You can plan a whole month of speech therapy in one sitting. Before the month starts, I sort my caseload into segments by grade and goals. I pick one literacy-based therapy unit for each segment. Then I do the rest of my planning inside my sessions, with a quick note at the end of each one. A few clicks up front, and everything else happens in the flow of therapy.
In the last few episodes, we talked about the problems with how we might be planning therapy right now. If you missed it, I shared why you might be reinventing the wheel every session. Then we talked about segmenting your caseload as a way to make planning faster. Now I want to show you what the actual planning looks like.
Start by Segmenting Your Caseload by Grade and Goals
Segmenting is the step that makes everything else fast. Instead of planning for every single group, you plan for a few segments. Each segment uses a type of text that fits those grades and goals.
In SLP Now, we have a Therapy Plan Assistant. You enter your grades and your goals, and the assistant recommends caseload segments.
You still get to use your clinical judgment. You decide if those segments make sense for your students. But they’re usually very spot on.
We make those recommendations based on which units work best for which types of goals and which grade bands. We also think about which ones will be most relevant to the curriculum.
What Segments Look Like for a Preschool Through Fifth Grade Caseload
Let’s make this real. Say I have a preschool through fifth grade caseload.
My segments might use an early language book, a picture book, and a fiction article. Each segment gets its own unit for the month. That’s three units for my whole caseload, not a separate plan for every group.
Pick One Unit for Each Segment
Once your segments are set, you choose your units. This is the part that used to eat up my planning time. Now it takes a couple clicks.
The assistant gives you the top three unit recommendations for each segment. So for my preschool through fifth grade caseload, I’d see the top three units for the early language book, the picture book, and the fiction article.
Then I just scroll through and decide.
“Okay, number one looks best for the early language book. I love number two for the picture book. And number one for the fiction article looks really awesome.”
You get a short list. You check it. “This looks great. This looks great. This looks great.”
That’s your therapy planning for the month, in just a couple clicks.
Browse the Full Unit Library When You Want Something Specific
You can make it more complicated if you want to. The short list shows the units that are most popular right now. But you can also scroll through our entire library of units.
If you’re looking for something in particular, the full library lets you find the unit that matches what you need.
And if you can’t find it? We have a chat button on our site. You can just say, “Hey, I’m really hoping to do a unit on pumpkins.”
If you’re having trouble finding that unit for whatever reason, we can share it with you. If we don’t have anything for what you’re asking, we can add it to our list. We have a whole team of SLPs who are always making new materials.
You should be able to find your units in just a few clicks.
Why Monthly Therapy Planning Can Take Minutes Instead of Hours
I used to do calls with SLPs where we would do therapy planning together. We would spend an hour putting together these plans. We’d look at different targets, link different activities, and put it all together by hand.
That work matters. But you shouldn’t have to do it from scratch every month. So we’ve done all of that legwork for you.
Every Unit Is Already Analyzed for Common Targets
When you click into a therapy plan, we’ve already analyzed the text for the targets that match your most common goals.
For example, if you’re targeting articulation, we’ve pulled the high-frequency articulation words. We’ve also analyzed each text for categories, syntax, basic concepts, and all sorts of other targets.
You can click to view all of the targets. If you click on a single target, you’ll find teaching materials for it.
Those are there if a student needs extra support. You can use them to really dive into that target, like for pre-teaching before you start the book.
Activities Are Linked to Every Step of the Literacy-Based Therapy Framework
Each plan also has the whole unit plan. Activities are linked for every step of the literacy-based therapy framework.
So you aren’t hunting for a KWL chart in one folder and a vocabulary activity in another. It’s all in one place, in the order you’ll use it.
If you need a refresher on the framework itself, scroll back to the last few episodes. We did a deep dive on all things literacy-based therapy planning.
Deciding Once Takes the Pressure Off Every Session
Here’s why this saves so much time. You make the big decision one time: which units you’ll use across your caseload this month.
After that, you aren’t starting from zero before each group. When you see your next group, you just decide which of your units makes the most sense for them. Then you click in and go.
What Using a Unit Looks Like in a Real Session
After those few clicks, you’ve technically planned a whole month of therapy. So what happens when a group walks in? You open the unit and every activity is right there.
Let’s say we’re doing Apple Trouble.
Step 1 is pre-story knowledge activation. You have a KWL chart. You have a virtual field trip. You have all the activities for that step.
Step 2 is the read-aloud. You have the YouTube video for the read-aloud, so you don’t even have to get the book. You can just pull up the video and use that.
