IEP Teams and Families: 3 Best Practices for Student Success

As an educator and special needs mom, I have a unique perspective on the importance of collaboration between parents and teachers of students with IEPs. Students with special needs are more likely to experience success when there is a strong partnership between school and home.

Following are three best practices for collaboration between families and IEP team members to ensure student success.

COMMUNICATE 

The goal is for parents to be informed of challenges or successes children experience at school. There may be a need to reconvene as an IEP team if something needs to be changed and a parent has the right to request a meeting at any time. By starting off with positive, personal communication, it will likely be much easier to collaborate in the future.

• Families: Request a check-in protocol to maintain open lines of communication. This could take many forms and the needs of the individual child dictate how often this should occur. Teachers may complete a daily checklist or a weekly communication email. This should be established at the beginning of each school year and documented in writing in the IEP.
• Educators: It is a good idea for teachers with IEP students to be proactive and build relationships with parents early (even before the actual school year starts). After reading the student’s IEP, contact the parent and ask for input. Ask questions like: “What are some of your child’s outside interests?” or “Tell me how he feels about school.”   

COLLABORATE 

Educators need to know when to simply listen to parents and when to problem solve. Parents rely on communication from teachers to keep apprised of how children are performing in school. Case managers are the special education “expert” within the school. They are the member of the IEP team responsible for collecting data and managing goals. This person should always be included in any communication with other teachers. They are the liaison for all of the teachers and should be the IEP student's best advocate.  

• Families: It’s important to remember that no decision should be ever be made without input from all members of the IEP team, including you as the parents. In other words, the school team should never hand you a ready made IEP and ask you to sign it. IEP meetings should be collaborative meetings where the team crafts the document together.
• Educators: Sometimes it is necessary for parents to simply have a discussion with teachers in order to feel reassured that their child is being successful. In these cases, save your suggestions, comments and attempts to solve any problem and be an active listener instead. 

COLLECT DATA

The school regularly collects and analyzes data. It is common practice for teachers to meet and discuss how that data will inform their instruction. There may come a time where you do not agree with the school’s summary of your child.

• Families: It is essential to communicate with the team and share any outside data you may have from experts in the field. You know your child best and it is important for you to paint a picture of the "whole child" to ensure school programming is tailored to meet his/her needs.  
• Educators: When you have data to share with parents, remember to communicate sensitively. Parents of children with special needs are inundated with constant reminders of their child’s limitations. Be mindful of sharing in a way that highlights growth and includes the child’s strengths.  

Communication, utilizing a team approach and considering the whole child are best practices for both school staff and parents to successfully collaborate. A strong partnership between parents and educators contributes greatly to student success, especially for students with IEPs.  

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Laurie McLean has more than 20 years of experience in public education as a certified reading specialist, supervisor of curriculum, and administrator. Laurie is also the mother of a 13-year old son on the autism spectrum. Learn more about Laurie's work by visiting her blog: www.lifewithasideoftheunexpected.com

The Secret to Student Growth

Do any of these sound familiar? Mindset is everything. Challenges make life interesting. Think positive thoughts. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond. 

Time and again, we realize how outlook influences outcome. The wisest among us leverage this fact to manage stress and respond to obstacles with novel ideas. At age 19, Jessica Matthew invented SOCCKET ball to help those living in developing countries recuperate from power outages. She is quoted saying, "It's not just about providing off-grid power. It's about believing what you put into something can give you something in return".

All too often, the connection between outcome and outlook becomes clear in hindsight. More important, students may not have the skills to develop logical connections between effort and experiences. Honing this skill requires heavy lifting. Much work is required to change the figurative zebra's stripes, but it's possible.

The old way

Traditional views of learning tend to align with the fixed mindset, the antipode of growth mindset. Individuals with a fixed mindset believe they are defined by things they're good at; having a fixed mindset fails to account for the value of effort and the benefit of mistakes. Promoting fixed mindset qualities in students decreases motivation, causes disengagement, and stifles growth. 

The new secret

Today's psychologists and educational thinkers are rallying behind a way of thinking coined growth mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. Adopting a growth mindset requires one to become self-aware. The secret to student growth involves training students to monitor their thoughts; then, use results to strengthen character. 

