!
You may have your goals organized and ready but do you have specific speech and language word lists ready?
Why do word lists matter?
Well, if you’re working on /r/, practicing the teacher name “Mr. Roberts” will have a far greater impact than the word “raccoon.”
Rather than planning ahead of time, craft your articulation and vocabulary word lists WITH your students.
It’s actually really simple!
- For articulation, list words from their everyday lives that contain their target sounds (e.g. people, places, things). These articulation graphic organizers are the ones I use!
- In addition to teaching Tier 2 vocabulary, use these language graphic organizers to connect language targets to their personal lives!
It doesn’t take long at all (and your students are INVOLVED!)
Once you gather ALL of your articulation and language graphic organizers, stick them in your student’s therapy file and/or send a copy home. Then, you’ll be off to a super strong start that will help facilitate carryover! (Not to mention, you’ve done some important planning!)
Read more about how you can create meaningful speech therapy word lists here!
3. Personalize Your Routine
There are several easy ways to do this. Here are a few of my favorites:
– How are they feeling…for real?
Glance at this free Maslow Hierarchy of Needs for Schools I created for you, each morning (you can grab a copy at the end of this post!). Then check in with your students, keeping it in mind. (Your students learn best when all of their needs are met).
– Incorporate their preferences when you can.
EXAMPLE: After my student told me about his week and all of the football practice he had, I wrote a series of sentences about him with complex vocabulary. He needed to use context clue strategies to determine the meaning of each word. (This was so meaningful and made him feel special!) “He felt lethargic after practicing football for 3 hours!”
– Build confidence by incorporating self-advocacy skills every week!
We all know how critically important the strategy of self-advocacy is for our students, so why don’t we explicitly teach it? Well, the answer is because we have SO much else going on.
I have a solution…incorporate self-advocacy into your ROUTINE! (So much easier and more meaningful that way!)
I created these visuals that are always accessible and easy to incorporate into all sessions.
Take a closer look at these tools HERE.
GRAB A FREE COPY OF THE MASLOW HIERARCHY OF NEEDS FOR SCHOOLS AND A SET OF EXIT SLIPS IN MY FREEBIE LIBRARY BELOW!
(Already a part of my newsletter community? Grab these by entering your password HERE).
