“I have no idea how I’m going to get this all done.” or “I’m going to be writing IEPs all weekend…” Sound familiar? We’ve all been here.
As itinerant Teachers of the Deaf or Speech Language Pathologists, it seems like there are at least 8 million items on our to-do lists at all times. Our schedules can be jam-packed with student sessions, traveling between multiple schools, attending IEP meetings, writing session notes, figuring out scheduling changes for a student (or 5), and so much more.
But I’m here to tell you that there are systems you can put in place to make your life quite a bit easier. In this blog post, we’re going to look at 10 strategies for using your time efficiently so that you can get more done in the workday. Implementing these strategies can help you get your evenings (or your weekends) back and give you time to spend time with your family or on yourself outside of the workday. So let’s get to it!
How to save time when PLANNING
1. Batch your tasks
Batching is a time-saving strategy that is basically the opposite of multitasking. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t not multi-task. It’s part of the job.” And while I understand that many times we don’t have a choice, I highly suggest trying this strategy during your next prep time so that you can see the benefits for yourself.
If you want to try batching, you’re going to segment your time so that you’re doing the same task over and over again until all of the similar tasks are complete. Then, you’ll move on to the next set of similar tasks.
For example, let’s say you have 3 students to write progress reports for. You can go through the process linearly for each student: analyze their data and notes, write the progress report, and enter the progress report into your IEP system. Each time you do this, you have to find your notes, switch your brain to analyze mode, double-check your data, switch your brain to writing mode, summarize the student’s progress into a nice sentence or two, then switch tabs on your computer and enter your notes or email them to the case manager.
Versus, doing this in bigger steps or batching into similar tasks:
analyze the data for all students
write notes for all students
send progress reports for all students
Your brain has to do less switching, thus using less energy and time. You also don’t have to change tabs on your computer as much, which also saves time (every minute counts).
Using the batching strategy whenever you have multiple of the same task to do (e.g. progress reports, session planning, parent emails, session notes, etc.) will no doubt save you time and energy. This strategy helped me get so much more done as an itinerant teacher and helped me get my tasks done with better quality too because I felt more focused on each task.
2. Plan by goal type
One of my favorite ways to plan sessions and activities is to plan by goal type. I try not to plan for just the week ahead, which would mean planning a bunch of separate sessions and activities for all of the students I’m seeing that week with all of the different skills they’re working on. Instead, I prefer to plan activities for a group of students that have similar goals and try to find activities that will work for most, if not all, of those students.
For example, if I have a few students working on identifying rhyming words, I can find and prepare several activities for building and testing that skill. Then, each week I can grab one of those activities and use it for all of the students that week that would benefit from working on that skill.
I like to think of this as building “activity banks” for each skill that I can pull from throughout the year. I have “activity banks” for identifying initial phonemes, high school self-advocacy, and activities that are highly differentiable (like board games or crafts). This system is very flexible and very much aligns with the idea of batching your planning sessions to save time.
3. Reuse activities
Be creative with how you use your resources. You can save yourself time, storage space, and money by using the same resource across your caseload and/or reusing activities with the same student multiple times (yes, this is more than okay).
In addition (or as an alternative) to planning by goal type (tip #2), you can plan your sessions for an entire week, and still save time, if you plan to use just one activity for nearly your entire caseload (yep, K-12). This is why I LOVE versatile resources.
Let’s look at an example. Last year I used the I-Spy activities from my TPT store with nearly all of my students in the same week. For the really young children I saw, I gave them the I-Spy board with fewer icons and a dot marker, and we just worked on identifying vocabulary and finding items on the page. For elementary students, we worked on specific auditory skills like identifying initial phonemes or rhyming words, and they got to pick which board they wanted to use. Then for my middle school or high school student, they chose which board they used, I read from the auditory memory lists of 4-5 words, and I intentionally created difficult listening situations (i.e. using sabotage or background noise). Then, the students needed to be very specific in how they requested to repair the communication breakdown to move on. Even a resource that may appear elementary can oftentimes be adapted for middle or high school, and quite a few of my older students appreciated the occasional break from more “serious” work to do more “fun” things like an I-Spy game with crayons. This is a great example of being creative to make one activity work across many ages, skills, and levels.
Also, these activities can be used several times throughout the year because they’re seasonal, and the vocabulary changes between the seasons. Or you might use the same season again with the same student, but target a different skill and use the other board (fewer or more icons). By reusing the same activity in multiple ways, you’re saving time finding new resources, printing and prepping, explaining directions to your students, and writing new plans or session notes. It’s a win-win-win-win situation to reuse activities.
4. Use a digital planner
Imagine having a planner that you can access from all your devices and does half the work for you. Sounds amazing, right? This on-the-go planner was life-saving for me as an itinerant teacher.
Having everything I needed to know about each student all in one place saved me hours of time. No more sifting through emails or IEPs because I was finally organized with a planner that was designed for itinerant teachers. Personally, I prefer to use the digital version because it truly saved me so much time and energy. With the digital version, you can search the document, you can view it from any device, and it automates so much work for you. It’s a HUGE time-saver!
Also, I combined this caseload planner with my Outlook calendar (Google would work the same) to schedule my caseload. I laid out my schedule in the 4-week format that’s included in the planner and color-coded by district. Then, I included all of my students’ teachers in calendar invites in Outlook so I could easily communicate any schedule changes as they came up. This system worked really well and I got a lot of positive feedback from the teachers I worked with about it. I talk all about this system in our episode 15 of the TOD POD here!
