How to Write IEP Goals

Marisha (00:01.208)

Hey there and welcome to the SLP Now podcast. I am really excited to have Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan with us today. We are going to be talking about strategies to write effective IEP goals. And Dr. Karen is the founder and owner operator of Dr. Karen LLC and it's a...

a company focused on empowering therapists and educators to design interventions that support language literacy and executive functioning. And a little bit about her background, we're going to turn this over to Dr. Karen in just a second so she can share her story. But she has a doctorate in special education and director of special education and assistive technology credentials from Illinois State University. And she also has her

masters and bachelor's from Illinois State University in speech language pathology. And she spent 14 years in the school systems and she has filled various roles. She's also a fellow podcaster. So even that bio that had a lot in there, but I feel like it hardly does her story justice. So Dr. Karen, welcome to the podcast.

Karen (01:09.878)

Yeah.

Karen (01:15.095)

Thank you for having me.

Marisha (01:16.974)

and would you mind just telling us, so we're focusing on IEP goals today. and I'm just curious to hear a little bit more of your story, because you share so many amazing resources on your website and on your podcast and you just have a wealth of knowledge. so can you just share a little bit of, I know you might have to pick and choose the snippet, but

Karen (01:23.565)

Mm-hmm.

Karen (01:43.381)

Yeah!

Marisha (01:44.686)

Just kind of what led you to create all of these resources and a little of your joining me.

Karen (01:50.303)

Yeah, so I guess I can kind of start at the beginning. So I started off in the schools in the early 2000s and I originally thought I was going to be medical. And then of course, it was easier to get a job in the school. So I ended up there, thought, you know, I'll just finish my CF here and then move over to the hospital. But of course, I ended up staying that position for 14 years. And I really did not enjoy my language disorders course in in grad school because it was so

They threw so much information at you and it really probably should have been three or four courses. that was really, once I got into the schools, that's a huge part of your caseload is language. And then you have to think about literacy on top of that. And it seemed like some of the other areas of therapy that we treat with articulation, fluency, voice, or even some of the things that you might address in adult cognitive rehab, just being in the schools was just,

there were so many different elements that I didn't feel like I knew how to deal with. so I quickly realized that I had to figure out how to handle language therapy and really figure out what my role was on that special ed team, really in literacy, because I kind of felt like I was just grabbing random things off of my shelves. And then you get to the end of the IEP and it's like, what did we even do here when you're filling out your progress updates? I, that,

That's part of why I went back to get my doctorate in special ed. And what that really allowed me to do was kind of customize what I was studying. It's a little bit different when you compare communication sciences and disorders to special ed, because when you're thinking about special ed, you're really thinking about the whole team and all of the whole cluster of special education services and how you fit in within the team. And so that's really where I...

I focused, but my area of research was about vocabulary and metacognition and how we can put supports in place, both in the schools or just what are those language skills that we need to build in order to support comprehension. And so obviously I was focused on literacy. I was in the schools during the time that we were switching from the discrepancy model of identifying students with learning disabilities. So I was really involved on my school team with

Karen (04:13.335)

figuring out what interventions needed to be in place and then was also working on my doctoral work at the same time. And that's really where I put together the first framework that I created that was kind of the first suite of courses that I created for my business. And then I also have expanded that to focus on things like executive functioning, which is really, you're talking beyond the SLP's role, but also just how you work together on that school team.

because really when you're thinking about executive functioning, which applies to language as well, but with executive functioning, you can't not focus on other service delivery models outside of direct intervention. So yeah, that kind of, and then I also have an administrative role right now in the Department of Children and Family Services. doing some other roles in leadership with figuring out how to take, just kind of thinking beyond what do we do when we have

students or clients in front of us and how do we create change in a bigger organization.

Marisha (05:15.514)

that's amazing. You're like the ultimate SLP problem solver. You're helping us figure out how to do intervention and you're helping us figure out how to implement changes in the systems as a whole. That's so cool. I love that. What a fun story. And thank you for...

Karen (05:19.373)

Thank you.

Karen (05:31.531)

Yeah, I like to say I just get bored easily. So I always, you know, have to keep evolving and figuring out a new way to do things. So.

Marisha (05:39.47)

But that is such, like those are such amazing ways to impact the field. So we're lucky to have you. We're lucky that you get bored and that you're like looking at all these different avenues. Yeah. I love it. Okay. So now let's circle back because you have some amazing frameworks that really help reduce the overwhelm for SLPs and help us provide.

Karen (05:47.501)

Thank you. Yeah, a blessing and a curse.

