Why Should SLPs Use Therapy Plans? + Resources!
*This post contains affiliate links.
The subject of SLPs writing therapy plans has long been debated in both the workplace and in online forums. I often see posts of SLPs resisting the idea of writing out any plans because "we are not teachers".
And they're right. We are not teachers. We do not follow a curriculum and do not need to document how each therapy session meets the educational standards that the school is required to follow. After all, some of our students are 20% intelligible in conversation and/or have a 50-word vocabulary. It makes sense that we shouldn't have to show how we are linking that to the curriculum because our students first need to be able to express themselves and be understood when they are trying to express themselves.
However, an SLP can write therapy plans that do NOT mirror the lesson plans of a teacher.
Some argue that the IEP is the lesson plan, and I beg to differ. The IEP drives the therapy plan, just like the curriculum drives the teacher's lesson plan. The IEP tells you what needs to be addressed in a therapy session, but when you have multiple students with multiple goals, suddenly you are dealing with 5-10 goals for the whole group. Each goal needs to be addressed at some point in the year. How can you say that the IEP drives your therapy plan in those cases? You need to plan an activity that can target the goal(s) of EACH student in your group. There needs to be a therapy plan so you know what activity you will use to meet the student's goals.
Our therapy plans do not have to be detailed, common core aligned books that we hand to our administrators.
Sometimes lesson plans are required by administration, but sometimes the plans are for our eyes only. Either way, our lesson plans may just be a short memo of what we did the previous week and where we will go from there for the next week (example: initial /r/ word level mastered, next week's target is phrase-level). It may be more detailed and show a theme for the week and the themed activities we will be using to meet the goals of our students. This is not the point.
Here's the point.
The fact that the therapy plans exist at all means that you, the SLP, are planning sessions that will truly meet at least one goal of every student in your group because you took a few minutes to think about how you can plan a student/goal-centered lesson. That is what matters.
Consistently scrambling to think of last-minute activities is not the best practice, although we've all been there and sometimes it turns into a good session. However, if we know what we are doing before we go into that therapy session, we can have copies made, therapy items pulled from shelves, and we are ready to go. The kids will look at us as prepared individuals and not the scatterbrained SLPs we may be portrayed to be (and sometimes feel like). Therapy plans allow us to be as productive as we can be and not wasteful with time. There is no worry of "Did I even target a goal for every student in this group?!" or "Didn't he already master this?" No more wasted sessions because we had a therapy plan to guide us to where we needed to be.
So how do I use therapy plans to guide my sessions?
Each Friday, I take 10-20 minutes to quickly examine data from the week before on SLP Toolkit which holds all my student data, as well as my lesson plans. I look at the students in my group and the goals each of them has on their IEPs, as well as their last percentages. I take that information and think, "What can we do next week in speech that will target at least 1 goal per child?" This is especially useful when each child is working on a different level of articulation, or in a mixed speech/language group. I look through my activities and type up a short lesson plan that usually looks along these lines: "Read Three Little Pigs, WH Questions/Compare & Contrast". This tells me what I need to have ready, and that I have 2 goals to work on during that session. No one's goals get forgotten that way.
Lesson planning resources:
SLP Now Affiliate Discount: SLP Now has a lesson planning feature built in. Join using the code KAYLASLP and get $10 off! your membership.
SLP Toolkit Affiliate Discount: SLP Toolkit has a lesson planning feature built in. You can get 20% off your first year or a free month by signing up using this affiliate link.
Note: Please know that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
