Marisha:
Hello there and welcome to the SLP Now Podcast, where we share practical therapy tips and ideas for busy speech language pathologists. Grab your favorite beverage and sit back as we dive into this week's episode.

Hello there, and welcome to The SLP Now Podcast. I'm Marisha, and today we are going to be chatting about five tips to navigate mixed groups in speech therapy. So let's go ahead and dive right in.

So tip one is to embrace and lean into the positive aspects of mixed groups. I think just adjusting our mindset and trying to look for the positive can make this a lot easier to navigate. Of course, there are situations where one-on-one therapy is absolutely the best option, and we can try to figure out a way to make that happen for our caseload.

But I think that in the schools, we really need to group students to be able to see all of the students and provide all of the services. There's just not enough time in the day to meet all of our student services one-on-one. And I think that there are really some positive aspects for mixed groups.

I think it's a really great way for our students to have peer models. The research shows that that has an impact on generalization, and it's just really cool to see students be able to support each other, and support each other in using their skills in the classroom, and being models for each other.

So students have unique strengths and needs. And one student may have a relative strength in producing grammatically correct sentences, but they are working on vocabulary. Whereas another student might have a relative strength and vocabulary, and they need support with producing grammatically correct sentences. Just as a simple example. And by working together in the group, they can scaffold and support each other. And it's really cool to see that in action.

And so just trying to find the positive aspects that we can look for, those were just a couple examples. I'm sure you can come up with your own. But I challenge you to jot down just a couple of things that are beneficial about mixed groups, and really focusing on how that can actually have a positive impact on students versus having it be a negative thing.

And then my second tip is to set up a data-collection system. It can be easy to lose track of how students are doing if we don't have a solid data collection system. Because we need that data to assess where students are at, and to make sure that we're making meaningful progress. We've talked about data collections several times throughout the podcast. Episode 159 goes into a lot more detail. So if you're curious about that, I'd recommend checking out that episode, and that'll give you a lot more resources and ideas.

And step three is to prepare your visuals. So having your go-to materials ready to go will make mixed groups a lot easier. Because your visuals are the core of your therapy sessions, that is what you are going to use to really teach students and break down skills. And having those ready-to-go, easy to access, making sure that they're organized will make a world of a difference.

And then episode 161 talks about some strategies to build those visuals, and can keep them organized. So if you're feeling like that's an area that you'd like to work on, or that you'd like some inspiration for, head to episode 161.

And then the fourth tip that I have is to create a routine. It'll decrease your students' cognitive load, but it'll also make things a lot easier for you. And I'm linking to a lot of podcast episodes in this episode because it's really a recap of all of the strategies that we've been talking about. But in episode 158, I talk about how you can structure an individual speech therapy session. So that's a great place to start in how you're building any individual session.

And then we also have a podcast episode on planning larger units of therapy, and you can hear more about that in episode 163.

And then the last tip is planning ahead. So building more of an overarching structure to your therapy sessions. So 163 will also touch on that in terms of building out a month-long unit for your sessions. Because the routine would include what you do in an individual session and how you approach therapy overall. But being able to plan ahead, and gather your materials, and make it easier to implement therapy for all of your groups and all of your students can make a massive difference.

So to recap those tips, tip one, embrace and lean into the positive aspects of mixed groups. Two, set up a strong data collection system. Three, prepare your visuals. Four, create a routine for your sessions. And five, plan ahead so that you're not scrambling and putting together resources at the last minute.

If you want a recap of these steps, as well as easy links to all of the relevant resources for all of these tips, head to the show notes at slpnow.com/169. Again, that's slpnow.com/169. I hope you enjoyed these, tips and we'll see you in the next episode.

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