And it keeps going for the rest of the unit. Step four is very meaty, and we have a lot of activities linked there.
All of the activities are digital. You just click to open them.
You Don’t Have to Print Anything (But You Can)
You can click and go. You literally don’t have to print a thing if you don’t want to.
Now, I do like to have some paper activities. So there’s a tab where you can open your favorite materials and print them out. They come in color or black line versions.
Printing is totally optional. It just adds a few minutes to your planning time. In the next episode, I’ll talk more about organizing all of those materials.
The Best Therapy Planning Happens Inside Your Sessions
This is my favorite part. Once your units are picked, there is still a little planning to do. But it happens in the session with your students, not at your kitchen table on Sunday night.
You really do your best therapy planning when you’re in the group with students. You can see what’s working. You can see what they need next.
As we’re wrapping up a session, I do my little micro planning. Wherever you keep your notes, digital or paper, jot down a quick note about where you want to pick up next time.
You can jot down what’s working, too.
“Okay, these strategies are working really well.”
Or, “We just did the KWL chart. We really need a virtual field trip before we dive into the book walk.”
You’re giving your future self a reminder of where you left off and what will work best, based on what you know about your students. Then you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.
How to Track Where Each Group Is in a Unit
If you’re scheduling your sessions in SLP Now, you can attach the therapy plan to your sessions. You check off the steps as you finish them.
The next time you go into that session, it remembers what you did last time. You just pick up where you left off. Checking off those steps is your planning.
If you use your own paper data sheets, that works too. Just make a note of which activity you left off on, or what you want to do next session. That way you always know where each group is in the unit.
My Monthly Therapy Planning Routine, Step by Step
Here’s a quick summary of what this looks like in practice. Most of it happens in one sitting before the month starts. The rest happens while you’re doing therapy.
- Sit down before the month starts.
- Open the Therapy Plan Assistant in SLP Now.
- Select your segments.
- Favorite the units you want to use for that month.
- Optional: attach those plans to your sessions.
- Optional: print some of the materials.
- At the end of each session, jot a quick note about where to pick up next time.
That’s it. You don’t have to do any other prep or planning. Everything else happens in the flow of your actual sessions.
Recap: How to Plan a Month of Speech Therapy in One Sitting
Planning a month of therapy doesn’t have to mean a weekend of searching and building. You segment your caseload, pick one unit per segment, and let your in-session notes handle the rest.
Your segments decide the texts. Your units hold the targets and activities. Your quick notes keep every group moving forward.
If you’d like to try this routine for your next month, you can start a free SLP Now trial here. Pick your segments, favorite a few units, and see how it feels to walk into the month already planned.
Transcript
Now we're going to dive into what actual planning looks like. In the previous episodes, we talked about what the problems with therapy planning are, with how we might currently be doing it.
And then in the last episode, we talked about the strategy of segmenting your caseload as a way to streamline your therapy planning. So what this actually looks like, in SLP Now, we have a therapy planning assistant, and you enter your grades and your goals, and the assistant will recommend caseload segments.
And you get to use your clinical judgment to decide if those segment recommendations make sense. But they're typically very spot on. And we make the decision based on which units are best for which types of goals and for which grade bands. Which ones are gonna be more relevant to the curriculum and all of that.
So that's how we make those decisions. And when you do that, it gives you the top three recommendations for units for each segment.
So let's say I have my preschool through fifth grade caseload, and I'm using the early language book, the picture book, and a fiction article. It'll show me the top three units for the early language book, the picture book, and the fiction article.
And then I can just scroll through and be like, "Okay, number one looks best for the early language book. I love number two for the picture book, and number one for the fiction article looks really awesome." And so it gives you a short list, and you can just quickly check and be like, "Okay. Yeah, this looks great. This looks great. This looks great." So you can do your therapy planning for the month in just a couple clicks.
You can make it more complicated if you want to. You can scroll through our entire list of units, instead of just looking at the ones that are most popular right now.
If you're looking for something in particular, you can scroll through our entire library of units and find the one that matches what you're looking for and what you need. If you're not finding what you're looking for, we have a chat button on our site. You can just say, "Hey, I'm really hoping to do a unit on pumpkins."
If you're having trouble finding that for whatever reason, we can share that unit with you. And if we don't have anything for that specific thing that you're asking for, we can also add it to our list. We have a whole team of SLPs who are always making new materials. You should be able to find your units in just a few clicks, and we have done all of the legwork for you.
