How do these goals sound?

I have some thoughts, but first I do want to emphasize that in my experience, a low verbal IQ (despite a higher performance IQ) will pervasively effect education. Most of education is verbal, and his verbal score is a bit low.

I don’t like the “correctly pronounce” verbage, I believe it is too vague. The teacher should identify what she wants, like:

“When shown with a list of 10 “CCVC” (with the “CC” being consonant any blend) pattern syllables (including words and nonwords), Joey will correctly decode at least 8.

“When shown a list of CVCC syllables (where the “CC” is any final consonant blend), Joey will correctly decode and pronounce at least 8.

Now, the vowel sounds should precede the blends, I believe. I might suggest:

“When shown a list of 10 CVC pattern syllables, Joey will correctly decode and pronounce at least 8.”

Now, “Joey will be able to correctly read vocabulary words in a story” tells me nothing. It is a worthless objective. So, what story, what level, what kind of preteaching?

Maybe, “When taught a story in a 2-2level reader, where the vocabulary words have been pretaught, Joey will read the story with at least 95% accuracy based upon 3 random samples of about 100 words.” I’m just toying with this. When I write this sort of goal, I write:

“When provided with a 2nd grade level selection from an informal reading inventory, such as the Johns, Joey will read aloud with at least 95% accuracy, as measured by test samples.”
Then I give, usually 2-3, selections at that level and use them as the benchmarks, they are also in my file if anybody wants to see them.

“Joey will correctly identify the definition of a vocabulary word in a story.” This is an attempt, but still meaningless. What word? So you might want to try something like:

“Joey will use context and/or glossary or dictionary aides to identify the meaning of unknown vocabulary words stories at the 2nd grade level, as measured by either work samples or by teacher records of oral discussion.”

If his vocabulary score on the WISC was low, this sort of goal may be good for him. He may also benefit from concept work.

When I want to assess and quantify the child’s progress on reading real words of increasing difficulty I turn to the graded word lists in the Johns Reading Inventory. There are 20 words per list from PP (early first grade) through about 8th grade level. Be aware that beyond 3rd there is little actual difference in difficult and it is not uncommon for a child to score 60% on the 4th grade list and 80% on the 5th grade list.

At his level, we are ok, so here goes:

“When shown a list of 20 words at the second grade level, Joey will sight read at least 70% orally, as measured by informal assessment.”

This is another one where I would have the list scored in my file and it would remain as long as I taught the child.

No, I felt most of the goals were weak and told little to nothing. I could not take and implement that IEP, sorry.

Now, be aware that he will need major language work, major vocabulary development, etc. to get his reading comprehension up. I know that as a resource teacher I am often shocked daily at the simple, everyday words my students do not know. Yesterday and today I had extensive discussions with 5-6 graders on the words “moist” and “moisture.”

My only problem with these goals are that they only talk about decoding skills and vocabulary. Where are the comprehension goals? Reading is understanding. If you don’t understand the story then you are not reading .I can decode any text but I cannot understand every text. make sure they include comprehension strategies.

When was testing done? Ask for future results in standard scores, not grade equivalents and try to ask for the Gray Oral Reading Test next time, it’s a much more “real life” snapshot of reading ability. What about spelling and writing goals?

Thanks Anitya, those do seem much better detailed. I do understand that my sons prognosis of developing academic skills equal to his grade and age is guarded but still hope. His vocabulary score on the WISC was 7, information 6, Similarities 9, and digit span 5. This child though has really beat a lot of odds. When he was 1st dx’d as being on the Autism spectrum here is what the experts predicted. “you will be lucky if he potty trains by the age of 5”-he was 3.5 when completely trained day and nigt. “You will be lucky if he EVER gets functional speech/language.” The boy can talk up a storm, he can hold brief functional conversations. I think what helps is he loves word play. He has always been fascinated by language and often plays with new words. Before his placement in a self-contained LD class in Oct he could not even read at a pre-primer level. He has come such a long way in such a short time. They have introduced both sign language and braille since he loves language play. They have found this multisensory input has helped alot with his vocabulary. At home he likes to sometimes watch shows with the closed caption on, on our DVD’s he likes to listen to the movies in a different language, the DVD’s with “games” on them have also been helpful. What a wonderful multisenory world for him. I really valued your suggestions, I even printed your goals so the team can work on my sons. Thanks for such an honest response. Hope you have a wonderful last quater of school.

