[ainfalt]

Hello! I have a student who I feel is much lower than the rest of my class and is needing life skills goals on his upcoming IEP. I need to also put in some reading, math and writing goals. I'm not sure what to put. I have the life skills goals, but I'm not sure what academic goals to write. He is non-verbal, stims all day, will come to the table for a few minutes with his own aide then leaves to stim and walk around again. The goals I gave him at the beginning of the year (I'm having to do his IEP again) seemed out of reach. I gave him things like, match uppercase A with uppercase A, tell which group has one, two or three items. He's not there yet. He's working on toileting and school readiness. He is in 2nd grade this year going into 3rd next. Thank you!

[teabreak]

Hmmm....I would base his goals around his life skills. What will he need to know to be somewhat self-sufficient in the world outside of school. Maybe he can match shapes for math, do repetitive (block in a square hole of a box) type movements. I would think for reading it would be identifying the letters then moving on to the sounds. For writing you could have him practice pencil grip (not sure of his fine motor skills - just guessing here) and tracing lines.

What do his stims look like? What does he look for in rewards? Use those to help tailor his goals.

[ainfalt]

Thank you for your ideas! I think I will use the matching shapes goal for math. He stims by rocking back and forth on one foot, then the other while moving a toy in front of his face or in his hands and making noises with his lips like the sound of someone giving another person a raspberry.

[teabreak]

My thought is this: If your student is able to stay at the table for 5 minutes matching shapes, then give him the toy and set a timer for like 2 minutes, then come back to the table to repeat what he did. Extend the time at the table and lessen the time with the toy over an amount of time. Does that make sense? It will help him stay at his learning place, but know that he has a reward at the end.

[whatever]

you can make goals based on his ability to attend to an activity of your choice at the table. If you can't get him to stay at the activity, you can't expect much progress. So even if he just watches or listens to you read or lead an activity, he is attending (giving attention) in whatever way. As he builds stamina at this, you can add his participation, add a longer time, add an extra reward, etc.

For those very low kids, get creative with your verbs. Attend to, explore, etc are very open to interpretation. You get to define it and state how it is measured.

As for general skills, does he write now? Color well? Cut? Prewriting can include fine motor activities and similar. Explore different writing media--pens, pencils, crayons, markers, paints, sidewalk chalk, fingerpaints, playdough, whatever... Math can be sorting, patterns, counting, etc.

Stimming is a coping behavior and/or a sensory issue. Though reducing is ideal, it really needs to begin with replacement instead. If nothing else, can you get him to stim in place rather than walk away to do so? Can you move the activity to him at his rocking spot? Can his aide remain with him at the table?

Good luck--these are the hardest IEPs to write sometimes.

What you can do is have different task boxes set up for the student's IEPs. For math you can have the student match numbers if he does not know his numbers yet. To get him to do the work, you could have the student do the task box once, set a timer for him to have a break (2 minutes), and then do the task box again. Then repeat. The breaks can start off constant, but as time passes, more work can be added.