IEP Goal Planning

https://iepq.education.illinois.edu/toolbox

My item of interest is the website called IEPQ which serves as a support for creating IEPs. The website offers a functional goal assistant which helps professionals identify possible goals for students based on State Standards. Additionally, the website offers a resource library which includes items such as planning sheets which help IEP team members gather information prior to the meeting so that they are well informed beforehand. The website offers fictionalized student examples to help professionals get a better understanding of how the IEP should be written. This website has been helpful for all the professionals in the student service office as well as the case managers and teachers. This is a useful tool especially as we are all just starting to work on IEPs. There are a number of resources that can be valuable in creating more personalized IEP goals. Additionally, the website saves the goals that you created so that you can reference them in the future. This website is completely free, but requires a log in to access the information on this site.

Treatment Planner

While meeting with my advisor before I have an IEP meeting, I was struggling to create goals that would be sufficient. My supervisor handed me a bunch of packets, some helpful and some not so helpful. He then showed me a book, “The Complete Psychotherapy Treatment Planner.” He explained how he uses this book frequently for his students to help him come up with goals. What he also explained was how it broke down the long-term goals into short-term objectives. For the short-term objectives, it give many therapeutic interventions to use for each objective. While working with my students, this book will give me suggestions for my students’ goals, but also suggestions for objectives and interventions to use.

My supervisor explained to me that his copy was very old and there was probably a specific adolescent version that was much newer, so I searched it and got my hands on my copy. When I got my copy and dug deeper into the book, the objectives and interventions have an EBP symbol next to the ones that are psychological treatments that have the best supportive evidence for the interventions and objectives. This is very helpful when working in a school because when I am trying to work with a student, I know that when I follow the suggestions from this book, I will be using a practice that is evidence based. This book has been very helpful so far and you can get it for relatively cheap on amazon. 

Here is the amazon link

SMART Goals Paint Swatches Activity

Item of Interest: SMART Goals Paint Swatches Activity

Specific

Measurable

Action orientated

Realistic and Relevant

Time based

This is a great way for students to be able to visually see their goals that they are working on everyday. The student can physically see the goals and how to work on achieving them all in one place. It’s colorful, so the student will be able to locate it when necessary. When the social worker has the time, he or she will check in on the goals and keep a chart of progress towards the student’s goals. Moreover, if the student has the paint swatches laminated, the student can physically “check-off” once they have completed the goal. This item of interest meets the Social Work Model under the practice feature of “Provide[s] evidence-based education, behavior, and mental health services”. This is done by implementing the practice, monitoring the progress of the goals, and evaluating if the student is making progress with this activity. Goals can be updated on the paint swatches and changed when necessary. SMART Goals are easy to relate to evidence-based practice as they are used throughout education and can be easily implemented.

Materials Need:

Paint Swatches (Multiple colors in one strip), Pens

Instructions:

Each student that you are working with should receive two paint swatches.

The paint swatches should be glued back to back.

Students will then develop SMART goals.

            The first swatch will be a SMART Goal for today.

            The second swatch will be a SMART goal for the week.

            The third swatch will be a SMART goal for the month.

            The fourth swatch will be a SMART goal for the year.

The SMART Goals will be in line with IEP goals for the year.

Example: Student needs to work on organization. A SMART Goal for today could be that their assignment notebook is filled out for the day completely before leaving school.

On the back of the SMART Goal will be ways to complete this goal.

Example: Assignment notebook has all homework listed, checkmarks of completion, or NONE if no homework was assigned.

Sources:

Activity: Created by myself, Katie Cuciarone

S.M.A.R.T Goals:

Jung, L. A. (2007). Writing SMART objectives and strategies that fit the ROUTINE. Teaching exceptional children, 39(4), 54-58.