Show Notes:
Happy New Year, SLPs! 🥳 It’s time to shake off the holiday haze and dive into a brand-new year with fresh ideas and big dreams for your therapy sessions. In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie brings the ultimate guide to planning engaging, New Year’s-themed activities that will have your students saying, “This is why I come to speech!”
Discover quick, no-prep exercises, free resources like a fun YouTube video (hint: think New Year’s Eve tradition!), a summarizing card game, and a versatile digital comprehension activity for in-person or virtual sessions. Hallie also shares tips for using New Year’s resolutions to create personalized, motivating therapy plans.
Here’s what we learned:
- Fun, thematic ideas to re-engage your students after the break.
- How to align personal goals with therapy objectives.
- Hallie’s go-to tools for quick, low-prep sessions (find links in the show notes!).
- Tips to connect therapy skills to your students’ real-world aspirations.
- A sneak peek into how SLP Elevate can transform your planning and outcomes.
RESOURCES
Resources Mentioned:
Free New Year’s Comprehension Activity from Speech Time Fun
New Year’s Summarizing Card Game FREEBIE! from Speech Time Fun
Why Is There a Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve?
Learn more about Hallie Sherman and SLP Elevate:
🎧 Check out the Secondary Secret Podcast here!
JOKE OF THE WEEK:
Q: Why did the girl keep her trumpet out in the snow?
A: She likes playing cool jazz
Where We Can Connect:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Hallie: Hey there SLP, working with grades four 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 shrug in their shoulders and looking at you saying, why am I here? I don’t wanna 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.
00:01:15 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 relaxation time. I am here for you each and every week. Let’s do this SLPs.
00:01:56 Hallie: Hey, hey, and welcome to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. Happy New Year. I cannot believe it is 2025. I know some of you might’ve gone back to work maybe the end of last week, but most of you probably are going back today or maybe next week. And I wanted to do an episode here all on New Year’s themed activities, since that’s probably what you are wanting to incorporate into your therapy sessions as you’re entering back in wanting some low prep therapy ideas, and I am here to help you out as you are embarking back into work mode. So why I love doing New Year’s themed activities is more than just thematic activities.
00:02:37 Hallie: Yes, thematic activities I’m all about, I find it makes it easy to plan. You can plan all your sessions around one thing and all the groups can do one thing, and it makes it just easy to just wrap your head around what you have to do. But it’s also makes things relevant to your students. More importantly, New Year’s is an opportunity to talk, just like we like to talk about our goals and our hopes for the year and our one word. My one word this year is momentum. I wanna keep the momentum going of helping support each and every one of you. You can have that conversation with your students, what’s your one word of the year? What are your hopes and dreams? What are your goals?
00:03:17 Hallie: So often we talk about goals and expectations in the beginning of a school year. But New Year’s is the perfect opportunity to have that conversation again with our students. What are their goals academically, personally? What are their dreams? What are their hopes? What do they wanna accomplish in 2025? By knowing these things, you can incorporate it into your therapy sessions. You can tailor your sessions and say, hey, this main idea goal, this activity, this conversation strategy, whatever you are working on can help you with whatever goal, whatever dream you shared with me back when we did those New Year’s activities.
00:03:57 Hallie: You can show them how maybe their goals and dreams has changed since the beginning of the school year and you can talk and reflect on that. Hey, what’s changed? What difference, you know, why are you feeling this way versus that? Like, hey, in the beginning of the year you said this. It doesn’t mean you’re not working on speech goals when you’re having these conversations with them because in order to work on your speech goals, you need to know this information. So it is okay to put a pause on the speech goals and just have these conversations. It doesn’t even have to take the entire session.
00:04:25 Hallie: But if you were, you can still work on formulating sentences, answering questions, social skills. You can work on other things while working on having these conversations. And it shouldn’t even take a full session. And I’m gonna share with you some other ideas that you can work on other speech goals and incorporate it to introduce the topic of New Year’s. So then you can also still just have these conversations while also addressing whatever goals you are working on.
00:04:50 Hallie: Okay, so it is so, so important to have goal setting conversations with your students throughout the year. And this is such a perfect time to do it. You get an opportunity to talk about your desires. The one word, you can talk about what that means and smart goals and what steps they need to take in order to achieve these goals. So it’s achievable. Like what good is a goal if, you know, a goal that you don’t reach is just a dream, right? We want to show them that we can make things a reality.
00:04:25 Hallie: And we can show, explain to them like what your dreams are. I wanna lose five pounds. I wanna go to the gym or I wanna go to sleep before, whatever, share yours as long as it’s appropriate. Like why not? It shows, it builds that rapport with your students and that everyone is working on something and everyone needs to take steps in order to be a better person in 2025, okay? So what are some quick little prep ways that you can work on New Year’s themed activities that are, and I’m gonna share all these links in the show notes and not to worry about.
