Writing Measurable Standards-Aligned IEP Goals for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Speaking: Marlene Schechter

April 10, 2012

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Essential Components to Standards Aligned IEP Goals

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Well good afternoon everyone and welcome to PaTTAN, to our Writing Measureable Standards Aligned IEP goals for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. My name is Marlene Schechter, and I'm really

excited to share information with you all this afternoon on this topic. I know that my colleagues across the state have done numerous trainings on the same topic, and today's approach will be a little

bit different in that we are rolling up our sleeves and actually doing a very practical, practical, hopefully very useful training for you this afternoon. That's why I asked for you to please bring in

a copy of an IEP with you today, because we're going to interact with that text as we move along. I'm going to just get started right away, and as we continue through the day you'll see exactly... I'm

going to switch to our PowerPoint, exactly what our goals are for the day and where we'll be going. We'll review and also do a little check for our understanding at the end to make sure we're all on

the same page. As you know, our mission at PaTTAN is to support the efforts of the Bureau of Special Ed and the Department of Education, which is why we're here today. And in addition we always want

to be sure that our students are in fact in his or her least restrictive environment. During the presentation today you can send questions, please jot this down if you have a pen or pencil, which I

hope you do because I'll be asking you to make notes throughout the day, throughout the couple of hours that we're together. Please jot down this email address, and at your sites or now with

technology maybe even from your phones, although I hope they are turned on silent, you can in fact email a question to vc@pattanpgh.net. vc@pattan Pittsburgh.net. So here's the plan for today, here's

our organizer. What the goal actually is in my mind, and I hope you'll be able to use some visualization as well, is we're hoping to be able to use routines, and I use the word 'routines' because the

idea is really to be as efficient as we can when we're writing IEP's. What I mean by efficient is we respect the fact that it takes time, it takes a lot of time to write a good IEP, but I think if we

have the skills and the routines down pat, you will more efficiently and effectively be able to do the task at hand. After we talk about some of those routines that we will link with our SAS

framework, then we're going to develop measureable goals that are aligned to the PA standards, anchors, eligible content, or an element from the curriculum framework. We'll talk about that in a little

more depth as we continue. Then lastly we want to take that information and implement it, apply it to your very own IEP that you brought with you today. It will be a 6 step endeavor that we'll be

talking about in a minute. So before we can get started, I think it's really important to make this as real as possible. When we think about making it real I think we need to envision a student, and

let's make it a happy student that we'll all had in the past, and we'll be meeting some of the students on this very page that you're seeing on the screen. You see there's a blank on the bottom right,

and again I hope that you're following along in the PowerPoint's that were provided at your site. There's a blank there, and it says a student in your, our school who has an IEP. Now it's OK if your

drawing skills maybe aren't the best, that's not a test. You could even do a stick figure, you can do a little Q, a symbol, anything that will help you, initials, anything that will help you just

connect what we're going to talk about today to a real student. That's the purpose for having this anticipatory set ready to go. So please take a moment and either jot a little sketch, or initials, or

some type of symbol for whom you'll be thinking about all day today. [ Silence ] Good. I hope it's a happy thought. It's really important I think to know where we're going with a graphic organizer,

and that's why I have this for you, this 6 step process that we'll be talking about all day. It's probably not new to you, but again I hope some of the routines that we employ within these 6 steps

will be really meaningful, and again help with your IEP goal writing that's aligned to our Pennsylvania standards. So we'll be referring to these 6 steps about reviewing our present levels of academic

achievement, identifying student needs. Today we'll be focusing on academic needs, prioritizing student needs, and that's a tough one sometimes for some of our students who might have some significant

language delays; and then determining what standard, anchor, or element from the curriculum framework correlates with that need that we've identified, and then after considering those steps above,

writing the goal, writing the goal with all of the components that are necessary for a well written goal. And then of course, of course monitoring the progress to see how it is we're doing with the

student, how our work is progressing. So... I know many of you have visited our SAS website, but I want you to look at it through the lens of IEP writing, so it's a little bit different. We want to

think about the framework, the content and the skills that our students need to learn and that we utilize to teach our students through that lens. So when we think about SAS we know that there are

content standards of course, and the anchors, eligible content, curriculum framework; and what's within that curriculum framework is what I believe is really important and relevant for writing our

goals. We also know that SAS links to resources and materials that we can utilize for each student. That won't be the target for today, that probably will be another training that we'll be holding

with you, for you, but not today. But I think it's important to mention that that's available as well. The same goes for some of the teacher tools that we have in SAS. Curriculum Mapping, you might

want to put a little star to go visit Curriculum Mapping, because when you really take a moment to view that there are a lot of hidden ideas there, maybe not so hidden, that you'd be able to utilize

for writing our goals. OK, so I told you we'd revisit the big ideas concepts in competencies, and there's a reason for that. This is wonderland when we think about writing our goals for students,

because we've got the big ideas that are the declarative statements, and you can see something that's underlined on your PowerPoints and on the screen. The idea is that these concepts transcend all of

the grade levels, all of the grade levels; this content for all students. That's important, so please highlight that. We'll come back to that in just a moment. And when I mention concepts that's when

we do begin to think about our students, but in relation to the specific grade level. Now remember we're talking about writing standards aligned IEP goals, so we are talking right now, not about

instructional level, we're talking about grade level. So furthermore, if we're thinking about what we want our students to do, it's the competencies. That part of the curriculum framework that we want

to be sure to highlight, because that describes what a student is able to do. Hmm, sound familiar? What a student is able to do? The behavior, the action? So we know that that's a really important

component of a well written IEP, and please once again highlight, star, circle, whatever it is you like to do, that will capture your eye when you revisit the work we're doing today, because

competencies are valuable when we write our IEP goals. So let's stop for a moment. I want you to think... I would like for you to stop and think for a moment. If you have a student who is working

below grade level, which element would provide an entry point, and entry point into the general education curriculum? What I mean by that is if your student is working below grade level, we still know

we have to align the goal to our standards, but how would we be able to do that? There's an item on here that says that it transcends all grade levels, the idea of... Which would it be? Everybody in

this room, everybody all at once, where would we look? Big ideas. Yeah, it's a wonderful entry point for looking at students who might be below grade level in order to write our IEP goals so that we

know in fact they are being aligned to the standards. By the way, why is it important that we align our goals to the standards? 2 reasons. 1 is it's best practice, it's best practice because these are

the skills we want our students to know when they leave a particular grade level, so that makes sense. They are actually seen within all of our standards, and anchors, and eligible content, etc. But

the other reason is a more legal reason, so it would be a litigious reason, and that is because we want some of our students, who we have IEP team meetings for, we're thinking together around the

table, to take the PSSAM, the modified PSSAM it's called. The reason that it's so important is that it is in our chapter 14, our state law that if a student takes the PSSAM, in fact there has to be a

goal that is aligned to the standards. Just wanted to make sure that we reviewed that point so it's clear. So I've talking and talking about aligning and relating our work to our framework across the

state, our web portal, and I'm taking a lot into... I'm assuming a lot as you walk into this room, and what I'm assuming into your respective room I should say, what I'm assuming is you're pretty

familiar with our Standards Alliance System. This isn't a training on SAS, although I am going to throw in a few tricks, but this isn't on SAS, however I'm curious and I'd like for you to think to

yourself for a moment how proficient are you in your navigation skills on SAS? How proficient are you? So think about it. I'll ask the room here, and if there are facilitators in other sections, let's

take a little quick poll, a visual poll from 1 to 5. If you feel you could explain SAS to your neighbor very clearly and articulately, then that would be a 5, you're pretty proficient in navigation

