How I Get My Teachers Ready for Speech

Getting ready for a new year is always crazy.  Setting up my room, grabbing files, going over my students’ goals.  One of the things that can easily fall to the wayside is getting my teachers ready for a new year of speech.  Making sure teachers know which students get speech and why is so important to start the year off on the right foot.

I try and do this with teachers before the kids start school and everyone is back setting up their rooms or at least within the first week of school

The IEP system my district uses allows us to print an IEP At A Glance, which has a summary of all of their goals and any accommodations they may have.  This makes the bulk of this work a lot easier for me, but if you don’t have a program with this feature you can provide teachers with a copy of the student’s goal pages and write any accommodations or special considerations on the back. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just helpful.

I try and give teachers helpful information about the student that may not be on the IEP, like how sitting in the front makes them anxious or that they shine when activities are hands on.   I also make it a point to list at least three strengths for each kid.  It seems that all too often we get hung up on their weakness or where they struggle and forget about everything they can already do and do well.

I also give my teachers this free handout about why they are coming to speech.   Something else I like to give my teachers, usually a week or so later, is a handout of typical speech milestones for their age/grade level.  In the past teachers have said that they like to have it as a reference tool.  Here are some  great ones from Sublime Speech. I also like these from Panda Speech.