345: Using One Activity With As Many Groups As Possible

Show Notes:

In this solo episode, Hallie breaks down how to stop drowning in back-to-back groups with completely different goals. She covers why you don't need a separate activity for every student, how one resource — a video, book, article, or even a game — can hit multiple goals at once, and why mixed-goal groups can actually work in your favor instead of against you. If planning has been eating into time you don't have and you're tired of scrambling between sessions, this episode is for you.

Here's what we learned:

  • You don't need a new activity for every student — one resource can carry the whole group.
  • Mixed-goal groups pick up extra language just from hearing each other get prompted.
  • Edpuzzle lets you drop goal-specific questions right into any video.
  • Nobody's handing out a trophy for asking the exact question printed on the card.
  • The same resource can flex across grade levels — just adjust the difficulty, not the material.

RESOURCES

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Learn more about Hallie Sherman  and SLP Elevate: 

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Q: Why did this smartphone need glasses?

A: Because it lost all of its contacts.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Hallie: Hey there, SLP working with grades 4 through 12. New school year, new you. Let's not go into this school year feeling overwhelmed and behind on paperwork. Let's not worry about students asking why they are coming to speech. Let's not have students shrugging their shoulders and looking at you saying, why am I here? I don't want to be here. Let's instead have your students excited to come to speech, ready to take on the challenges you provide and make massive progress towards their goals. 

00:00:30 Hallie: If you are ready to make this school year the year that you leave work promptly at the end of the day, plan in an hour or less a week and go into every session confident that your students will grasp the session objectives, then SLP Elevate is just what you need to make this school year a successful one. Either go to slpelevate.com or send me a DM on Instagram with the word club, C-U-L-B, and we can discuss if SLP Elevate is right for you and your students. Now is the time to get your time back and now is the time to get your students excited to come to speech. SLP Elevate is perfect for you. 

00:01:14 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech language pathologists who work with older students, grades 4 through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate Membership, and I'm thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you're tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even during a well-deserved relaxation time, I am here for you each and every week. Let's do this, SLPs.

00:01:54 Hallie: Hey, hey and welcome to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. Today is a solo episode and I'm going to be sharing here with you guys today one thing that I get asked a lot about on social media. A lot of my SLP Elevate Members come to me for help with this, and that's why they join the membership. And it is how to plan easier, more effectively, work smarter, not harder. 

00:02:20 Hallie: A thing I find to be super important so that we maintain our sanity when working, especially in a school setting, and you're having back-to-back groups and large groups with different goals, is we can't be planning a completely different activity for each session. We can't be planning a completely different activity for each student. There is just not enough hours in the day. That is not the best use of our time. And there's many reasons for that. 

00:02:48 Hallie: But one reason is we don't have the time. And two, our students can benefit from working with each other and learning from each other. And I'm going to share something. Like you might have a student A working on summarizing, student B working on inferencing, student C working on social skills. That student C might not be working on summarizing or inferencing, but they need to know how to do that in the classroom anyway. So why can't you incorporate them into the activity? Let them be the language model. They can benefit from the working on that skill anyway. And let them all do things together. 

00:03:24 Hallie: Now, I'm not saying they're all working on the same goal. You're going to use the same activity, but they can all benefit from hearing how you're prompting each other, and that social skills student might be just learning how to play the game that's a language game. Okay, and this episode is not necessarily on how to work with a mixed group, but how to plan faster and easier using one resource with as many groups and goals as possible, and especially with one group with many groups inside of it. So you can easily take the strategies I'm going to be sharing in this episode today and incorporate it for running a mixed group. 

00:03:54 Hallie: That said, I find it super important in the beginning of the year and throughout the year to always be reminding the students of what they are individually they're working on. You guys listening to me, you probably have older speech students. Maybe when they're younger, they might not be as aware of exactly their goals. The older students, you can tell them their goals. Why are they here? Are they here for social skills? Are they here for articulation? Are they here for working on vocabulary? Maybe listening comprehension, thought direction? Like what are they there? What is something that they're struggling with in the classroom, in life? And that's what they're there to work on. 