and understanding of SAS. If you're not so much, then it would be closer to a 1. So in this room and in other rooms across the state, just hold up your hand so we have a feel for our knowledge base in

the room. [ Silence ] OK. I see some variation here. And I'm not so sure about across the state, but I can tell you that in our room I saw all the way from 1's all the way up to 5's. So we'll have to

take a little bit better notes perhaps. For those of you that aren't as familiar, because I will walk you through each step, especially in the beginning, as we get through some of our examples here I

will be hoping that you can on so we'll move along more quickly and get to your very own IEP's. But like I said it's a matter of routine, so I have 4 examples for you today that are relevant to

students who are deaf or hard of hearing, at least in all of my 25 plus years' experience, that seem to be repeating themselves so that would be something perhaps related to vocabulary and reading,

and perhaps a self-advocacy goal and listening goal. Those were the 4 I chose for today, and again we'll review them as we go through, and at the end. Hopefully by the 4th example you will start to

feel the routine and see the efficiency as we go through SAS. So let's get to it. Moving right along, and I know I'm going rather quickly but we don't have that much time together. So as I said,

please jot down any questions you have. Right now I have a support person ready to run them over to me, or at the end of the PowerPoint that you have I also have contact information and I'd be very

happy to answer any questions after the fact as well. So up here, isn't Sammy cute? Look at Sammy. Sammy is in grade 3. He is struggling with vocabulary, but how do we know that? Well I'll tell you

how we know. It's from his very well written present levels of academic achievement. So let's take a look. We see that, and this is only an excerpt, so what I'm trying to show you here, I didn't want

to take the time to write present levels for every other area. We are assuming that those are also very clearly articulated to us. So I just lifted the part that related to vocabulary to share. We can

say that with the use of visual phonics, and visual phonics cues, repetition, Sammy is on grade level; bright and early 3rd grade for worded text skills, and that's evidenced on the Woodcock Johnson

reading mastery test, it's a diagnostic. His grade equivalent on the word comprehension test also from the Woodcock, that is showing that he is functioning on grade level about 1.5, mid 1st grade. And

in addition his scores on monthly probes that are called depth of knowledge vocabulary probes, I hope you're familiar with those, we rolled that across the state... the Deaf Hard of Hearing

Initiative, my colleague Sue Ann Houser and Jane Freeman, we rolled that across the state in earlier sessions, which is a vocabulary measure that we've been using for progress monitoring, and we also

have a baseline. If you're not familiar with the depth of knowledge, I'm just going to throw this in there, we are including assessment information on the deaf hard of hearing page of our PaTTAN

website, and there will be a little tab there. I don't believe it's quite... it's not there yet but it will be there very soon. All the information about the depth of knowledge assessment, how to give

it, how to score it, and we may revisit that at another training as well. I just didn't want you to wonder what it is. It will be under the assessment tab on the PaTTAN website, www.pattan.net under

educational initiative deaf hard of hearing. So you'll be able to find that kind of information there. But back to Sammy, what I'd like for us to think about, we're going to pause. I know, those of

you that know me think oh here goes Mar again, pause, a little homophone. Yes, it's a homophone, pause meaning we're going to stop and it's time for you to think a little bit. It's the part to slip in

action work zone for you, because we need to go to your second packet, you were given 2 packets today, and this is the packet where I wanted you to think about a very quick review on present levels of

academic achievement. So I'm going to switch screens here for a moment, and bring it up. And hopefully you can see that pretty clearly as well. Again, this isn't a training on present levels of

academic achievement, but if we don't have well written present levels of academic achievement we can't go on. So we wanted to be sure just to stop for a minute and take a look. Feel free to take a

look at your own right now. We're going to do it at the end in great detail, but feel free because you can see I've made it look somewhat like a checklist. If you don't have one with you please think

about it, but do your present levels describe the current academic achievement and functional performance on both grade and instructional level? Underline that, highlight that, star that. It's huge.

It's very important. And how do assure that we included both grade and instructional level? Well first of all we need to interpret the data by the way, and that data that I'm talking about comes in 4

different forms. We can have summative data, formative data, benchmark data, and diagnostic data. And I'm here to tell you a lot of people like terms that are measureable, meaning that you can

actually take a look quantitative I should say. We need to have 4 or a minimum of 3 of these types of assessments, so make a note on your present levels of academic achievement to look at yours. Do

you have 3 at least, types of achievement, types of information that tell us about the student? So we know that Sammy had that, because we talked about a formative assessment with his... at least in

this area of vocabulary. Now it doesn't mean we have to have 4 in every area, but to get a true picture of Sammy we would need to have it whether we're talking about reading or math or science or

social studies. I'm going to pose a question to you. If we only had summative data for Sammy, only had PSSA scores, I'm sure you realize that's summative data. Sammy might not look like he's doing so

hot right, if he didn't score well on that PSSA. However what if we only had, what if we only... what if we only included formative data, which is what we're doing in class all the time, we're

checking with our students, seeing how they're doing, formative data; maybe we're using rubrics. It's on an instructional level, and if you don't remember that add that to your notes because our

formative data, if our instructional level data, but if we only had formative instructional level data, maybe Sammy's getting A's and B's and A's and B's all through his education. I'm not sure that's

a real true picture of Sammy is it? We don't know how he's doing in relation to grade level data, which might be the PSSA or another form of summative work, a TerraNova or something else you may give

in your areas. So it's really important. Benchmark data, I know that many of the districts and the IU's in the school use Foresight benchmark, and now there are a few other types of benchmark data

that we can use. Some folks choose to use AIMSweb as a benchmark data, and we have diagnostic data which we know tells us where the skills are, the specific skills that are needed. We do have

something on SAS and being trained really throughout the state called a Classroom Diagnostic Tool. The abbreviation, if you want to note this, is CDT, Classroom Diagnostic Tool. And again, that's not

the purpose of today's training, but if you're feeling you don't have enough data from which to make really appropriate IEP goals, show the needs of our students, then you might want to look into some

of these options so that in fact we do have enough data. So back to present levels, I'm going to pause a moment more. We're talking about also the student's disability related needs. That definitely

needs to be noted as well. Then finally we want to talk about what is and what is not working to advance learning. Do we talk about progress on past goals, and also related to the general ed

curriculum. So that's something we definitely want to be sure we're doing, and we're going to head back to... we're going to head back to our Sammy here and see how we do the next few steps... ... in

our 6 step process. Because now what we need to do is think about the needs and the priorities. I'd like you to take a moment, look at the present levels that we have there for Sammy. Jot down a few

needs that you see please. You can highlight it if you have a highlighter, but I'd like you to jot down the information that makes sense, that will help you to think about what are Sammy's needs.

