The child's assessment is finished and the results are in front of the specialist: mastered items, emerging items and clear gaps in some areas. The next step is to turn those results into a plan the team works on in sessions, the parents understand, and anyone can measure a few weeks later. At many centers this plan is written from scratch for every child, on a paper form or in a Word file.
What is an individual education plan?
It is a document that turns a child's assessment results into specific goals for a set period, and states who works on each goal, how it is measured and when it is reviewed. Many centers call it the individual therapy plan, and in practice it is the same thing.
Its value is that it ties what happens in sessions to what the assessment showed. When a specialist does not know why they are working on a particular goal, or each therapist works on something different, sessions drift apart and it becomes hard to tell parents what has been achieved.
How do you turn assessment results into goals?
Every weakness in the assessment is a candidate goal, but a plan cannot carry all of them at once. So the specialist goes through the results and ranks them.
A few questions help with ranking. Does this skill affect the child's daily life at home or at school? Is it a prerequisite for other skills that cannot be worked on until it is in place? Do the parents see it as a priority? The answer to that last one comes from talking with them, because a plan the family does not believe in tends to move slowly.
How do you write a measurable goal?
A measurable goal describes a behavior you can observe, the conditions it happens under, and the criterion that tells you it has been met. If two different specialists read it and record the same data, it is well written.
| Vague wording | Measurable wording |
|---|---|
| The child will improve communication. | The child requests a wanted item with one word when it is shown to him, in 8 of 10 trials across two consecutive sessions. |
| The child will pay more attention. | The child stays seated at a table activity for 5 continuous minutes without reminders, in 3 consecutive sessions. |
| The child will learn colors. | The child points to the named color from a choice of 3 when hearing its name, in 8 of 10 trials. |
The numbers in the table are examples of wording. The right criterion for each child is set by the specialist based on the child's level and the tool used in the assessment.
How do you track IEP goals once they are written?
By recording the child's response on every goal in every session. Without that data, a review turns into a general impression along the lines of "a bit better."
In Enable 360 each plan comes with a tracking table using the MT, EXP and RR stages, and the specialist records responses for each goal on DTT sheets during the session. Once the child masters a goal, it is generalized across different therapists and settings, because a skill that only shows up with one specialist in one room has not settled yet.
- Assessment resultStrengths and weaknesses in the child's file
- Suggested goalOne per weakness, edited by the specialist
- Tracking tableMT, EXP and RR stages
- SessionsResponses recorded on DTT sheets
- Mastery and generalizationAcross different therapists and settings
- Report and homeAn achieved goal and home practice for parents
What are the common mistakes in writing an individual plan?
- Too many goals for the team to record data on every session, so half of them get neglected.
- Goals that describe what the specialist does ("the child will be trained on...") instead of what the child will do.
- No written mastery criterion, so each therapist decides alone when a goal is done.
- Plans copied from one child to the next with the name changed, sometimes leaving the previous child's name in, or masculine wording in a girl's plan (Arabic marks gender in verbs and pronouns, so this shows immediately).
- Plans reviewed only at reassessment, even though session data shows much earlier that a goal is not moving.
Why do individual plans eat up so much specialist time?
Because the specialist writes every plan from scratch, copies the assessment results into it by hand, then builds the tracking table manually. With every reassessment, all of those steps repeat. At Sawa Academy for special education, preparing plans was part of the cycle that took a large share of specialists' time before Enable 360.
Today the plan there comes straight out of the assessment result: a suggested goal for each weakness, which the specialist edits, selects and approves. Measured before and after the system, assessment, reporting, plans and tracking became about 60% faster. For the assessment itself and where its time goes, see why a child's assessment takes so long.
How do parents take part in the individual plan?
They help rank priorities before the plan is written, and they carry out home practice once goals are mastered. A child spends far more time at home than at the center, and a skill that is not practiced there fades.
In Enable 360, parents follow the plan, reports and home guidance on a portal they sign into with their phone number, and each mastered goal reaches them as home practice. We wrote about how to word the reports they receive in progress reports for parents, and about the whole cycle in running a special education center without paper.
See the details on the Enable 360 page. Any special modules your center needs, we build through our custom software service. Send us the plan template you use today and we will show you what it looks like when it comes straight out of the assessment result.
Questions our partners ask
How many goals should an individual plan have?
There is no single number that fits every child. Aim for as many as the team can actually work on and record data for in every session, ordered by what matters most in the child's daily life.
Does Enable 360 write the plan instead of the specialist?
No. The system suggests a goal for each weakness the assessment found, and the specialist edits the goals, chooses among them and approves the plan.
When is a goal considered mastered?
When the child meets the criterion written into the goal and the skill is then generalized across different therapists and settings. The goal then goes back into the report as achieved and reaches the parents as home practice.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
