I used to get very nervous about how my therapy notes looked to an outsider. I used to pray no one would ask to see my notes because I could barely make sense of them myself. And any time I felt like I was improving and taking more detailed therapy notes, it wouldn’t last because of how much time it would take to keep up.
At the beginning of the school year, I would make ambitious plans for my therapy logs and how I would collect and record excellent data. But then as the year progressed, I’d find it harder and harder to make time for keeping up with session notes.
Now, I use Notion to log sessions and data for every student on my caseload, and after the initial investment to set up my system, it’s revolutionized the way I complete my session notes. What used to be an easy task to procrastinate has turned into a frictionless system to get my notes done in minutes. Want to learn how I did it? Keep reading.
In this article, I dive into these points:
Before I get into that, just a quick reminder: brains are wired differently. What works for me isn’t going to work for everyone. But if it works for me, then it will probably work for someone else out there. You need to decide if that someone is you. Figure out how your brain works and whether my system may be a good fit, then try it out for yourself. If it doesn’t end up working, you’ve just learned something new about yourself, and that too I believe is valuable information.
3 Barriers that prevent me from completing my daily notes
I learned if I wanted to make completing my daily notes a consistent habit, I needed to lower the barriers to entry. And this required some deeper analysis first to identify the problems holding me back. Here’s what I uncovered as my main barriers to writing my session notes.
1) Interest barrier
For better or worse, working with kids is never dull. There’s always something interesting about seeing students, even if it’s trying to figure out ways to engage students in speech therapy sessions. It requires our full attention, engagement, and we’re constantly having to think, process, and adapt to our students’ abilities, needs, personalities, and energies.
Then the sessions end and we’re left with the uninteresting, joyless task of logging the sessions and reporting data. However you look at it, there is nothing exciting about recording the date, session duration, individual or group session, the number of students in a group, and goal area. And repeat for 10+ kids daily.
I understand the purpose of logging every session. But even though I want the work I did to be captured and count for something later, I still struggle to convince myself that this repetitive data entry is really important. Because it feels so tedious in the moment. Sometimes I feel like it takes more energy to initiate completing simple, tedious tasks than harder, engaging ones.
When I know the task I need to start is boring, that resistance to begin amplifies.
2) Cognitive barrier
Once I get past the mindless, repetitive data entry, I encounter a completely different barrier. Having to recall exactly what was targeted in session, level of cueing and types of cues given, counting pluses and minuses, and summarizing the session. Which involves deciphering the notes I jotted down on a sticky note or my whiteboard and visually replaying aspects of the session in my head to accurately capture the important details of the session.
In other words, a cognitive barrier. The cognitive demands are not low to properly record session data and complete detailed notes. What’s worse is the more teaching and scaffolding I provide, the harder it is to keep up with accurately writing down the therapy I provide in the moment. Even harder when it’s a group of students rather than just one.
3) Emotional barrier
I’m not sure how many other SLPs can relate to this feeling, but sometimes I inadvertently tie a student’s progress to my abilities as an SLP. If my student doesn’t demonstrate much progress or if they require significant prompting/cues to demonstrate a skill, I can start to question my own professional competence. Am I not teaching the skill well enough for my student to make progress?
So when I record my student’s lack of progress, I feel a sense of misguided guilt or responsibility. That if my student fails, I too fail as their therapist. I know these fears aren’t rationale or reasonable, but they remain nonetheless and can discourage me. Erode my confidence. They can manifest as yet another barrier to completing my daily session notes.
Diving deeper into procrastination and lack of consistency
All of the mental barriers I described above lead to the same result – procrastination. In the executive function world, we call this skill task initiation.
My autistic brain struggles greatly with transitions. I struggle to get started on a task, stop working on a task, and switch tasks. It’s Newton’s law of inertia over here – an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force. My autistic brain seems to require a significantly greater external force than the average person.
This can be both a strength and a weakness. When I enter a state of hyperfocus, I can feel unstoppable. I get so much done. But since my two natural speeds seem to be all or nothing, achieving consistency can be incredibly difficult. And completing session notes daily requires just that, consistency.
So, I need to hack my brain. I use my strengths in planning and hyperfocus to build a system that is easier to follow every day. This system then makes up for my difficulties with organization, time management, and task initiation. And to do that, I’m currently using Notion.
