SLPA Supervision Log Template: What to Record and How

Supervising a speech-language pathology assistant is a clinical responsibility, and the supervision log is how you show you met it. When a licensure board, a district compliance review or a Medicaid audit asks whether an SLPA was adequately supervised, nobody accepts "I checked in with her most days." They ask for dates, minutes, the type of contact, and what you did about what you saw. This guide gives you a copy-ready SLPA supervision log template, explains each field, and shows how to keep the running totals that most state rules are written around.

If you are new to supervising an assistant, read SLPA supervision requirements: ASHA and state rules first. This page assumes you know what may and may not be delegated, and focuses on recording it.

What a Supervision Log Has to Prove

A useful log answers four questions without anyone having to ask you:

• How much supervision happened? Minutes of direct and indirect supervision, per week or per reporting period.
• Was it enough? Those minutes compared with the SLPA's client contact time and with the minimum your state sets.
• What did the supervision consist of? Which students and sessions were observed, and what feedback was given.
• Did anything change because of it? Follow-up actions, training provided, and changes to what was delegated.

ASHA's guidance on SLPAs separates direct supervision (you observe the SLPA with a student, in person or in real time by video) from indirect supervision (record review, data review, planning meetings, recorded session review). It also sets higher supervision amounts in an assistant's first months of employment. States adopt, modify or ignore those figures, and where they differ the state rule is the one your license answers to, so put your state's numbers at the top of the log where you will see them every week.

The Copy-Ready SLPA Supervision Log Template

The template has three parts: a header you fill in once per reporting period, a contact log with one row per supervisory contact, and a summary you complete at the end of each week. Copy it into a spreadsheet or your district's form.

Part 1: Header

Part 2: Supervision Contact Log (one row per contact)

Part 3: Weekly Summary

How to Fill In Each Field

Type of contact

Record the type at the moment you log the contact, not at the end of the month. "Direct" should mean you watched the SLPA deliver services to a student in real time. Reviewing a recording later, checking data sheets, and a planning meeting with no student present are all indirect. If your state allows live video to count as direct supervision, note the platform so the record shows how the observation happened.

Students and sessions

Use initials or a student ID. The log will be read by people who do not need student names, and it is easier to share with an administrator if it carries none.

Feedback and follow-up

These two columns are where a log shows supervision rather than attendance. Write the specific skill you saw and what you said about it. When you ask for a change, the follow-up column should say when you will check it, and a later row should show that you did.

Worked Example: Calculating Supervision Time

Suppose your state requires supervision equal to a set share of the SLPA's client contact time, with part of it direct. In one week the SLPA delivers 1,200 minutes of sessions (20 hours). You observe two sessions on site for a total of 60 minutes, observe one teletherapy session live for 30 minutes, and spend 90 minutes reviewing data sheets and planning together.

• Direct supervision: 60 + 30 = 90 minutes, which is 90 of 1,200 contact minutes (7.5%).
• Indirect supervision: 90 minutes.
• Total supervision: 180 minutes, which is 180 of 1,200 contact minutes (15%).

Compare those figures with the numbers in your header. If your state calculates over a month or a grading period rather than a week, keep the weekly rows anyway and total them; a short week is far easier to spot and fix in week two than in week nine.

Add a Delegation Roster and a Competency Checklist

The log shows supervision. Two companion records show that the right work was delegated in the first place.

Delegation roster

• Student initials or ID, goal area, and the IEP goals the SLPA is implementing
• Date delegated and the written session plan the SLPA follows
• The date you last saw the student yourself
• Date the delegation ended and why (goal met, needs SLP services, schedule change)

Competency checklist

• Each skill the SLPA performs, such as following a cue hierarchy, scoring trials, running a group, or modeling on an AAC device
• Date observed, rating (not yet / with support / independent), and your initials
• Training provided and the date of the next check

Delegate a goal area only after the matching competency is marked independent, and note the date. That single habit answers the hardest question a reviewer can ask: how did you know the assistant was ready for this student?

Signatures, Storage and Retention

• Sign or initial each contact row as you go, and sign the weekly summary.
• Ask the SLPA to initial each row too, so the record shows feedback was received.
• Store the log with your district's personnel or supervision records, not inside student files.
• Keep it for as long as your state licensure board and your district require. If you change jobs, keep your own copy of logs for assistants you supervised, with student identifiers removed.
• If you supervise across several schools, keep one log per SLPA, not one per site.

Common Gaps That Show Up in Reviews

• Totals but no rows. A weekly "3 hours supervision" with no record of what happened in those hours.
• Indirect logged as direct. A data review over lunch is valuable, but it is not observation.
• Feedback with no follow-up. A concern noted once and never revisited reads as a concern ignored.
• Session notes the SLP never reviewed. Notes written by an SLPA usually need the supervising SLP's review; log when you reviewed them.
• Supervision that stops in testing season. Busy weeks are exactly when a short week needs a make-up plan written down.

Keeping the Log Without Extra Paperwork

The fastest logs are the ones built from records you already create. If the SLPA's session data, the session notes and your reviews live in one place, most of the contact log can be filled in from them. In SLPDesk you delegate a session to an SLPA, the SLPA attests to the session they delivered, and the session goes into your supervision queue for review, so every review you complete leaves a dated record. Session notes can start from the same trial data; the free SOAP note generator shows how a note is written from correct, cued and incorrect trials, which is also the data an SLPA should be collecting.

For the wider set of records a school SLP keeps, see SLP documentation compliance: FERPA, HIPAA and Medicaid, and if you also supervise a clinical fellow, the clinical fellowship supervision guide.