Creating a Goal Program

Let’s be honest here, creating goal programs for a caseload of students can be very daunting and hard to tackle.  The beauty in it though, is that once you have the structure finished, you can easily collect data, update materials and chart progress!  In light of this, I challenged myself to see how long it would really take to set up effective goal programs that directly link to my students’ IEP goals.  I even timed myself…it took me an hour to set up programs for 11 students for two different grades (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4).  The first step is to be in the mindset to work intentionally.  That means that you are going to truly focus on the task at hand.  It can be so easy to go down a rabbit hole of Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers and then Instagram.  Set a timer and follow these steps!

***The following 5 action steps took me 25 minutes.

Goal Program Action Steps 

 In order to work intentionally, I first wrote out the steps that it would actually take in order to make programs that linked to student IEP goals:

1. Write the names of your students (took me 1.5 minutes)
2. Create a BROAD list of goals (ie: Touch/see program, WH questions, Counting Objects to 5) (took me 10 minutes)
3. Group the goals (took me 5 minutes)
4. **This one is the kicker! List resources that you ALREADY have made, own, or have purchased that would be applicable to those group of goals you just made.  The reason this one is so important is that often times as creative educators, we think, “Oh I need to go online and find something appropriate, cute, themed, and perfect!” And then before you know it, you waste 3 hours online and you have gotten nothing accomplished.  Re-use those effective resources you ALREADY have! (took me 4 minutes)
5. Are there any goals that NEED materials? If so, list and create 1-2 ONLY. (took one minute to list)

**So, as you can see, the first 5 steps only truly took about 25 minutes! Set yourself a timer and work intentionally.

6. Create a simple data sheet (or use one that you already have made, post it notes, a journal, notepad, whatever!). **I like paper/pencil and then I made google forms that chart it for me. SO EASY, see below!
7. Gather materials/resources needed and label with the student names that have goals linked to those materials.

**Steps 6&7 took about another 30 minutes!

Quick and Easy Google Forms

It took me awhile to drink the Google Forms Kool-Aid but I finally did and I’ll never look back! Just like everything else, once created, it does practically all the work for you.   Sasha has some awesome Google Form Data posts and that’s all I used to teach myself how to create them.  By grouping my goals and students like explained above, I was able to actually copy many of the forms and just tweak minor details when needed.  I still collect data via paper and pencil and it takes me about 1 minute to enter the data either via my phone or on desktop.  Did I mention it graphs it for you? Because it does.   Watch these videos here to make initial google forms.  Below are screen shots of how to copy a form! Time saver!

Happy Goal Program Creating!