CK they just did the Woodcock Johnson this month. I asked his teacher for an “official” report of the results that will have the SS on it. What I have was a draft of his IEP that lists GE on it. There is no spelling goal but there is a writing goal. It is: Child will write a simple paragraph consiting of 5 sentences.
-Will independently brainstorm/organize a paragraph when given a prompt
-will use his brainstorming to independently write a 5 sentence paragraph
-will edit his paragraph, with teacher assistance, for capital letters, punctuation and grammar

There is also no speech/language goals yet as this was just a draft from his special ed teacher. I expect a goal will be added for this also. His recpetive language score was 89, his expressive score 78. Under present levels concern was poor receptive/expressive skills along with poor pramatics.

They will also add a social skills goal. Concern difficulty resolving peer conflicts.

I was just trying to get ideas of what a reasonable goal would look like. Thank you for your insight and suggestions.

Simliarities at 9 is average. He CAN think, he just needs more data to use when he engages in verbal reasoning. He might be one of those fellows who thinks and reasons more spatially than verbally.

I agree, there should be a comprehension goal, however at this stage vocabulary and information building might be a prerequisite to comprehension. To write comprehension goals, comprehension data needs to be taken to determine present levels and needs.

NT

Dear Lisa,

Do not let them ever try and tell you again what your son can’t do. They are supposed to tell you what they can and will do to help him learn.

Remember their IEP is only for less than a year. We as moms are in the planning and goal setting for our kids for life. It totally pushes my button when people predetermine what a kid can do.

If we as parents buy their puppycock about our kids only being able to achieve certain goals they won’t have to try harder to meet their needs.

Always tell your child he can do anything he wants if not at this moment sometime and that you will always help him.

Good luck at your IEP

Marion, let me try to put this nicely. Your comments: “if we as parents buy their poppycock………….they won’t have to try harder to meet their needs” are are offensive to myself and perhaps to other hardworking teachers who frequent this board. The only reason we estimate progress is that we are required to do do.

Now, let’s go back to something all parents understand. Let’s say your first child was just born, or your second or third. The government comes and knocks on your door, they want you to write an IEP for your child. They want you to predict where your child will be at 1, then at 2 and so on. Now, let us suppose that your child does not walk until 15 months (within the average range) when the average is 12 months. Perhaps your IEP should state that you WILL have your child walking independently at 12 months. Maybe if you don’t you haven’t tried hard enough.

Move into the second year of life. Write the IEP re. speech and language development for your child, afterall, you are your child’s first teacher. Now, you should probably commit to having your child talking in sentences by her second birthday, anything less would imply that you are not working hard enough.

Now, is this absurd? Yes, of course it is. Children develop in ALL AREAS at DIFFERENT rates. People learn at DIFFERENT rates throughout their lifetimes.

I would be very, very hesitant to accuse Lisa, a mother who cares enough to post her questions here, of not trying hard enough to teach her child language. Lisa may have done all the right things, but her child did not pick up the vocabulary or the information. There may be reasons not addressed in her post. Her child might be ADHD or CAPD, both of these disabilities can effect oral learning rates, but you won’t get that rate to change by accusations.

Hi Lisa,

I’m just a mom, and I certainly don’t want to offend any teachers here. We parents really appreciate your input.

I am concerned that the projected improvement in both word attack and word identification is only .7 in one full school year. What I mean is: your son is finishing third grade. If his current level of word attack performance is 1.8, he is 1.2 years behind. At the end of fourth grade, if your son achieves the proposed goal of 2.5, he will be 1.5 years behind. So he is gradually falling further behind his peers.

Go to the Wrightslaw website, (wrightslaw.com) and read the article “Understanding Tests and Measures.” I’m sure this explains it better than I can.

