Well, y’all, it is that time of year again-time to
schedule your speech students. Before you start feeling that migraine coming
on, I want to share two quick tips that may help you, your students, and your
teachers manage the speech schedule. These tips won’t work for everyone (of
course they won’t!), but they have made this difficult task a little easier for
me.
Quick Tip for Making Your Schedule: Schedule Speech
for Classroom Transition Times
This tip works especially well for my fifteen minute
articulation groups. As much as I can, I try to pull them right after or right
before exploratory/encore/specials, recess, lunch, and other times where the
whole class is getting ready to transition to another subject or area in the building.
They are missing very little academic time, these are easy times to remember,
and often the rest of the class is putting away materials, using the restroom,
etc.
One of my regular education second grade teachers
actually came up with this idea. She sets an alarm on her smart phone. She has several of my students, so for the
alarm label she puts their speech days and names. The first week she tells the
kids to go to speech when the alarm goes off. By the second week, the kids know
what the alarm means, and when it dings, they just get up, leave the room
quietly, and come to speech. This works best with grades 2-8. Many teachers
will probably think this would be too distracting for the class, but it
actually keeps them from having to interrupt the class to send the kids and
from having to remember the schedule. It is a win-win for us.
I hope these tips have been useful! Comment below with
any other strategies you’ve found for keeping the schedule nightmares away.
