In Part 2 of the Systems Series, I'm diving in to how to create a simple system for planning your therapy sessions. Whether you are a new speech-language pathologist or a seasoned SLP, planning your sessions can help save you time and reduce feelings of confusion and overwhelm.
This episode covers:
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
In Part 2 of the Systems Series, I'm diving in to how to create a simple system for planning your therapy sessions. Whether you are a new speech-language pathologist or a seasoned SLP, planning your sessions can help save you time and reduce feelings of confusion and overwhelm.
This episode covers:
Are you sick and tired of feeling overwhelmed by all the things? I can help. Schedule a free consult today.
Come join the SLP Support Group on Facebook for more tips and tricks!
Follow me on Instagram! @theresamharp
Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.
This is your Speech Path mindful time management for the busy SLP. My name is Teresa Harp and, as a mom and speech pathologist turned productivity coach, I know a thing or two about how hectic life can be. If you're an SLP who's overworked, burnout and feeling like you're constantly falling short as a therapist and a mom, then this is the podcast for you. I cover time management and mindset strategies so you can learn to love your work and your home life at the same time. Let's dive in. Hello Speech Paths.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Episode 22, the second episode of this system series, where I'm breaking down simple systems that you can create in your work as a speech pathologist to help save you time, decrease your overwhelm and make things run a little bit more smoothly and efficiently in whatever setting you are working in. So today I'm diving into the second part of this series, where we're going to be talking about lesson plans or session plans. I kind of use those phrases interchangeably. So what I'm going to do in today's episode is talk about why you need some sort of a system for your sessions if you are practicing as an SLP, and give you some direction in terms of how to create a system that will work for you to help you get ready for your speech and language sessions, and I'm also going to link in the show notes access to a template that I created that I actually used when I was practicing as an SLP, and I used this lesson plan template when I was planning session after session. So I've kind of created it for you. I have created a sample one where I filled in the information and then I've created a blank one as well, so that you can download both of those in the show notes for free and it will give you eyes on what exactly I have used and help you to create something that will work for you. So that is the plan for today's session and this session. Do you hear me? Now I'm already talking in SLP lingo. That is the plan for today's episode, and today's episode is going to be released right before Thanksgiving. So things are getting busy over here in the harp household. It's not quite Thanksgiving yet, but when you're listening to this it will be right before the holiday and there's a lot going on and probably for those of you who are listening, if you're listening to this episode live, you might be experiencing a little bit of extra overwhelm. It is kind of a crazy time of year, and so all the more reason to have one thing simplified, and hopefully this will be something that you can take and use in your own practice to make things easier on you.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's just spend a couple of minutes talking first about why I recommend having a system for planning out your sessions. I think we all know in general how systems generic systems in your business, in your work or in your household help things to run more smoothly and help you to save time. But when it comes to session plans or planning for sessions, I think there's maybe a I don't know a range of opinions on this and depending upon how long you've been practicing as an SLP and what type of clients or population you work with and what kind of setting you're in, you may spend more or less time planning out your sessions than other people. You might think about them very intentionally, spend quite a bit of time, especially if those of you are new if you're listening and you're a newer SLP, in my experience, newer SLPs tend to think about planning out their sessions a little bit more than some of the more seasoned SLPs might spend. But I think, regardless of where you're at, there's something to be said for the benefits of having a system for planning out your sessions, especially for those who find yourselves thinking about your sessions with clients in between sessions.
Speaker 1:So how many times have you been driving or in the shower or doing a workout and you've thought about a kid or an adult on your caseload and they've popped in your mind and you're like, oh, what are we doing in our next session? Or you're thinking at or looking at your planner for the week or your calendar for the week and you're seeing what sessions you have scheduled and you start to your mind starts to go to what are we going to do? What are we working on? What are we going to do in this session, right? Or how many times have you found yourself scrambling at the last minute, rushing into a session not even sure what you're going to be working on, grabbing things off the shelf or off, you know, in the closet or wherever you might go to find materials and just sort of grabbing what you can and figuring out how you're going to work with it?
