How to Choose IEP Goals
One of the most challenging aspects of teaching in a special education classroom is determining IEP goals. This aspect of the program is very specific to each student and needs to be done in such a way that it is focused on where students are planning to be when they finish school.
Today we are going to discuss how to decide on goals to focus on so that you can use this information to plan specific programs for students, and plan lessons and units for the class as a whole.
Beginning…
When I first started working in special education, IEP goals were the biggest challenge for me because I didn’t really know how they fit into the program as a whole.
Before teaching in special education, I taught Religion at the High School level. The planning for this subject involved having a curriculum, then breaking that down into units and lessons to get students where I needed them to be at the end of the semester.
The challenge for me was that there really wasn’t a curriculum for Special Education, at least not one that was specific enough for the individual needs of each student.
There seem to be a lot of suggestions and ideas of what you can do with students, but not a concrete way to do this on each day so you can get them where they need to be.
Where to start?
Before deciding on IEP goals for students, there was a lot of research and planning that needed to be done. This part gets easier if you stay in the same classroom with the same student for a few years, but when you are first coming in to a new classroom or school, the process can be daunting.
I started with school records to go through psychoeducational assessments, medical reports, and any other information about the student that could tell me about each student’s strengths and needs.
Next, I conferenced with each family to talk about where they saw their child at the end of school graduation. This is not the easiest conversation to have because often families haven’t really thought that far ahead (depending on what grades you are teaching).
I firmly believe, however, that this conversation should happen as early as possible so that you have years to work on the skills a student will need when they leave school.
For Example…
I worked with a student diagnosed with DS. The family wanted the student to be able to work in a retail type store when they finished school and to live independently with some supports.
This was a great starting point for me as I planned IEP goals for this student because it allowed me to focus on goals around working in a store, as well as life skills around living independently.
Once you have this end goal in mind, you can then begin to work backwards to determine IEP goals that will lead the student to the skills they will need when they graduate.
Diagnostic Assessments for IEP Goals
Once I knew what general goals the student would be working on, I could use some diagnostic assessment type activities to help me determine what they are currently able to do.
This gives two important pieces of information. What skills have been mastered already and what skills need to be taught.
Knowing what mastered skills a student currently has is important when you are working on independent work systems. These are a great way to help students develop independence in their day – a skill they will definitely need if they are going to be working.
Mastered skills are then the activities that I would use in task boxes within independent work stations.
Next I look at the current ability of a student on a particular goal, and break that down into small parts that can be scaffolded to create activities and lessons around the specific skill progression.
What does this look like?
To better illustrate what this looks like in a classroom situation, I will use a specific example.
Let’s use our student who is going to be going to work in a retail store and living independently upon graduation. There are so many different things this student will need to know how to do, but for this example I am just going to pick one.
Knowing how to use a schedule is important because it relates specifically to work and to living independently. Once I have a general area (schedule), I work backwards until I get to the student’s current mastered skill ability.
So, to read a schedule, a student has to be able to determine what day of the week something occurs on a particular calendar day.
To be able to do this, they have to be able to read a calendar, know the days of the week, months of the year, and understand things like today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
Putting it together…
Using diagnostic assessment, I can determine how many of these skills the student has. In this case, the student knew the days of the week and could consistently determine the order of the days. They also had a general sense of today, tomorrow, and yesterday, but not consistently.
This meant that days of the week would be a skill I could put in the independent task stations, but today, tomorrow, and yesterday would need to be more explicitly taught.
In this case, I still use task box activities, but not completely independently (there may be some prompting needed).
How does this become an IEP goal?
Now that I had a goal to work on, I could start to determine how to teach this goal, and how to measure it so that I could keep track of progress.
This allows me to either move forward when the skill has been mastered, or know that I need to break it down further if the student is not able to progress.
I think the biggest challenge at this point for me was that something like the calendar skill IEP goal was one goal of the many that students work on within a special education program.
Multiply that by the number of students you have in your classroom and this becomes a very big task.
Don’t Panic!
I am definitely not trying to scare you here, because it is totally doable and so worth the effort once you see the progress your students are making.
In addition, there are many ways to use the same goals with different students because often they are working on the same skills, especially life skills that all students will need.
What comes next for IEP goals?
The last thing that I would do when I am starting to plan IEP goals is to look at all of the students and see where there are common needs. This now becomes whole class lessons that can benefit all students.
Things like community signs, kitchen safety, and functional numeracy & literacy are units students of all abilities can benefit from.
Once you have a list of IEP goals for each student, the next step is going to be writing the IEP goals. Stay tuned for the next blog where I will go through creating specific IEP goals for students in your special education classroom.
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Check out my TPT shop Exceptional Education CA or my Etsy Shop for task box activities that focus on one specific goal using scaffolded levels to help students progress toward their IEP goals.
Here are a few that we talked about today!
Thank you!
Thank you for making it all the way to the end of this super long article!!
As always, please feel free to email me if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles or products. I would also love to hear how your year is going so far and how your IEP planning is going!!