How to save time when TAKING DATA
5. Automate your data recording
As I mentioned above, having systems and tools that do work for you will save you so much time and energy. This obviously applies to data recording as well. A big part of our job as TODs and SLPs is taking data and reporting on that data to show student progress. And honestly, this can bog us down. We want to spend time teaching our students new skills and doing fun activities. We want to see their growth and celebrate wins with them. But, we also have to have the data that proves those wins and shows that growth. However, taking data doesn’t need to be a terrible and time-sucking task. If you have data collection tools that do all the work for you, like this minimal pairs automated data collector, you can focus on all the fun and amazing parts of your job while letting Google Sheets do all the math for you (and I’ve already done all the setup work for you too). All you have to do is read the lists and click some checkboxes!
6. Track progress systematically
Being organized in the way you track progress will save you time. Overall, consistency is the key.
Using the same wording in your daily session notes and your progress reports is a systematic approach because it makes it easier to compare progress over time.
Using the same checklists or rubrics for every push-in session or observation makes your data and anecdotal notes more reliable and easier to spot trends in.
Using the same activity to “test” your student at the start of a session saves you planning time, saves you time in explaining directions and expectations, and makes your data more accurate.
Finding systems that help you build consistency result in less decision-making which means less time spent on each task for you. These are just a few examples!
How to save time when LOGGING SESSION NOTES
7. Pre-write while planning
I started writing my session notes before the session as part of my planning process. I did this in my caseload planner when I was planning sessions so everything was in one place and easily accessible. Once I had my activity and/or target goal picked out for the session, I would write a sentence frame that included the name of the activity, the target skill, and how I was measuring the target skill (with blanks for the data - either number of trials correct and/or how much support the student needed). Then, after the session, all I had to do was go in and fill in the blanks!
Always be on the lookout for ways you can save yourself time later by starting a task now and/or ways you can combine tasks.
(Side note: We used IEP Writer where I worked so I had one extra step of copying and pasting into that system, BUT I heard from colleagues in two different schools that they lost all of their data in that system, so it doesn’t hurt to always have a back-up!)
8. Create mini templates
If I’m going to use the same activity multiple times either with the same student or with multiple students, I can save my “pre-written sentence frame” as a template for future use. One way to do this would be to create a separate document to store all of your planning notes. However, if you’re using my caseload planner for your planning and notes, you can easily search across all tabs using a keyword search (Edit > Find and replace) to find your notes “templates” for future use.
For example, if I’m using a versatile resource, as mentioned above, like the I-Spy seasonal bundle, I know I’m going to be reusing my notes “template” for multiple students the week that I’m using the fall activity and then again the week I’m using the winter activity, and so on for each season. I’m also going to have slightly different templates for each skill within the activity. These are great activities to create and save templates for my planning and notes so that I’m not reinventing the wheel each time.
How to save time when WRITING IEPs
9. Use goal and accommodation banks
IEPs should be individualized, no doubt about it. But the reality is that you don’t have time to write brand new, never before seen goals and accommodations for every one of your students on your caseload each year. That’s not feasible or necessary. Starting with a goal bank and/or an accommodation bank to pull wording from, to double-check to see if any of the supports listed would also be beneficial for your student, and to use as a starting point and to adjust and tailor to each of your student’s unique needs and situations - that’s totally plausible and actually helpful for you and your students.
This strategy for IEP writing is not a shortcut IF you are taking the information from the goal banks or accommodation banks and individualizing it to the student you are writing the IEP for.
10. Develop a framework for writing present levels
Similarly to tip #9, it can be helpful to have a framework and/or an outline when writing your present levels. I specifically did not use the word “template” here. I feel that’s a slippery slope since this area of the IEP should be very unique to each student. However, having an outline and some wording that you use consistently across your IEPs can be beneficial and save you time since some things will stay the same.
For example, if you’re a TOD who works with students who use amplification devices, you’ll likely be reporting on your students’ audiological information in each of your IEPs, so having a basic outline and some verbiage for that paragraph makes sense. Then, you adjust as needed and plug in each student’s individual information. Having a standard paragraph that explains how you collect teacher input using a SIFTER and how you compare that data to your observations during push-in sessions throughout the year to determine student progress is another example of some wording that you might be able to reuse between reports because that’s not necessarily specific to the student, but rather to your process.
Be sure to individualize the student-specific parts of the present levels section. However, there are parts of this section that speak to your process or that can be outlined to save you time. You certainly don’t need to reinvent the entire wheel each time you sit down to write your IEP input.
Putting it all together
If you’re trying to get your itinerant life together and your caseload organized, I bet this felt like a lot of (very useful) information. Trying to implement all ten of these tips tomorrow would probably be quite overwhelming, though. So, I suggest you start with just one of these tips, and I know you’ll start to see a difference right away. Then, maybe next week try another tip, and slowly but surely all of it will come together and save you so much time and effort.
If you’re reading this before the start of a new school year, you might have more time to try to implement most, if not all, of these tips to start off your year on the right foot. If you stick with these strategies in your planning, you’ll surely see a world of difference between last year and this one.
Make sure you stay tuned for upcoming posts that will dive deeper into each of these topics. I have so many more tips and tricks in store for you that will save you time, effort, and money. And I can’t wait to share them with you!
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