I leverage the extra time and energy I have at the beginning of the school year to make keeping up with my session notes throughout the year easier. If that doesn’t resonate with you and you don’t like the idea of investing more time into building the system upfront, then Notion might not be a great fit for you.
About Notion
What is Notion? – you may be wondering. If you want a primer on Notion first to learn more about it before I share my system, check out this article to determine whether Notion may be a good fit for your situation and needs before jumping in.
In short, Notion is simply a tool used to capture and record information. It consists of pages, databases, and links to help you collect, organize, and store your notes or data for later reference. Notion is not the easiest tool to set up and learn, but I’ve found learning and using Notion worthwhile for my caseload and SLP organizational needs (and bonus, it’s also my favorite tool for saving recipes!).
Today I’m discussing my favorite thing to organize and track in Notion – student sessions and data. I use Notion to log my student sessions, data, and track progress on their goals. For a tool to be successful, it needs to play to your strengths and work for your brain. Here’s how Notion helps me overcome the mental inertia I feel when sitting down to write my notes.
Overcoming the interest barrier
To overcome the interest barrier, I built my system for daily session notes to complete the most tedious aspects of my notes automatically. Yep, no more typing in today’s date 10+ times per day. No more typing in the same duration for all of a student’s sessions. No more typing in the same therapy target every session for students with one goal.
I use Notion’s templates to pre-fill the information that tends to remain the same every session. This removes the barrier of boring, tedious data entry. Now I can concentrate my energy on entering the information that does change. And I don’t need to waste so much energy trying to convince myself that mindless data entry is interesting or worthwhile doing. It wasn’t, so now technology does it for me.
I’m not sure how much time that ultimately saves me, perhaps seconds. But that’s not what really matters. It feels like I’m saving time because there are far fewer mindless steps in the way of accomplishing my task. The task feels lighter and therefore quicker. And that to me, is a huge win.
Overcoming the cognitive barrier
I use a few features in Notion that help overcome the cognitive barrier when it comes to recording session notes. One of the reasons I disliked and abandoned using Google forms for my session notes (besides the repetitive data entry) was due to the mental energy I expended just searching for the students I wanted to log.
Honestly, it sounds a little silly, but I wasted time scrolling through my Google forms looking for a student and their Google form to log. And when you see a student for multiple years and create multiple forms for them based on their goals, even using the Find feature can waste time and energy.
So, in Notion I created one page where I log all of my session notes. I’ve organized the page by day of the week and the students on my schedule in the order I see them. Each student’s name is a button that with one click starts a new daily note. I don’t need to leave this page to enter the notes and I don’t waste time searching for my next student to log. It’s already set up and organized.
Another feature I use to reduce the cognitive load for entering my notes is drop-down menus. We all know that providing multiple choice prompts reduces the cognitive load for a student to answer a question, while open-ended questions are more demanding. The same concept applies here. Coming up with an open-ended response for session notes is more demanding than choosing from a list of drop-down menus that prompts us through the process.
When entering notes demands less mental energy from us, it’s easier to complete.
Emotional barrier
Unfortunately, there is no magical cure for stopping irrational anxiety responses. But I can do small things to proactively counteract the anxiety.
I accomplish this purely from the system I’ve created in Notion to take my notes. Knowing that I’ve systematized the process of entering my daily notes inherently makes me feel more put-together and competent in my job. Having access to beautiful and detailed notes of my students that I would feel comfortable showing to anyone makes me feel responsible. If I can take control of doing my notes, I feel like a better SLP. So now completing my notes leaves me feeling better about my performance, not worse.
The more I can replicate these positive feelings when entering my notes, the lower the emotional barriers become in the future.
The magic of Notion = Templates + Buttons
What are the key components in Notion I use to save time on data entry? The answer is simple: templates and buttons. I create templates to use in each student’s logging database and then use buttons to automatize part of the process and reduce clicks.
Notion templates
First, I create a database in Notion for every student on my caseload where I log their sessions. Then I use templates for future entries. Every student gets templates for absences, holidays, and typical sessions, which I assign as the default template. These templates allow me to set the parameters for sessions that tend to remain the same.
A student that’s typically seen in the same group for the same duration? Included in the default template. A student that typically works on /r/ sounds at the conversational level? Included in the template. A student that typically works on vocabulary strategies? Fluency strategies? Intelligibility strategies? Included in the template. Then if for some reason the student is seen for a different duration, with a group of more or fewer students, working on a different strategy or level? I edit the pre-filled information when there are changes rather than start from scratch entering in every field every session.