Oftentimes, especially in math or reading, we have more than 1 need. Then we also have to think about prioritizing those. OK, I'm going to show you what I picked out. You know there's not only 1 right

answer, it's our interpretation of that data. Perhaps a need that would make sense for Sammy is that he needs to identify and interpret the meaning of this vocabulary, and because I'm a teacher who

feels that in 3rd grade nonfiction text is pretty important, especially for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, related to background knowledge. I chose to say a nonfiction text. Doesn't mean

it's right or wrong, it's just my particular choice. OK, so very quickly we're going to take another detour, because how do we prioritize student needs? Like I said, oftentimes... did I lose myself

here? I did. Oftentimes our students have more than 1 need, so how would it be... how would it be to prioritize these needs? So let's take a look. We talked about the use of 4 types of data, but

prioritizing them means we need to use information in SAS, and what I wanted to show you that's in SAS, something called Test Blueprints and Performance Descriptors. What I've done for you is at the

end of your packet there I've included an example of each, so let me scoot to the end and show you what I mean. Hope I didn't make you too dizzy. Here's the math test blueprint. As you can see, and I

hope it's big enough for you to see, if not I can make it a little bit bigger here for us. What you can see is, let's suppose we had a student in... let's say we had a student in 4th grade. We have a

student in 4th grade. Where might we spend a great deal of our time? Where are most of the questions asked? What reporting category? Everybody? 4th grade? Majority of questions? Yeah, numbers and

operations. Now it doesn't mean we wouldn't want to spend time in that area, but we can start to see that the percent of time varies according to grade level. So it might be helpful in deciding where

we want to spend a lot of our time. I also wanted to show you I did the same thing, I pulled the same ideas from reading. This is talking about, we know that there are 2 categories in reading. We've

got comprehension and also the interpretation analysis piece. It tells you here the grade and the number of questions that are asked in those areas. Might be helpful when you think about choosing

goals. And the same thing here is in the science blueprint. I just wanted to share that with you so that you'd know, and then of course I say to myself, how do I find those, because there's a lot more

information in there. So I've given you directions on exactly how to find those, and maybe near the end we'll actually do a demonstration, but I don't want to lose our train of thought too much. The

important point here has to do with prioritizing and how do we begin to prioritize? This is 1 tool that we can use when we think about spending our time, and getting the biggest bang for our buck

frankly. Alright so let's go back to Sammy here. We've identified the need, and now where we're going to go is right onto SAS, because we have the need. Remember the need was related to his vocabulary

and the interpretation and meaning? So part of the routine is, I'm going to go straight to SAS. I want to align my goals to SAS, so I'm going to go there. You can see on this screen how to get there,

but I'm actually going to take us there, at least the 1st time, 2nd time, and then after that I'm hoping that you get the routine. So it didn't take us very long to identify from the present level his

need, now we're going to go to clear standards. For those of you that aren't real familiar, get out your pencils because I'm going to give you couple little tricks. We're going to click on clear

standards in SAS, which by the way the website I'm sure you know, but I just want to let you know. It's just pdesas.org. I'm going immediately to vertical viewer. Just save yourself some time because

this really is, I would think, and well it's my opinion and not of others who use SAS all the time, the most efficient way to get where we need to be. So I went to clear standards vertical viewer, and

then you can see I'm going to go to the 1st subject area, there are 14 by the way... all the way to driver's ed. I want reading, so that's number 1, subject area number 1. And vocabulary has to do

with his independent reading skills. So I click on independent reading. Now what grade is Sammy in? Everybody, what grade? 3rd, good. Am I looking for the purpose in reading? No. Word recognition,

word attack? Not really. It's related, but that's not the need we chose. I'm going right to vocabulary. He is in 3rd grade, so we see the 3 right here, if you can see where my cursor is. The standard

says that to use the meaning and knowledge of words, both synonyms, antonyms in the content develop reading vocabulary. So I'm going to click on that, and do you remember what we talked about in the

beginning? I know you do. And that is that it's not just the standard that we might need to look for to work with Sammy, it might be the eligible content, might be the anchor, because as we drill down

we are getting closer and closer to the need. Right? The need. And if you have your paper open you can see the need that at least I, if you want to go with my opinion for right now, chose for Sammy.

Well we have to understand fiction, but we talk about understanding nonfiction. I'm going to click on that, and when I do we have choices to match the need that we've picked for Sammy. So let's see.

Interpret the meaning of vocabulary and nonfiction. Well it does happen to be the 1st choice right here. So I'm going to click on that choice, and sure enough to identify and-or interpret the meaning

of multiple meaning words, is 1 idea. It's not really what we saw in the need, might be OK. To identify and interpret the meaning of content specific words and text. Yeah, that really is close. I'm

not faking it, it really is a vocabulary need, it's here in the standards, and there we are. It's as simple as that frankly. So I'm going to minimize that right now, because I want to go back to where

we are in our process, in our routine. We looked at the PA standards for writing; we are using the information from above, from our present levels to see what Sammy's needs are in vocabulary. If you

wanted to you could write them in the blanks, but I pretty much have shown you where we needed to go. So let's see what's next. We pick out the standard, the anchor, I happened to write them here for

you to expedite our time together, and we found that the anchor descriptor... and highlight this or star it for Sammy, is to identify and interpret the meaning of vocabulary and nonfiction. I hope

that's making sense for you. We determined that, I'm not going to make us go to the work zone, although... I showed you, if you want to look through your pause sheet we can. I want to move along, but

basically for number 4 on your pause sheet talks about, beginning with the grade level, finding the need and we did that together viewing the standard anchor eligible content from our curriculum

framework, or from the standards; and we did it. Ours is an anchor, that really seemed to... doesn't matter what you pick because the anchors are based on the standards and that's what we mean by a

standards aligned goal. Now we need to think about writing the goal, as you can see... and monitoring student progress. So when we think about monitoring the goal, I actually am going to take a little

detour, because what I'd like for us to look at when we think about monitoring the goal... has to do... with an effective IEP goal. Now I know you guys have seen this over and over again, you've been

to classes at college and trainings and your IU's, or in your school districts, or in your approved private schools. But I'm here to tell you that we do quite a bit of training with folks, and yes

pretty much people are pretty good with the condition, being able to describe what it is that's been used; pretty good with the name, although I'm chuckling because guess what? If people are using

some of the programs that are cut and paste, we have few errors with name because it was cut and paste incorrectly. But when we talk about, you can see yes we've been taught using the word 'behavior',

but I'm using the word 'skill' because when we talk about standards they really are skills. So what is it that the student is going to do? Where we're really having problems guys, I'm going to be very

frank with you, where many of us are having problems is right here in the performance criteria area. I don't know how you're feeling about that, but it's true. I think it has to do with, and let me

move over a little bit, I think it has to do more with the criteria related to progress monitoring, and how are we measuring progress toward that goal. Where does that fit in? How do we write it so

that it flows smoothly in our goal? The olden days when we did training about almost 10 years ago, when I was here at PaTTAN we did a lot of training on reading fluency for example, and I will admit

to you we said it was a new concept for us and we would say, Jodi, we'll increase her reading fluency score from 110 to 135 throughout this year. What's the skill? It's not there. What is she really

going to do? It's not there. Is she going to read... it's not there. And we're seeing that still happening quite a bit, whether it has to do with a writing rubric or whether it has to do with math

skills. We're talking about scores and not skills, so please note somewhere skills, write the word, put a brand on your forehead or something, but that's where we're starting to see the breakdown a

little bit. I wanted to share that with you and be totally honest. I am going to go back now though; I'll just minimize this so we can see what does it really look like. OK. When we go back to writing

the goal, I'm going to model the 1st few for you. By the way, for student progress you can see that we talk about graphing, using a checklist or a rubric. Here is a sample, and I should have put

sample big across... OK it's me, it's not really there, thank you. It's why you guys are here with me, thanks. Pointing to the screen. Thank you. Here is just a sample, and I say just a sample. Please

don't think that every goal related to vocabulary has to look exactly like this. However we do know that a sample is very helpful, and that's why we wanted to share it with you. So let's take a look.

