Having a thousand beautifully laminated flashcards just means you own a lot of stuff. Having a system means you have a repeatable, streamlined process for selecting those materials, executing the session, collecting data, and documenting the results without losing your mind.
If you’re a school-based SLP in the thick of it, you already know the drill. You have hard drives full of PDFs and cabinets overflowing with board games, yet you still hit Friday afternoon feeling completely drained, scrambling to figure out what to do with your Monday morning mixed group. More materials won’t fix that. A smarter system will.
The 35% Problem: Why More Materials Won’t Save You
The real reason your therapy materials aren’t saving you time is that direct therapy isn’t the only thing eating your schedule. It’s the massive administrative load sitting on top of it.
If you feel like you’re drowning in paperwork, you’re not imagining it. A national survey of school-based SLPs found that roughly a third of their work week goes to documentation, assessment, and other non-direct-service tasks, not the therapy itself (ASHA Schools Survey data, reported in Cronin et al., 2024). No amount of additional resources can fix the fact that a third of your week is taken up by data logging, Medicaid billing, and IEP writing.
When you only have a materials library, you’re forced to mentally bridge the gap between the activity you chose, the data you need to take, and the documentation you have to file. A true system connects those dots for you. Your materials, your data collection, and your planning all work together. No manual bridging required.
Systematizing Your Therapy Planning
The Power of Literacy-Based Intervention
A therapy system links your materials directly to evidence-based frameworks, which reduces planning time while improving student outcomes at the same time.
Literacy-based therapy is a strong example. Research shows that simultaneously targeting speech sounds and literacy skills profoundly benefits children with speech sound disorders (Cabbage & Algeo-Nichols, 2024). A 2024 systematic review published by ASHA confirmed that embedding speech sound intervention into phonological awareness activities improves both speech production accuracy and literacy skills concurrently.
Building these multi-layered sessions from scratch every single week, though, is a fast track to burnout. When you work within a unified system rather than a folder of disconnected materials, you don’t just get a book or an activity. You get a pre-built unit: evidence-based targets, vocabulary lists, and comprehension questions already mapped out. You stop endlessly searching for ideas and start executing clinical frameworks that are ready to go.
Data Collection: The Probe-First System
One of the most practical shifts you can make is adopting a probe-first approach: a quick, unsupported probe administered right at the start of your session.
We’ve all been there, trying to run a game while simultaneously calculating percentages on a sticky note. A true system separates the teaching from the testing. By collecting probe data first, you capture clean, accurate data on the student’s independent skill level before any instruction happens.
Once that data is logged, the pressure is off. You can spend the rest of the session doing what you actually went into this field to do: teaching, scaffolding, and connecting with your students. No clipboard juggling required.
Ready to Build a System That Actually Works?
If you’re tired of spending your Sundays piecing together plans for the week ahead, it might be time to work from a smarter foundation.
SLP Now gives you therapy materials, planning tools, and caseload management in one place, built specifically for the reality of school-based practice. Start your 14-day free trial today and see what it feels like to walk into Monday morning with a plan already in place.
References
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). (2020). Schools Survey, as reported in Cronin, S., et al. (2024). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17549507.2024.2404035
Cabbage, K. L., & Algeo-Nichols, D. (2024). Literacy-based intervention for children with speech sound disorders: A review of the literature. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_persp-24-00025 (available to ASHA members)
SLP Now. (n.d.). How to Use Probe Data & The Probe-First Data Collection System. SLP Now Blog.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Have you ever found yourself [00:00:05] searching for materials right before a group? Maybe quickly purchasing something on Teachers Pay [00:00:10] Teachers or scouring Pinterest for the perfect [00:00:15] therapy materials for an upcoming group? If you have, you are [00:00:20] absolutely not alone, and I am excited to dive [00:00:25] into today's episode to help us solve [00:00:30] this problem for the rest of our careers, [00:00:35] essentially.
The problem isn't that we need better materials. [00:00:40] It's that we're trying to use materials without a system. So we [00:00:45] can find the right material for one session, but if we keep [00:00:50] using that process, we're going to be spending a ton of time and [00:00:55] money putting together the materials for the specific session over [00:01:00] and over and over.
