Raise your hand if you start the year strong with organization, and by the end of September, you find yourself scouring through laundry piles of resources and worksheets. I know I can’t be the only one out there! I decided to get serious about how to organize my speech therapy materials by themes. Here are some ways you can organize themed therapy materials, so you don’t have to constantly find yourself thinking, “I swear I put that articulation packet in this folder…..”
How to Organize Speech Therapy Materials When You Are Using Them
One thing I invested in is these file storage crates. They are so easy to find and such a game-changer. You can find these file storage crates at Staples, Target, Walmart, or Amazon. You want to make sure the crate will fit the hanging file folders legal and letter-sized folders. I used the legal size so it is wider and can fit books and wider folders better. Some will fit the As you can see in the picture, I label each file folder with my themes. When I’m looking for a particular themed activity, I’ll know exactly where to look in the crate which saves me a ton of time. This is especially helpful for organizing themed therapy materials for my whole classroom or push-in activities. When I first started organizing with crates, I quickly realized the file folders were essential! Without them, my materials turned into another pile, but this time they were in a crate instead of my desk!
Speech Material Organization with Zipper Pouches
Suppose you love having all your themed materials together but don’t have time to organize them every day perfectly. In that case, you need to learn how to organize speech therapy materials functionally so you can quickly clean up after a long day!
Using file pouches from Dollar Tree or zipper pouches on Amazon (affiliate link included.) Like the crates, they are super easy to find and an excellent organizational investment. These zip pouches are perfect for those themed activities that require a lot of components. For example, crafts, core word squares, books, and sentence strips. It’s super easy to keep all of the themed components in one place with these pouches. You can grab them and transport the speech therapy materials easily around campus.
A quick tip: I recommend purchasing more durable, plastic ones if you are interested in buying these pouches. This helps keep your materials from bending or creasing, and they don’t “flop” as much for easier storage.
Organize Your Story Themed Materials in a Scrapbook Box
Scrapbook boxes are a great tool to organize themed materials and lesson plans. These boxes are wide and deep enough to store your theme-related books and companion activities.
The best place to find these scrapbook boxes is at Michaels.
I love these scrapbook boxes because I can use them to store the books I want, the activities, any pouches I have for my loose cards and materials, craft examples I want to use, and all of my visual supports. They are so easy to label, grab, use, and reorganize at the end of my day. I’ve cut down so much time on my planning and organizing once I started using these scrapbook boxes.
Check out my video on Facebook or Instagram to see what my scrapbook box and pouch organizational systems look like using an ocean theme!
Use Binders to Organize Your Speech Materials for Themes
In binders, you can store your theme’s word lists, lesson plan notes, speech therapy worksheets, visual supports, and flashcards!
One of my MOST favorite office supply finds is the binder envelope pouches because you can put flashcards and task cards in the pouch and easily store them in your themed binder.
Because we serve different ages and skill levels, keeping a graphic organizer with task cards in the same place is excellent. For all the binder office supplies, head to my Amazon storefront.
You can use the Avery tab dividers to organize materials by skill, such as articulation, receptive language, vocabulary, etc. Or, you can put activities in the binder by grade level and type, such as prek-1st, 2nd-3rd, open-ended games, and visual supports.
Use Zipper Pouches and Bins to Keep Sensory Bins Neat
One thing I love to incorporate into my therapy is themed sensory bins. However, these sensory bins and the loose materials I put in them can get super messy and time-consuming to organize. Using zipper pouches and a storage bin has helped keep my sensory bin materials neat. First, I store the loose cards or small toys in smaller zipper pouches. Then, I store the “sensory” materials in their zipper pouch. You can then place the sensory bin filler, smaller items, and materials all in one larger zipper pouch. Then, when it’s time for you to assemble your sensory bin, you can grab the zipper pouch and all the contents are together. Check out this blog post for more details.
More Tips for SLP Organization
Looking for more ways to get your office or your materials organized? Take a look at my 7 Tips for Organization.
If you’re an SLP that has an articulation/phonology-heavy caseload, then you’ll want to take a peek at my previous blog post where I talk about setting up articulation folders to help with organization.
Digital organization solutions for SLPs doing teletherapy or wanting to keep their PDFs and digital materials in one spot can check out this post HERE.
I love seeing how other SLP’s get organized and what works best for them. Let me know in the comments your favorite way to stay organized throughout your school year!