What to Do First, in Order
Do eight things, in this order: set up the room, build a caseload master list, build the schedule, introduce yourself to teachers, teach first-week routines, run screenings and baselines, send the parent letter, and block your planning time before anyone else claims it. Order matters because each step feeds the next. You cannot build a schedule without a master list, and you cannot write a useful teacher email without a schedule.
Most school SLPs get three to ten workdays before students arrive, and half of that disappears into district meetings. Treat this as a triage order. Finish the first four items before the first bell and you are in good shape; the rest can happen during the first two weeks with students. One caution throughout: service minutes, evaluation timelines, and referral procedures are set by your state and district and they vary, so check the local ones against your special education handbook.
- Days 1-2: Room setup and materials audit
- Days 1-2: Caseload master list with IEP dates, minutes, and reevaluation deadlines
- Days 3-4: Draft schedule, sent to teachers for objections
- Day 5: Teacher introduction email and referral explainer
- Week 1: Routines, rapport, and room expectations
- Weeks 1-2: Screenings and baseline data
- Week 2: Parent introduction letters home
- Week 2: Planning and evaluation time blocked on the master schedule
Build the caseload master list before the schedule. Almost every scheduling problem and due-date panic later in the year traces back to that one document.
Set Up the Room So It Runs Itself
A speech room works when you never have to stand up mid-session. Sit in your therapy chair and ask what belongs within arm's reach: mirror, timer, data sheets, reinforcers, tissues, and the current sound's materials. Everything else goes away. If you travel, this becomes one cart and the rule holds.
Audit materials while the room is empty. Pull anything you did not touch last year, anything missing pieces, and anything that only worked for a student who has moved. Organize what is left by sound, not by activity type, because that is how you search during a group: you need something for the two students working on R, not something in the card-game bin. On most elementary caseloads R, S, L, SH and TH earn folders of their own.
Build the Caseload Master List
Before you touch a schedule grid, build one document holding every student you serve, sorted by due date rather than by name. Record grade, teacher, service minutes and frequency exactly as the IEP writes them, individual or group setting, goal areas, annual review date, and reevaluation due date.
Add two columns most master lists skip: date of last parent contact, and a dismissal-candidate flag. The first keeps parent communication from silently lapsing; the second makes you notice students who have met their goals and are quietly holding a slot.
Read the actual IEP minutes rather than carrying over last year's assumption; thirty minutes weekly in a group is not the same commitment as thirty minutes weekly individually. Flag reevaluations landing in the first quarter now, because evaluation windows are counted in school days and the fall calendar is short. If you are writing goals from scratch, the articulation IEP goal bank gives you measurable frames to adapt.
Build the Schedule in Four Passes
Scheduling goes badly in one pass. Do it in four, adding one constraint layer at a time. Pass one blocks fixed constraints from the building master schedule: lunch, recess, specials, testing, reading intervention, and other related services. Pass two places students who cannot flex, meaning individual service, a setting written into the IEP, or a teacher's hard no. Pass three groups everyone else by grade band, then by sound. Pass four is the one people skip: reserve two flexible slots per day for makeups, evaluations, and Tuesday's absence.
Send the draft with a short objection window: here is the speech schedule for your students starting Monday, please reply by Thursday if any of these conflict with core instruction. Forty-eight hours gets real feedback while changes are still cheap.
Group by sound wherever you can, because mixed-sound groups multiply prep. When you cannot, plan the mixed group deliberately rather than improvising, which is what first-weeks games for mixed groups is for. If any service is remote, settle the platform, materials and audio during your workdays instead of mid-session.
Introduce Yourself and Explain Referrals
Most teachers do not know what a school SLP actually does, and the ones who think they do often assume it is only articulation. Your introduction email sets the quality of every referral you get all year. Keep it to one screen: who you are, where your room is, what you treat in plain terms (speech sounds, language, fluency, social communication, voice), which of their students you see and when, and what happens on absences.
Then explain referrals concretely: what to try in the classroom first, how to document the concern, what form to send you, and what happens next. In most districts a teacher concern moves through a general education problem-solving process before an evaluation referral, parents may request an evaluation in writing at any time, and districts carry Child Find obligations. Specifics vary, so write yours from your own handbook.
Then follow up in person. Stand in a doorway at dismissal and ask one question: is there anyone in here you are wondering about? That conversation surfaces better referrals than any form.
First-Week Routines, Rapport, and Screening
Spend the first session teaching the room rather than treating in it. Students need to know how to get to you, what to do on arrival, where to sit, what a session looks like, and how to get back to class. Ten minutes in week one buys back minutes every session after that.
Rapport is a clinical tool: a student who trusts you will attempt a hard sound and tolerate correction. Use a low-demand get-to-know-you activity and learn one specific thing about each student. Preview the year honestly with older students, naming the target sound and explaining that practice climbs from isolation through syllables, words, sentences and conversation.
Screening and baselines are different jobs. Screening finds students you do not yet serve; baselines measure the ones you already have so you can show growth in spring. Use a fast repeatable probe for screening, described in the start-of-year articulation screening guide, and probes short enough to sit inside a session for baselines, described in baseline data in the first two weeks. When you discuss whether a sound is late, use ranges: early sounds such as p, b, m, n, h, w, d, t, k and g are typically in place by about three to four, later sounds such as l, s, z, sh, ch, j and v by about five to six, and R and TH are usually last, often by six to seven, with TH sometimes running to seven or eight. Ranges vary by source and by child, and only an evaluation by a licensed SLP can determine whether a child has a disorder.
Screening answers who might need services. Baselines document where your current students are starting. Do not let one substitute for the other.
Data, Parent Contact, and Planning Time
Pick one data system in August and do not change it in October. The best one is the one you will still use in March, usually the simplest: one sheet per group, a tally per student per trial block, percent correct written before students leave the room. Data transcribed later usually is not. Scored practice tools, like the pronunciation games in the SLP game library, can capture trial-level accuracy for one student while you work with the rest.
Set the parent communication cadence in week two and let it run on rails: an introduction letter in the first two weeks, home practice at a predictable interval, and a progress note timed to the report card calendar. Copy-ready wording is in the parent letter templates, and if you want home practice to come back completed, build it on the one-page formula in home practice packets that parents actually use.
Finally, block planning and evaluation time on the published master schedule with a label and a room, as if it were a student. Unlabeled gaps get filled by coverage requests. Defend two blocks a week: one for testing and report writing, one for prep and service logging. A themed first month removes a daily decision too, which is what back-to-school articulation activities by sound is for.
- One data sheet per group, scored before students leave the room
- Absences logged with a reason, since makeup obligations are tracked in minutes
- A monthly fifteen-minute review of the master list for upcoming due dates
- Two planning blocks a week, labeled on the published schedule
Bringing It Together
The first two weeks are the only stretch all year when you get to design how the rest of it runs. The SLPs who feel calm in November are rarely the ones who worked hardest in September; they are the ones who made these eight decisions early and stopped relitigating them.
As you pull materials for the first month, having practice pages, word lists and worksheets for every sound in one place cuts real prep time, and the scored pronunciation games and story builder on SpeechTherapyMagic can run a targeted station for one student while you work with the rest of the group. Creating an account is free. It supports the plan you already wrote rather than replacing any part of it.