IEP TIPS
Tip# 1
In addition to parents,students can be valuable members of IEP team.
Tip#2
As you participate in IEP conferences and colloboratively develop goals and objectives, you should always consider how the goals and objectives that you recommend will advance equality of opporunity , full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufieciency.
Tip#3
Some students who do not qualify for coverage under IDEA do qualify under Section 504. You may be involved in developing a 504 plan for these students rather than an IEP.
Link: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/504faq.html and http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/edlite-FAPE504.html
Tip#4
The IEP team must design an IEP that ensures that the student will be involved in and make progress in the general education and education-related needs.
Tip#5
As a member of the IEP team, you and your collegues must identify the supplementary aids and services the student needs to be involved and make progress in the general education curriculum.
Tip#6
The IEP team is responsible for making placement decisions. Although IDEA allows placement across several settings,it presumes, as you must, the students will be edcuated in the general education classroom and will participate in extracurricular and other school activities with their nondisabled peers.
Tip#7
During the IEP conference, the results of nondiscriminatory evaluations should be summarized and serve as the basis of planning each student's individualized program.
Tip#8
At the IEP conference, you should develop a discipline plan for a student who needs one and you should make the plan culturally appropiate.
Tip#9
At the IEP conference, you must comply with IDEA by communicating with students' parents in their preferred language, which may be their native language.
Tip#10
When school social workers and school counselors are members of the IEP team, you can partner with them to identify how schools can reduce the educational challenges facing students experiencing poverty.
Tip#11
As you develop a partnership, ask the family member who is most accessible to you whether there are other family members whom they want you to include as partners in IEP development and implementation.
Tip#12
Collabortively developing the IEP provides an excellent context for building a trusting partnership with families.
Tip#13
When you contact parents to invite them to the IEP conference, you can tell them about the resources of the parent training and information center in your state and encourage them to gather information from the center about IEP conference, if they believe that it would be helpful to have this information in advance.
Link: http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/idea/ and http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/section504/
Tip#14
During an IEP conference, ask the student's parents if they want suggestions about how to help the student with homework.
Don't presume that they do or do not provide that assistance!!
Tip#15
The IEP should address student's emotional and social needs, not just the student's academic needs.
Tip#16
Teachers have opportunties at IEP conference to learn more about the nature of different assessments and to have questions answered about the assessment links to classroom instruction.
Tip#17
Differentiated instruction is a good strategy for all students, not just students with learning disabilities, so you should almost always consider it when developing an IEP.
Link: http://www.ascd.org/research-a-topic/differentiated-instruction-resources.aspx
Tip#18
Unless everyone on a student's IEP team has heard the student try to communicate, team members would be wise to observe him or her before drafting the IEP.
Tip#19
As helpful as school-based assessment is,the IEP team should also consider conducting home-and community-based assessments to gain a through understanding of how the standard communicates.
Tip#20
The IEP team will want the student to learn strategies and use augmented communication systems that will allow him or her to communicate with teachers, family, and peers at school.
Tip#21
The IEP should specify that every professional who works with a student who uses an AAC or other devices should learn how to operate the AAC or other device.
Tip#22
During IEP meeting, you should address the specific strengths,needs, and preferences of students who experience depression in order to ensure a positive school environment.
Tip#23
Complex behaviors and problems often require complex solutions. It's likely that no single intervention will be suffiecient for students with EBD, so you and your colleagues on the IEP team should use multicomponent interventions.
Tip#24
If a student is prone to conflict, you should make sure that the student's IEP includes strategies to teach the student social problem-solving and anger-managment skills.
Tip#25
When you and your colleagues develop an IEP for a student with an intellectual disability, you will want to consider carefully her home and community environments and teach skills that enable the student to be effective in them. This is because the student needs to generalize the school curriculum to her home and community environments and to adapt to them. To know about those environments, you need to learn from the student's parents; their participation in the IEP conferences is essential.
Tip#26
When there is an obvious connection-or even a suspicion of a connection-between the student's intellectual and adaptive funtioning and risk factors such as inadequate nutrition, health care, and rest, you and related service providers (such as a school social worker) should connect the student's family to appropriate school and community resources.
Tip#27
Although involving adult support providers, such a potential employers, in transition planning is a good idea at any time during secondary education, it is especially important for students ages sixteen through twenty-one so that their community-based instruction curriculum becomes embedded in thier community.