If therapy planning is taking over your evenings, segmenting your caseload is the strategy that makes the biggest difference. Instead of planning for each student or each group, you split your caseload into a few segments. Each segment gets one unit. You plan that unit once and run it with every group in that segment for the whole month. For a preschool through 5th grade caseload, that means planning about 3 to 4 units total. Even if you have 100 students.
In this post, I’ll show you what this looks like for an elementary caseload and a secondary caseload. I’ll also share how to keep your segments flexible, how to add variety when you’re ready, and why using the same text across groups is great for you and your students.
What Is the Caseload Segmentation Strategy in Speech Therapy?
Most of us learned to plan student by student or group by group. With a big caseload, that adds up fast. Every group means a new set of choices about what to use and how to use it. The caseload segmentation strategy cuts all of that down.
Plan One Unit for Each Segment
A segment is a set of groups that can share the same unit. You choose one unit for each segment. You plan it once. Then you slot it into every group in that segment for the month.
So instead of asking, “What am I doing with my 10:30 group?” you ask a much simpler question. “Which segment is this group in?” The answer tells you which unit to grab.
Key Takeaway: You plan for each segment, not for each group.
Why Fewer Planning Decisions Make a Big Difference
When I plan this way, my decisions go from about 5,000 a week to about 10 a week. And that 10 includes the small tweaks I make for certain groups.
That’s a lot of brain space back. Planning stops being a pile of tiny choices. It becomes a few clear ones. And the energy I used to spend deciding now goes to my students.
How to Segment a Preschool Through 5th Grade Caseload
Let’s make this concrete. Say I have a preschool through 5th grade caseload. Here’s how I might split it into three segments.
Segment 1: An Early Language Picture Book for Preschool
For my first segment, I’d pick an early language picture book. This is a really simple story. I’d use it with my preschoolers and my younger kindergartners, the ones who need a little more support.
Segment 2: A Picture Book for Kindergarten Through 2nd Grade
For my second segment, I’d choose a picture book. I’d use it with my K through 2nd grade students.
Segment 3: A Fiction or Nonfiction Article for 3rd Through 5th Grade
For my third segment, I’d use a fiction or a nonfiction article with my 3rd through 5th graders. It depends on where my students are.
If I have a lot of range in 3rd through 5th grade, I might do both. One fiction article and one nonfiction article. That gives me four segments.
Key Takeaway: For preschool through 5th grade, I’d have 3 to 4 segments. That means I’m planning 3 to 4 units for my entire caseload. Even with 100 students, I plan those units once and slot them into the right groups.
How to Segment a Middle School and High School Caseload
Secondary caseloads look a little different. With 6th through 12th graders, I might not split by grade at all. Instead, I’d focus more on the skills we’re working on. Here’s an example with four segments.
Fiction Articles for Narrative Goals
I might use a fiction article for students who have narrative-based goals. A story gives them lots of chances to practice retelling, story parts, and sequencing.
Nonfiction Articles for Expository Text and Summarizing
Then I might use a nonfiction article for students who are a little higher level. These students might be working on expository text and summarizing.
Science Experiment Units for Social Language and Higher-Level Skills
Next, I might use a science experiment unit. This is a great fit for students working on social language, executive function, and higher-level language skills like inferencing. There’s planning, teamwork, and a lot to talk about.
Vocational Videos for Functional Communication and AAC Users
Last, I might use a vocational video for students working on functional communication goals and for my AAC users.
If you haven’t seen a vocational video before, here’s what it is. We have units in SLP Now where we worked with secondary students to create peer modeling videos. The videos show different functional, real-life scenarios. They’re really fun.
Key Takeaway: For secondary students, you can segment by skill instead of by grade.
How to Choose the Right Therapy Units for Each Segment
Once you know your segments, you need units to fill them. You can absolutely make your own. I’m sure you already have a lot of materials you love.
Using Units You Already Have
You don’t need anything fancy to start. A good book or article plus a few language-rich activities can carry a segment for a month. If you want ideas for making one book work across different goals, I wrote about using books with mixed groups here.
Getting Support from SLP Now
All of the units I mentioned have versions in SLP Now. That includes fiction, nonfiction, science experiment, and vocational video units. Each one gives you the targets, the activities, and everything you need to run it.
If you’re looking at your caseload thinking, “Okay, but which units would I use for which groups?” we can help with that too. SLP Now has a tool where you plug in the grades you work with and the goals you’re targeting. It recommends units for you. Then you get the actual units to use.
Every Unit Still Targets Every Goal
One worry I hear a lot is, “If everyone uses the same unit, how do I hit all the different goals?” The units all have language-rich activities. They’re still great for targeting all of our students’ goals, even in mixed groups. For more on this, check out my 5 rules for literacy-based therapy with mixed groups.