Notion buttons
Now that I’ve created templates for each student on my caseload, I enhance those templates with Notion buttons. I create a Notion page that houses my buttons for logging student sessions. Then I organize the buttons on the page by day that the students are typically seen. So with one click I can log a new session for each student. Amazing.
See my Daily Notes page with shortcut buttons below (example only, not my full schedule).
Now, I don’t stop there with simply logging that a session occurred. I need to add specialized information regarding the session, such as data, or details about what was targeted. But this isn’t difficult to do. The new session entry created by the button automatically pops up on the same page, is easily editable, and once I’m finished, I can close the pop up and find myself back on the page with all of my buttons for logging more student sessions. This reduces the amount of clicking and searching I need to do for logging each student session.
With the combination of Notion templates and buttons, I create less of a barrier to entry when entering my notes and reduce mindless data entry that drains me.
And if you want, you can even dress up your Daily Notes page by adding icons for each student as shown below. Adds a bit of fun and personality that can bring a little spark of joy when working through your notes.
How I use the session logs / data sheet templates for every student on my caseload
Every student on my caseload gets a database where I store their session logs and data. Although each student’s data sheet is individualized based on their target goals, much of the data sheets use similar formats/metrics. I create a highly detailed session log/data sheet template per goal area, and then modify the template to fit each student’s individualized needs and goal.
Drop-down menus
I use a high frequency of drop-down menus because this reduces the cognitive load when entering session notes and the drop-down menus create easy filters for viewing progress. When I include a drop-down menu for level of a speech sound, I can filter and easily view student progress specifically at the word level, phrase, sentence, or conversational level. Whatever is most useful and applicable to view.
For strategies targeted – fluency strategies, intelligibility, vocabulary even, I use a drop-down multi-select menu to select the strategies targeted within the session. Parts of speech, grammatical morphemes, sentence structure type, wh-question type – the possibilities are endless! For my students that do not consistently attend or actively participate, I use a drop-down menu to select their attentiveness/participation. I use a multi-select menu for indicating cueing hierarchy and types of cues provided (shown below). Or instead of using a cueing hierarchy, you could also denote the number of cues or prompts provided.
Drop-down menus are also useful for indicating which goal(s)/objective(s) were targeted during the session for students with multiple goals and/or objectives. When students have a rubric-style goal measure, I use drop-down menus to indicate the rubric score that aligns with their performance each session.
Summary of use cases for drop-down menus:
If I use a Rubric for scoring one student, I use a drop down menu rating from 1-5 instead of percentages. For goals that involve using strategies, I can delete strategies I never use with a particular student, or organize the most commonly used strategies at the top of the drop-down menu. And if we go over the same strategies during most sessions, I can automate selecting those same strategies, and then simply revise on the days that different strategies are used.
Drop-down menus are incredibly useful and help me capture more complete details about my sessions. But for any percentage goals I need to calculate, I look to formulas.
Formulas – for goals with percentages
When my session data is in percentage form, I typically create formulas for calculating those percentages. I disliked pulling up a calculator, (which is often needed, especially when I don’t reach an even 5 or 10 trials). Now, I still count my pluses and minuses, but instead of using a calculator, I plug them into my data sheet in Notion as Correct Trials and Total Trials. My Notion formula then calculates the percentage for me.
Any percentage goal can be determined using a formula to calculate the percentages. I use 3 fields per goal/calculation – 1) correct trials, 2) total trials, 3) the percentage result.
Another option, if you’re not interested in using formulas, would be to use a single Number property where you record the percent accuracy after you’ve calculated it. To avoid visual clutter, I hide the extra properties for correct trials and total trials in my table and simply display the calculated percents.
My Notion page with all of my session log templates
I keep all of the session log/data sheet templates I use on a single Notion page, organized by frequently occurring goal areas. For example, I have templates for recording data on speech sounds, use of intelligibility or fluency strategies, receptive language tasks, wh-questions, story retelling, complex sentences, problem-solving, perspective-taking, and use of AAC.
This page includes 6 speech-related templates, 7 language-related templates, 4 pragmatic-related templates, 2 AAC-related templates, and 1 fluency template, all of which you can adapt to fit the unique needs of your students. I use these templates for the base formatting of the tables to display data. Then I plug in my individual student’s goals and use what I want to track and ignore what I don’t.