Using the graphic organizer, and in 1 case that we've been using, it's a 5 finger strategy. When reading new vocabulary in nonfiction text, Sammy will correctly interpret word meanings, and we're

going to evidence that by a 3.0 increase each month on his DOK, is depth of knowledge vocabulary probes that are given, a formative assessment, and he has to do this for 6 out of 8 months, increase by

3. On the bottom you can see that I choose to, it is not a state law, not a state law, but I do choose to put in reference what the standard is. Question for you. Do you think it would be really

helpful if I just had R3, A21? I don't think so, for a parent or others. Hey, I've been in the field a long time. Do you think I have those memorized? Absolutely not. So if you're going to reference

the standard at all then please do, just even if it's in smaller print, put the whole standard. I think it's good practice. If I were you I would do it. It doesn't hurt anything, and it really helps

parents and the whole IEP team know exactly where you're going. Alright let's go to the next piece that we have to include on our IEP, so how was the student's progress towards this goal going to be

measured? Well we're actually using the rubric for the depth of knowledge, and for those of you that I said I know some of you may not be familiar, it's a 0, 1, 2 type of rubric but we can measure the

student, how many more points for 10 words each month, it's only 1 time a month that are given, we'll be able to graph his progress. But not only that, we're going to maybe have a team effort so that

the speech language pathologist might also be working with Sammy, and report some progress to us regarding vocabulary on what he or she is doing in their sessions too. I'm just choosing that I would

communicate this progress 1 time per quarter per report period, and the reason I say that is because if we're only doing it once a month, we wouldn't have a whole lot of data to report if we did it

more frequently. So that's the reason for the 1 time per month. Alright let's move on to what that would look like. This is not a test on progress, this is not a training on progress monitoring, but I

did want to do step number 6 for you and just show you what that might look like to a parent. They would be able to see, there is the trend line in yellow if you can see it, but you would also be able

to see if he's making some progress and what's happening, and also if there was a dip we could talk about why would that dip be there, things like that, because a picture is worth a thousand words. So

I'm going to stop for a moment. I did receive a question. I will answer that, take a breath, and then we'll go on and meet Alice. The question that I received, actually it's from IU13 and it is, is

there a writing cluster blueprint? The answer is yes, there is a blueprint. Each blueprint isn't exactly the same, like you could see the reading isn't really called a blueprint. But there is writing

information on there as well, on that link that I gave you on your pause packet. There is information in that link, and basically when you go there what we're doing is we're going through the SAS

portal, but it takes us right to the PDE website. The information is in the PowerPoint called Getting Ready, and that's where I was able to find that information. While we're on the subject, I'm just

going to throw it out there because that's just the way I like to present. I've received questions through many years about using the writing rubric for writing, the PA writing rubric. That's really

not a very informative rubric as well, and when you try to make it fit into the routines that I just showed you, it really doesn't work very well because then we end up talking about scores and

numbers... a 3. But we have 5 different traits don't we? We've got organization; we've got topics and staying on focus and those kinds of things. So putting a number for the writing rubric doesn't

give us the information of the specific skill that the student needs. So I wanted to throw that in to you, because I don't have a writing example for today. So let's... I see that it's me again. We're

going to meet Alice. And Alice is in grade 5. Don't you just love her hearing aid? I do, I think it's really cute. And those do look like the hearing aids that most of the students I see wear. But

anyway, Alice is in grade 5 and we're going to focus on reading comprehension here. Again, I made an excerpt from Alice's present levels regarding reading comprehension, and you can see that I'm

commenting on the fact that she met the criteria of her current reading fluency goal, which was from last year of 120 words per minute. She's in grade 5 by the way. The San Diego Quick Assessment

suggests that her instructional level is 3rd grade, and her frustration level is about 4th grade. She scored low basic on foresight, and that was all year long. So this foresight data, the benchmarks

as well as classroom assessments have indicated that Alice has difficulty in summarizing and identifying the concepts that she reads in nonfiction text. She is able to keep the pace with her classwork

and her peers in social studies when, and again this would be her specially designed instruction, when pre-teaching and the review of important concepts when using graphic organizers in reviewing;

important concepts prior to the lessons. So again, I'd like you to take a moment, getting the routine down, think about the needs. Drop them down please... related to reading comprehension. [ Silence

] And if you see more than 1, just let us know what you think the priority is, star it. And then of course I'll give you my 2 cents, which probably is in your PowerPoint isn't it? Yep, sorry, don't

cheat. I just realized that I should have hidden that. Oh well. Might as well move on then. But hopefully in your own minds, if you didn't cheat, you saw that in my opinion, and again it's only my

opinion, it's that Alice needs to develop comprehension skills with a focus on summarizing and identifying key concepts. It's pretty much a no brainer because it was indicative, was indicated I should

say, in her present levels. So let's keep moving on with our routine, because we're going to look at the Pennsylvania academic standards, and I am going to take us right there pretty quickly. I'm

going to use the information from the curriculum framework that would address her needs. So I'm going back out to SAS. I'm going to go up to the vertical viewer in the standards. I'm going to go to

reading, writing, speaking, listening. There we go. And again this does have to do with A, which is the 1 component of reading independently. And Alice is in grade 5. We're talking about purpose for

reading? No. Word recognition? No. Vocabulary this time? No. Ah, comprehension for grade 5. So when we read through the standard it's not giving me exactly what I want. It's there, demonstrating

comprehension, understanding, before-during-after reading, summarizing. Yep, that's great. Retelling, note taking. But I want to see if I can hone in on what the specific skill is that I really want

Alice to do. I'm going to click on that, and let's see. Ah, the assessment anchor search here, we're talking about understanding fiction, nonfiction again to grade level, and understanding fiction

appropriate to grade level. I'm going to click on... understanding... am I in grade 6? That's why I can't see. I know it would help if I wore glasses. I'm vain, OK? [ Laughter ] I'm vain. I'm old and

vain. My eyes are going and I didn't see. Thank you though. So we are going to go, no wonder I couldn't see. I am looking at a 5 aren't I? Nonfiction? Thank you. That's what I was searching for

before. So we want to... take a look at summarizing nonfiction text in grade 5. So when I click on that, because that most closely identifies the need that we saw? Correct? Are you with me? We get

summarized the major points, events in nonfiction text. And again, if we wanted materials in resources, Chris for you, we would just pop right over here and we'd be able to get those as well. OK, so

let's go back and take a look at the sample that we've chosen. We've already picked out the assessment anchor, eligible content. And here's a sample, again only a sample, I wish I could... oh I did

write sample, good. I've picked 2 samples for Alice, and I'll tell you why. There isn't just 1 way to write our goals. So I thought OK, let's make it real. I'm going to do 1 way, if I wanted to do a

MAZE probe, I'm going to do another way. If I chose to use a rubric, and that's what I'm going to share with you in a moment. So here we go. Given a nonfiction passage, Alice will identify the stated

or implied main ideas and details. This is what we want her to do. Of course we're going to teach our heads off, right, in order to hope that that's happening. We're going to know if it's working as

indicated by a minimum increase of .8 correct word replacements, and that's related to a MAZE, per month for 2.5 minute MAZE probe. Now I don't know how many of you use MAZE, but I will tell you this;

there aren't a whole lot research based, there aren't a whole lot of research based assessments, progress monitoring tools that we can use that accurately let us know how we're doing all along the way

throughout the year that keeps with consistent benchmarks, and really allows us to make appropriate decisions for instruction. So that's why I've chosen to use MAZE as an example, and frankly we've

trained quite a few teachers to use MAZE, and that also will be on our website. I believe it actually already is on our website under assessment tool. In case you forget how to do it, or where to get

the probes, that kind of thing, this isn't a training on assessments, but we do have the information for you on our web page. I see some faces here who have been trained and I know they like it very

much. So we see that the eligible content, which was where I chose to make my goal, because it was closest to the need for Alice - identifying, explaining ideas that are implied or right there, and