How to Keep Your Caseload Segments Flexible
Segments are a starting point. They’re meant to make planning easier, so they should bend when your students need them to. You don’t have to decide anything forever.
Assign Units, Then Adjust as You Go
First, pick your units. Then go through your schedule and assign them. “My Monday 10:00 group gets this one. My 10:30 group gets that one.” Use your best judgment about what makes sense.
As you go, pay attention. Maybe you notice a group would do better with the early language book than the picture book. Then switch it. If it’s not working, switch it up. Some students might need to step away from the unit for a while, and that’s okay too.
Use Your Own Criteria
You don’t have to use the same grade cutoffs as me. Choose what makes the most sense for your caseload.
Maybe you push in for certain groups, and a science experiment fits best in that classroom. Great. Put those groups in that segment. You can use any criteria you want to decide which unit fits which group.
Key Takeaway: Pick one, take your best guess, and see how it works.
Start Simple and Add More Variety Over Time
If you’re feeling super overwhelmed right now, like “Please save me, I’m drowning,” segmenting your caseload is a really great place to start. You don’t need tons of variety to deliver great therapy. As your capacity grows, you can add more.
Using Classroom Texts When You’re Ready
Once I got the hang of things, teachers started sharing the texts they were using in class. So for some of my upper elementary groups, I stopped picking my own fiction or nonfiction article. I just used the article that grade or classroom was already reading.
Pulling From the Curriculum
I felt like I had room to do something a little different for a few groups. So I started pulling more from the curriculum instead of choosing topics I thought were relevant.
That was a step I took once I was ready. It wasn’t where I started. And it doesn’t have to be where you start either.
Why Using the Same Text Across Groups Helps Your Students
I want to come back to this, because it matters. You might worry that using the same picture book or article with many groups short-changes your students, or that it’s lazy. I promise, it doesn’t, and it isn’t. Using the same text actually makes your clinical thinking really sharp.
Knowing the Text Frees Up Your Brain
Think about everything you juggle in a session. Multiple students. Multiple goals. A bunch of other things you’re figuring out in the moment.
When you know the text really well, that’s one less thing to think about. You can put your focus on your students and what they need right then.
A Repeatable Structure Helps Students Make Progress
Your students get the same benefit. When the structure repeats, they don’t spend so much effort just figuring out what’s going on. They can put that energy into the skills they’re working on, which helps them make more progress.
I Thought I’d Get Bored (I Didn’t)
I’ll be honest. I was nervous when I first tried this. I thought I’d get bored using the same text over and over.
Instead, I got more creative. I’d catch myself thinking, “Wow, Marisha. You thought of that? That was a really cool way to target that skill.” Or, “Wow, that worked way better than I thought.” Or, “This student is making a ton of progress because I’m helping them in a slightly different way.”
It was really cool to see how much this helped me show up as a clinician. And my students benefited too.
Key Takeaway: Repeating a text gives you and your students more room to focus on the skills that matter.
Recap: How to Segment Your Speech Therapy Caseload
Segmenting your caseload is the planning strategy that makes the biggest difference. Here’s the quick version:
- Split your caseload into 3 to 4 segments, by grade band or by skill.
- Give each segment one unit for the month.
- Plan each unit once and run it with every group in that segment.
- Switch units anytime a group needs something different.
- Add more variety, like classroom texts, as your capacity grows.
If you’d like help picking units for your segments, SLP Now can recommend units based on your grades and goals, and give you everything you need to run them. You can start a free trial here and try it with your own caseload.
Transcript
We are going to dive into how to segment our caseload and reduce our planning time. So this is the big, big strategy that makes the biggest difference.
So what the caseload segmentation strategy is... instead of planning for each student or each group, we segment our caseload and each segment gets one unit. We just plan that unit once and we run it across every group in that segment for the whole month.
So let me get a little bit more specific with what this actually looks like.
Let's say that I have a preschool through fifth grade caseload.
I might create three segments for that caseload.
So segment one might be for an early language picture book, so a really simple story for my preschoolers and my younger kindergartners, like the kindergartners who need a little more support.
For the second segment, I might choose a picture book and use that with my K through two students.
And then for segment three, depending on where the students are at, I might use a fiction or a nonfiction article for my third through fifth graders. If I have a lot of variability in third through fifth grade, I might do a fiction and a nonfiction and have four segments. But for pre- preschool through fifth grade, I would have between three and four segments, and that means that I'm only planning three to four units for my entire caseload.
Even if I have 100 students, I'm planning those units and slotting them into the appropriate group.
Another example, if I'm working with sixth through 12th graders, I might not do it by grade band and just focus a little bit more on the types of skills that we're targeting if I'm working with a secondary caseload, but I might use a fiction article for students who have narrative-based goals.