So I used to do calls with SLPs where we would do therapy planning, and we would spend an hour putting together these therapy plans, and we would be looking at different targets and linking different activities and manually putting it all together. But we have done all of that legwork for you.
So if you click into a therapy plan, we've analyzed the text for all of the relevant targets for your most common goals. For example, like the high-frequency articulation words if you're targeting articulation. We've analyzed it for categories and syntax and basic concepts, all sorts of targets.
You can click to view all of the targets, and if you click on a target, it has teaching materials if you need supplementary materials to really dive into that target for a student, for your pre-teaching and all of that.
And then we also have the whole unit plan, and we have activities linked for all of the steps of the literacy-based therapy framework.
And if you need a refresher, scroll back to the last few episodes. We did a deep dive on all things literacy-based therapy planning.
After taking those few clicks and selecting your units, you technically have planned a whole month of therapy. When you see your next group, you just decide, okay, this unit makes the most sense for them.
You click into that unit. You have access to all of your activities for that unit, and they're all digital, and you just click to access them. So let's say we're doing, Apple Trouble, and so for step one of the unit, we have pre-story knowledge activation. So you have access to a KWL chart. You have access to a virtual field trip. You have access to all the activities for pre-story knowledge activation.
Then for step two, you have access to the YouTube video for the read-aloud, so you don't even have to get the book. You can just pull up the video and use that. And then it just goes on and on for the rest of the unit.
Like step four is very meaty, and we have a lot of activities linked there.
Like I said, you can just click and go. You literally don't have to print a thing if you don't want to.
Now I do prefer to have some paper activities, and so we have a tab where you can just click and open your favorite materials and just print them out.
We have color or black line versions. And in the next episode, I'll talk a little bit more about organizing all of that and what that might look like. But you do have the option to print if you prefer, and that would just add a few minutes onto your therapy planning time.
If you're scheduling your sessions in SLP Now, you can attach the therapy plan to your sessions. It'll help you keep track of where you are in each unit for each group because you can check off the steps, and then the next time you go into the session, it'll remember what you did last time, and you just pick up where you left off.
If you have your own paper data sheets, you would just wanna make a note of which activity you left off on or what you wanna do next session, just so you can keep track of where you are in the unit for each group.
So you just make the decision, okay, which units am I going to use across my caseload? And then, there is a little bit of planning within the session. The best therapy planning happens in the session.
And I do my little mini micro planning within the session as we're wrapping up the session. And so wherever you're keeping your notes, whether it's digital or paper, I just jot down a quick note about where I wanna pick up next time.
Like I said, if you're using SLP Now, you can check off the steps that you complete and that automatically is your planning.
You really do your best therapy planning when you're in the group with students.
"Okay, these strategies are working really well."
And you can jot that down, too. And then you can jot down notes of, okay, we just did the KWL chart. We really need a virtual field trip before we dive into the book walk and all of that. So you can jot down those notes, and then you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.
You're giving your future self a reminder of where you left off and what you think will work best based on what you know about your students. A quick summary of what this looks like in practice. You sit down before the month starts. You open the Therapy Plan Assistant in SLP Now. You select your segments. You favorite the units that you wanna use for that month. An optional step is to attach those plans to your sessions. Then another optional step is to print some of the materials as well, but then you're done. Everything else happens in the flow of your actual sessions.
You don't have to do any other prep or work or planning. It's just a couple clicks, and that's all you need. So that's a peek at what your therapy planning routine could look like. And then in the next episode, we're going to talk about organizing all of the materials and making that process as easy as possible.
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FAQ
How can I plan a month of speech therapy in one sitting?
Group your caseload into segments by grade and goals. Pick one literacy-based therapy unit for each segment before the month starts. Then do a little planning at the end of each session by jotting down where you want to pick up next time.
What is a caseload segment?
A caseload segment is a group of students who can share the same type of unit, based on their grades and goals. Segmenting lets one unit serve many groups, so you plan a few units instead of a plan for every group.
Do I have to print materials for literacy-based therapy units?
No. In SLP Now, the unit activities are digital, and the read-aloud is linked as a YouTube video, so you don't even need the book. If you like paper, you can print your favorite activities in color or black line.
How do I keep track of where each group is in a unit?
At the end of each session, jot a quick note about where you want to pick up next time. If you schedule sessions in SLP Now, you can attach the therapy plan and check off steps, and it remembers where you left off.