the details from the text. And then how we're going to do it. We actually are going to put the scores of the MAZE passage, they'll be tracked, but I hope you can see here Alice is tracking her own

data and I think I have that on the other student as well, even 3rd grade. I have them track data in 1st grade. It is extremely motivating. Now would you keep your own copy? Of course you would. Not

that we don't trust our darlings, but the point is that we want them to have a copy of the data so mom and dad, when we talk about progress here in the next column describing when the progress will be

given, really is a parent knows what's going on in the classroom, really, they could say well let me see your chart Johnny. Or let me see your chart Alice, because it's right there, because she's

keeping her own data. I choose to do this 2 times a quarter, and again that's just a personal choice. You could do it once, twice, however often it fits your classroom style and your needs. But let's

take a look at another sample, another example of reading comprehension that you might choose, and I'm sure out there in TV land you have your own as well. This one again, we're going to use a

nonfiction passage, it's expository text, is one of my pet peeves because I just think our kids need as much information as possible. But given nonfiction passage and a graphic organizer, different

condition as you can see, Alice will summarize the major points on that graphic organizer and earn at least a minimum of 4 to 5 points on the summarizing rubric that I've created for the students, on

4 consecutive biweekly trials. So again, this is a different way in that I'm asking her to write it down on a template, on a graphic organizer that I made. Now some of you might want your students to

sign it, some of you might want your students to state it, to state whatever the major points are. You could have them retell it. There are a lot of options. These are only samples that I'm giving you

that makes sense for writing a goal that's aligned to the standards, and that we can accurately measure. And then I'm also going to take a look at the foresight results, not just the rubric; if Alice

took the PSSA tomorrow, how we should do. That's what foresight tells us about as well. So I'm going to keep moving along because we're going to go to another example. Oh yes, I did want to show you

once again about monitoring progress and adjusting instruction. In this case I didn't draw a trend line because I know that the goal I had made by looking at the data that I have is... I want a

certain number of replacements each month. So really though at the end, I really want at least about 23 correct replacements at the end of the school year for this annual goal, and that's the reason

that I have the blue goal up there and I have to admit Excel is not my forte, and it took me a really long time to do this. I'm just going to go right through that one. But honestly, that probably on

my personal goals is something that I want to get better at because that took me more time than writing a goal, and we're really here about writing the goal. So that's just something that probably we

might want to roll out there at some point too, if that's a need that you all have. But back to another example. Many of you had asked about self-advocacy. I know that all of you are aware that

students who are age 14 and older would definitely have transition goals and grids, and be hopefully by then actively involved in their ITT meetings. But yet we're really unsure how to talk about

goals for these students, and I know that some of the... have done great things with PowerPoint's where students actually design PowerPoint's. I was going to go in that direction, but technology is

sometimes a problem so I didn't want to go there in case you didn't have that at your disposal where they would have to actually present something on themselves, and what their needs are related to

self-advocacy. So we're going to meet Sydney. She looks real happy. That's what some 9th grader girls look like, right? So Sydney is in 9th grade, and I'll go back to meeting Sydney. And her present

levels, which I do try to take from reality, look like this - that she's expressed frustration to her parents, they've called us, and the teacher of the deaf because her math and science teachers were

not consistently employing the accommodations that are listed on her IEP. I'm going to stop here because if you're watching from perhaps the School for the Deaf, or if you're watching from a different

setting, I can also tell you that some of the teachers even in our very own environment aren't always very consistent about wearing perhaps a mic, or something that would attach to a cochlear implant,

or whatever. So you can make this relate, let's generalize this to your setting. But anyway, so those accommodations aren't consistently employed, and she stated that she feels upset because the sound

field system is not being used, and when the students are all speaking at the same time she can't understand what's being said. Ever heard that before? So Sydney needs to, herself, identify the

accommodations that address her communication and learning needs, and then explain their importance for her access; and then of course it goes on with other areas, but this is the excerpt that we're

talking about. How did this fall in the PowerPoints? Don't look ahead. Let's not look ahead and cheat, don't turn the page, because what I'd like you to think about... oh well it's already under

there. But anyway, if you had to highlight in the live and learn, if you had to highlight in present levels for Sydney, hopefully you would take a look at what her needs are. You may have some

different ideas for her needs, but again we want you to prioritize it so that's part of our routine, so we can try to relate this to a standard, or at least a specific skill. And I'm not going to go

into the difference between a general outcome measure or specific skill measure, but I will say a general outcome measure actually has benchmarks nationwide. It might be like I'll use oral reading

fluency again. This is where all 4th graders need to be, or all 6th graders need to be. But there might be some skills that maybe even related with hygiene or whatever, there's obviously not a... well

I guess there is a standard for that, but there's not a standard that's written across our country for that. That would be a specific skill that we in fact would address. But in this case we would say

that Sydney needs to identify and express the types of services and/or supports that she needs that provide access, that would provide her access in the general education classroom, and that

positively affect her ability to learn, that would have an impact on her ability to learn because if she doesn't have access obviously she can't learn. Right? I'd like to show you where, actually I

went to to find this. I'm going to go off road again, and we'll go back to the standards. What I'm going to do now, so get out your pencils because we're not staying with the vertical viewer

standards. Where I'm going to go now is the curriculum framework, and I'll tell you why in a moment. So please note we're visiting curriculum framework. And when we get there, you see some different

choices here, and what we're really talking about, when we talk about self-advocacy we're talking about a school wide area of focus. So I'm going to click on school wide area of focus. I see you

writing so I want to give you time. We went to curriculum framework, school wide area of focus. And when I'm in here I don't have too many choices, sorry my mouse isn't very cooperative right now.

When we're in here I'm going to pick student interpersonal skills. It's abbreviated as SIS, so I'd like you to abbreviate it as SIS as well. Student Interpersonal Skills. I'll click on there, and when

I do, when I'm in the curriculum framework and I find it under SIS, I'm going to see that I have some choices here related to the big idea for all kids, but I'm going to choose the one that most

closely relates to Sydney. So I don't know about awareness of self, understanding, engagement, environments. I'm not sure about that. How about self-management and responsibility? Yeah. I think we're

getting closer to what her need is, and especially because it talks about academic environment, so I'm going to try it. I click on there, and I'm going to hide the concepts right now because they're

in my way. I'm going to hide these central questions so we can actually see a little bit more clearly what it is we want to find. I'm going to read through these competencies. You can do it as well,

maybe you can't see, but the first one talks about reflecting about identify options, demonstrating constructive ways, about impulsivity, responding to different environments, that might work. Respond

and adapt appropriately to personal and environment cues. Hey, that looks pretty close don't you think? I see some head nods in here. OK, and then what I would do is I would hover because I don't

really want to go to each one of these and see what it says. Identify, manage emotions. That's not it. Recognize personal qualities and external supports. Hey that sounds pretty close. It's not going

to be exact of course, but we want to align it with the standards. So I'm going to click on there. I hope you're starting to see how quickly the routine can be mastered. Here we are. We're in the SIS

area, developing self-awareness and management skills, but here I have found that recognizes personal qualities... hmm, and external supports. Not exact but it's certainly very close. OK, so I'm going

to accept that for the time, and take us back... to our PowerPoint and we see her need there. And the reason why I put the screen shots, these are called screen shots where I make the shots for you,

in case you forgot how I got there. So this way you can find it on your own, that's why it's here, for step 4 for making that connection to the anchors and the standards. So after I do that I read it,

I can see it in print. The reason I wrote this here for you, not 'the' but it was hard to see, so I wanted to make sure you could see it. This is an area that a lot of people don't even know or forget

is on SAS, and for little guys, just an FYI... oh my gosh there are really cool, very cool ideas in this interpersonal skills section that I've shown some of you before but it's a great place to

explore. So let's get back to Sydney, and here's just again, 1 sample of a measurable goal when it has to do with self advocacy. So it's not as clean as some of our academics, but this makes sense.