00:04:28 Hallie: And building that routine when they come in, you might be doing some initial reminders of each of their strategies, giving them maybe their individual graphic organizer or a visual aid, and then we're going to do an activity together and be patient while I'm working and asking each individual question to a student their question or prompt. Don't call out. Don't make fun of someone getting something wrong. You know, all those different things. You want to constantly be reminding of those routines and expectations. 

00:04:54 Hallie: Okay, so that's it. So how do we do this? I'm all about taking something that can be used with as many groups. So for instance, I love using YouTube videos. I love using Edpuzzle. If you're not familiar with Edpuzzle, it is a free site that only needs a Google login and has tons of YouTube videos and you can make or find interactive videos and embed different questions or prompts into the video. If you go on Edpuzzle and search for your favorite videos, such as Simon's cat or One Man Band or different Pixar shorts, you might even find… you can find, you know, Big Bang Theory and Peppa Pig, like let's be real, clips on that and different Lego clips and things. 

00:05:32 Hallie: But you can also search for by goal. Now, yes, you can totally tell when you're searching by goal, like ones that are created by SLPs because they're like I'm working on our sound R, but like you can easily edit someone else's video and make it your own. But that's a whole nother story for a whole nother day and SLP Elevate members you have an entire Edpuzzle database where I have found or made different videos for different goals. And you can literally just click the goal, click the video and go team go. And also every month inside of SLP Elevate, you do get YouTube cheat sheets that has various goals included.

00:06:03 Hallie: Anyway, you can use the video after you've introduced their goal, take the video and pause at different points and prompt the different students or different questions and reminding them. And remember, we're not just testing, we are teaching. So, you know, don't be afraid to pause the video and you might need to re-watch the video. Have a re-teaching opportunity after you, you know, modeled your doing the skill and maybe you work to help them grasp the skill. It's okay if you don't even finish the video. Okay, it's okay if you don't finish a book. It's okay if you don't finish something. Okay, we want to remember to teach. So stop at different points, ask the different students the different things that they are working on. Videos make it super easy to do. Okay? 

00:06:43 Hallie: Another way you can do this is with using wordless picture books. Again, there are just like wordless videos on YouTube and Edpuzzle. You can do this with wordless picture books. I have tons of blog posts on how to use wordless picture books. I have companion packs inside my TPT store for my favorite wordless picture books and all those are included in the bonus section of SLP Elevate, such as Chalk, Pancakes for Breakfast, Tuesday, and Snowman Story are my top favorite ones. 

00:07:11 Hallie: But you can, after each page – go page by page. Let's describe what you see. Work on WH questions. You can ask your articulation student to work on their sounds while telling what the pictures are doing or what they see in the pictures or name the different items or even answering questions that have their sound in it. Your social skills students can talk about the body language or perspective taken or give those characters a voice. You can literally work on anything because there is no words. Just pretend there are words there. You can pretend there's vocabulary words and work on context clues. You literally can do anything. So you can take that one book and use it all day long or week long with all your different groups working on all your different goals. 

00:07:54 Hallie: Okay, what else can you do? You can take any storybook and do the same exact thing. You can take an article like ones you get inside of SLP Elevate or ones if you… you can go to Newsela or ReadWorks.org or any of those free sites and you can use an article and you can have students summarize. You can have students ask WH questions. You can work on context clues. You can have them read, tell the story using their articulation sound. With SLP Elevate, I give you all the follow-up graphic organizer and question types for working on main idea, WH questions, inferencing, context clues, recalling key story elements like those like important things like character setting, problem solution, summarizing, fiction and non-fiction you get. 