Monitor thoughts

By reflecting on internal processes, we identify helpful and abandon harmful story lines. The following questions prompt student reflection.

1. What strategies worked well for me?
2. What strategies did not work for me?
3. What should I do next time?
4. Do I need some help for next time?

As educators and parents, we want to model growth mindset characteristics through reflection exercises as well. Consider making this internal process visible to learners by "thinking aloud", and challenge learners to do the same. Demonstrate the thought process needed to improve a second (third or fourth) iteration of a task.

Strengthen character

Knowledge of character strengths helps us improve those traits working against student growth. Equally important as brainstorming solutions with learners is doing so with a positive attitude about options. (This may call for above average acting skills, at times.)

Not sure where to start? Character Lab offers a number of tools to help. It's a great option for aggregating student and stakeholder feedback on growth. Character Growth Cards are similar to Report Cards in that they promote discussion about strengths and weaknesses; this helps learners leverage strengths to build up weaker skills. The primary difference between Growth Cards and Report Cards lies in the qualitative nature of the former. In place of alphanumeric scores, Character Lab's Growth Card reports qualify student efforts in each of eight character strengths (or character traits). An added benefit is the goal-setting feature used to collaborate with families, build confidence, and improve performance.

Character development is the secret to student growth. Developing character strengths is a strategy for addressing academic challenges and behavior issues. Contact Jackson Education Support to learn how we can help.

SMARTening up your targets

New Year’s Resolutions... those fantastic goals for the coming 12 months. We all set them: to lose weight, take up running, get a new qualification, travel more, join a gym, etc., etc... We force ourselves to enjoy these challenges for the first two weeks of January, start to slip in the middle of January, and the gyms are again empty by February. The diet clubs lose members, and we avoid going for a run in favor of watching TV.

These vague targets are soon forgotten, but with some tweaking you can transform vague targets into SMART targets making them useful, far easier to reach, and a great way to improve learning.

Let’s say you decide to Help your child with homework. What does this actually mean?

Specific

Helping with homework sounds great. But, is it sitting with a child each evening and gently guiding them? Or, buying them books to help them learn? Is a tutor a better plan? Are they struggling with a subject you know nothing about? Or, is time management an issue? Are they constantly losing worksheets?

Targets:

1. Help children become more organised.
2. Improve maths skills.
3. Reduce the amount of screen time.

Measurable

Help is a great word, but it needs to be defined further. This could mean a number of things. I could hand them a sheet of paper, so they don’t have to get up. I could read their work before submitting for a grade and offer feedback...  Make sure there is a way to measure when you’ve reached the specific goal.

Targets:

1. Watch a maximum of 2 hours TV per night.
2. Set a goal to achieve 80% on a Year 4 Maths test.
3. Create study area with folders for each subject.

Achievable

We’d love to be helping every night and achieve A's by the end of the year in all subjects. But, that just puts too much pressure on you and your child. You’re going to be helping them stay organised? Plan to work on this one or two nights a week when it doesn't clash with your work schedule. Plan to boost performance by two letter grades per year. (If children achieve more, that’s fantastic!) Avoid setting unobtainable goals.

Targets:

1. Review papers and organise them together two days a week.
2. Improve Maths grade from a D grade to a B grade.
3. Set aside homework time each evening.

Relevant

Do they actually need homework help, or is a different issue to blame? As a professional charged with the responsibility of helping struggling students, I normally sort out learners' problems in one move: limit screen time. Between social media, games consoles and their favourite programmes, often the issue with too much homework relates to an issue with too little free time.

Targets:

1. Reduce screen time.
2. Set aside a specific homework times for them to do homework.
3. Improve handwriting so students can read their own notes.

Timed

When are you going to start helping? How long is it expected to last? By when should grades improve? If you need to set aside daily homework time, are there other obligations to consider?

It seems like a small change, but rather than Help with Homework, your improved target could be...

1. Download a workbook and two textbooks to work through together for an hour each night to improve their D grade in math to a B grade by the end-of-year exam.
2. Reduce screen time outside of schoolwork to a maximum of two hours each weekday evening by removing their phone and tablet from the bedroom and turning off the television.
3. Set up a filing system to help organise class docs and plan for the week ahead on Tuesday and Friday evenings.