Marisha (06:06.248)

more effective intervention, operate at the top of our license, all of that good stuff. And part of like one of the questions that I get all the time, and I know that there's so much that goes into this, but I wanted to talk a little bit about IEP goals and just kind of, I know you're going to share a little bit of your frameworks and everything as we go through that. But when we're thinking about IEP goals, what does an effective

Karen (06:19.648)

Right.

Karen (06:23.744)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (06:35.598)

goal look like or what should it include? What are some of the big things that we need to be thinking about as we start, like as we're sitting down looking at an IEP, deciding what the goals are.

Karen (06:44.587)

Yeah, so that's it's I also get that question all the time. So definitely relate. get how do I write goals for this and how do I evaluate whenever I share a framework? It's like, this is different. But so how do I switch my goals? So I when when people ask me that question and I will share some specific set of questions or principles that you can think about when writing goals, because that's where I really like to start rather than a gold bank. Not that I think all gold banks are bad, but I think that if you

jump right to that before you understand the process, then sometimes it can be kind of a bandaid. So just wanted to say that. But where I always start with people before we get to goals is the framework, whether it's language, whether it's executive functioning, because in order for you to understand what is meaningful and relevant and how to measure, you have to understand what you're working on. Now, obviously, it does make sense to start with evaluations. But a lot of times people who come to me

There are clinicians, they're already practicing, so they at least have some knowledge on how to do an evaluation. So I don't feel like I need to start there. Really what we need to do is kind of zoom out and back up. So that's why I don't start with the goals and evaluations. I give the framework first and then it's like, okay, once we understand what we're working on and we can start adjusting your therapy, now we can start working on these goals and now we can start figuring out what you have and how to adjust it. So.

Whenever I teach a framework, what I do with people and how I recommend that they start making updates to their entire system is just because you're doing a new thing in therapy, you're changing the vehicle to get to the end destination, which would be your goals or your outcomes. But just because you're changing the vehicle, like your therapy technique or your framework, doesn't mean you have to change the end destination. you don't have to just...

know, panic and feel like you need to rewrite all of your IEP goals. You can make little adjustments and then update as you go. So that's what I recommend for people. What I really focus on helping people do is figure out how to write goals and just really do intervention for language and executive functioning. And I think we can, I think about writing goals for those two things a little bit differently.

Karen (09:09.213)

where I usually start with people. So I guess I can go through my questions and sort of my highlights of what I can cover today and then we can dive into each specific. So I would say things like language and some of those other things that you're addressing in therapy can be a little bit different than thinking about executive functioning. That would be the first thing. The second thing would be the actual syntax and structure of your goal. And then the other things are how you think about

what should be in the goal versus what should be in accommodations that might help you get to the goal. And then also thinking about, do I want to address a strategy or a specific task or do I want to teach the child to do a specific strategy? And so I want to come back to that last one because I think I'll have to give some more context for people to understand. So

Yeah, should we start with the syntax of goals? So syntax about goals about syntax being really meta here.

Marisha (10:11.502)

I love it. Let's do it.

Karen (10:13.973)

Okay, so, and I actually don't like to, in practice, spend a ton of time thinking about goals, but I get that it's such a headache for people. I always, my philosophy on goals and data is that you want to make sure that you're compliant. You want to make sure that you are, you know, getting enough information that you can make good decisions.

But beyond that, there can be diminishing returns. So you don't want to take away from your therapy. So that's why I like to be really efficient with the frameworks. really, can start with the basic syntax of a goal is client will do x with y. So client will do x, which is your behavior or observable behavior, with y, which is that level of accuracy.

And so I always start with that. And so when you have that basic syntax of the goal, the place that I have people start with first after the framework is thinking about what is that observable behavior. So with something like language, what I usually give people is just kind of a set of things that can go with the specific framework that I teach. It's a lot.

smaller and more condensed than a goal bank, because when you start with just maybe five or six observable behaviors, then you can kind of tweak and customize and go from there rather than having huge drop downs. for example, and I can actually link to some resources rather than getting into really specific things here, but if you're wanting to build vocabulary, one of the goals that I commonly do is just defining and describing

words. So that's something that you can physically see. We're not saying things that are vague that you can't necessarily observe, like comprehend or understand, but defining and describing words with two to three attributes. I can actually see somebody doing that. Or even, and I know this sounds super basic, something like syntax. How can you tell if someone has their syntactic skills intact? They're saying a sentence or they're writing a sentence.