I consider the primary goal(s) of my student and choose the template that best fits my needs. Then I input the goals/objectives of the student to individualize the template. Once I have the goals/objectives entered, I decide what fields I need my table to show for this particular student and their goals.
Once I’ve invested the initial effort and energy into setting up this system for my entire caseload, continuing to use the data logs becomes much easier and less demanding, while still allowing me to log good data.
How to use my Notion session log & data sheet templates for your caseload
Example 1: Customizing data sheet for student working on speech sounds
My templates can look overwhelming to start, but the beauty of the system is that you can take what you want and leave or delete what you don’t. I’m going to demonstrate by walking you through the basic properties and options available for my speech sound templates.
When you open or create a new entry, there are several fields that pop up. For the speech sound templates, these include date, duration, group size, other students in the group, goals/objectives, progress, engagement, activity, sound targeted, level, word position, cueing, correct trials & total trials per goal, calculated percentage per goal, and notes. Again, you don’t need to use all of these fields, just the ones that are relevant to you and your student’s needs.
For example, each of my templates includes a drop down menu for student engagement – to indicate whether the student was attentive, inattentive, actively participated, or minimally participated. I don’t use this field for every student, as many of my students are generally attentive and participate fine. I only tend to use this field in the beginning of the year before I know my students well and if the student varies greater in their engagement to clarify performance on goals.
If you’re only working on speech sounds at the conversational level, then you don’t need to use the drop down menu to specify the level. If your student is only working on 1 speech sound, then you may not need to use the drop down menu to specify sound targeted (although I often like to use this for specifying things like vocalic /r/, /s/ blends, etc., for more complex sounds.
Notion has multiple features to automate and save time on future entries. You can set up Notion to be able to log a session occurred at the click of a single button – Notion can create a new entry for your student that includes logging today’s date, session duration, number of students in the session, goal targeted, and any other recurring information that remains largely the same for each session.
Here’s an example of some information you can set up to pre-populate. This student is typically seen in a group of 2 for 30 minutes with Sadie, they generally are attentive & actively participate, and they work on “sh” sounds at the sentence level in all word positions. They also typically make sufficient progress in their sessions.
If any of that information changes, you can edit the entry easily. After that, you can and should add more detailed information when recording session data. Now you can focus your energy on recording the information from the session that’s most important – data.
For example, let’s say the student achieved 30/50 correct “sh” sounds at the sentence level and required moderate level cueing that included verbal models and direct verbal cues. You would add that information to the session entry. You may also want to record the activity you did so you can reference when you’ve done which activities with which groups.
You can also summarize the information from the drop down menus in sentence form as a written note. For my session log templates, I include a “Notes” view to display the information most commonly used for billing purposes and to quickly view any long-form notes.
I also created a “Data” view of the database to display only the student’s data to quickly reference their progress as shown below.
Example 2: Customizing data sheet for student working on retelling stories
My language templates tend to include more drop-down menus that you may or may not find useful for your student and their goals. These templates still include date, duration, group size, other students in the group, goals/objectives, progress, engagement, activity, cueing, correct trials & total trials per goal, calculated percentage per goal, and notes.
For the story tell/retell template, I include additional drop-down menus for context (paragraph, picture sequence, video, conversation, etc.), number of story grammar elements used, types of story grammar elements used, error areas and grammatical errors (if your goal also addresses grammar/syntax), and rubric rating. If you’re not using a rubric, feel free to delete or ignore. Again, you don’t need to use all of these fields, just the ones that are relevant to you and your student’s needs.
A template for story retells might look as follows with some of the information pre-filled.
Since the template pre-filled some of the repetitive fields, you can focus your energy on entering in the information that changes. For example, the picture below shows logging a session where a student retold the story of a video clip that included 3 story grammar elements (character, problem, action) given a visual support.
Since I entered that information for Sadie, here’s what her table looks like. The first image is the Notes view of her session log and the second image is the Data view. I find using the ALL view a little overwhelming, so breaking it up into two sections helps me better see the data or information I’m wanting to know.
Get all of my student session log templates for free
Want instant access to my Notion page where I keep all of my templates available for creating the student session logs based on goal area? You can find them on TPT here or sign up for my email list below and I’ll send them straight to your inbox.
Why am I giving away all of my notes templates for free? Because I want anyone who thinks they may benefit from this system to be able to try it out and see if it really works for them. I don’t want to add any more barriers to helping you feel more confident and put together with your system for logging therapy notes.