And then I might use a nonfiction article for students who are a little bit higher level, working on more expository text summarizing.
I might use a science experiment unit for students working on social language, executive function, higher level language skills like inferencing.
And then I might use a vocational video for my students working on functional communication goals or my AAC users. If you're not familiar with a vocational video, we have units in SLP Now and we worked with secondary students to create peer modeling videos in different functional scenarios, and so those are really fun.
All of the units that I mentioned, the fiction, nonfiction, science experiment, vocational video, we have units for those in SLP Now where it gives you all of the targets and the activities and everything that you need to implement those units. And you can absolutely create your own units, and I'm sure that you already have a lot of materials at your disposal.
If you're looking for a little bit of support with that, SLP Now has a tool where you can plug in the grades that you're working with and the goals that you're targeting, and it'll recommend units for you. So if you're listening to this and you're like, "Okay, this is my caseload. I'm not quite sure which units I would wanna use for which groups," we can help you with that, and then we'll also give you the actual units.
And some important things to note, the segments are not meant to be rigid. So you might select your units, and then you would say, "Okay, my Monday 10:00 AM group gets this one, 10:30 gets this one," and you can decide what unit you think makes sense. But as you're going through it, if it's not working and you're like, "Oh, we actually would benefit from using the early language book more than the picture book," then you can absolutely switch that.
If it's not working, then switch it up. Maybe some students need to step away from the unit for a while. It's totally flexible, but it just helps reduce our decisions from 5,000 a week to 10 a week, if we're including some of those customizations. They don't have to be rigid.
You don't have to decide for forever. You can just pick one and take your best guess and then see how it works.
And the units all have language-rich activities. They're still great for targeting all of our students' goals. That's what we spent all of last month talking about, in terms of how to use a unit.
So there's lots and lots of options here And you don't have to use the same grade cutoffs as me. You can choose, what makes the most sense.
Maybe you do push-in for certain groups and you feel like the science experiment would be the best activity to use for those groups. You can absolutely use your own custom criteria to decide which unit makes sense for which groups.
Segmenting your caseload is a really great place to start if you are feeling super overwhelmed and you're like, "Please save me, I am drowning."
But as your capacity grows, you can add more variety, but you don't have to have that variety to deliver really awesome therapy. Once I got the hang of things, teachers would share texts that they were using in the classroom. And so instead of using kind of my best selection for a fiction or nonfiction article for my upper elementary students, I might just use the article that they're using in that grade or in that classroom.
I felt like I had capacity to do something a little bit different for a few of my groups. And so I started pulling more specifically from the curriculum instead of trying to select topics that I thought were relevant And so you have options to step things up and add more variety over time.
We talked about this a lot last month, but I want to reiterate this. Using the same texts across multiple groups, like using the same picture book or the same article across multiple groups isn't short-changing your students. It's not being lazy. It actually makes your clinical thinking really sharp.
I was nervous at first. I thought I would get bored, but it was really, really cool when I started implementing this. There are so many things that we have to wrap our heads around in a session. We have multiple students in front of us, multiple goals, multiple factors that we're figuring out throughout the session.
And being really familiar with the text that we're using reduces the number of things that we have to think about, and we can really focus more on our students and what they need. If we have a more repeatable structure, it also helps our students, be able to make more progress because they're not having to spend so much cognitive effort just figuring out what's going on.
They have the same kind of experience as we are.
When I started implementing this, I was worried that I would be bored. But it was so cool to see how creative I got, and I would just, like, be like, "Wow, Marisha. Like, you thought of that? That was a really cool way to target that skill."
Or, "Oh, wow, that was really, really awesome." or, "Wow, that worked way better than I thought." or, "Wow, this student is making a ton of progress because I'm helping them in a slightly different way." And so it's just really, really cool to see how much that can help us show up as clinicians and how that benefits our students as well.
I hope that this was a helpful overview of how to segment your caseload. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
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FAQ
What is caseload segmentation in speech therapy?
Caseload segmentation means you split your caseload into a few segments. Each segment gets one unit for the month. You plan that unit once, then use it with every group in that segment.
How many segments should a school-based SLP use?
For a preschool through 5th grade caseload, I usually use 3 to 4 segments. That means planning 3 to 4 units for the whole caseload, even with 100 students.
Is it okay to use the same book with multiple speech therapy groups?
Yes. When you know a text well, you have fewer things to juggle in a session, so you can focus on your students. A repeatable structure also helps students make more progress, because they spend less effort figuring out what's going on.
How do you segment a middle school or high school caseload?
Instead of grade bands, I group by the skills students are working on. For example, a fiction article for narrative goals, a nonfiction article for expository text and summarizing, a science experiment unit for social language, executive function, and inferencing, and a vocational video for functional communication goals and AAC users.