Karen (12:27.755)

Like that's your base observable behavior. Now, of course you might put a specific sentence type in there, but that's what you physically want to see. Or maybe we'll answer a question about a sentence. We'll pull out a morpheme in a word or explain what different word parts mean. We'll be able to segment a word into morpheme. So again, just some basic behaviors that we want to see in order to

show those language skills. And obviously, all of those examples that I gave might make sense to people, obviously, if they're an SLP, but it would make more sense if they had the whole framework. But really, the key takeaway here is what is that observable behavior? And then we can move on to what level of accuracy makes sense here. And I think that where I tend to err is I like trials better than accuracy because

When we think about language and when we think about executive functioning, sometimes it's really hard to measure level of accuracy. So like, if you are working on writing, almost, it almost makes more sense to figure out what are the elements of, of, that I want to see in this paragraph and go and see if they've done all of those elements. And you're kind of like, well, maybe they did the introduction, but not the conclusion and their syntax.

you know, wasn't intact, they, they, cause they sometimes do some, but not all. And so it almost makes more sense to say, like, did they complete the task? Cause you can get through the whole thing maybe once, maybe twice in a therapy session, you're not going to get, you know, all these different trials where you could do 80 to 90%. So when you have those bigger, bigger chunks of things where you're only going to have maybe one, maybe two, three trials per session, it almost,

more often than not, it's easier to track if you go with trials. Now, obviously things with articulation, you can get a lot of trials and then it does make sense to do that percentage, but that's where I go with some of those bigger things where it's a process with a lot of steps. just some things to think about within that syntax.

Marisha (14:42.828)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So the basic goal is client will do X with Y. X is the observable behavior and then Y is the level of accuracy. And then yeah, you have lots of other great tips in there, but I won't recap all of them because we have good comprehension here. OK, so that's the syntax side of things. Are we ready to chat about?

Karen (14:51.127)

We'll see.

Karen (15:01.611)

Yes, I hope so.

Marisha (15:10.904)

what should be a goal versus an accommodation.

Karen (15:13.345)

Yes, and I think that kind of that can is a good piggyback to the syntax conversation. So what I've seen people do and get carried away with, and I'm not saying you should never do this because sometimes it's appropriate, but what people sometimes do is put what they do in the goal, like what the clinician is doing versus what the child is doing. So where I recommend people start is what do you want the child to do? That's what the goal is.

And then when people start to put things like given assistance, given a prompt, given, and then they'll start listing out the accommodations that they need. I've seen people write a goal that is a paragraph long with all these accommodations in there. And sometimes that is appropriate. Sometimes you do need to say, this client needs a phonemic cue or whatever it is. Sometimes you might have

they want, they're going to do all of these steps in the task. And the goal is that you want to have them complete the entire task and fade the prompts rather than trying to make the task progressively harder, especially with executive functioning. sometimes does make sense to have the goal be to fade the prompts rather than to work up a hierarchy, which you kind of have to toggle back and forth with some things that we're working on. But,

In those cases, it is appropriate to say with fading prompts. Where it gets really tricky is one, the goal gets really wordy and you almost can't read what the goal actually is. Two, it's kind of vague, which sometimes we do have to settle for things that are a little bit vague, but sometimes I'm like, I ask people, what are you trying to accomplish by putting that in that goal? Are you just...

Do you feel like you need to put it in there? Is it really adding something? Would another clinician pick up this goal and know what that means? Now, of course, again, we can't always guarantee that somebody's gonna pick up your paperwork and know exactly what's happening, but I always, I just encourage people to, when they feel the urge to do that, just figure out what am I trying to accomplish here? Because again, sometimes it's appropriate, but I've seen people get carried away with it.

Karen (17:30.293)

And then the other thing that happens is that people try to put in all these, their accommodations sometimes, like given visual supports, given, you know, a queue, given multiple modes of communication. And they're almost putting things in this goal that you should be just doing anyways, that almost should be more of an accommodation on the IEP that's just globally applied to the student's plan. And they're putting it in all the goals and it's just making the goals wordier. So again, not saying that you should never

link a support or a specific cue to a goal. But I always encourage people to think, hmm, should this be in the goal or should this be an accommodation? And why am I trying to put it in the goal? I think sometimes people are almost, they're putting it in the goal because they're worried that the student is not going to get all the support that they need. Which if that's the case, you don't have a goal writing issue, you have an issue with the team and the leadership and which of course is a much more challenging problem to address. But

But yeah, I always say don't try to fix an issue with your team by trying to focus on your paperwork. Again, this is where it's so, it just depends. And that's why I always encourage people to ask themselves a set of questions rather than be like, this is the way that you do it. Because I used to be more of a, this is the way that you do it person. And you always find situations when that you've got to just understand the nuance.

