How to Choose IEP Goal Areas

1/30/2022 0 Comments

How Do I Choose IEP Goal Areas for IEPs?

How do I choose IEP goals for my students? l Miss Rae's Room Teaching Reading to Students with Learning Disabilities Blog

You did the assessments. You have the data. But how do you decide if the lagging skills should be a goal area, an accommodation, or a modification?

Let me tell you!

Here's how I decide if a lagging skill should be a goal area, an accommodation, or a modification!

I start by asking...

What areas of the curriculum are impacted by the student's disability?

Then, I go through each item I listed and ask...

Can we put an accommodation or modification in place to remove this hurdle to the curriculum?

OR

Is this a hurdle that requires Specially Designed Instruction?

Now, I review my list and...

1-Add accommodations to the IEP
-be specific & choose appropriate accommodations for the student's disability

2-Hurdles that need Specially Designed Instruction are your goal areas!

Example:

Hurdles: Fluency, Comprehension

Classroom Accommodation(s): Text to Speech for content area materials

This Classroom Accommodation will support the student's ability to access the grade level material in the classroom, but this lagging skill also requires Specially Designed Instruction SO it may also need to be an IEP goal area, in this student's case.

IEP GOAL:
By the end of the IEP period, STUDENT will achieve a benchmark score of 16 (or higher) of the DIBELS' subtest MAZE.

IEP OBJECTIVE:
STUDENT will a score of 96 (or higher) on 3 consecutive administrations of the DIBELS' Oral Reading Fluency - Accuracy.

Example:

Hurdles: Written Expression

Classroom Accommodation(s): Speech to Text, Exemplars of Writing Assignments, Word Banks for Content Area Vocabulary

This student's evaluations demonstrated that the student had the skills in the area of Written Expression; however, the student was not always demonstrating these skills in the classroom. Based upon assessment and observation data, the Classroom Accommodations of Speech to Text, Exemplars of Writing Assignments, Word Banks for Content Area Vocabulary will support the student in overcoming the hurdle in the area of Written Expression. This student would not require Specially Designed Instruction in Written Expression so no IEP goal needed for Written Expression!

Click HERE to grab a pdf of this chart for your own teaching!

And once you choose your goal areas, check out my blog post on how to write SMART IEP goals!

Happy & Healthy Teaching!
PEACE,
Miss Rae