Thursday, June 12, 2014

Transition

Westside has had a very hard week. We lost a beloved staff member far too soon. Please keep them in  your prayers.

Today I want to drop a few notes about transition.

For the high school folks, if you feel like you need transition training, please let me know. We can get with Bonnie Boaz and set something up. Transition is a difficult animal...everyone needs a refresher now and then!

Don't forget about the website www.nsttac.org This website offers tools for staying in compliance with Indicator 13 and for writing effective Transition Plans.

Remember to have transition goals for each of your students with a transition plan. These goals can start out less specific when students are younger but should progressively become more and more target to specific skills the student needs in order to accomplish life goals.

Be sure to create linkages in your IEP to what is actually going on in the classroom. Activities such as budgeting, banking skills, resume writing, career research, etc... can be listed in the transition plan. Remember to list the school as an active party in each activity to which we commit.

If anyone has any questions about this or any other topic, please let me know. I appreciate you all so much!

Thursday, June 5, 2014

PLOP

Hello All!

These past few weeks I have spent a great deal of time looking at folders...Annual Reviews and IEP's...

Overall, I am very pleased with the amount of thoughtful information you guys are putting into these documents.

The Standards Based Goals, Student Profile and PLOP are just very difficult items. Today I want to talk with you a little about the PLOP. This is an incredibly important area of the IEP. It's meant to be crafted specifically for the standard for which you are writing the goal. Information about the Present Level is to be directed for that standard alone. So, for instance, if your standard is one for reading fluency, you would not include math or written expression data.

The present level of performance needs to be determined accurately for each goal, not only so we know exactly what the student can and cannot do related to the goal, but also for the purpose of justifying the goal's placement in the IEP. In essence, the PLOP is the foundation for the IEP.

A description of the data sources for information in the PLOP must be included. Please remember, these data sources do not have to be standardized tests. When determining which data sources to document, it would be much more appropriate to use a Classroom Based Assessment, Pre or Post testing or classroom observations/checklists (recent data) than 3 year old standardized assessment data. Just be sure to list the source and describe a synopsis of the data.

Also included in the PLOP is an impact statement. This statement needs to tell the reader how the child's disability effects the standard for the goal. If the child is ADHD, how do his specific issues impact the child's achievement in reading fluency? Answers for many of these questions can be found in the evaluation report. If you have specific questions when writing IEP's feel free to ask Nichole or me. We will be glad to help in any way we can.

Below is a link to state department training for Standards based IEPs. Copy and paste into your address bar. I hope you will find this helpful!

https://arksped.k12.ar.us/CurriculumAndAssessment/StandardsBasedIEPs.html

I know you guys may get frustrated with all my sticky notes, but I really am here to help. I hope this post cleared up some of the questions you have had regarding PLOP, if not just give me a shout if you need me!