From Chaos to Clarity: Why One-Off Activities Are Failing Your Therapy Sessions

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Speech and Language Kids Podcast 21 min 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed 2 hours ago

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Why do one‑off activities feel tempting but often fail in speech therapy?

Carrie Clark 0:00

You spend all evening scouring the internet for the perfect activity for little Timmy. You print, you cut, you laminate, you velcro, he's gonna love it. And then it lasts all of two seconds in therapy, and then he's bored. I'm Speech Language Pathologist Carrie Clark, and in today's episode of the Speech and Language Kids podcast, we'll be answering the question of are one-off activities really working or are they just filling time? Plus, I'm going to show you how the power of having a start-to-finish plan that actually moves children toward success. Welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to have you guys here. If you are listening to this recording of the podcast, you can find the show notes for today at speechandlanguagekids.com slash chaos.

Carrie Clark 0:45

That'll be today's episode. Hey Olivia, hey Leanne, welcome. You guys can pop over into the chat inside the hub here and say hello and I'll take your questions as we go along. If you guys would like to listen to uh the episode recordings live in the hub, you guys can also do that. Head on over to s to hub dot speechandlanguage kids.com to join us in there. Alright, so today in our Wayback Machine, I want to take you back to my SLP survival kit. Does anyone remember this? So this was, oh gosh, I don't even know what year this would have been. Um, but this was one of my very first resources that I made that was super, super popular. Okay. And

Unknown 1:24

I actually just found this the other day and my son saw it, my 11 year old, and he said, SLP survival kit. What do you need to survive as an SLP? And I said, Well, you just needed to survive this session. And so oh the video's not great on

Carrie Clark 1:39

this. Um, but it's basically just it's a book that I made of all of these one-off activities. And it was organized by topics you could say, okay, here's the speech activities, here's the language activities. And the idea was that if you were struggling in a session, you could just pull this out and have a ready-to-go activity.

Unknown 1:59

Leanne says my friend has it. That's amazing. Hey Kim, welcome. Um yes, so Okay, nothing wrong with this with my SLP survival kit. But It kind of reflects the um Where I used to be versus where I am now in terms

Carrie Clark 2:17

of this whole therapy process and how we serve kids and how we support kids, okay. Um, it was really, really popular. People loved it. And that was because it feels like we're all in survival mode. It feels like if we just find that perfect activity, then the kid's going to get it, right? But it's not just about the perfect activity. It's about having a full plan from start to finish that walks them from where they are now to where we want them to be. And it's about getting them there as quickly as possible. So when we're using something like a survival kit where we're just grabbing one-off activities, yes, it gets us through the session. Yes, we survive the session, but it's not necessarily serving them.

Carrie Clark 3:01

And it's not serving us because what we find is we have these kids who are just on the caseload for years and years and years. And yes, we're doing stuff and it's probably helping, but we're not moving them to the finish line. We're just kind of stagnating, right? Does any do any of you feel that way in any of your sessions? Or maybe, maybe you are not me. Maybe you totally feel on top of all of that. Um, but but I do feel like these one-off activities have such an allure, but they have an allure and they have a problem. So why let's look into this? Why do we love one-off activities so much? Well, they're readily available. There is an entire Teachers Pay Teachers website where you can get any one-off activity you need.

Carrie Clark 3:44

You type in a skill and boom, there's an activity for it, or like 10 probably. They're super easy. We can just grab them and go. They're super cute and fun looking. A lot of those that you find on Teachers Pay Teachers or on Instagram, they're so adorable, right? And they're very alluring because of that. The other piece of this is it's there's like a peer pressure component to it because it's what we see on social media. Because they're catchy, right?