Can you see how the targets now are more specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timed?

Try redefining one of your targets. I don’t need to be more organised. I need to timetable two hours per night, Sunday through Thursday, to mark student work and plan the next day’s lessons. How can you SMARTen up your targets?

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A very special thanks for this contribution goes to guest blogger,

Ruth McDonald, B.Sc., M.Sc., pgDTLLS.

Ruth is an educator with 
Sailing Through School.

Her role is to improve learning for children and adults outside the classroom.

Plan For a Successful Year

This time of year, New Year's resolutions are a common topic of conversation. Many resolve to make better decisions. Commonly, resolutions involve establishing healthier lifestyles, finishing a few good books, spending more (or less) time with family and friends, completing an education or training program, or saving for the future. As we learn, we should do things differently... right? This cross-cultural colloquialism rings true to education approaches and, more importantly, to learning. Who can argue with Dr. Angelou?

Today's post is intended to encourage and inspire readers to reclaim your time in 2016.  Emphasis is on identifying and resolving ineffective parental engagement, instructional, and learning strategies by taking a closer look at your success plan.

Generally, successful people have schedules. These tools make the best use of time and prioritize chaos. With my parents and kids (not my biological parents and kids, but my clients) I've experienced a common phenomenon: though many have adopted some sort of schedule to balance curriculars, extracurriculars, and family time... schedule disruptions are a challenge. I struggle with this as well!

In light of Murphy's Law - if anything can go wrong, it will - keeping lists of tasks, events, meetings, people, and research topics is essential. Getting organized helps us respond to scheduling challenges more effectively; they work hand-in-hand.  Setting a schedule and adopting an organization structure help families recover from the emergencies and tempting opportunities that hijack our lives.

Organization that works: Schedule time to review your schedule and growing lists of tasks, events, etc. During the process, consider questions like these...

1. Is this event scheduled next quarter or next year?
2. What's keeping me from connecting with Mr. X?
3. How can I adjust to make progress on research topics?

Plan: First, update the schedule of events after reaching out to schools, teachers, parent organizations, social and athletic club sponsors, or educational service organizations. You may have missed that too-good-to-miss event, but nothing's stopping you from making next year's program.

Connect: Start making calls and drafting emails. Plan these activities outside of peak times when people are more likely to respond or make themselves available. For instance, it's best to connect with classroom teachers during the 2nd and 6th weeks of a 9-week period; they are more likely to have student data that you can leverage before it's too late in the term. Waiting until the week before midterms and final exams to access information on your child's performance has one primary challenge: teachers are more stressed. This isn't an infallible solution, but it's a good way to build a partnership. If you've tried these and experienced little success, show up. Consider other avenues leading to the same result. The take-home point here is to avoid derailment by remaining persistent and taking action early on.

Research: This is the first task to lose rank in the list of priorities. Parents forgo researching summer programs only to learn that enrollment for the-program-of-the-summer has a waiting list by the middle of Spring semester. Educators who forgo researching professional development opportunities early on become frustrated as deadlines pass and waiting lists grow. It's easy, in our fast-paced society, to favor immediate gratification over investing time and effort into researching effective and expedient ways to accomplish goals. To avoid this trap, schedule time to review your schedule... Yes, schedule time to review your schedule. Maintaining electronic schedules makes for easy implementation of these suggestions, because you have an editable record of what you've done, notes on how things went, and plans for the future. Use this data to make better decisions.

Jackson Education Support helps learners and families tweak organization structures and schedules related to improving academic performance, increasing confidence, and moving into more challenging environments. Personalized learning plans are developed to get clients on track - and revised to keep them on track - toward achieving short- and long-term goals. Learning plans involve varying degrees of parental involvement based on client need and family dynamic.

If you'd like to work with an educational support professional to make better decisions this year, schedule a free consult here.

Multisensory Practice During Winter Break

Of course you want your kids to have time off during Winter Break. But, their brains don’t have to go to mush just because they’re on a break from school. And, you still have to find things for them to do during break to keep them happily occupied.