However, when we have a system, [00:01:05] we have a process for planning, data, [00:01:10] and progress monitoring, all of that built in ready to go, and [00:01:15] we don't have to find ourselves scrambling for the right materials [00:01:20] for the student and the group. This significantly reduces [00:01:25] our mental load and makes everything so [00:01:30] much easier when it comes to providing therapy for our students.[00:01:35]
So the difference in the types of questions that [00:01:40] we're asking. So if we are focused on materials, [00:01:45] we're focused on, okay, what am I using with this upcoming [00:01:50] group? What therapy materials are we using today? When we have a [00:01:55] system, we're asking, okay, what are we targeting? Where do my materials [00:02:00] live? How am I collecting data? What am I doing in the next session?
And [00:02:05] we can have amazing materials and still feel [00:02:10] incredibly scattered if those materials aren't connected to a repeatable [00:02:15] workflow.
So some things that we might be seeing if we have [00:02:20] materials but not a system. We have folders, bookmarks, [00:02:25] downloads everywhere, and we're scrambling before sessions to [00:02:30] find that right material. We spend more time [00:02:35] selecting our materials than actually using them in therapy. We're seeing a lot of [00:02:40] materials flop, especially ones that you quickly purchased and put [00:02:45] together and were super hopeful about, and then it's a complete flop. If your data is [00:02:50] living on sticky notes or scraps of paper or in your memory. If you're [00:02:55] wrapping up sessions and you're thinking that went okay, but you don't have any clear [00:03:00] steps, and when you're writing progress reports and it feels [00:03:05] like detective work and you're having to fill in the blanks.
And [00:03:10] if you are noticing these things, it's not that you're [00:03:15] unprepared, it's that your prep isn't organized into something [00:03:20] repeatable.
We have helped countless SLPs streamline [00:03:25] this process and solve this problem. Here are some examples. So Courtney [00:03:30] said, "I've been able to gather my materials, collect my data live, and have a graph to [00:03:35] show how students are making progress." Mary said that she saved forty [00:03:40] hours a month after streamlining her planning and documentation with [00:03:45] SLP Now. Robin said she's having a lot less anxiety about planning for [00:03:50] therapy, and she's better at it and enjoying it more.
So what does this [00:03:55] actually look like? 'Cause those sound like really great stories, right?
We want [00:04:00] to shift from collecting materials to building that workflow.[00:04:05]
So a simple system includes [00:04:10] planning, first of all.
This is where we have a predictable session structure, so we're not [00:04:15] always reinventing the wheel. If you go to the [00:04:20] SLP Now Academy. If you're not an SLP Now member, you can sign up for a free [00:04:25] trial and access the Academy totally for free. But we have a course on [00:04:30] Session Structure, and we walk you through how to set up your own session [00:04:35] structure.
And so that is the first part [00:04:40] of this simple system.
The second part is materials, [00:04:45] and we want to make sure that we have goal-aligned resources that are easy to [00:04:50] find and reuse. So we want to have our core set of [00:04:55] materials that we use over and over and over again.
I have my [00:05:00] skill-based materials that I've been using for ten years, and some of them have gotten a little [00:05:05] bit of a refresh as I've learned and done more professional development and all of that. [00:05:10] But they are tried and true, and I still have some of my [00:05:15] very original materials that I use because they work.
[00:05:20] Making sure that we have those skill-based materials, so that we have [00:05:25] visuals and tools to actually teach skills and break [00:05:30] them down for students. And then on top of that, we layer thematic [00:05:35] units. The cool thing is we also have courses in the Academy to [00:05:40] dive into how to build your starter kit of [00:05:45] materials to make sure that you have all of those goal-aligned resources for your caseload. [00:05:50] We have tools inside SLP Now. We have all of [00:05:55] the materials. We also have tools to make it really easy to gather those for your students. So [00:06:00] you don't have to do a bunch of digging. There's a way to run your [00:06:05] students through, create their goals, and [00:06:10] then export their probes and their visuals and everything that you need [00:06:15] for those core materials, including evidence-based strategies to help you [00:06:20] target those goals because you are your best therapy tool.
We walk you through how to do that. [00:06:25] And then Thematic Units, we have a course on that and how to set those up for your [00:06:30] caseload. We don't have time to dive into all of the details on that. But those [00:06:35] two little shifts in terms of having your starter kit and picking [00:06:40] monthly thematic units will significantly reduce your planning [00:06:45] time. You're infusing evidence-based strategies into every single thing that you [00:06:50] do in your sessions.
You'll start to feel way more confident as an [00:06:55] SLP.
Then the third part of the system is data. [00:07:00] We want to make sure that we have quick probes and simple progress monitoring built into our [00:07:05] session. The goal is not more paperwork. It's easier decisions. And when we [00:07:10] start the session with a quick probe, it helps us determine [00:07:15] where the session needs to go. Like, does this student need initial teaching, or are we ready to [00:07:20] dive into more practice? Are they heading towards [00:07:25] generalization? It gives us the exact information that we need to drive the session, but then it [00:07:30] also gives us a really nice data point that we can use for progress monitoring to make [00:07:35] sure that students are making adequate progress towards their goals.
