Welcome to Back-2-School Week! This week is geared towards getting you ready for school this year. We all know that if we feel organized (and prepared with our ammo of creative therapy activities!) we will have a great start to the year, right? Well, we will at least feel ready for what this year has in store. Today is all about classroom organization. I have ideas and downloads that I have used and feel worth sharing.
First up...Binders! I am a huge fan of binders and (after a few years of trial and error) keep myself organized by using binders. If you remember from my
How Do You Keep Student Data post a few months ago (we will revisit data tomorrow) I keep all my data in binders organized by grade. I also keep binders for meetings, screenings, parent contact, etc. Here are a few downloads for you to get your binders in order! (To download, click on the link, not the picture)
IEP Student List: I actually keep this list on my bulletin board. At the beginning of each year, I organize this list so I do not miss an IEP due date. In the notes section, you may want to note if a re-evaluation is coming up for the student.
Parent Phone List: I like to make two copies of this list. One to keep by the classroom phone, and one to keep in a communication log binder. Hopefully you won't have to do this with your little angels, but I have also used it to keep handy when students start acting up. They love to use the "You don't have my momma's phone number!" and then quickly straighten up when I can read the number to them :)
Parent Communication Log: I keep a binder of all parent communication. This includes phone calls, emails, notes home, even note worthy conversations in the car circle. This is good to have for record keeping of communicating student progress, behavior (good or bad!), notices of IEP's... anything. **Bonus: Principals LOVE to see this!
Speech/ Language Screening Log: I also keep a binder of speech and language screenings done. This is will come in handy when Johnny's new teacher writes a speech referral for him. You can look back to see if he was already screened or show the teacher that he was already evaluated and did not qualify.
Next up, how to organize student information. Tomorrow I will show you how I do this (I combine it with data). But I wanted to share with you an idea that I used my first year. I got a recipe box from the dollar store and a bunch of index cards. I had an index card for each student. On the index card I included:
- student name
- student birthdate
- IEP date
- re-evaluation date
- student's goals
- service minutes
This was a very organized method that made it very east to reference information on a student. If Lizzy's teacher came in asking about her services, I could quickly pull her card instead of looking up her IEP. A recipe box doesn't take up a lot of room either, so it is easy to store on your desk or therapy table.
Last but not least.... lesson plans! A few days ago, I posted a question on Facebook for school based SLP's: Do you have to write up or submit lesson plans to your principal? Most of you that replied said no, however, there were a few of you that said you do have to. At my school, we submit plans via email to our principal on a weekly basis. I have come up with a "principal approved" template. I update the plans weekly and type onto them. I do not have a printable version for you to download because it is much easier to type into in rather than hand write on the plans. I created this on Word and created a 3 column table: Day/Time/Students, Lesson Plan, IEP Goals. My principal loved that the goals were right next to my plan making sure they were addressed. I also added a notes and meetings section at the top of the plan. This is a screen shot of the first page of my plans...check it out:
I hope you all have found this helpful!! If you have any other requests for helping you get organized, please let me know. Check back in tomorrow for Data Day!