Try a few new multisensory practice ideas each day to work on particularly tricky spelling words or math facts with your student. Pick one to three particularly tricky math facts or your child’s personal spelling demons to work on each day. Try lots of different multisensory practice strategies to practice throughout the day. Who knows, you might just find some new practice strategies that work well for your child when they head back to school that will make learning more fun. For all these activities, monitor to make sure your child is practicing with accuracy.

For kinesthetic learners, try practicing spelling words or math facts while jumping on a mini-trampoline, jumping rope, balancing on one foot, or tossing a Koosh ball. Try to keep a balloon aloft and recall one tricky math fact between each time you touch the balloon.

Tap into your child’s craft interests by having them write their spelling word or math fact out in neat large letters on an index card. Then, have them trace over the letters with glue and let it dry to create a smooth raised surface to trace over later. Do it again. But this time, put yarn over the glue for a different surface. Another time, sprinkle on sand or glitter to create a different tactile surface. Once these dry, use them to trace over with their finger for tactile reinforcement on another day.

Tactile learners also do well with tracing the spelling word or math fact on various tactile surfaces with their finger such as carpet, sandpaper, silk, fake fur, corduroy, velvet, their arm or leg, or even the tabletop.

Try building the word or math fact with Wiki Stix. Or, roll ropes of non-air-drying clay, and spell words or build math facts with the clay ropes. Consider modeling the dictionary definition of the word in three dimensions to go along with the clay rope 2D model.

For more visual learners, have your child pretend they have a white board just above and in front of their forehead and have them visualize writing their word on their mental white board. Encourage them to use different colors to emphasize particularly tricky parts of the word. Have them spell the word to you reading it off their mental white board. Then have them tell you what specific letters you designate are such as the third letter, or last letter, or middle two letters, or any other part of word by visualizing the spelling on their mental white board. Always end with having them spell through it front to back one final time before they’re done.

Write out the spelling word in large letters and then decorate the word with fun images that provide useful memory hooks.

Create a mini-story that goes along with your math fact and illustrate it.

In addition to enjoying fun multisensory practice strategies, many online programs such as those offered by Wings to Soar Online Academy in our Custom Path to Success Learning Plans sneak a lot of learning into activities that are actually a lot of fun. Our students enjoy working in programs such as Lexia, Headsprout, and Nessy to build their reading and spelling skills. 

Sign up for your FREE Just-Right Level Assessments to properly place your student and begin a FREE 2-week trial at JustRightLevel.com.

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A very special thanks for this contribution goes to guest blogger, Beth Ellen Nash, 

Intervention Specialist with Wings to Soar Online Academy 

where she helps dyslexics and other 'outside-the-box' learners 

gain skills and confidence to not just survive 

but thrive in school and in life.

Strengthen Skills This Holiday Season

School breaks are an exciting time for students. Whereas some students end on a high note, others barely survive the semester. The good news: holiday breaks offer low-stakes opportunities to strengthen weak areas and prepare for upcoming challenges.

To make the most of holiday breaks, begin with open dialogue. Parents find success when they leverage educator knowledge and experience toward improved student achievement. Likewise, educators reap the benefits of sharing performance evaluations and expectations with parents.

Talking Points for Educators and Parents:

1. Next semester's big ideas: How will the curriculum unfold in coming months? What are key skills and background knowledge needed to be successful? 
2. Current semester's challenges: What do progress reports tell us about gaps in knowledge and abilities? How are next semester's learning goals linked to current learning deficits?
3. Behaviors impacting learning: To a high degree of certainty, behavior effects learners' ability to receive and process information; it also influences assessment results. Take time to explore the how, why, and what that link academic performance and behavior.
4. Execute a data-driven plan: After gathering information about performance, discuss expectations with learners. Allow them to respond to concerns about academics and behavior; develop a deeper understanding of the challenges your child experiences.

Using classroom data to develop and execute a learning plan during school breaks may be a challenge. Jackson Education Support offers customized lessons and assessments based on performance data. When school is out, learning should continue.

Let us help identify solutions that extend learning during the holiday season. Complete the service form or call 1.601.724.2152 to schedule your free consultation.

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