How to Encourage Your Students to Take Ownership of Their Learning with IEP Goal Tracking

Learning should not be a one-track conversation for students, and that includes our students with disabilities.  Imagine being at work and having no knowledge or input on what your yearly goals were?  How weird!  You wouldn’t even know what was expected of you, or in you were headed in the right direction.  This should be no exception for our students.  As a matter of fact, having the opportunity can really help with student’s executive functioning skills

Last year, I began to focus on having my students reflect on their learning.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much they could do, and how it motivated them to keep working towards their goals.

This is why I developed my IEP Goal Tracking and Self-reflection pack.  I knew our kids would be able to reflect, even if it was in a super simple, straight forward way.

Here is how I set up my students’ IEP Goal Tracking binders:

 

First, I give it a cover.  Not the most important step, but a cute cover makes everything a little better.

Second, I fill out an IEP Goal Sheet for each student’s goals.  It also allows you to list the objectives of each goal.  No lie, my students get ridiculously excited when they can check off that an objective had been met.

Third, we fill out our data tracking sheet.  We use this to track our scores and how we were assessed.

 

Next, we fill in our self-reflection sheet.  Students reflect on how they were assessed and how they feel about the direction they’re headed in in terms of meeting their goal.

Lastly, we add a brand new data point to our data graph.  There are a few graphs included, since of course, not every graph is measured by percentage and not all our students have mastered translating a score in to a percentage.

To reinforce the idea of reflecting on our learning, we use the Self-reflection exit tickets daily during Teacher Time to reflect on our understanding of what we learned that day.  I love seeing how honest my students are in their reflections.  Best of all?  These exit tickets are easy to attach to a permanent product or data sheet.

My result with implementing our IEP goal and self-reflection binders?  My students are taking ownership of their learning.  I have one student who has made the biggest impact personally.  This is a student that had so much trouble with failure.  In the beginning of the year, the mere thought of not knowing something to mastery was aversive to him.  I’m taking about negative self-talk, walking out of the room, and basically a total meltdown whenever he didn’t perform to the level he wanted.  He still has his moments, but being made aware of his goals and having a system to track them has seriously desensitized him to the idea of not knowing everything.

You can find my IEP Goal Tracking and Reflection kit in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.  Click below to see it!