It’s week three of school and I already have two IEP meetings next week! If you are in the same boat as me, keep reading (if your students’ IEPs are not until later, please enjoy IEP Goals Can Wait).  When I was shown how easy it was to create goals using the ABLLS-R, writing  meaningful and appropriate for my students became a breeze. Here is how I use the ABLLS-R results to write IEP goals for students…

1. Write Down Skills

Go through your student’s ABLLS-R results and write down the skills they have not yet mastered.  There is something about handwriting the skills that makes it easier for me to remember skills each student needs to master and it is helpful to see the skills one student needs side-by-side. You don’t need to write all of the skills (unless you want to), but write down a few skills in each subject area so you are able to have options.  Writing down the skills is also helpful when you collaborate with related service providers so that they might be able to select certain skills they would like to create goals around. 

2. Select Skills

There are so many ways to select skills for your students’ IEP goals. Recently, I’ve started to develop my own scope and sequence for different sections of the ABLLS-R to determine a systematic order in which to teach these skills to students. Another way to select skills might be to look at patterns among students. While IEPs are individualized, if you have multiple students who are skill working towards mastery on the same skill, targeting that goal for multiple students through small group instruction is  an efficient way to teach the skill.  

3. Group Skills When Appropriate

Sometimes students need to focus on one ABLLS-R skill at a time depending on their current level of functioning, but there are other students would would be able to target multiple skills in a single yearly goal. I usually look at the skills students need to master in a row to determine which skills would be ideal for grouping. Often, I group R22, R23 and R24 (pictured above) because they all have to do with mastery of coins. Other skills I group together include B25 and B26 because seriation is a precursor to picture sequencing.  An intraverbal skill group I put together often is H14, H15, and H18 because they all have to do with categories.  

4. Look Up Mastery Criteria

Look up mastery criteria to help determine the benchmarks that you will have when creating a goal. What makes the ABLLS-R very user friendly is that most skills have 4 different levels of mastery criteria making it easy to write benchmarks. If the skill only has 1 or 2 levels of mastery, you can group skills to create a goal or change the level of prompting. Looking at H18 above, you can easily break that down into four benchmarks with the overall goal being that the student will be able to fill-in the class given an item, for 20 or more fill-ins with two responses. While the first benchmark says two fill-ins, depending on your student, I might make the first benchmark 5, so the benchmarks go up by 5 each time. Looking at Q17, you could create the 2 benchmarks into four by increasing the amount of sentences a student reads, the reading level or the amount of prompting. For example, you could have the overall goal for the student to read 4 or more sentences and answer comprehension questions and have the benchmarks be 1, 2 and 3 sentences. You could also start with the prompting level at maximum and have it taper down to independently answering the comprehension questions. You could also always have the student read 4 sentences but start it at a Fountas and Pinnell Level B and go up to Level E as the overall goal.

5. Put It All Together 

Use the Task Name, Task Objective, Question and Criteria for the ABLLS-R skill in order to create a well-developed SMART goal for your student (for more on SMART goals, check out How to Write Great IEP Goals). 

For example, if I was creating an IEP goal out of skill B26, I would use the Question and Task Objective to describe the materials, circumstances and specifically what I want the student to do. I would probably start like this:

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange…”

Then, I would add in the overall criteria and give examples: 

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange at least five sets of four items in a picture sequence (e.g. washing hands, brushing teeth, making a sandwich)…”

Finally, I would add my opportunities:

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange at least five sets of four items in a picture sequence (e.g. washing hands) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.”

Then I would change the sets and items for the benchmarks to match the benchmarks in the ABLLS-R:

Benchmark 1:

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange at least 2 sets of three items in a picture sequence (e.g. washing hands, brushing teeth, making a sandwich) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.”

Benchmark 2:

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange at least 3 sets of three items in a picture sequence (e.g. washing hands, brushing teeth, making a sandwich) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.”

Benchmark 3:

“When given a variety of classroom materials (e.g. games, picture cards, worksheet), D will be able to correctly arrange at least 5 sets of three items in a picture sequence (e.g. washing hands, brushing teeth, making a sandwich) in 4 out of 5 opportunities.”

I hope you are able to use the ABLLS-R to make IEP goal planning systematic and simple.  For more specific examples of goals, check out IEP Goal Writing.  Share ways that you use the ABLLS-R to help students make progress towards their academic and functional goals!