Overnight we have woken up to a “new normal” due to the impact of  the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day the situation seems to change and has resulted in extreme measures taken by our national and local governments all in an effort to keep us safe.  

One of the safety measures taken was the closing of schools to help with “flattening the curve.”  With orders to stay home and the closing of schools, many special educators are feeling overwhelmed by the expectation to continue with providing instruction during such crazy circumstances. 

As special educators, we already have one of the most challenging jobs in education, but now we have been thrown into a situation where we are navigating a digital learning environment.  This is all while taking on the nearly impossible task of providing some sense of normalcy for our students who have suddenly become homeschool students. We are trying to learn how to use virtual platforms, many of us without thorough training and without the ability to explicitly teach our students how to interact with us and eachother online.  

On top of this, we have to consider the barriers to technology access that many of our students may face.  We can’t assume that every one of our students has access to a working device, internet, adult support, etc.   

Another consideration that we have to make is our parents.  Many are in situations where they may have to work during the day, either inside or outside the home, and simply aren’t able to supervise instruction for their kids.   

As providers of specially designed instruction, we also have to think about things such as routines, avoiding regression, data collection, documenting services, and IEP deadlines. General education teachers and students are going to suffer from this, but students with disabilities are much more at risk of having a significant and long-lasting impact from the current state of education..  

Because of all that our community is contending with these days, I wanted to compile resources and strategies that may give special education teachers ideas on how to get through the next few months of teaching students with disabilities in a digital environment. 

Setting Up Your Workspace

Before you even dive into the technology aspect, you want to make sure you have a workspace that is going to be conducive to working from home.  If you are lucky enough to have a dedicated office or space for working, then you are already off to a great start.  

For many, lessons are now going to have to take place at a small desk, a kitchen table, bedrooms, or anywhere that we can find a clutter-free, presentable environment.  Try to find a place where you are going to be comfortable sitting for an extended period of time and where you can limit the number of distractions.  

Technology

To recreate some of the instructional methods that you utilize at school, such as modeling for students, there are some tech tools that can help streamline your instruction.  Most laptops and tablets come with a built in camera, but for some it may be worth it to purchase a separate web cam.  

Some may also choose to use a headset when creating videos or engaging in virtual learning and meetings.  Anything that has a noise cancelling feature has been a life saver for me when trying to work in a busy household. 

At this point I think that most are familiar with Zoom and Google Hangouts, which give you the capability of sharing your screen with attendees. To provide modeling of math content where you want to write directly on a document, you can use a tablet or you can look into a stand alone drawing tablet that connects to a PC. 

Free software that can be used along with a drawing tablet would be Sketchbook.  If you don’t have access to a drawing tablet, then you can also check out the Chrome extension Page Marker, which allows you to draw on any webpage that you have pulled up in your browser.  

Screen Recordings

Something that we may want to consider for students with disabilities, is creating actual recordings of lessons or examples in either subject area.  This would be one way of providing accommodations and modifications to students in a virtual environment. 

Unlike hosting a live session, students with disabilities are able to view the video in their own time, pause the video to take breaks or for extended time, rewind the video for repetition, etc.  You can also differentiate your videos based on student need or choose to provide content in short bite-sized chunks for your students. 

In order to record your screen to create lesson videos, Chrome has an extension that can be added called Screencastify  This could be a good option if you are just wanting to try out screen casting, but the free version of this program comes with limitations.  These limits include a 5 minute limit on recording and not having access to the program’s full functionality. 

An alternative would be the use of Quicktime which provides an option for recording your screen.  For recording lessons, I have had a lot of success with Camtasia, which provides the ability to capture your screen.  The software is pricey, but they do offer a free trial and a significant discount for educators. 

Virtual Learning Platforms

There are several online platforms that are offering discounted or free access for teachers and students.  For Reading, consider checking out Learning A-to-Z which has a variety of platforms that support reading goals.  Epic!, which provides access to a variety of books, videos, and audiobooks that support a variety of subjects, is providing free access until the end of the year. They also have books that are “read alouds”, which can act as an accommodation for students with disabilities.  Achieve3000 is offering some of its programs that support literacy to schools for free and also has free printables that can be used as a supplement at home. 

As always, Khan Academy, is a free program that can be utilized to support with mathematics instruction across grade levels.  Zearn is a free math program for grades K through 5 that follows Eureka Math’s scope and sequence. 

Curriculum Associates (creators of i-Ready) is providing free printables for reading and math across grade levels K through 8.  Students who already have access to i-Ready can also access their accounts from home. Abcmouse, which is geared towards students in grades K through 2 is currently free for teachers.  MobyMax and Learnzillion are also offering free access for teachers and both provide access to math and reading content that can be used to supplement your lessons. 

Communication

Tobii Dynavox, the makers of Boardmaker, is currently offering free communication resources.  Boardmaker is also offering free resources, including a free 90 day trial for their Boardmaker Online software.  Sounding Board is a free iOS app that can be utilized on an iPad or iPhone.  You can only download it in the iTunes store. 

Data Collection 

easyCBM has a free version of it’s assessment and data collection platform that teachers can access.  Some assessments would have to be administered via a one-on-one conference, but there are others that you can assign to students online.  Formative is a platform where teachers can create their own online formative assessments for students for.  The company is also currently offering premium memberships for free through districts and schools. 

Go Easy on Yourself

Lastly, as you navigate this new learning environment, remember to go easy on yourself, your students, and even your school leadership.  None of us are used to teaching and learning in this environment.    

Try to keep up with your district’s expectations, even though some may seem unrealistic at times. If something isn’t working, try it out first so that you will have the data and experience to provide feedback further down the road.  

The post Teaching Special Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Teach Special Education.

