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Coffee, color coding, and scheduling made easy. If you’re looking for a new way to schedule your students this year, this video is for YOU! Check it out below:
What do you think? I’m in love!
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About the Author
Shannon
Shannon is a pediatric SLP and the creator behind Speechy Musings. As an SLP, she is most passionate about language, literacy, and AAC. Outside of being an SLP, she loves hiking, camping, dogs, and travel.
I wish I could but it would be so hard to post a picture and hide student names and identifying information and such! I’ve been trying to think of ways to make it work without doing everything twice but I think it just might be too time consuming/tricky! Sorry!
I need some help! I got some pushback recently from someone in my building for not having my schedule filled every day with either pull-out groups or pushing in. (e.g. She thought I had too much time blocked off for evaluations, paperwork, and observations). Obviously I need time to complete these things each week.. How much time do you allot for prep, conferences, and evaluations?
My district has no guidelines, this is just a building-specific issue! Thank you for your help!
Great question!!! I’m moving to a new district this year with GREAT guidelines for caseload and hours like this. First, I should preface by saying that we have an evaluation team in my district that helps quite a bit with evaluations. Each week, we are allotted 3 hours for evaluations, 30 duty-free minutes for lunch/day, 225 minutes of prep time/week, and a minimum of 225 minutes of case management time/week. Hope that helps!
How do you align your schedule with Social work, OT, PT or EL support? So often the kiddos are receiving more than one service and all are competing for very few openings. Any suggestions?
How do you get your teachers on board to respond with available times? When I tried that I got very few responses back so I gave up and just used the school master schedule to gauge when grades were available (not in specialties, lunch, recess). Any tips?
This year all of my buildings are doing most of their core in the morning. I am really struggling with when I can pull students. We are not supposed to pull from core, specials, lunch, recess, guidance, which leaves maybe an hour at the end of the day to pull. I have a small room and many students can’t be grouped, and I can’t see that many students in the last hour. It wouldn’t be effective. We also have early outs every week so I lose one full afternoon. Basically, there is no time to take students. What do I do? Do you have any suggestions, or this not an issue in your buildings?
[…] your friend. I did my research before embarking on my scheduling journey. This blog post/video from Speech Musings was super helpful and a step in the right direction. Luckily, I am in a district with realistic […]
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I’m visual too and love the color coding! Thanks for the idea to make the schedule on a poster with stickies before making it into a spreadsheet.
Glad it was helpful for you! Good luck with scheduling this year!
Loving the color too.
Can you perhaps post a picture of how the schedule ended up looking? Total cliff hanger.
But, Maria
I wish I could but it would be so hard to post a picture and hide student names and identifying information and such! I’ve been trying to think of ways to make it work without doing everything twice but I think it just might be too time consuming/tricky! Sorry!
Yeah. Can imagine.
Perhaps just turn all the ones with names over. And leave the rest? (and try not to sneeze) 😀
I need some help! I got some pushback recently from someone in my building for not having my schedule filled every day with either pull-out groups or pushing in. (e.g. She thought I had too much time blocked off for evaluations, paperwork, and observations). Obviously I need time to complete these things each week.. How much time do you allot for prep, conferences, and evaluations?
My district has no guidelines, this is just a building-specific issue! Thank you for your help!
Great question!!! I’m moving to a new district this year with GREAT guidelines for caseload and hours like this. First, I should preface by saying that we have an evaluation team in my district that helps quite a bit with evaluations. Each week, we are allotted 3 hours for evaluations, 30 duty-free minutes for lunch/day, 225 minutes of prep time/week, and a minimum of 225 minutes of case management time/week. Hope that helps!
thank you- that is so helpful! 🙂 I think it’s hard for some people to understand and see all the other parts of our role besides doing therapy!
I totally agree!
How do you align your schedule with Social work, OT, PT or EL support? So often the kiddos are receiving more than one service and all are competing for very few openings. Any suggestions?
At my current school, we all spend an afternoon in a room together and schedule. That seems to work well!
How do you get your teachers on board to respond with available times? When I tried that I got very few responses back so I gave up and just used the school master schedule to gauge when grades were available (not in specialties, lunch, recess). Any tips?
That’s what I do! I don’t really ask and just kind of do whatever works. I’m in a middle school so the schedules are a bit different though.
This year all of my buildings are doing most of their core in the morning. I am really struggling with when I can pull students. We are not supposed to pull from core, specials, lunch, recess, guidance, which leaves maybe an hour at the end of the day to pull. I have a small room and many students can’t be grouped, and I can’t see that many students in the last hour. It wouldn’t be effective. We also have early outs every week so I lose one full afternoon. Basically, there is no time to take students. What do I do? Do you have any suggestions, or this not an issue in your buildings?
It isn’t that rough in my building.. 🙁 I’m sorry! I would definitely chat with your supervisor and show her your options! Good luck!