One of the things I realized when I was preparing for my first evaluation this year was that I didn’t have a good way to remind my students of what we work on in therapy or why. I always try to talk about it at the beginning of the year with my students, but don’t really think about it much during the rest of the school year. When I was reading through the criteria that I would be evaluated on, that was one of the areas that stood out to me that I could improve on.
So, I decided to spend a session with each of my students to go over their goals and talk about why they come to speech-language therapy. I came up with this idea:
I wanted to have something that each student could personalize, and then be able to refer back to later. I had a space on one of my walls that I had thought about updating (previously my pirate ship “sailing on the sea of sounds”), and decided this would be a great place for it.
I had the students each fill one of these out. Some needed more help than others, and only a couple remembered all of their goals. We then spent time talking about why these goals were important, and then I let the students fill in the “why” section. (For my youngest students, I helped them write this part.) It was a very enlightening session for both my students and myself, as I learned what they thought of therapy, and they learned the reasons why they come to see me.
I plan on adding my new students to the wall as they join me throughout the year, and have each student fill out a new one next year with their new goals. I’m really happy with the way this turned out, and plan to continue this in years to come!
In case you would like to do something similar, you can download this freebie from my TeachersPayTeachers store and make it your own! I cut each one out after the students were done and mounted it to colored paper for more of an impact on my white wall. I chose different shades of green and blue papers, and made sure to have enough extra for any new students that come on my caseload in the future. I them laminated each one, and used sticky tack and/or sticky clips to attach them to my wall. This would also work well on a bulletin board, or you could keep them in each student’s working folder. (Note: For privacy reasons, I would not display these in the hallway. Mine are in my therapy room, and there are no names on them.)
What do you think? Is this something you might use in your therapy?
Great idea Natalie! I know my students could all use a little reminder.