Lil

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their valuable input on the goals. I have shared the input with my sons teacher and she was very open to suggestions. I have the IEP later today and believe it will go well. I valued all the suggestions from teachers and parents alike. We each have our own unique experiences which gives us insight from a different prespective and we must be careful to respect this. Yes, there are good and bad teachers out there, and yes, there are good and bad parents out there, but that does not mean we should be quick to jump to any conclusions. The experts I referred to that said my child would be lucky if he did this or that were Drs not teachers. I did have one teacher tell me that the youngest could not learn because he was Austic—but all his other teachers have been great. My oldest sons 6th grade teacher told him he was just lazy, and told us we needed to medicate him and get him counseling, but all his other teachers have been great, especially the last 2 years. I always take the approach that I am a member of a team teaching my children, I treat the teachers with respect and help them out when I can, this has seemed to work pretty well. Not to say it always worked because I wanted to do not nice things to that 6th grade teacher—but luckily we moved and I never have to deal with her again. I agree with Marion that I never let a teacher or anyone else for that matter tell me what my child can and can’t do. But I also try and be realastic and can understand where the teachers come from. Sometimes I agree with them and sometimes not, I just let them know when I do and don’t. Sorry to of rambled on but felt bad that I caused such disagreement. HOpe you all hae a good weekend.

Lil, you were sweet, however when your (no offense intended, Lisa) verbal IQ is 82, this is in the very low average range. Projected rate of learning in the verbal arena will not be a year in a year (theoreticlly this may be the case with an IQ of 100). A standard deviation is a statistical term for statistically significant variance. This is 15 points. So, IQ scores of 85 are statistically below the mean. fortunately his performance scores are higher, but school is verbal, for the most part.

I think I understand your concern, but let’s crank this up a bit. Shall we speak of a child who may have an IQ score of about 119. This child is above the mean. This is a child whose projected learning rate would be faster than a year in a year. Would you hold this child necessarily to only a year.

Lastly, whether or not that 82 truly represents Lisa’s son’s verbal abilities, I cannot say. I did propose possible scenarios that could cause that delay in verbal learning. His verbal reasoning is average and that is clearly a good sign.

I would submit that there are disabilities, very specific ones, that are interfering with his progress in reading and in verbal learning. Lisa, did you get a good evaluation? Do you have a good picture of his strengths and weaknesses?

Lastly, here is a number to put in your pipe and smoke (so to speak). Briefly, in a study by Fawcett and Nicolson of LD children (pure LD, they weeded out ADHD, economic limitations, etc). Anyway they did some testing where they subjects had to learn to do a task that was similar to reading (requiring many of same set of skills) but was not a reading task. The LD subjects learned more slowly and NEVER achieved the degree of accuracy achieved by the nonLD subjects. Furthermore, the learning process itself (defined as when the individual’s performance leveled off and no more progress was made), took on the average of 10 times as long. If nonLD subjects needed 10 hours to learn, LD subjects needed 100 hours to learn the task less well.

I offer this because I think we (educators and parents both) often really don’t understand just how difficult learning to read, write and spell can actually be for a genuinely LD student. If there is validity to the 10x theory, then it becomes a challenge to actually find that much time to teach children within the confines of the day, the week and the year AND permit them any recreation time at all.

It is so easy for you to suggest that the teacher should get this or that gain in a year, the other parent (above) even went so far as to suggest that we don’t want to work (God forbid). I don’t think people who have not worked closely with this population always appreciate just how hard reading is for some children.

Anitya I do not take offense when people explain things as they are. It is a true statement that individuals with true LD’s learn at a slower rate and require things presented differently and repeatedly. I think that most parents also realize this as we are the childs first teacher. I believe that what gets parents in an uproar though is when a teacher out right says something to the effect “your child can’t learn he is Austic or whatever reason.” The teachers I have an easier time listening to are the ones that say due to “John’s difficulty in this area here is what we might expect and here is what we can do about it.” Yes, my son has had extensive evaluations and I am aware of his strenghts and weaknesses. His dx is high functioning Autism and yes this will interfere with all language domains. The other thing I know is that test results are just numbers to give us an idea of what to expect and are not an absolute, it is a snapshot of that child on that particular day. The 4 specialist who have tested my son have all said the same thing, including his latest IQ testing, when “I score the test according to guidelines this is his score, but it is important to note that he can answer test items at a much higher level with understanding.” The testers as seen this as so important that it is included in their official reports. At the begining of this school year my son was not even reading at a Kindergarten level so I was more then pleased with the results of his lastest testing. This was a result of intensive 1:1 reading instruction both at home and school. I don’t know when he will reach his platua that I know will happen but as long as he is progressing I am a happy parent.