Low Prep Summer Speech Therapy

Episode 95: Low Prep Summer Speech Therapy

You're listening to the Speech Space Podcast, a podcast full of tips and resources for SLPs. I'm your host, Jessica Cassity, and this is Episode 95.

Today, I'm going to be discussing ways to minimize your prep for your summer speech therapy sessions. Before we get started, I did want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by The Digital SLP membership site, which is a site that features time-saving, interactive digital resources that are all teletherapy platform-friendly. You can learn more or sign up today by heading over to thedigitalslp.com/digitalslp. Providing summer services might be something you've signed up for to provide continuity of services for your students, or perhaps even the recession has put you in a position where you can't afford to take time off right now. Either way, I think it's essential to know how to plan your sessions in a way that cuts back on prep time so you don't waste your summer burning the candle at both ends. Let's go ahead and dive right in and talk about some of my favorite ways to set yourself up for a low-prep summer.

My first tip is to reuse items from one session to the next. For example, if you're using Pop the Pig to work on turn-taking, also use it for your next session that addresses phonology goals or stuttering. For example, for phonology, you could have minimal pair cards set up to go with the game. And for stuttering, you could work on light articulatory contact when saying "Pop the Pig" or other set phrases. My next tip is to use resources that work well for mixed groups. When you do this, you reduce the need to find new materials for each student on your caseload, which in the end saves you time. So when picking out an activity or a resource, go for one that'll work well for a mixed group rather than choosing something different for each student. My next tip is related to my last suggestion, but rather than focusing on resources, I wanna suggest that you pick some summer themes that you could incorporate across sessions. So for summer, it can be really fun to incorporate something like a camping theme. And with this, you can pretend to have a campout. You can use a flashlight to find words or objects with target sounds or attributes around your speech room. You could pretend to build a campfire for working on following directions. So there are a lot of possibilities here, and I know it can be easy to wanna switch up the theme each week, but my suggestion is for low-prep to stick with the same theme for the whole month. So not only does this help you to find your groove with the activities, making it even easier to utilize this theme next summer, but it also gives your students a chance to really immerse themselves in the creativity of the theme. Oftentimes, we just think about touching on a theme and then moving on, but it can really provide for a richer experience if we keep coming back to it a few weeks in a row. And of course, when we do that, it also means less prep time for us because we've already set things up in the speech room to support this theme. Now, my last tip is to use digital resources. Now, of course, I am a lover of all things digital here, but not only are digital resources super engaging, and they can touch on a lot of goals within one resource, but they essentially require zero prep time. So you just pull it up on your device and you are ready to go, simple as that! Digital SLP has a great freebies library, if you wanna check that out. I'm actually going to be switching out a couple of the spring resources for summer resources soon. So stay tuned for that. I will make sure to leave the link for that in the show notes as well so it's easy for you to access.

So those are my tips for minimizing your prep time this summer. And I really do hope that you found them to be helpful. If you like this podcast, I would love it if you would take a moment to leave a five-star review to make it easier for your fellow SLPs to also find this podcast. I would also love to know if you'll be providing summer services, and if there are ways that you like to minimize your prep time that I might have left out in today's episode. As many of you might have guessed, the podcast will be taking a short break this summer like it usually does, but I am very excited to say that it will be making a return the first week of September and we will be sticking to the usual schedule of two podcasts a month that air on the first and third Tuesday. Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this show, we are now offering a free trial of Digital SLP. So if you are looking for a collection of no prep, engaging resources for your in-person or teletherapy sessions, then head on over to thedigitalslp.com/digitalslp to sign up. Thank you so much for tuning in and I can't wait to get back to podcasting for the 2022-2023 school year this fall.