The Need to Tailor Lesson Plans to Your Own Caseload

The views and opinions in the post are my own. 
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
If you have to write lesson plans, then I'm truly sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry that your administrators don't understand that the goals on the IEP are your lesson plans.

Over the past few years, lesson plans and activity calendars for Speech/Language Therapy have popped up on TpT. Your time and money can be so much better spent than taking (or buying) someone else's lesson plans. Take that time you are using to tailor them, and write your own. Novel idea? No. Every one of us is intelligent...if we weren't we wouldn't have those credentials behind our names. There is no way that someone can use another SLP's lesson plans; there are just too many factors. Besides the students' needs, there is also each SLP's personal therapy style as well as the principal's preferred format.  Sure, we all plan. Most of us at least write down (or have in our head as we become more experienced) what activities we're going to do for each of our groups.

You Know Best

No one knows your caseload like you do. No one knows exactly what skills your students should be working on like you do. No one knows your style of therapy like you do. So why buy plans and therapy activity calendars that someone else put together based on their caseload? Yes, it takes time, but it's not that difficult and it will benefit your students so much more. In addition, you will grow by leaps and bounds as an SLP.

Making Ideas Your Own

I'm definitely not saying that we shouldn't be looking at what other SLPs are doing and getting ideas from them. Some of my favorite things I'm doing with my data collection and therapy aren't my own ideas. But I have taken those ideas and tailored them to my style of therapy. What works for one person isn't going to work for everyone. Please don't try to fit your students into someone else's mold. It just won't benefit the student and it will probably end up frustrating both you and the student.

Individualize!

Write each student's goals to their individual needs. Don't try to write goals according to what cute materials are on TpT. To be perfectly honest, the students don't really care how cute it is; they just care that it's fun and engaging. My students love when they throw chips in a cup to see how many they can get in. Not cute, and to be perfectly honest, not very creative but they love it.

If at first you don't succeed...

My advice to young SLPs is this:  Save your money. Use your talent to create your own style of therapy. Tailor your activity calendar to your caseload. Have faith and confidence in yourself that you can do it. You don't have to do it perfectly those first few years of being an SLP; you learn best by trial and error. You can do it! I have complete faith in you!

Need help getting started? These posts may help.
How to Build a Play-Based Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan Template
coffee cup on table with plant and open writing book with text under the picture


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