Given practice sessions with her teacher of the deaf, Sydney will identify and state what types of services and/or supports she needs to provide access in the general education classroom, and that

positively affect her ability to learn as evidenced with a score of 5 out of 5 on a self advocacy rubric for 3 consecutive opportunities. Why would I, and it's my own decision pick 5 out of 5 on a

rubric out of 5, it's because I know Sydney and I'm going to practice with her, I'm going to have her SLP practice with her. I'm really not going to give up on this goal until she gets it. I'll try

other strategies, I'll try new interventions, we'll film her, we'll do whatever it takes; but basically I'm going to make sure she gets it. It's kind of like a goal for someone who might be visually

impaired, crossing the street we don't, on a rubric; it can't be 3 out of 5 can it? It has to be 100 percent of the time. In my mind this is really important for Sydney's learning and it has to be 5

out of 5. You may have someone else that if you get a 4 you're thrilled, so again that's what makes it individualized. So we see the standards again on the bottom, and how am I going to do this?

Sometimes I've written his goal as what's called within a hierarchy where actually I've divided into objectives. So for the first part of the year we would just do modeling and she'd use cue cards.

Then we would do a lot of repetitions, and then we would start to look at her rubric. Also you can see below that right here we talk about videotaping and feedback. That's probably another way that I

was going to express progress toward that goal with Sydney individually. And again I don't get to see her all that often for this particular goal, 1 time per quarter is how I would communicate that

progress for her. So how are we doing, OK? Well do we have questions in this particular room? I have another one here but... do you want to say it and I'll repeat it? [ Inaudible question ] Good

question. The question was, if you write a goal and you're utilizing a rubric in order to show the progress that that student is making, must you attach the rubric to the document? I would yes or else

it probably wouldn't make sense. As far as is it legally required, there is nothing that says it's legally required, but it would definitely be helpful for the parents and the IP team to see what the

rubric looks like. The last example, I have 1 for you that I just made. The more you do it the more quickly you can devise rubrics to show progress. So yeah, my answer would be yes. Should you? Yes.

Good question actually. OK, so we're going to move on to the last example. Thanks for that question too Jane. We're going to a little guy. Tried to make this diverse as possible for you. This little

guy is, and look at you in the background, all of you happy teachers, look at you, you're so happy with Patrick. That's you. Patrick has a listening, we're going to focus on the area of listening. And

here is the excerpt for Patrick. According the screening instrument for targeting educational risk, often known as the SIFTER, Patrick passed his listening assessments in the area of school behavior;

areas of school behavior, communication, and even classroom participation. But he failed in the areas of academics and attention. And this is a checklist, so it was according to classroom teachers who

completed that assessment. And in addition the test of auditory comprehension of language, the newest one, the TACL, the measures a child's auditory comprehension skills. That indicated that he scored

low in the area of elaborated sentences, so when it was a longer piece of information. Again I'm going to ask you to think what you have targeted as his needs? We can't just say listening in general,

because that doesn't tell us a whole lot. We need to get a little bit more specific so that we can think about where we can find it when we go to SAS to visit it, or if we wanted to make up our own

specific skill goal, 2 types of goals. So when we think about determining needs... for Patrick, I'm sure you've already turned the page, you've got this down, routine. Again this was just my

interpretation of the data, is that Patrick needs to actively listen and respond to others with appropriate questions and ideas, otherwise I won't know if he's getting the information that he's

hearing in the academic and with attention environments. So how do I link this one to the standards? I work with audiologists quite a bit and they're always asking about that. So again I have a screen

shot for you, but let's go off road and go right back to, so I can show you how I got there. We'll go to SAS. And I'm going to go back to my vertical viewer again, which is of course we know under

clear standards. And again, this is what I mean about routines. Pretty soon you'll be zipping through here like I'm able to do because I use it so often, and then I'm hoping that's how you'll do it

when you write you're IEP's. That's what we're here for, to get these routines down pat. So here we are, we go to reading, writing, speaking, listening. And we do have, within our subject areas, when

we go down to 1.6 speaking and listening. So if you're making notes we went to vertical viewer, and then we went to 1.6 for speaking and listening. Uh oh, grade 3. I want grade 1. So I look up here,

if you're following me. It says that I can look at the standards for pre-K through 3, so I click on that button. The reason I'm going a little bit slower is because I have some 1's and 2's here when

we talked about SAS navigation, which is why I polled you in the first place. So here we go. I'm going to go to grade 1, and I have choices. I have listening or I have speaking. So I am going to go to

the listening for grade 1. Let's read what that says. [ Silent reading ] OK, so hopefully you were able to read that. Let's take a look. Listen actively with others in responding group situations. I

click on that... and here it is. To listen actively and respond to others in small groups and situations. So it's right here. I think it's pretty close, I don't know about you, but that's acceptable

for me to know that what I'm going to pose as a goal is align to the standards too. So let's go back... let's go back and see what our PowerPoint says what a suggestion might be for Patrick. Again

there's your screen shot of how I got there. Oh, I want to show you this. How did I... I also have another source, resource I can use. So what I want to go back and show you is how I got there. When

it comes to listening it can get tricky, because the 1 that I chose is pretty common, in groups etc. But what if I want more information? Another place we can look, again if you want to note how I get

there, and the reason I say this is because all too often it's like wait, how did she get there? I'm going to curriculum framework... and underneath curriculum framework you see an ELL overlay. We

also see content pages, but right now I just want to take you, you know what ELL is of course? It's an English language learner area. I'll click on that... and wow. We get some really interesting

options from which to think about our students in listening, especially those of us who are in a school setting. So if we look under math for example, we can say that... and we haven't done a whole

lot with high school so I'm going to do algebra II listening and reading. This is for students, OK I'm going to get my glasses now. This is for students, and I'll make it bigger for us. By the way you

can do this too; you'll see that because none of us can really read this. That arrow helps us to make these bigger, and I'll make it a full page. But when we're in algebra II and we were talking about

listening, take a look at the valuable information in here guys. This is just to me amazing, because we've got the big... the concepts and competencies which we already talked about, but look at

what's here. Can you see it? I don't know if you can, but I'll tell you what's here. It's vocabulary. So how nice is that for those of us that work with students in higher, but it's also for the lower

levels which I'll show you in a minute. But congruent, composite, and these are the skills related to listening in level 1. It also gives you where the student might have different entry level points.

Identify a math sentence. Anticipate a limitation on a domain. Decide whether these scenarios explain verbally represent an exponential, quadratic, or polynomial function and etc. But you get the

idea. All of this is here under listening. So let me go back and I'm going to show you literacy. Now we have our little guy Patrick, is grade 1 right? And it's the same for speaking by the way, but

our goal for him has to do with listening. So I'm going to click on the overlay for grade 1 in reading. Let's see what we find here. I'm going to make it bigger. This is a really helpful tool when we

think about, again aligning this with our state standards, and we start with monitoring one's own understanding. We have vocabulary here. I think this vocabulary's pretty tough to be honest with you.

And then we have, must be more in the 3rd grade side, but look at level 1. This is what I wanted to show you. Sort pictures of short segments of a read aloud using a graphic organizer. That's a great

goal, and talking about that related to language arts, or sequencing pictures, responding, drawing conclusions. So this is a wonderful tool, and where do we find it? Do we find it under standards? No.

