Must Haves for the Beginning the of the Year
We are about two weeks away from the beginning of our school year. In NYC, we usually start the day after Labor Day. As of the latest, our students will be in a hybrid model, which means we will be seeing some of our students in-person and some of our students virtually. Given the craziness that the beginning of this year will undoubtedly bring, we want to feel prepared for whatever is thrown our way. From organizational tools, to beginning of the year packets, to a digital planner, to yearlong weekly responses – we wanted to share what we use to get us off to a great start in hopes that you’ll find something useful as well.
Must Have #1: All the Organization!
What is better than a fresh, new planner at the beginning of the year? Literally nothing. We created this teacher planner, perfect for SLPs. It’s updated with 2020-2021 calendars, IEP and evaluations calendar, to-do lists, lesson planning pages, and so much more. We love printing this in color and binding it to make us feel fancy!
We also created a Digital Organization for the SLP Google Drive resource to help us organize our remote learning. This was super handy last year in March when we went remote and wanted to digitize all of our lists and schedules. The resource contains individual editable Google Docs with everything parent outreach logs, student communication logs, in-(virtual)classroom service notes sheets, lesson plans, blank schedules, session notes…the list goes on. This is such a great resource for getting organized with all of the craziness that remote learning will bring. 
If we’re back in school, we have a few tried and true organizational tools that we use year after year. Our letter to excuse students from class is great for putting in teachers mailboxes so they know when we’ll be taking our students. Our introduction letter to parents is something we send home at the beginning of every year so our students’ parents know who we are and when their child has speech. Some years we even have our students practice addressing an envelope using this lesson to prepare to mail the letters home.
We also love helping our students get organized at the beginning of the year. We have two executive function packets – one printed PDF resource and one that can be used digitally with Google Docs. The packets include activities such as schedules, to-do lists, goal setting, daily, weekly and monthly homework logs, and so much more.These are great to help our students start the year off on the right foot. Our students will definitely need some help getting started this year.
Another amazing new resource we’re excited to use this year is our Google Suite how-to packet. This will be perfect for helping our students with their digital literacy and executive function skills. The packet contains over 85-pages of Google Slides lessons about the entire Google Suite – including Gmail, Google Classroom, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc. We can’t wait to help our students master their Google skills and prepare them for success in the virtual classroom. This resource comes with an interactive digital notebook activity booklet with activities for each program in Google Suite.
Must Have #2: Collecting Baseline Data
Baselines are so critical at the beginning of the year. We collect data on our students in September to inform our IEP goals and make decisions about what to focus on in our group sessions. Not knowing what this year will bring, we decided to create beginning of the year packets for Google Slides, which can also be printed out (in case we see some students in person). There are 4 packets included in the Google Drive folder, one for each grade in high school. We included ice breaker activities, writing samples, reading baselines, vocabulary baselines, a “What is Speech and Language?” lesson, beginning of the year Google Form surveys, and a ton more. We are looking forward to using these when we start school, and don’t feel stressed to plan or prep anything else!
Must Have #3: Digital Notebooks Yearlong Weekly Responses
Have you heard about digital notebooks? When we learned about digital notebooks for Google Slides, we knew we had to create our own. Our yearlong weekly responses are an interactive digital notebook, with a YEARS worth of activities. During remote learning last year, we had the idea to create weekly responses and post as assignments in our google classrooms each week. We decided to expand on that this year and create something to last us the ENTIRE school year (40 weeks, September through June). Each weekly activity has a quick speech and language skills activity and a writing prompt. Each month focuses on a different speech and language skill. For example, September is executive function skills so we have 4 weeks of different executive function activities, one for each week in September. October is context clues, so each week in October is a new context clues activity. We included a quick skills lesson sheet at the beginning of each month, in case your students needed a refresher about each skill or strategy. The best part is that the digital notebook is totally flexible – we have the option to assign activities as independent work or homework, they can be used at the beginning of our sessions when we wait for everyone to log in, or as a whole session-long activity! We can’t wait to break these out and use them each week.
Must Have #4: IEPs Galore
We don’t know about you, but we are usually SWAMPED with IEPs at the beginning of the year. Many of our students have early IEP dates and we are inundated with report writing during the first few months of school. I think we can all agree that report writing is a drag and quite time-consuming. We wouldn’t be able to survive without our high school IEP goal banks. These are literally life-savers! We have over 90 goals that we adapt and individualize for our students using our goal builder. We also use our teacher IEP surveys to collect information from teachers about how our students are functioning in their classes, and we love using our student speech and language forms for including student voice in our IEPs as well. We recently updated our forms to make them digital! Perfect for emailing teachers and students who are remote.
Must Have #5: College & Career Readiness
As high school SLPs, we always have some seniors on our caseload who are thinking about post-high school plans. If it’s possible, we try to group these students together so we can focus on college and career readiness activities in their group sessions during the Fall of their senior year. We just created two packets focusing on college and career readiness skills that would be PERFECT for any Senior. The college resource tackles everything from applying to college, writing the college essay, recommendation letters, brag sheets, and so much more. The career resource contains tons of career exploration activities, resume writing, interviewing skills, job applications, etc.
Another great idea for college seniors is taking them on a virtual trip to a college of their choice! Since college tours are not ideal right now, our Virtual Experience: College Tour Google Slides activity allows us to check out colleges virtually, with discussion questions, note taking activities, and WebQuest activities included. Our students loved exploring the different campuses and listening to the tour guides.
Heading back to school this year is going to be unlike any other that we’ve ever experienced. It’s hard to know what the year will look like and it’s even harder to plan for when everything is so up in the air. Knowing that we are organized and prepared with activities that require no prep makes starting the new year a whole lot easier. We hope you found some ideas to make your life a little easier, too! No matter what your school year looks like – you’ll be ready for anything.