We can also document what [00:07:40] types of supports are helpful. Once we move on from that initial probe, [00:07:45] we just focus on therapy and are able to describe what supports actually [00:07:50] benefit the student, and that makes for a really [00:07:55] high-quality note. In SLP Now, it's so easy. You can [00:08:00] do this all within your session. We have dropdown menus to make it really [00:08:05] easy to populate that note, and you enter your data, use the [00:08:10] dropdown to select your support, and then you can [00:08:15] automatically generate the note with our note template. It's all really easy and [00:08:20] efficient, but it gives you really high-quality documentation.
And then the fourth [00:08:25] step is follow through. We want to make a note for our future [00:08:30] self as we're wrapping up the group because we do our best therapy planning [00:08:35] inside the session when we're with the students and everything is fresh. I jot down a [00:08:40] note in terms of what I'm thinking for the next session, [00:08:45] and it's easy to view that in SLP Now.
The next time that [00:08:50] I see this group, I can see what note I left last time, and that gets [00:08:55] carried forward, and then it makes my whole therapy planning process [00:09:00] really streamlined and efficient and evidence-based.
To recap the [00:09:05] four steps, we have planning, materials, data, and follow [00:09:10] through.
This system helps us streamline all [00:09:15] of the aspects of therapy planning and providing really [00:09:20] high-quality therapy.
As a CF, I walked into a therapy room that [00:09:25] was packed to the brim with games and [00:09:30] puzzles and worksheets and therapy books and so many [00:09:35] materials.
I also was a digital materials hoarder. I [00:09:40] purchased a lot of digital materials. I also downloaded any freebie that I could [00:09:45] find. I spent so much time organizing all of these digital [00:09:50] materials.
And then I moved out of [00:09:55] state a few years into my career, and I started at a new school, and there [00:10:00] were no materials there, and I hadn't shipped all of my [00:10:05] stuff from the previous state. So I had zero [00:10:10] materials, but it was amazing how much better my [00:10:15] therapy was, because I wasn't overwhelmed by all of [00:10:20] the options.
At that time, I had my skill-based materials, and I was [00:10:25] doing those thematic units, and things were just so much easier. So [00:10:30] more materials is often not better. They can [00:10:35] actually increase our overwhelm. We don't need to have [00:10:40] a ton of stuff. If you're feeling like, "I don't have materials," [00:10:45] you don't need a ton of materials.
If you have a solid [00:10:50] workflow, everything becomes so much easier. With a strong [00:10:55] system, like I've been describing, we just need to gather a couple different things. And [00:11:00] like I said, SLP Now will help you with that entire process [00:11:05] of gathering those materials and then giving you the pieces of the system that you need [00:11:10] for your therapy plans, for your data collection, [00:11:15] for your notes, all of that good stuff.
I want to make sure that this [00:11:20] episode is super actionable. I shared a lot of different things that you can do [00:11:25] in terms of planning, materials, data, and follow through. Pick one thing. So if [00:11:30] you feel like planning is the biggest hurdle for you right now, [00:11:35] check out SLP Now and do that Session Structure course.
Or [00:11:40] if you're like, "Okay, I feel like I have a decent session structure, but the materials are driving me [00:11:45] crazy," then check out the Thematic Units course in [00:11:50] SLP Now or the Therapy Planning course would help you build [00:11:55] those materials. Pick one action item from this episode [00:12:00] to implement and start from there.
If you're wanting to [00:12:05] revamp your data collection, you can take the Data Collection course in SLP Now [00:12:10] and test it out with a group.
If your materials aren't making life easier, [00:12:15] the answer may not be new materials. The answer may be building [00:12:20] a system around the ones that you already have and evaluating them [00:12:25] and kind of trying to make sure that they fit what you need.
That [00:12:30] is our episode for today, and if you are tired [00:12:35] of patching things together, you don't have to work harder.
We [00:12:40] just need a system that works with you, and it is totally feasible, [00:12:45] totally possible. I shared the stories of three SLPs who implemented [00:12:50] this and are experiencing relief, and I know that you can too. [00:12:55] So I would love to see you in SLP Now. We'd love to support [00:13:00] you and help you reduce your workload.
That's a wrap, and hope to see you [00:13:05] soon.
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