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Chapters

8 chapters

1 Why do one‑off activities feel tempting but often fail in speech therapy? 0:00–4:49 2 What makes cute, ready‑made activities so alluring to SLPs? 4:49–6:01 3 What are the main downsides of using one‑off activities in sessions? 6:01–8:47 4 How does a start‑to‑finish plan create intentional, predictable therapy? 8:47–11:38 5 What’s the difference between a therapy pathway and a therapy plan? 11:38–14:41 6 How can I build a therapy pathway for a specific client challenge? 14:41–16:52 7 What steps make up an individual therapy plan for a single skill? 16:52–18:54 8 Where can I find pre‑made therapy plans and how do they work? 18:54–21:28

Speakers

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Carrie Clark 19 min

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Instagram 1 ADHD 1 anxiety 1 Olivia 1 Kim 1 Leanne 1 Timmy 1 Speech and Language Kids podcast 1 Carrie Clark 1 Bianca 1 speechandlanguagekids.com 1 Teachers Pay Teachers 1

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Recorded24 Feb 2025

Publisherspeechandlanguagekids.com ↗

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Show notes

From Chaos to Clarity: Why One-Off Activities Are Failing Your Therapy SessionsYou spend all evening scouring the internet for the perfect activity for little Timmy. You print. You cut. You laminate. You velcro. He’s gonna love it. And then… …it lasts all of two seconds and then he’s bored. I’m speech-language pathologist Carrie Clark and in today’s episode of The Speech and Language Kids Podcast, we’ll be answering the question of “are one-off activities really working, or are they just filling time?” Plus, I’ll show you how you the power of having a start-to-finish plan that actually moves children toward success. Listen to the Podcast Here You can listen to the full podcast episode below: The Allure (and Problem) with One-Off ActivitiesWhy do we love one-off activities so much? Well… They’re readily available They’re easy They’re super cute and fun-looking And they’re what we see all around us on social media. Cause they’re catchy. But the downsides of one-off activities are numerous: Lack of progression – no clear path from skill introduction to mastery. SO MUCH time & effort – constant searching for new materials. Difficult to track progress – activities don’t build on each other. Can be overwhelming for kids – inconsistent approaches confuse learners. The Power of a Start-to-Finish Plan:So what’s the opposite of throwing together a bunch of one-off activities? A structured plan that takes you from introducing a skill to mastery in a systematic way. Think back to grad school, remember the Van Riper approach? First we work on sounds in isolation, then syllables, then words, etc. Remember? Imagine having a systematic plan like that for EVERY skill you teach! And then imagine having a systematic plan for which skills to teach in the first place! Start-to-finish plans are: Intentional – every step builds toward mastery. Predictable – clients know what to expect, which lowers stress. Efficient – no scrambling to find the “next” activity. Two Types of Start-to-Finish PlansThink of this as two types of plans: Therapy Pathways: A sequence of skills that you’ll teach to treat or support a specific challenge Therapy Plans: Specific therapy lessons for specific skills that they need to master. A good therapy plan will include both of these. Think of them as the forest, and the trees. The pathway is made up of a whole bunch of therapy plan modules. For example, a therapy pathway for a child who stutters may include coordinating their breathing, dealing with negative emotions, and teaching them stuttering modification strategies. That’s the Pathway. And then there will be an individual therapy plan for each of those skills that breaks them down into manageable steps. How to Make a Therapy Pathway:Take a look at where the individual is now. How are they communicating? Where are they struggling? What are the individual skills that they would need to learn to overcome that particular challenge? Then, we map out the skills that they will need to get there. How to Make an Individual Therapy Plan:Once you know what skills they need to acquire, you can work on planning out how you’ll teach each individual skill. These will become your individual therapy plans. Again, think about where they are now with that skill and where you want them to be. Then, create a step-by-step plan that will walk them through learning the skill. You can… Provide supports and remove them as you go along Or, make the skill easier and then build it up as you go along Want Some Pre-Made Therapy Plans?Oh! I’m so glad you asked! Why am I so passionate about this? Because this is what I’m spending all of my time on right now. I’m building out the therapy plans for you so you don’t have to spend your free time coming up with structured plans. And I’ll be working on the Pathways next! All of our Therapy Plans are available inside the Full Hub Membership. Join Today to Access the Therapy Plans! The post From Chaos to Clarity: Why One-Off Activities Are Failing Your Therapy Sessions appeared first on Speech And Language Kids.

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