Creating Goals

Hi there and welcome back!

Today’s blog entry is a little bit different from the rest because rather than focusing on the implementation of inclusive education, it will focus on the creation of effective goals for your students, especially when it comes time to create IPPS. The first thing to keep in mind about goals is that a ‘goal’ is more general and includes numerous ‘objectives’ which are essentially steps that teachers will use to achieve the “big” goal. Each goal usually contains three objectives that each have differing time lines. When writing goals there are five typical areas of focus, these areas are: self help skills, pro social skills, communication skills, academic skills, and work habits. When creating goals, it helps to consider any of these areas because it allows you as a teacher to create a goal that is going to significantly benefit the student. For example, if a teacher was interested in creating a goal about a student of hers who is consistently off task, and moving around the classroom when he should be working, then you would create a goal that focuses on his work habits. When writing goals it is important to ensure that they are "SMART". This means that they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time sensitive. If a goal does not include all of these elements it makes it slightly more difficult to achieve because there is some ambiguity involved. SMART goals should most definitely be included in an IPP, so that the student can work towards a specific goal, and as a teacher it will be easy to assess whether of not the goal is being achieved. By now you are probably asking yourself, "how does one go about making a goal or objective measurable?" Well, this is a common question, and the answer is to ensure that the goals include elements of "ACT How". This simply means that the goal includes an action, context, terms, and of course how. So 'action' refers to what you are going to have the student do, 'context' refers to when and where the student will perform the action, 'terms' are the criteria for the successful achievement of the goal, and finally 'how' suggests the type of assessment tool that will be used to ensure this goal is being met. An example of a goal that meets the "ACT How" requirements is as follows; "By November 30th, student will be able to correctly cursive write the alphabet in her Language Arts journal during class time by her self and achieve an accuracy of 100%.

Unfortunately my entry has already come to end, however I hope that you are more confident now when it comes time to create goals, and essentially implement them in your future IPPs.