Creating a quality goal with correctly scaffolded objectives can take a lot of time and effort, so I want to show you one way in which you can break down this process into a series of manageable steps.   But before we dive into how exactly to go about writing goals and objectives, first let’s look at how IEP goals are defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act:

(II) a statement of measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals, designed to–

(aa) meet the child’s needs that result from the child’s disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum; and

(bb) meet each of the child’s other educational needs that result from the child’s disability

When creating academic goals for students, it is important to ground the goals in the grade level content standards. This provides students with access to grade level curriculum as stated above.  For many districts who are working with the Common Core State Standards, it is also important to base grade level goals on how students are functioning within relation to these grade level content standards.  

Step 1. Identify the Standards that Meet the Student’s Needs

The first step in this process involves identifying the standard(s) that should be addressed.  You can start by identifying the grade level standards for the student. These standards have already broken out by grade level and have been organized by domain within this document.

By reviewing the student’s Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance, you can determine which standards the students may have the most difficulty with. Additional data sources can be utilized to assist with identifying standards that the student needs focus on.

Teachers should then prioritize the standards based on those that would have the greatest impact on the student’s progress towards grade level.   For math, one consideration could be around the mathematics content at the student’s current grade level. Major content in the area of mathematics is defined as the major work for the grade level, which means that these are the areas in which teachers will spend most of their time throughout the year.  

Special educators can choose to focus on these areas when creating IEP goals since we know that these are areas that will be focused on heavily during day-to-day instruction. To learn more about this please follow this link: https://achievethecore.org/content/upload/Focus_in_Math_06.12.2013.pdf

For English Language Arts, you want to really think about the standards that are going to support your student in being a successful, lifelong reader.  For each student that will be different based on individual need, but major standards that come to mind as being high leverage are those that focus on main idea and details, using evidence from a text, and writing an argument.  

Also, many times we need to think about how to leverage basic phonics and writing mechanics skills that many of our students may require support with.

Step 2. Set Performance Target

The next step would be to set the performance target. You can utilized the Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance in order to determine the baseline performance, historical rate of growth/progress, accommodations, and necessary supports needed to make the grade level content accessible for the student.

By deconstructing the standard and determining which components will promote student success, a individualized performance target can then be set.  

For example, in math,  you may want to see a student demonstrate success through completion of a teacher generated worksheet with 80% accuracy over the course of 4 to 5 trials.

Step 3. Develop a SMART IEP Goal.

Special education teachers should ensure that they are keeping in mind what the acronym SMART stands for when developing goals:

S – Specific: The goal is focused by content (i.e. the standards) and the learner’s individual needs.

M – Measurable: Performance target is clearly stated and an appropriate measure is selected to assess the goal.

A – Attainable: Based on the student profile, it is determined that they have the ability to meet the performance target.

R – Relevant: Relevant to the individual student’s needs.

T – Time-bound: The goal is achievable within the time frame of the IEP.

Step 4. Develop SMART Objectives aligned to the selected IEP Goal.

There are three ways in which you can develop scaffolded objectives:

1. Sequential benchmarks that demonstrate increasing fluency, independence, or accuracy

2. Components of the goal

3. Prerequisite skills

I prefer to develop objectives utilizing specific skills or components of the grade level, standards-based goal.  I find that by breaking down the content into workable chunks, I can develop lessons over a period of time that builds up to a grade level standard.  

When reviewing general education curriculum, one can see that teachers are rarely tasked with tackling an entire standard within one lesson. To expect a special education student to tackle an entire standard in one goal or objective is also pretty unrealistic.   

At times, it may be necessary to create scaffolded objectives to provide students with prerequisite skills from the current or previous grade levels that support the standard that the grade level goal was based on.  The data may indicate that many of your students need the standards deconstructed in this way, in order for them to be successful in meeting the grade level standards-based goal that has been developed.

When  following the steps listed above, I was able to create the following IEP goal for a third grade student:

By____ when given a teacher generated problem set, manipulatives, and a prompt, Student will interpret whole number quotients of whole numbers by drawing a picture and describing a context that indicates the partitioning of a total number objects into equal shares as measured by 80% accuracy on at least 4 out of 5 trials.

When really unpacking the standard and digging into the content, I decided that I would create four scaffolded objectives that would support the student in meeting their grade level goal:

By____ when given a teacher generated problem set, manipulatives, and a prompt, Student will interpret whole number quotients of whole numbers by drawing a picture and describing a context that indicates the partitioning of a total number objects into equal shares as measured by 80% accuracy on at least 4 out of 5 trials.

By____, when given a teacher generated problem set and a prompt, Student will interpret whole-number quotients as the number of objects in each group when partitioned into equal groups by drawing a picture and providing an explanation with 80% accuracy on at least 4 out of 5 trials.

By_____, when given a teacher generated problem set, manipulatives, and a prompt, Student will represent a situation with a division expression with 80% accuracy on at least 4 out of 5 trials.

By ____, when given a teacher generated problem set, manipulatives, and a prompt, Student will represent a division expression with a situation by drawing a picture and providing an explanation with 80% accuracy on at least 4 out of 5 trials.

When I really think about the deconstructed standard and review student weaknesses,  I may find that instead of breaking this standard out by the grade level content covered, I may need to include another goal that supports prerequisite skills that I will address prior to going into this standard. 

When considering the example above, we have to ask ourselves, is the student ready for division even with the supports included in the goals and objectives? Would it make more sense for me to attack addition, subtraction, and multiplication first?  

This is where the individualization comes into play and where you really have to be strategic in how you write the annual goal.   Every IEP goal should be specific to the individual, but it helps to have a process to follow to make creating these goals a bit easier.  

To save even more time, please visit my TPT store where you can find hundreds of prewritten IEP goals for Common Core English Language Arts and Math.

The post How to Write SMART IEP Goals appeared first on Teach Special Education.