The IPP Process Continued

Welcome Back!

In this blog entry I am going to finish the discussion the I started the other day about the creation of an Individualized Program Plan. It is important to understand that when a IPP is created, it's not something that is created in a couple hours. In fact it actually takes several weeks, maybe even months to properly prepare one in which the student will be most benefited by the program you and your team have created. In yesterday's class we began to discuss the usage of basic classroom assessment techniques in this process, and I feel it is an essential topic to discuss.

Firstly, it is important to note that assessment tools are more so research instruments than anything else. They are tools that help teachers discover how well their students have learned the material over the year, and what changes the teacher could make and benefit from. One example of a simple assessment tool that a teacher could use to evaluate a student's social skills is the "Getting Along With Others Inventory", which is a tool that we actually had the opportunity to complete in class. It essentially generates data for teachers about how a child thinks about their social skills and compares it to their actual social skills that are observed by the teacher on a daily basis. This inventory acts as a self reflection for the student, which is also known as "Assessment as Learning". If you recall, there are three different forms of assessment, the other two are "Assessment for Learning"(on going assessment) and "Assessment of Learning" (a cumulative exam). You may now be asking yourself why teachers feel it is necessary to collect classroom assessments rather than just relying on the specialized assessment data that is collected by a psychologist for the creation of the IPP. Well, teachers feel it is necessary to collect supplementary information because it helps to confirm that the IPP team has indeed created a successful program for the student to follow. Another reason is that the specialized data may simply be out of date, and does not really look at how the student functions within the classroom. For instance, the student may be much more successful at writing an exam during class time rather than in the presence of a psychologist. No, I am not saying that this is usually the case, in fact it is very rarely the case - but it is however important to reflect upon the assessment strategies used and ensure that they are representing the student in the best possible way. One assessment strategy that is most commonly used in this situation is classroom observation. This way, it is possible to see how the student interacts with the other students and classroom material on a daily basis. It is however important to note that a classroom observation doesn't just occur over a few days, it should actually be conducted over several months, of even an entire school year if possible. This way, you be as objective as possible, and be confident when determining the student's barriers to learning, as well as any strengths that the student may demonstrate throughout the year. It is almost important to use ecological assessment when observing the student because it gather information across environments to check for environmental influences. For example, there may very well be another kid that is setting "your" particular student off and causing him to act out in class, and be very unproductive in managing class time. If this is the case, it is very simple to remove that student from that particular environment and assess how he does away from that student, or classroom. Now there are four types of methods that are used for observational methods, these include anecdotal records, event recording, duration reporting, and rating scales. Anecdotal records are when the student does something, either good or bad, you write it down. For example, "Sally got out of her desk after I told her to stay seated in her desk, and sat on the ground and then looked at me for my reaction". Next, event recording is when you are focused on a particular behaviour that the student exerts, so every time he/she displays that particular behaviour you will put a check mark next to it, in essentially a chart format. For example, Amanda Wright from our EDPY class gave a funny example from when she was an EA back in the day, and she was working with one student who had a problem with picking her nose. So every time she picked her nose, Amanda would have to put a check mark next to that behaviour. Next, duration reporting is when you record how long a behaviour happened for. So, back to Amanda's example, she would put a check mark and then write how long the little girl picked her nose for. (Oh wow, what a funny situation!) Finally, the use of a rating scale looks at the extent to which the behaviour is occurring and how bad it is. My personal example of this is from when I was volunteering at Mattie McCullough School last year (still a volunteer there presently) and there was a grade 5 student with aspergers disorder. His teacher would record his behaviour every 15 minutes, and then record how badly the behaviour was occurring and rate it in comparison to previous episodes from the day so far. Overall, when observing any type of behaviour is important to ask yourself, how often does it happen, is it random or is there a pattern, and is the behaviour intense enough to interfere with the learning tasks at hand.

To conclude, I think it is important to understand how important other types of classroom assessment really are in the creation of an IPP because it will help to create a program that is most helpful for the student. I also think it is important to observe the student in many different ways, over a long period of time, so that your IPP team is not creating an entire program centered around one random behaviour, that may or may not be displayed again.

Thanks Again.