Welcome back to Day 2 of the Paperwork Reset Guide: 4 Days to Start the Year Strong. Hopefully Day 1 was a good start to checking tasks off your list and helping you to feel less overwhelmed. Today is all about scheduling.
Aligning schedules with the master schedule, your own schedule, and specialists (SLPs, PTs, OTs, etc.) can be challenging, but this front-loaded work will set you up for a smooth and successful school year.
If available, review any student preferences submitted at the end of the previous year. I always tried to build schedules that students would be excited about, classes they genuinely enjoyed, with teachers they connected with. This made the school year run more smoothly.
Here’s your checklist to move through scheduling with clarity:
Checklist: Building Student Schedules
Set up an SDI Spreadsheet:
Use excel to create a document with all the students on your caseload.
Include columns such as: Student name, evaluation date, IEP date, SDI/services (reading, writing, behavior, etc.), setting, frequency/duration, and related services. (Reply in the comments “SDI schedule” and I will DM you a template)
Add a Provider column, since IDEA requires documenting who delivers each service
Review your school’s master schedule:
Obtain or build the daily schedule for each student based off of the master schedule for your school.
Consider the general education classes they can take, resource rooms/SDI time availability in your schedule, lunch/recess, specials (PE, art, music), and any existing co‑teaching blocks.
Cross‑reference SDI summary with the schedule:
For each student, slot in services at the specified frequency and duration (e.g., 30‑minute reading intervention 5×/week or 45‑minute resource math 3×/week).
Ensure that push‑in services occur during appropriate instructional times.
Check least‑restrictive environment (LRE) considerations:
IDEA requires that students be educated alongside peers without disabilities as much as appropriate.
Verify that pull‑out sessions are minimized and justified by the IEP.
Identify conflicts or gaps:
Look for overlapping service times or schedules that pull students repeatedly from the same content area.
Collaborate with co-teachers or related service providers to fix conflicts before school starts.
Draft student schedules:
⚡ This step may feel tedious, but doing it now prevents chaos later. Adjusting schedules after school starts is frustrating for students, they may miss routines and those “get to know you” activities that happen in the first few days.
😀 Stay positive, scheduling always works out. Don’t hesitate to ask specialists or colleagues for help. Remember: lean on your team.
Thank you for taking the time to read Day 2 of the Paperwork Reset Guide: 4 Days to Start the Year Strong. Schedules are the backbone of a smooth year. The time you spend today prevents chaos later. Stay tuned for Day 3 on Monday, we’ll dive into data, because as we like to say as Behavior Analysts: if there’s no data, it didn’t happen!