Classroom Management Isn't Just for Teachers

Finally, a post that's really about speech and language therapy in the school setting!

Before I get into the meat of the post, here's some backstory. My bachelor's degree is in Applied Linguistics and Spanish (double major, since my university didn't confer dual BA's) and I also earned a TESL (teaching English as a second language) certificate with a few extra applied linguistics classes. I am not a certified or licensed ESL teacher! I just learned how to teach ESL in case I decided to pursue that line of work. I've used almost everything I learned from my applied linguistics and TESL classes with regards to classroom management and curriculum design in my practice as an SLP. That's what inspired this evening's post.

If you are a school-based clinician, then you rarely see individual kids all day. Your caseload numbers are far too high to accommodate individual sessions for each student. So you end up with lots of dyads, some triads, and more and more you may find yourself taking on a whole classroom of students (this is a great way to do an informal, very basic screening of kids that a teacher is concerned about!). Your graduate program will touch on ways to do group therapy and design curriculum-based materials, but that doesn't necessarily prepare you for three kids at a table who are all vying for your attention. Here are some strategies I've used with at least moderate success.

1) Print out copies of practice materials. If you want each student to practice their sounds and not create a cacaphony of voices when it's not their turn during a game or activity, then give them a sheet of practice words or sentences for them to peruse quietly. I tried this first with a couple of loud, enthusiastic groups. It took some training for everyone to self-monitor their vocal volume and ability to stay on task, but after a couple of weeks I saw and heard a big difference in noise-level, on-task behaviors, and even cooperation between students when I was working with their fellow speech buddies. This is especially helpful for groups in which each student is working on a different sound or structure.

2) Ask classroom teachers what they are teaching in science and social studies. I hated language arts as a K-12 student. I didn't feel very good at it and I thought most of it was boring. Many other kids feel the same way about math. But Science? Social studies? Those were and are cool! They also lend themselves well to what SLPs do in therapy because of all of the vocabulary, sequencing, relational concepts, and high interest level. A student who's interested will learn more.

3) Make your speech room rules concise and small in number. Too many rules will turn into a wall of text and a barrage of auditory information that is completely uninteresting. Ms. Persistence's Speech Rules are very simple and easy to review at the beginning and end of therapy sessions. I only have five of them:

1. Listen to Ms. Persistence
2. Try your best
3. Keep your hands and feet to yourself
4. Show respect
5. We play games to have fun, not just to win.

For #4, I made sure to talk with each student about respect, how to show it, and how not everyone can or has to show it exactly the same way (eye contact, augh!). As an added bonus, my first graders who are learning to read like to read my speech rules and tell me how well they followed each one.

4) Have a system in place so that each student in a group will have a chance to choose the game, take the first turn, etc. I wouldn't suggest rolling dice each time because of the potential for one person getting to choose a game more often than their speech buddies. With a dyad, this is pretty simple because you just alternate weeks. Triads are a little trickier because it takes time to write everything down and remember. My CFY supervisor writes a dot, a 1, or a 2 next to each kiddo's name for that day's session. A dot means that student chose the game today, a 1 means that student got to take the first turn and will pick the game next time, and a 2 means that student will get to take the first turn next time. I've found this to be useful and you might find it useful, too.

5) Don't beat yourself up when something doesn't work. When you're new, this happens a lot. It can set the tone for your whole day if you're not careful. But it's not just you! It happens to everyone. Instead of spending hours reflecting on what went wrong, have a few contingency plans in place for next time. Ask another SLP or school clinician what they would do (our OT is a great resource for me). Ask a teacher what they find useful and think about whether it might work in a small group setting. Groups are tricky and they can take some trial and error.

I'm looking for more strategies for groups. If you have one, tell me about in a comment!