Helpful Tips and Free Links for the Organized SLP
Do you get to the end of the day with your desk looking like a paper storm hit? It takes some effort to keep all of the SLP paperwork, games, and activities organized, but it feels so good when you can manage it. Whether you are an organized SLP or just wannabe, this series can help you out!
Organizing Materials
There’s no time during the school year to actually re-organize the materials that were used. Yet you need to easily find them when the school year revs back up in the fall! Try these tips to be an organized SLP:
- Cut back on using printables. Try using no print materials instead!
- Insert your printables into a page protector and let the students use erasable markers. This way you need much fewer copies.
- Place the extra, unused copies you can re-use the following year in a box on top of your file cabinet. Sort them when you have a few extra minutes, later in the year, or bring the whole box home to sort. Empty manila file folder boxes work great for this! Place the two pieces together to make it sturdier. Then label each box according to where they will eventually end up.
- Place one original of your favorite worksheets, with a yellow highlighter mark in the corner, in a page protector for storage with similar themed materials. It’s easy to store them in labeled binders.
- Keep a special spot to place worksheets or activities that your students particularly enjoyed or ones that are great for using as a pre/post progress measure for specific goals. Put this binder of materials in a place that you can easily access when setting up your workspace the next school year. And label them for free!
Organizing Learning
We all have to keep up with CEU’s, and ASHA has a great organization system for that. But what about when we get a student who has a disorder we aren’t very familiar with? Or the child with a more severe level of disability who isn’t responding to the strategies that we know? Then we want tips from an experienced speech path, so we go on a google hunt.
Now you’ve found the resources you are hoping to find! Hooray! You read the blog post or research article, but what about if you want to be able to access it later? Pinterest boards are the best tool for keeping links you want to be able to easily find again. Best of all, you aren’t printing paper that still needs to be organized or downloading information that takes up memory on your computer. And still needs to be organized.
Just set up your Pinterest account and name your board. Then go to the blogs of your favorite SLPs. They’ve probably already organized some of the information for you. So just pin that blog post! Then be sure to check their Pinterest boards, too, and save the information you need to your board. Easy and organized! And if you love their stuff, be sure to follow as well.
Organizing Your Space
This can be a tough one for SLPs! We have so many different types of materials and supplies. Generally, so little space as well. It totally makes sense with all the different student needs and learning styles that we work with during our careers. But it can pose an organization problem!
Have you ever gone looking for a specific material and come across something else you’d completely forgotten that you own? Of course, you have, if you’ve been working long enough. That’s our goal for being organized: to have a pretty, comfortable space to work in and quick, easy access to the materials we need.
There are so many different ways to accomplish this goal. And it all depends on the size of the room you’ve been given and the amount of money you are willing to spend. But a tip that makes sense for everyone? Make good use of all the space that you have!
The tops of file cabinets are great for keeping the file boxes of papers you need to re-organize when you have a chance. Metal cabinets work well for displaying posters and progress charts.
Older students can be in charge of punching their own reinforcement cards for good behavior and progress. Just keep some hole punches on hooks and use magnets for them to store their cards on the doors.
Favorite storage methods for organized SLPS include all of these pictured ways! To get the benefit of talented SLPs on TpT, I’ve organized their ideas on a Pinterest board. Just looking at the pictures could help you solve a room organization problem! So click the link to check it out.
If you have your own pictures of how you’ve solved an SLP organization problem, get in touch! I’d love to add your photos to my board. Good luck staying organized this year!
