You will notice that I'm providing our comments without providing the actual IEP draft, only the final accepted IEP. Hopefully this is still helpful for you. The important thing is to get an idea of the extent of communication we have with our team regarding the IEP process. I encourage you put challenge your team to put forward the best possible plan on behalf of your child.
Here is the actual document. Parental comments to the proposed IEP draft
4 years old
Dear Team Leader,
Attached to this letter are our initial comments on the proposed IEP draft which we received on May 13th
2012. Please make the corrections and modifications possible at this
time and let us know when a new draft is ready, so we can act on it.
We appreciate the time and effort you and the team members have invested in the proposed IEP.
Sincerely,
The parents
May 19th, 2013
Parental comments to the proposed IEP for The STUDENT
- Student information (Page 1). The STUDENT is 4 years old.
- Student Strengths (Page 2).
- The STUDENT’s strengths, as mentioned here, are copied from the previous IEP and are outdated. Especially the note that reads “Recently he has begun verbalizing more sounds …” should be replaced with something along the lines of “The STUDENT is talking in single words and short sentences. He is very interested in communicating with both adults and peers. “
- The 2012 speech therapy comments on The STUDENT’s strengths are missing.
- It should be mentioned in the text that the evaluation results described in the paragraph beginning with “According to Early Intervention and the Public School assessments …” are from 2011 evaluations. They do not reflect his current development in terms of his age level.
- The 2012 Speech Therapy updates are missing.
- The speech and language goals should be labeled/reorganized according to their focus as (1) Expressive, (2) Receptive and (3) Social Pragmatics Goals. The non-specialist members of the team (parents and teachers) need a clear organization of these goals in order to attempt caring them over in daily activities, to monitor progress and to have a meaningful communication with the therapist regarding specific strategies.
- There should be an objective that addresses specifically the increase of the length of utterance. The STUDENT is already using sporadic 3-4 word sentences, but The STUDENT, parents and teachers need help in identifying strategies to encourage The STUDENT’s consistent use of longer sentences. We would like to add an objective formulated along these lines: “The STUDENT will use 4 word sentences within a play activity to request specific objects or to describe what is happening, in 4 out of 5 measured opportunities”.
- For parents’ and teachers’ clarification, please specify the spontaneously (vs. imitatively) aspect of the expressive language objectives.
- The STUDENT should work on producing the “F” sound or an age appropriate approximation. The omission of the “F” sound is, in the opinion of the parents, highly detrimental to The STUDENT’s intelligibility.
- The STUDENT should work on maintaining the interaction with a peer and staying in the conversation and on topic. We would like to add one objective formulated along these lines: “The STUDENT will demonstrate appropriate turn-taking in conversation with a peer, taking at least X turns or lasting for at least X minutes using verbal communication, in 4 out of 5 opportunities”.
- The annual review proposed objective was going up/down a flight of stairs without railing assistance. The IEP goal says with railing assistance.
- The STUDENT should continue working towards achieving the goal of imitating circular scribbles (previous IEP) and progressing to independent circular scribbles.
- The STUDENT should continue working on zipping his coat, using a hand to stabilize one end and the other to pull the zipper.
- One of the cup drinking objectives could to be modified to mention the help needed for rotating the cup with more precision and for finishing his drink. The STUDENT is already taking independent sips from an open cup, when prompted verbally.
- PT services should be 2x30 minutes/week. The IEP shows only 1x30 minutes/week session.
- 2x30 minutes/week speech therapy sessions do not reflect the considerations of the new IEP. While The STUDENT made progress over the course of the last IEP, he did not in any way outperform his IEP goals. As mentioned in the annual review, not all objectives were achieved, although he did make good progress towards them. We agree that 30 minutes/week/per goal proved to be an adequate amount of Speech therapy. A similar amount of service time should be allocated for the newly added social pragmatic goal, to give The STUDENT and his therapist the chance to make similar progress over the next year. We believe the speech service for the next year should be either 2x45 minutes/week or 3x30 minutes/week, at school’s discretion.
- It was discussed during the IEP meeting, and agreed upon, using a more direct method of communication between the parents and therapists, in the form of a communication book, a calendar or some other type of daily form. We would like the IEP to explicitly mention the commitment of the team to using this mean of communication, rather than a vague mention of the parents’ desire for communication.
- “Parents feel that The STUDENT would benefit from having his (not her) services … “.
No comments:
Post a Comment