00:05:49 Hallie: Colossal Questions, I love that YouTube channel. It is nonfiction. It has just all things, just a whole bunch of videos that are like five to 10 minutes long, not even. And you can use it in an ed puzzle, pause it throughout the video to work on various goals. But there is one, I’m gonna put the link in the show notes. Why is there a ball drop on New Year’s? Now granted, obviously you’re talking about this afterwards, but we can still have these conversations and work on main idea, nonfiction summarizing, answering questions, whatever you’re working on.
00:06:20 Hallie: You could also utilize Wanderopolis is another great site if you’re looking for high interest nonfiction texts. The only problem with this site is there are no reading levels. So if you’re using them as is, you wanna just make sure it’s appropriate for your students. But there is one called, why do people make New Year’s resolutions? That’s a perfect one to utilize to start the conversation about New Year’s resolutions. I also have a free summarizing card game on my teacher’s pay teacher store that I will give you that one.
00:06:52 Hallie: So it’s a great opportunity to practice and work on using somebody wanted, but so then with the New Year’s theme, just to introduce, you know, to just get them back into the swing of working on, you know, summarizing goals. And then I also have a digital nonfiction New Year’s Eve themed comprehension activity. It’s a Google site activity. I’m gonna put the link to that in the show notes as well. So you can get access to that. So you can use if you’re working via teletherapy, that’s another way. And if you are via teletherapy, the comprehension digital activity and the Colossal Questions video are two easy ones to utilize with your students virtually.
00:07:31 Hallie: So whether you are virtual or in person, you wanna still have these conversations and you can… Again, utilize these four free activities that I’m sharing with you here. I gave you one video, a task card game, a digital task card game, and an article that you can utilize to spark the conversation, work on those speech goals, and then have these conversations. What are their goals? How are we achieving these goals? Let’s map out the plan.
00:08:00 Hallie: And then again, use this information to motivate them for the remainder of the school year. What good is this information is you don’t utilize it. So have them write it down on a piece of paper for you. You write it down for them. They put it somewhere so that they can be reminded of their goals and their dreams. Display their one word, I don’t know, somewhere. Make it so that you can always refer back to it when they are giving you a hard time saying, why am I here? Why do I have to come to speech? Why do I have to work on this? Hey, remember that goal you had for the year? That is why.
00:08:33 Hallie: And it might, their goals might not be academic and that is okay. Their goal might be, I want to get a job. This might be my future. Like that, they need this skill for that. Their goal might be to make the baseball team in the spring. Well, they need to be able to follow directions and to be able to prioritize lists of tasks so they know what is the most important thing so they can make sure they make it to their practice on time and do all their homework and not fall behind.
00:09:00 Hallie: Whatever it is that is important and relevant to them, we can tailor our speech sessions so that it is relevant to them, motivating to them, and they can see how what we are doing in our speech closets is gonna help them in their outside world. If they can’t see it, they’re not gonna be wanting to participate. It’s just gonna be busy work.
00:09:22 Hallie: It’s just, they’re gonna be just going through the motions and they’re not gonna be carrying over this skill. We need to be able to show them, tell them, explicitly make them aware of how what we are doing is going to help them outside of our speech walls. If you’re lucky enough to have speech walls, it can be virtual walls, wherever you are. But I want you to just remember the importance of knowing their goals, their dreams, their desires. That is how you motivate them. That is how we get them to participate and join us and work hard and take those risks and ask for help. Okay?
00:09:58 Hallie: And if you want more help with this and are struggling to have these conversations with your students, that is something I teach a lot in SLP Elevate. So head to slplelevate.com if you’re wanting more information on how to have these conversations. You get access to a comfort contract of what behaviors they need to be doing in speech so that they’re comfortable and taking risks and displaying appropriate behaviors with their peers and not making fun of each other and taking chances and get access to goal setting and conversations and all the things inside of SLP Elevate.
00:10:34 Hallie: Plus on top of it, you know, tons of materials for virtual and in person. So you can work on anything under the sun, executive functioning, you know, perspective taking, note taking, all the things I got you covered in there. Okay. So again, head to the show notes if you want to see any of the free resources I mentioned here today, and then also make sure you are interested in learning more on how you can keep your students motivated, have these conversations, get access to my support. Make sure you head over to slpelevate.com. Members are planning in minutes and I want to help you out.
00:11:07 Hallie: That is my mission. My vision is that all SLPs working with middle school and high school students no longer have to spend hours prepping, hours looking for resources for hours, and you just go into work and just have fun. All right. I always end my episodes with a joke. So why did the girl keep her trumpet out in the snow? She likes playing cool jazz. Ba dum ching.
00:11:32 Hallie: All right, guys, until next week. Hope you have a great first week back. Hope you have a great new year. You’re listening to this whenever. And I have so many amazing episodes in store for you for the remainder, for the upcoming week. So make sure you tune in every Monday for a brand new episode of SLP Coffee Talk.
00:11:57 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.
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