Speaker 1:I found myself in all of those situations and it's not fun. It results in what I call a lot of mind drama, where I'm overthinking what to do. Should I do this activity? Oh, but if I do this activity then we might get stuck, or you know, he might get really stuck on this material in the activity, or it might not go according to plan, or that's not one of their you know topics of interest or areas of interest, or we did that recently, or what will the family think? And so that overthinking starts to happen, or sometimes there's just blank. It's like my mind is blank when it comes time to figure out what I'm doing in a session with a kiddo.
Speaker 1:So I found myself in all sorts of positions when it comes to figuring out what is happening during sessions and that results in, like I said, the mind drama, overwhelm, decision fatigue and it just wasted energy and anxious thoughts. And I found that creating a lesson plan or a session plan was incredibly helpful in reducing all of those negative effects. It helped me feel more prepared. It helped me feel more excited and eager to go into the session instead of maybe dreading the session a little bit because I had all this pressure on myself of what I was going to do. It helped me feel more creative. It helped me feel more prepared and then I could go into the session just having fun, right. And I also think, for newer SLPs, having a system for planning out your sessions can help you to increase your skill set, increase your efficacy as a clinician.
Speaker 1:And one caveat, though, with that is I think it's really helpful to have a session plan, yes, but I also think it's very important to be able to fluctuate, or pivot is probably a better word. Pivot your plan in the moment, change your plan in the moment or completely throw out your plan in the moment, as needed. Okay. But just because you might find yourself in a position where your plan doesn't go the way that you think it will and you're throwing it out the window and you're starting from scratch. That I'm sure has happened to you. But don't use that against yourself. Don't use that as an excuse to not plan for the session because you think that why bother planning? Because it never goes the way I plan, it never goes the way I intend it. I think there's value in both. I think there's value in having the plan and there's value in being ready and willing to modify the plan at a moment's notice. Okay, all right. So hopefully I've sold you on why you want to have some type of system for planning out your sessions.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think one other important point to acknowledge here is that some of the more seasoned SLPs who might be listening to this episode, you might be thinking I don't need a plan, I can just I know I've been doing this long enough I can go in and fly by the seat of my pants. And if that's truly, truly the reality for you and that's how you feel, then fantastic, then maybe you don't need this plan, maybe you don't need this episode. But I got to say, even when I had been practicing for five, 10 years, I still felt better going into the sessions where I had a plan Because, if nothing else, it helped me feel prepared and helped me feel, I guess, excited about what I was doing, instead of getting bored and getting caught up in the you know, in the repetitive nature of what sometimes sessions can look like, depending upon what your caseload is like. And then I also think, those of you who are listening, if you have a very high caseload, if you have a very fast-paced setting, you might find yourself thinking I don't have time to plan. And so I want you to think about that for a second and challenge it, and I would suggest the thought I don't have time not to plan. Or maybe, to put it another way, planning my session saves me time, or planning my session is an investment of time that I get back in the future, if that makes sense. So, in other words, by spending some time now planning out the session, you'll have more time available the day of the session, because you're not scrambling and trying to run around and find things or think of things to do. Okay, so just be aware of what limiting thoughts might be coming up as you're listening to this episode, so that you don't completely disregard it if, in fact, it might actually be helpful for you All.
Speaker 1:Right now, let me tell you what I have found to be the most important pieces to include in your lesson plan. Okay, now I'm all about modifying this. I'm all about taking this and changing it to fit your own personality, your own caseload, your own work setting, whatever that might be. I'm just going to give you information that I found to be really helpful for me, and I think that this is a great starting place for you if you are looking to start implementing a system for session plans. Okay, so the five key pieces that I like to have on my session plan are the clients' current goals, the clients' future goals, the clients' interests, the materials needed and my future plan, and I'm going to explain each of these so that this makes sense. Okay, let me walk you through them one by one. So I said the clients' current goals. Now I like to have a section on the lesson plan that clearly outlines the goal or goals that the client is working on.
Speaker 1:Typically, I don't have this written out as an actual measurable goal because I don't necessarily need that information. I don't necessarily need that information. But you could write out the goal exactly how it's written in the IEP or in the treatment plan, if you want to be incredibly clear and consistent in terms of structure, context, queuing, all of that right. But for me now I mean, I'm not practicing currently, but when I was practicing most recently, I would just write the target areas and I would know exactly what like, based on each kid. I didn't have a big caseload, so I would know, okay, they need this level of queuing or we're doing it in this type of context. But when I was first starting out, it was really helpful to have this written exactly the way that it was written in the clients documents so that I was consistent. Okay, and I also want to mention when I was writing out the current goals.
