Free Example of Individualized Education Programs Essay

Gordon Gybbes and Tina Dyches, in their Guide to Writing Individualized Education Plans, furnish great insights into writing effective Individualized Education Programs. The resource has been designed for educators to ensure that their education plan is deep enough and working. According to the authors, an IEP may be regarded as a personalized guideline for child’s education. Since educators, parents, and other professionals are dedicated to teaching disabled children, the information contained in the Guide is essential. The workbook outlines seven phases to creating an IEP, expanding on each of them in great detail and giving hands-on opportunities for practice. While solving problems from the workbook, the teachers better comprehend the objectives and effectiveness of education for children with special needs.

According to the workbook, there are seven key steps to writing an IEP. The first step is to measure the present level of student’s academic and functional achievement. Academic achievement includes such skills as math or reading, which could be gauged using certain formal or informal tests. Because producing an IEP takes a team effort, the feedback from parents or teachers will be indispensible in assessing the academic performance of children and revealing their learning preferences. The living skills such as caring for themselves, self-help skills, or social behavior constitute the functional performance of children. This is another domain where the teamwork methods prove best in retrieving information on children’s learning needs from both home and school, although formal evaluations apply here as well.

The next steps derive from the revealed strengths of the disabled child and mark the space for child’s further development and attainment of measurable goals. The goals are measurable when it is possible to track progress on them or tweak them if necessary. Usually, measurable goals are tracked within a particular time period in child’s learning. Once such goals are determined and approved by the team, the teachers go about collecting and interpreting the data. In the measurement phase, it is recommendable to assess the disabled child’s progress by combining various methods, e.g., sample work and test results. Therefore, parents will receive a more comprehensive account of their child’s development and needs.

The last steps assume that it is not only important to track child’s development, but also to implement special adaptive services which would render teaching of children with special needs more effective. Once such services are up and running, any communication constraints deriving from the child’s disability should be addressed. Communication with the typically developing children mainly rests on the disabled child’s abilities; therefore, such a child should not be rejected solely because of their disability. Besides, the team should arrange for the academic achievement and functional performance of the disabled child to be evaluated at the level of state. For instance, if the child’s disability consists in limited motor skills, such child may need audio recording to be able to participate in evaluation. The federal law stipulates that such children also be counted in, since it is crucial to accommodate their abilities.

The present summary has discussed only the principal steps to creating a good IEP, yet it should be noted that children of 16 years and above also need a transition plan, which contains all of the goals already accomplished and those to be accomplished in their adult life. Furthermore, the transition plan should envision accommodations drawing on the child’s abilities, as outlined in the IEP. It must also consist of post-secondary educational goals, necessary training, occupation, as well as everyday living tasks. 

Upon participating in the workbook practices and analyzing examples, I have significantly increased my knowledge in IEPs. The practices involved in creating an IEP do not only mean to capture the disabled child’s current educational needs and strengths but transform them in a tailor-made education and a self-help guide to the future life. The workbook has also been helpful for me as a teacher, as it has been assisting me in building an effective.