Family & School Partnerships
When a child is receiving speech-language therapy in school, it can be hard for families and therapists to communicate with one another-- especially during this time of COVID-19, when face-to-face time with the team is limited! For our kids, we know that it's so important to keep this communication up, though, so that they can generalize their skills across settings. How do we, as parents and therapists, keep each other up-to-date on how our children and students are doing?
One idea is to use a "communication notebook" that goes back-and-forth from home to school in the child's bookbag. Ideas for topics to discuss include:
Goals that were addressed
Strategies that were used
How those strategies seemed to work
Ideas for other strategies or techniques the team could try
Other questions or comments, such as if the child has developed a new interest that would be fun to try at home and school
To give you a jumpstart in creating this communication notebook, I've created a Word document template that you can download for free and edit to fit your purposes:
Free videos and resources about how to communicate across home and school and are also available from The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge. Check out these modules, which are both available in English and Spanish!
Module 3: Communication for Collaboration
Module 4: Family-Professional Partnerships