Speaker 1:You could do this a couple of different ways in terms of how many goals you include. You could include all of the goals if you want, but for some of you that would be really unrealistic because you might have a lot of goals for your clients or it might be unnecessary. Or you could include the goals that you're planning on targeting in that session. I think there's benefits to both. There's probably also a middle ground. What I typically would do would I would write down the goals that I was going to be working on within that specific session. But when I was talking about earlier being willing and able to pivot at a moment's notice, I'm sure you found yourself in this position where you go to start a session, start an activity, and you realize that it's not going the way you thought. It was the clients not interested the way you had thought, and you have to then completely change the plan, which might sometimes mean that you can no longer target the goal or goals that you had initially planned to target. So by having some of the additional goals on your session plan, even if you don't intend to target them that specific day, having them there on the session plan can eliminate the wasted time trying to look for those goals in the session itself or trying to remember what those goals are within the session itself. Okay, so that's the client's goals.
Speaker 1:I also mentioned number two, the client's future goals. This is what I mean by future goals. I have a section on my lesson plan where I will write down anything that pops up in the session that I wasn't quite aware of, that the client needed to work on. You know, I don't know if this is something that you all have experienced, but for me, when I would be in a session working on a specific goal with a specific activity, something might come up in that activity that I wasn't aware of or never noticed before, or had noticed and forgotten. That would be an area to target in the future, and when I was first starting out, I would kind of I would, I would like shift gears immediately and I would start targeting that thing in the moment, like I didn't know how to stay on track with my initial plan A lot of times, and then if I saw the client needed help with something else, I would quickly start targeting that in the activity, even though that wasn't what I had planned to target.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if I was working on adjective plus noun structure and having the client use the expressive, use expressive phrases that include adjective plus noun the big fish, for example, right and then I hear the client say the big fishes instead of fish and I'm like, oh, a regular plurals, we have to work on that. And then I might go down that rabbit hole in a session and start targeting irregular plurals and I would get. I would get so off track and the session would get away from me, I would lose my focus and it just got incredibly messy and difficult. So what I started doing was writing that down in the session plan itself so that at the end of the session, when I'm writing my soap notes, or my less, my session notes that will come in a future podcast episode I had future targets right there for me. So now I have that section and if you download the free resource that I have in the show notes, you will see the section on my sample lesson plan that's designed specifically for you to write down those future goals. Okay, it's like a parking lot, for hey, we're not targeting this today. This wasn't on the radar at all, but I just saw this, I just heard this, I just noticed this. I'm writing it down and we'll come back to it when the time is appropriate. All right, so that's current goals future goals.
Speaker 1:The third thing I mentioned was tracking the clients interests. I would love to have a section. I loved I should say I loved having a section in my lesson plan where I would target or where I would write down what the clients interests are. So if you look at the sample lesson plan that I've included, you'll see a section that's titled notes and that is where I would write a couple things. I would write the client's interests. So if they are, let's say, really into Play-Doh or really into baby dolls or really into Super Mario Brothers, certain topics, certain toys, certain hobbies, certain activities that were motivating and exciting and interesting to that client, I would write down in that notes section. Why? Because that would help generate ideas in terms of what materials I would use for my sessions and it would also help give me sort of like a backup bank so that if the session got started and it wasn't going well, I could look at that list and very quickly come up with something else that we could do. Thank you on the spot. That I knew would have a pretty good chance of capturing the client's interests. Okay, so that's where I would include or document the client's interests and that is again in the notes section on the sample lesson plan.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I put in the notes section often, just in case this is helpful for anyone I didn't mention this before, but I would write down any sort of reminder of something that I would wanna check or see or ask in a session. So, as I'm planning out my session in advance, for example, I might need to remind myself to ask the client's parents, the child's parents, how their most recent audiology appointment went, cause I always worked with children with hearing loss. Or I might write myself a note to double check one of the hearing aids that was acting funny the week before, right, and so I would write those things in the notes section just to help me remember those little things that don't quite fit into a regular category and I might not need to remember that every week, but there is a place for it, should the need be there. Okay, all right. And then I mentioned the fourth thing that you're gonna track on your session plan is the materials that you need. This is so helpful for me, or it was when I was practicing to actually write down the materials the tangible materials that I would need to grab before the session. Because when I didn't have it there, I would just look at the goals and I would look at my notes and I would look at the date and I would look at the data section which we're gonna get to that in a second and I would be like, okay, wait, what are we doing? And I'd have to look and read and see what the plan was and come up with the materials and I still found myself, no surprise, scrambling, wasting time trying to grab what I needed. But once I started adding a section to include and I clearly outlined what materials I would need, it was so much faster for me to just grab exactly what I needed before the session would start, without having to really think about it or put much energy into it at all. I'll also say that this step the materials.
