Family & Community Special Communities
Special Education

CSPD Training Project
Module One: The Massachusetts IEP Process

Introduction - Measurable Annual Goals and Objectives/Benchmarks

Special educators and administrators have consistently requested training on the development of measurable annual goals and objectives/benchmarks. In response, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has developed this unit that includes an emphasis on skill building goals. As the Team develops skill building goals, objectives and benchmarks they need to:

• consider what will make the biggest difference as they choose the goal focus(es),
• make sure that goals, objectives and benchmarks are interdisciplinary,
• write goals that contain a 1) target behavior , 2) condition, and 3) criteria, and
• build a data collection system that will ensure measurability.

Used as a packaged plan, annual goals and objectives/benchmarks will be measurable. The goal of this unit is to present this concept to general educators, special educators, related service providers, paraprofessionals, and administrators.

This unit should be presented in the following order:

1. Measurable Annual Goals and Objectives/Benchmarks PowerPoint Presentation

2. Activity:

   1. Diagramming a Goal
      1.     Diagramming a Goal exercise
      2.     Diagramming a Goal answer sheet
   2. In small groups, participants will examine the goals, objective and/or benchmarks written on IEPs provided by the district, or brought by participants.
      1. First they will check the existing goals for all the components and discuss its measurability.
      2. They will then to re-write a skill building goal considering the 'Current Level of Performance' with all the necessary components, and develop a data collection system.
   3. The entire group will critique the work of the individual groups.
      
      

3. Handouts

   1.    Examples of Measurable Annual, Goals
   2.    Bloom's Taxonomy
   3.    Action verbs
   4.    Power Verbs
   5.    IEP Goals Template
   6.    Terms of Measurability
   7.    Data Collection Sample - Weekly review
   8.    Data Collection Sample - Data Sheet
   9.    Data Collection Sample -Daily Log