Where did we go everybody? Great, my room yelled out curriculum framework. From curriculum framework where did we go? Yellow. Awesome. Thank you so much. So yes, that's how we found that piece of

information as well. OK, I'm going to get out of there, take us back to our PowerPoint. In this short of time we have covered quite a bit of ground already, pretty efficiently and effectively using

routines on SAS; and if you can get yourself, or I see a lot of supervisors here, or your teachers to go back and forth like I just did in that routine over and over again, are you going to start to

see patterns? Will you start to see patterns? Yes. With those routines? I hope. Become more automatic? Yes. That's why I think the beauty of this is, I get really excited about it because I think it

makes a difference for choosing appropriate goals aligned with the standards for our students. So let's take a look, again I did a screen shot in case you forget how to get there for the listening

component and language arts, wrote it down. And let's take a look at a sample goal. [ Silence ] OK. When we take a look at our sample goal we have Patrick here given a grade level story that is read

aloud. Again, that condition was 1 that I came up with. You might have something else, but given a grade level story that is read aloud 1 time per week. Patrick will retell the events in the story

with the beginning, middle, end, and score a minimum of 4 out of 6 on a listening rating sheet for 6 consecutive opportunities. So basically he has to listen and retell the story, and then I have an

expectation with my experience and also from the presence levels of where I want him to be in 1 years' time; and that's scoring a minimum of 4 out of 6. You can see the standard is below here. Patrick

and I are both going to record the scores on this listening reading sheet, and I feel that... he's a little guy, I'd like to communicate this 2 times per quarter to the parents. So what does that look

like? And seriously, I made this up in 2 seconds, but I will tell you this. Guess where I found the information for beginner 1, 2 satisfactory? I found it from that listening rubric, that listening

piece that I just showed you the section before. Remember it said an emergent student would actually just use the pictures and move them on a graphic organizer after listening to a story, then they

retell the events pretty much with the beginning, middle, end in an organized fashion because they listen, hopefully, enough. But then a proficient listener would be able to, you can see, retell that

story but they would include that description, the rich description and details related to characterization. So I truly did just make this up very quickly by using that listening piece, and it will

give us a score, a formative assessment for this little guy, Patrick, based on where he is with listening. We're going to do a little review here before you get to roll up your sleeves. I'll give you

a moment. These are guided notes and a CFU. You know what CFU is right? Anyone that's trained with me before knows it's a Check For Understanding. And all of us do formative assessments and review all

along. So I'll give you a moment to please fill in the blanks, and then we'll check it. And I don't have the answers this time. [ Silence ] OK, hopefully you were able to do this. It should have been

a breeze. Actually it will let me know if I did a good job talking with you this afternoon. So Pittsburgh, again, you have to come through for me. Yell out nice and loudly what you got. Address

prioritized needs as is essential, let's start from the beginning though, it's essential that standards aligned IEP goals address prioritized needs as indicated from? Present levels. Yeah! Of academic

achievement and functional performance. I hope the other sites did as well as we did in Pittsburgh. Next, reflect standards, they also reflect standards, anchors, eligible content, or the big ideas,

concepts, or competencies from SAS is? Curriculum framework. Good, good, good! And they also, standards aligned IEP goals, have clearly stated performance criteria including how? Progress or skills.

Good. Will be monitored. Very nice, thank you. I feel good. Hope you do too. Let's keep going because now we're going to put you a little bit in the hot seat. I hope not though. We're actually going

to pause, and that means you as participants, this is your time to work. Participant action work zone. And take a look at the IEP's you brought with you. If you did not bring an IEP with you, have no

fear. How about in the room I'm in? Anybody who doesn't have an IEP with them? Everybody does? Yeah! Or else you're just not telling me, but good for you. What I do have here... what I do have here is

a kind person who blacked out everything possible, and I asked for an example that is not that great and it's from a 4th grader; that I will actually, while I ask you to do certain tasks, I'll put up

on our document cam and then you can utilize that as your work, just because I really want you to apply what we've talked about today. Then we'll come back together in a few minutes and talk again. So

this is what I'd like for you to do. I would like for you to read the present levels of academic achievement, and you can use your pause sheet to make sure you're on task here, but open your IEP's to

your present levels. I want you to look at a few things. How many different types of assessments do you have referenced there? Here I have different color highlighters, but I really want to see how

many different types of assessments you have referenced because we wanted to see the profile of the whole student, not just grade level, and not just instructional level, but the true picture related

on assessments; and then we want you to check all that apply from the list below. So are there connections to the PA standards? Are they descriptive? Do they include the strengths in the areas of

needs, inputs from teachers? Do you interpret the data, not just say so and so scored 18... not 18, 1218 on the math PSSA, but what does that really mean? It needs to be interpreted. I've seen just

charts and graphs. Parents and others may not know what that means. Do you have those 4 types of assessments? Check, check, check. And are both instructional and grade level information noted? I want

to take, just go that far please and then we'll come back together in a moment. [ Silence ] I'm going to get the present levels up here. [ Silence ] It's hard to judge time a little bit when we have

so many sites across the state, but I'm hoping that you had enough time to look at your present levels. We had some very, very good questions here and we have some very good present levels, and we had

some that whoa, whoa, whoa, too much information, lots of information. And what I'm seeing, not just here but even in academics for students who aren't deaf or hard of hearing, I see a lot of IEP's

and I've actually seen pages and pages of charts and graphs and like, this is information from here or... and I thought back here someone had the same thing. This is the work I'm sending them, this is

the work on antonyms, and it's actually a chart and how many right and how... we really need for you to interpret the data. Just putting down all the numbers and all the charts and graphs, you guys

with me? Everybody's still excited about their present levels. Alright the question Janine, you also asked me is how do you prioritize? Many of you don't know where to go. There are so many needs. We

don't want all of those needs in your present levels and then you not address them through a goal of monitoring progress for that student. What is important is that you get to the primary need, and

when we write our goals we will prioritize that so as to say it doesn't mean you're not addressing other needs. It doesn't mean that you're not looking at the curriculum that you have and covering

those different areas within the curriculum. But your IEP is not a curriculum. It doesn't mean you need to go to every single piece, if we're talking about writing, that every single lesson related to

writing and mechanics and topics and topic sentences; that a bit too specific. So you'd want to be sure, because you'll become so familiar with the standards and anchors and eligible content, to hit

on the priority need related to the assessments that you would choose. But it doesn't mean you're not coloring all that other information. I had another question, but the parents want 12 goals. The

parents want these 15 goals. Here's the thing. We recommend 3 to 5 goals because you are able to efficiently and effectively measure those and share progress. If the parent is that insistent, which we

know happens, if the parent is that insistent then what you might want to do at the IEP meeting is also bring your, you have your IEP and the primary needs based on assessments, but you also have the

curriculum there to show the parents or others that are really concerned about that, that you will be teaching and discussing and measuring formative assessments, all that other information. Sometimes

that really helps parents to see if you really bring the information that will be covered in class that year. Another question that we had is, uh oh I don't have enough assessment data here to really

make a good goal. We don't have a benchmark, or we don't have a diagnostic. Excellent questions. Diagnostic assessments are not given every year, we know that. Although now with the classroom

diagnostic tool, as some of you become familiar with that you will have a great diagnostic. But if you don't have a diagnostic... indicated there, you don't have information about diagnostic, not a

big deal because you have 3 other forms of data. Oh, you don't have a benchmark data, you don't have anything related to how is the student doing at this point in time, during the year if he or she

would take the PSSA right now regarding standards? So that would be our getting to how will he or she do on summative assessments? If you don't have enough assessments, or you don't have a benchmark

assessment, that could be something to talk about as a group. That says that you might not have rich enough present level data in order to make a good goal for your student, or see the entire profile.