Speaker 1:When I was first starting out planning my sessions, there were times when I would. I guess the easiest way to explain this is I would have two approaches. I would have two different approaches to planning my sessions. The first approach would be okay, what are the goals I'm targeting? And I would start there and I'd think about the goals and then I would try to come up with activities that would target those goals. Sometimes that worked, sometimes that didn't. The other approach that I took sometimes was I would think about the materials first, like, ooh, I really wanna do a pumpkin, a painting, pumpkin activity. What goals can I target with that activity? So, depending upon how your brain operates and it might work both ways for you, it does for me it might be easier for you to start with the materials than it is, say, for you to start with the goals. So I really like to have this section on the session plan because it can even help generate the plan itself, not just give you a place to clearly and easily see what you need right before the session starts. So hopefully that makes sense, okay. And then the last thing that I mentioned earlier and this one was such a game changer for me was a section to document the future plan. So let me tell you what I mean by that.
Speaker 1:I was when I would be in sessions. I was often so focused on what we were doing in the moment that the session would end and I wouldn't have a whole lot of direction or thought about what we're doing next week. And then I would this was especially true when I was a newer SLP and then I would put it away. I was like, okay, great, we made it through another session and I would put away all the materials, and then I wouldn't think about it again until the time came to see the client again the following week, and what was happening was I'd have to start this whole process over again from scratch. It felt like I was reinventing the wheel every week with trying to figure out what I was gonna do, but what I realized was I could start planning the next session within the session plan itself. So this is a section on the session plan that I don't fill out in advance, but I do fill out on the spot, especially at the end of the session, where I'm documenting what am I planning for next week's session? And so that way, when the time comes to start planning the next session, you already have the ball rolling. You already have some groundwork that you've done that you can use to help serve as a catalyst for planning your next session. And I'll also add that by doing this it helps cover that P section in soap notes, right, subjective objective assessment plan.
Speaker 1:So I didn't write soap notes per se, not the way that we were taught them in grad school at all when I worked as an SLP. Our format for our session I'm sorry, for our session notes, our documentation, our format was a little bit different than that soap note format. However, of course, we were always writing a session note. There was always some type of note that was being written and remember, the P in your soap note is for planning, right, so you're gonna start planning ahead and that doesn't mean that I'm gonna write out the whole lesson plan ahead. Sometimes it's as simple as one word that I would write down, but that one word was so much easier to think of in the moment of the session, it was just natural, it was already in my brain, so I would write it down and then, when the next week came and I was planning for the next session, I will just look at that word and it would trigger all these ideas of what I was gonna do.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I, in my template that I've shared with you that you can download for free. There is a section that I mentioned earlier with future goals, and that is an area. That is a section where I would also put my P. I would put what's the plan for next week, so I'd have both things in that section. But of course, you can modify this in any way that works for you, okay? So those are the most important information or the most important areas to track Clients, current goals, clients, future goals, clients interests, materials needed and the future plan.
Speaker 1:And one little bonus area that I would say is really helpful to include on your session plan template and I've included it for you in the sample that I created for you is a section for data. By having a specific area on your session plan where you can count and track your data, it gives you two things. Number one, it gives you the space to track right, to score yes, no or plus, minus or however. You're doing that so that when you're writing your session note, you've got your data right there in front of you. So it speeds up your your session note writing and it also helps you remember to take data. So how many times have you been in a session and the session's almost over and you're like, ah, I didn't take data yet right especially for newer SLPs.