00:08:34 Hallie: And then… but you can also use those things for more than how is intended and that's the other thing. That's the other way you can use an activity more than once. Let's just say you went on Teachers Pay Teachers and bought one of my… let's say my inferencing Jeopardy game. You can use it with the entire group even with students that are not working on inferencing. Ask them a different question when it's their turn. Your students don't care that you're asking them something else that is there. And that's when you build that routine like, hey, everyone's here for working on something different. When it's your turn, I'm going to not ask you the question that's on the card. I'm going to ask you a different question. 

00:09:10 Hallie: Or the student can summarize like or you can have them work in pairs. The student that's working on summarization summarizes it and then the next their partner answers that inferential question. That WH question student answers the evidence question while the – like there's so many ways you can use things more than how it was intended. You can take something and stretch it out and just ask different questions.

00:09:34 Hallie: My goal for you guys listening is to be able to look at something and say how many goals can I work on with this thing versus how many activities do I need to find to fulfill all these goals? It's so much easier and less stuff that's going to be on your desk and less… you're going to feel less frazzled if you're going to have less material overwhelm. If you need to use one thing all day with as many groups. 

00:09:59 Hallie: Now I get it. You're going to say, Hallie, well, I have some students that are in sixth grade, some that are – and that's different. But if you have similar students in similar age groups, use the same things. And like you can easily use the wordless picture book with your like lower ones and higher ones, but like ask different questions. Same thing with those Edpuzzles. Your older students will still like it. 

00:10:22 Hallie: And that's what you can even do themes. So that's why with SLP Elevate, you might do the higher level thinking article with your high school students, but you might do the picture story with your first graders. So yes, it might be a different activity, but you're still using similar vocabulary words, similar… like it's still not a completely different activity. It's less stuff. How can you like… all for less is more, work smarter, not harder, and use that precious time that you have in between groups, going to the bathroom, cleaning up, sending that email, making that parent phone call, having a sip of coffee, go scroll social media and check out what I have posted on social media. Like I don't want you to be scrambling to find that next activity. How can you take what you have? 

00:11:15 Hallie: And again, your students won't care. You don't get a prize for having the most activities planned for the day. You're not getting – like there's no award for being the last car in the parking lot. So how can we go into this year with a fresh perspective that things don't need to be perfect and that you can easily just adapt. Maybe little notes to yourself. And that's where we come in inside of SLP Elevate. We have a caseload concierge forum where if you're like, okay, Hallie, I do not know how I can use this article for this goal and you didn't give me that supplemental activity. So how do I do it? That's what we're there for. We will give you suggestions. We will give you ideas on how you can do that with your students. This way you're not on your own and not feeling so alone. Okay? 

00:12:04 Hallie: I always like to keep my solo episodes short. So just a reminder, you can use a video like on YouTube, using Edpuzzle. You can use wordless picture books. You can use a storybook. You can use an article or you can use any game and use it more than how it was intended. I think that was four or five different ways to use one activity with as many groups and goals as possible, but not to forget, to teach the skills to your students. Remind them of why they are there, that they're all there for working on something different. And then when it is their turn, what they are going to do to be successful. Because again, we want to get them those quick wins to show them that they can do it. If they don't have the confidence to do it, they're not going to want to work with you. 

00:12:49 Hallie: All right, I always end my episodes with a joke. Why did this smartphone need glasses? Because it lost all of its contacts. All right, everyone, until next week, stay out of trouble.

00:13:09 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you're tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, speechtimefun.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun, guys. 

00:13:50 Hallie: Hey there, SLP friends. It is Hallie here, popping in with the best news ever. My new book, Secondary SLP Roadmap, is officially available. If you've ever wished for a clear, practical guide for working with middle and high school students, this is it. It is packed with real stories, ready-to-use strategies, and tools you can use right away. Grab your copy now, check the link in the show notes, or search Secondary SLP Roadmap on Amazon, and then, of course, please do me a favor. When you are reading it, snap a picture and tag me on Instagram, @speechtimefun. I love seeing where you're diving in – the speech room, the couch, waiting in a doctor's waiting room, all the places. All right, ready? Go grab your copy and let's make secondary speech feel doable and fun.

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