That might be a conversation you might want to have as a group, or a team, or an IU, or whatever the venue is in which you work. So I would suggest that if you are finding that the data isn't rich

enough, that you might want to think about looking into some other assessments out there. There are quite a few. So OK, I think everybody did pretty well. At least I know in our room they did in the

present level area. So now let's take a look at the goal writing piece because we know if we didn't have the information done accurately and appropriately in the present levels, we couldn't get to the

goal writing piece, which is why we're here. So again, as we pause here's what I'd like... oops, let me get it on the screen for you. Again, as we pause I would like for you to be looking for the

following. And that is after reading the subject area that you've chosen, underline the primary need, the information that tells you about the primary need. So you need a pen or a pencil. Underline

the need, the primary need. You just looked through your present levels so you hopefully came up with 1 in 1 area. I understand you have a lot of areas there. Pick 1. And in that section on that IEP

under present levels write the primary need that's indicated by the data. OK, now go to the measurable annual goals section of your IEP, and let's find the goal that addresses that need that you just

wrote in your margin. I hope you're following me. You've identified a primary need, you're going to go to the goal, and now you have to ask yourself does the goal include a skill found in SAS in the

standard section anchors, eligible content, curriculum framework? Remember, we visited there? And then draw a circle around that particular... [ Technical difficulty ] When I say skill you know deep

down I mean the standard, the anchor, the eligible content, or what's in the curriculum framework and element from there. And actually that would also be the part of the goal that probably is your

action, is your skill, is your behavior part of the goal. Next while you're in the goal section, place a star next to the condition found in the goal. What does your condition look like? I hope it's

clear and it makes sense to someone else, the old stranger test. If a stranger picked up your IEP, does it make sense? And lastly while you're in the goal section, put a parenthesis around the

criteria, and that would include the progress monitoring information of course. Does it have all those components on the chart on page 3? Remember I showed you the area of criteria? Does it have all

those components in your section, it's on page 3 in the criteria section. So you've got quite a bit to look for and to denote, and then we'll be back in touch in just a few minutes. [ Silence ] For

those who may not have brought an IEP with them, I chose a measurable goal, just 1 that related to vocabulary as well so that you could take a look and be sure that you're working as well during our

pause time. [ Silence ] I'd also like for you, while you're looking at the goal, to make any corrections, edit, augmenting, how you might like to augment the goal while you're looking at it right now.

So you leave here with a goal that you're happy with. [ Silence ] Welcome back. So I'm a little bit curious. I have the pulse of the room in which I'm working as far as how did you do. I will go to

the next slide, which is coming up. Maybe you couldn't see it very clearly on your PowerPoint, but let's suppose these guys were your judges. [ Laughter ] And I guess looking at Steven Tyler today, if

any of you watched the news yesterday, he looks a little bit different than this. Hopefully you are validated and your IEP is so good that you just want to send it right off to PDE or IEP. So

excellent. Perhaps it needs a little bit of work, but you're close and it is aligned to state standards. We found a few here that weren't. They touched on it but they were about 5 standards and 1

goal. You are moving in the right direction, that would be fine as long as each year they get better and better. Perhaps the goal is a little bit vague and you need to work a little bit harder on

using the routines that we talked about today to make it more specific, and aligned with the standards or perhaps, and I hope it's not the case, but you wanted to shred and start it all over again. I

hope that that's not the case. Here is my content information, my contact information, and I will ask a favor though. I've done this quite a few times, that you don't just send me your goals that

aren't very well written and say will you just fix this? Oh my goodness. It's not that I don't want to, but the purpose of today was to provide you with routines on how you could use the skills and

the tools in order to go through those 6 steps, in order to make your own goal aligned to state standards, and most importantly appropriate for the students with whom you work. The goal that I had up

on the screen for those that didn't have an IEP with them, I was going to try to venture, to actually just walk through another example with you on vocabulary, but what I saw within that goal is there

were like 4 other goals. That's what I was seeing around the room a little bit. So I saw something like, and I hope this will help you as you look together at future goals, I saw that a goal might

have that a student will answer comprehension questions, and they're going to retell, and I'm going to measure that with 88 percent accuracy. And we know that that would be an impossibility. First of

all there are 2 different ways of measuring, methods of measuring that reading comprehension goal within 1 goal. And 80 percent accuracy doesn't always fit very well. I saw another with 70 percent

accuracy. And something that we wouldn't want as an expectation for a student is 70 percent accuracy for the whole year, completing the whole year. So that we would want to look at the standards, we

want to make sure that we're aligning our goal to that standard, and sometimes in order to do that, I'm going to throw out a really good example because I was talking to someone here. It said using

4th grade the condition was something like using 4th grade reading materials so and so will... whatever with the skill. What happened was let's just suppose that in the present levels the student was

on a 2nd grade reading level because we had that data in front of us. What do you do then? And that's the case with many of our students, especially the older they get. We do have some difficulty in

maintaining grade level. They seem to be doing great through 2nd grade and then 3rd grade when it starts to get more difficult, there gets to be a larger gap. In that case I'm going to give you a

recommendation. For progress monitoring I would recommend that you actually do 2 different types of progress monitoring, but it would be using the same probe, type of probe. Let's say we use MAZE. Let

me make it practical for you. And that student that I mentioned is in 4th grade but reading on a 2nd grade level. I would give, we give MAZE's monthly, I would give maybe 5, 6 MAZE's on an

instructional level; which would be the 2nd grade MAZE. The charting would be all along, hopefully see that trend of progress, but then every 6 weeks, 5 weeks, whatever works into your teaching style,

I would give a probe so as not to totally frustrate the student. I wouldn't do it often, every 5 - 6 weeks on grade level, because we have to have a measure of where that student is both

instructionally and on grade level. I don't think it's necessary in the condition statement to say, using 4th grade reading materials because they may vary. You may use some materials from actually

authentic text from different news sources or whatever. So please think about that so a parent again, and all those on the IEP team, get a really realistic view of that student and where he or she is;

because if we only do instructional level we get 1 view, if we only monitor progress on grade level we get another view, but if we provide information on both we start to see where the student really

is and hopefully where we as educators are closing the gap. Another question that arose, before we end today, has to do with rubric, where we can find certain rubrics and how to create the rubrics.

And you're giving us some really good ideas, perhaps for future trainings. But to answer your question right now, there are quite a few sites on the internet that are called Rubric Maker, Rubrics,

RubiStar, very many sites where you can actually go to that site, choose a topic, choose a grade level. It won't be exactly what you want, come on we've individualized this for the student, so what we

would do though is have a model from which we can work and make it meet our needs in measuring the student's goal; but it's already there for you. The other way, like the method that I utilized to

create the listening sheet, which in a way was a rubric. Microsoft, the newer versions of Microsoft Word, actually you can choose how many rows, how many any table really, and plug in the information

you need; 1 - 5, 1 - 3, in order to measure where the student is progressing. So maybe you've given us an idea, something else we can share with you at a future time. I don't know if there are any

other questions here? I see we're approaching 2:30. I want to honor your time, especially on a Friday. You've been great, a great audience here in Pittsburgh as I'm sure are the rest of you in the

other areas across Pennsylvania. Thanks so much for being with us today, and we look forward to continuing our journey on writing standards aligned IEP goals. Have a great weekend. [ Background noise