Speaker 1:So, having that section right there on the lesson plan itself it's all in one location. It reduces the amount of papers or I don't know amounts of tracking that you have to do, places you have to look, you just are on. It's like a one-stop shop. Your session plan becomes a one-stop shop because it has all of that information there on one sheet. It's perfect. So if you look at the sample template that I've included for you as a free download, you'll see a section for data collection. Okay, alright, so those are the basics of what you would want to have in your own system for session planning.
Speaker 1:Now I want to offer a couple of thoughts or ideas or suggestions that are going to help you take this information and tailor it to what works best for you. Okay, especially if you're not working with a coach or you're not working with a mentor or a supervisor and you're attempting this on your own, it might be a little bit difficult, right? Even though I've given you all of this information, it still is a little bit tricky to put this into practice. So let me give you a few additional ideas to help support you, one of which I want to say.
Speaker 1:It's really important for you to think about what type of format, platform I don't know. Think about I'm not sure what the right word is here but what type of format or what type of platform is best for you and your job setting and your learning style and your personality, and make sure that it's as few steps as possible. Whatever you choose, there needs to be as few steps or as few obstacles as possible, or else this will not work or it will not last. It won't be sustainable. So what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, if you are a paper and pen person who does not do well on electronics or you know digital type of format, then this is something that these lesson plans are something that you need to print out and write on with pen and paper. Okay. So how will you do that? Will you print that out and are you going to print it out every week, print out a new copy? Are you going to print them out and put them in a binder and it's one binder with tabs for all of your clients or are you going to print it out on a piece of paper and put it in your file or your binder for your individual client, right?
Speaker 1:You have to think about what makes the most sense given, like I said, your learning style, your job setting, your personality, as well as your systems, if you have any for these other areas, right? Do you already have a binder for every client? Do you already have a case file for every client? What are you already doing and how can you take this and incorporate it into that to make things as simple as possible, okay, another example for you is the sort of flip side of this. Are you a computer person, an electronic person, who hates having paper, gets overwhelmed by having lots of papers everywhere? Then, okay, how are we gonna get this on an electronic device that's gonna work for you? Are you going to move, you know, take this and put it into a Word doc and type up your information in advance?
Speaker 1:Are you going to be like what I did was I used my iPad and my Apple Pencil and I created this template and uploaded it into GoodNotes, and so I would write in what activities I had planned and what interests the client had and what the current goals were and what you know. All of that information I would just write it in to the boxes itself, but it was done electronically, so I didn't have to worry about a million papers laying around. Okay, so you have to think about what makes the most sense for you, given all of you know the things that I mentioned, the factors that I mentioned, and please, please, don't overlook this step. You really need to think about this because it's the key to creating something that works for you and that is sustainable. Okay, you want to make sure this is something that's sustainable, and I think it's really important that whatever you choose is something that you can rinse and repeat week after week, right? So, week after week, it needs to be something that you're able to regenerate repeatedly, right?
Speaker 1:You might also consider, if you look at my template and it doesn't really work well for your brain, it doesn't really align with your work environment, your work setting, whatever the case may be, there are so many resources out there. Look into something like teachers pay teachers. Look on teachers pay teachers for different lesson plan templates and see what you can find on there, right? Or sit down and think for a minute about what's the easiest way to do this for me. What am I already doing and how can I use those things that I already do to make this work for me. How can I now add in lesson planning to what I'm already doing? Okay, you have to get really, you have to get really introspective here, be very self-aware, be very honest with yourself in, and in doing so, it's gonna help you to come up with a system that will work for you. Alright, but I'd like to think that I've given you a really good starting point.
Speaker 1:The free download, as I mentioned with my template, just so you can see what this looks like, is available for you in the show notes. So click that. You can download that for free. And then you can also come and join the SLP support group for more resources like this, and you can also, in the group, ask whatever questions you have, talk with other SLPs and see how everyone else does things like lesson planning right. Ask what questions you have or what roadblocks you run into as you start implementing this within your own practice, because we are all here to support you. Alright, that's it for today's episode of the system series. Next week's episode, the final episode of November, is going to be talking about session notes, which is a really logical segue from today's topic of lesson planning or session planning. So just make sure you tune back in for that. Alright, everyone, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving If you're listening to this live, and I will talk with you all next week.