Motor and Self-Help Skills

My focus child is very independent. He has age appropriate gross and fine motor skills. I spoke with his teacher and she mentioned that even though he is potty-trained, he plays in the bathroom (runs around with pants down, doesn't always shut bathroom door) and would benefit from a bathroom schedule. I have created a bathroom schedule with pictures from board-maker for him that include the following steps:

1) open bathroom door
2) close bathroom door
3) pull pants down
4) potty
5) wipe
6) pull pants up
7) flush
8) wash hands
9) dry hands
10) exit bathroom

I went over the schedule with him and taped it to the bathroom door in his classroom. It seems to work pretty well. I had it laminated and his classroom teacher is going to send it with his folder to his new school where he will be enrolled in a Cross Categorical Kindergarten class in August.

Social Story Skill

The student that I am working with does not always display appropriate play behavior. He prefers to parallel play and recently he has been wanting to play and interact more with his classmates.His requests to participate do not always follow classroom procedures and he does not verbally request a turn in order to participate in small or large group activities.

In order to address this social skill I am going to create a PowerPoint presentation that is called, "I Can Play with My Friends." I have taken pictures of my focus child and his classmates to use in this story.  The purpose of the social story is to teach him to ask his friends, "Can I play with you?" when he is wanting to join an activity or game.


I hope it is something that will work for him. I am going to provide his parents with a copy of the story to help him prepare for Kindergarten.

How Goals are Embedded into Learning Activities

           I implemented by first learning activity last Wednesday, June 1st.  The Pre-K classroom that I am working in was studying Nursery Rhymes last week. During choice centers I decided to have a cooking activity at the art table. I based my learning activity around the Nursery Rhyme "The Muffin Man." I had the students practice writing their last name (another skill they were working on) onto chef hats. We then sang the "Muffin Man" song and made blueberry muffins for them to enjoy at snack time that afternoon.

         My focus child's IEP goals are to: 1) share information about personal experiences or activity at hand on 70% of opportunities and 2) participate in structured and non-structured activities with 80% of activities.
I embedded the first goal into the activity by asking all students at the beginning of the lesson if they had ever made muffins before and what kind of muffins they made. My focus child was able to answer the questions and said, "I made strawberry muffins at home." I also embedded the first goal at the end of the lesson when asking each student what their favorite part was. My focus child did not want to answer the question and left the art table to move on to another choice center.
I embedded the second goal into my learning activity by teaching a structured small group activity. My focus child was able to participate and answer questions. I did use a visual recipe with pictures of each step (bowl, add milk, stir, put muffin liners in pan, add mix to liners) and put a picture of each child beside each step that they were to do. This helped my focus child stay focused on the activity because he knew when it would be his turn.

Thanks for reading my post this week, I can't wait to read all of yours!

Until Next Time...

Why are Intervention Plans and the Collection of Progress So Important?

The intervention plan is very important in the child’s education because it is created specifically for that child to meet their individual needs in order to help them succeed at an age appropriate level.  There is a reason that a child is referred and is assigned an IEP or an IFSP. It is because when they were evaluated there were areas that they showed below average skills. All of this information was collected and a plan was created that gave examples of what each child was able to do and what they were unable to do. Goals are created based on this information and these goals should reflect each child’s specific needs. This plan gives the parents and the teachers some realistic expectations of what they would like the child to be able to do in a certain amount of time.

                Documentation towards these goals is very important because the purpose of this plan is for the child to meet expectations and not need as much support to function in his/her daily environment. Periodically as a teacher you are expected to send home a progress report or report card noting progress on each child’s IEP goals. If you are not documenting progress on a regular basis you are unable to honestly report on how the child is doing with their interventions and goals. Another reason documentation is so important is because a child will often meet their goals before their IFSP or IEP is due. At that time the team should meet again in order to create more goals in increase the child’s skills. Every once in a while you will have a child who is not meeting their goals within a reasonable amount of time or regressing.  As a teacher you would want to meet again and discuss reasons for this regression and create a new plan to help this child succeed. If you are not documenting progress it is very hard to catch regression before it gets out of hand.