IEP Reflection

After writing this IEP, I have realized the importance and significance of truly knowing
your students in all areas: strengths, weaknesses, interests, disinterests, etc. At the start of my IEP
project assignment, I was a little unsure of where to go. I am not the best at making things up and
prefer to have everything laid out for me of what I need to do. Carrie became a part of my
imagination and I began to think back to students I have had this semester and how I could
create this fourth grade student.
The first thing I did was read her test assessments report. From the report, I was able to
discover that Carrie struggles most with reading and in some areas of math. I also learned that
Carries interests included dance, gymnastics, art, and spelling. After seeing that her IQ was
average, I dug into her achievement assessment results. Seeing that in some areas she scored in
the average range, I built her strengths and capabilities on that information. I also added in that
Carrie was an extremely good artist. After evaluation of her report, I knew that Carrie was
capable of many cognitive skills but was hitting a wall because of her frustration with not
being able to understand certain concepts. In reading, her main struggle was with decoding
words. Because Carrie struggled with the basics of decoding multisyllabic words, she could not
develop other skills that built upon the foundations of phonics and phonemic awareness. I gave
Carrie one reading goal to attain at the end of one year, because I reasoned that if Carrie could
learn how to decode complex words, she would then be able to read on level texts, increase
spelling accuracy, and differentiate homonyms and silent letter words. After she is able to
achieve this one goal, I think Carrie will have more success not only in the subject of reading but
in social students and science as well. I also believe that her comprehension and vocabulary
scores would improve as well.

As for math, I separated Carries deficits into two separate goals because she really
struggled with two different concepts. The first concept Carrie struggled with was regrouping in
addition and subtraction. As Carrie receives specialized instruction in math, her teacher would be
able to develop a confident understanding of regrouping which would then feed into a
foundational development in multiplication and division. However, Carries absence of basic
multiplication calculation has also inhibited her ability to excel in the math curriculum. Because
of this, I added a second math goal for Carrie because once she mastered regrouping, she would
still be building on that knowledge for multiplication and eventually long division. I didnt want
the two math goals to make it seem like Carries main focus was math and not reading, but
because of the significant difference in concept between regrouping in addition and subtraction
and multiplication and division, I decided that she needed two math goals. I did not include a
behavior goal because I thought that Carries incomplete and inaccurate work was due to
frustration in the classroom and would fade away once she began understanding the material
better. As far as intervention services, I thought that because Carrie does so well with her peers,
she should be kept in her general education classroom for as much as possible. I did write down
that Carrie would receive instruction out the classroom with the math and reading specialist two
times a week because her deficits were so significant.
Overall, I learned not only who Carrie was over the course of this project, but also what
was best for Carrie at Sunshine Elementary. IEP compilation takes time, effort, and deep
consideration for the child. I hope, as a future teacher, to think this way about all my students and
their individual education!