Marisha (18:57.876)

And there's so much gray in what we do. And then, because I use a similar approach with my goals too. I like to focus on the observable behavior. I just feel like, cause especially it's hard to clearly describe the support. And I feel like a lot of my, I've had a lot of very transient students and I want to make sure that we're having like consistency and continuity across SLPs and.

Karen (19:00.278)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen (19:19.511)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (19:27.65)

that just felt like the easiest way to accomplish that. But then I know there's a lot of, so when you're like, if you're, I'm just curious in your practice, like when you were writing these types of goals for kiddos, did you, when you're doing progress monitoring, if you have the supports and the accommodations, do you provide the accommodations when you're progress monitoring for the goal or do you do that without support?

Karen (19:30.817)

bright.

Karen (19:57.141)

It kind of depends on where I want the student to be. I mean, to be honest, in practice, you kind of toggle back and forth. It's because in your session, you're always just, you're right there and it's like, do I need to jump in? Do I need to back up? And so we do that in practice anyways. And that's another thing where it's, well, this is what you should be doing in therapy. So you don't necessarily have to explain all of it in your goal. The goal should be something that is a meaningful.

Marisha (20:16.355)

Mm-hmm.

Karen (20:26.421)

way to give a picture or a snapshot. You know, I, if when I was actually in just like practicing, I would usually do both in the session and have both depending on where the child was. And then the goal would just be like, would, I would take the data and actually write down what was actually relevant to what was on paper.

Now, I would say if I knew the child was going to get such a low level of accuracy without the support, I would be asking myself the question of one, should I actually be taking data and putting a prompt in the goal or should I making the goal easier? Again, that's the question of does it make sense to try to get the child to do it and have the goal be to have them do the whole task?

Or does it make sense to expect less and take the prompting out of the goal or change the level of accuracy? And so a specific example that comes up for some of the students or the SLPs that are going through My Language Therapy Advanced program is that if we're doing semantic feature analysis and we're doing like state in the category and the function and the attributes and we're trying to get students to use self questioning to describe

multiple things about a word and the goal is maybe you want them to give you at least three to four different attributes. A lot of times people are like well should I make the goal to be just do one? Should I only make goals about categories? And I usually start with see if you can get as many different attributes at once or like see what you can get from the students even though we know that there's a hierarchy within those skills. We know that category is more difficult than stating a function.

for example. So, but just see what you can get from students and then, you know, let that be your guide for determining how much needs to be in that goal as far as like you make it difficult, more or less difficult. And I think the other thing that I would add in here to help you figure out some of these questions is that you can do therapy and try some of these things as part of your evaluation in addition to the formal assessments.

Karen (22:53.567)

as part of a dynamic assessment is measuring things like test, retest, and the ability to respond to some interventions to see what would be an appropriate goal for this task. And that's why it's important to have your framework first because sometimes your framework can actually give you additional processes that you can use in your evaluations, especially with executive functioning, where it's even harder to measure that the language.

I actually have a couple tools that I teach where I recommend that be part of your evaluation because you're really going to get a very limited picture from rating scales and standard assessments that are available for executive functioning, which of course is true for language as well, but is even more true for some of those other cognitive skills. I think you asked me the question of, I think you asked me about, I take data on

Marisha (23:42.446)

Yeah.

Karen (23:49.429)

if I did the prompt or not. Yeah, I mean, I always took as much, like gave as much information as I thought was relevant within that context. Like what is gonna give a good picture of the progress that we've made, so.

Marisha (24:05.526)

Yeah, and I like to, I feel like we have a similar approach, but I like to have that data without the support because then like every SLP will, especially if like it's a really clear goal, every SLP will be able to take data and it'll be pretty consistent. So then we have like a better measure of progress over time. And then

Karen (24:23.841)

Right.

Marisha (24:31.17)

Like in my therapy sessions, I'm always documenting what types of supports were helpful. And, yeah, so I like having both of those pieces of data. I think there's benefits to having both. I also like having like a nice simple goal because it just, it's easier to keep track of.

Karen (24:43.906)

Yeah.

Karen (24:47.915)

I know. Yeah. I mean, I always start with simple, you know, start with simple and then you can make it more specific as you work with the client.

Marisha (24:56.002)

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, and I know there's different youth. Like, we get to live in the gray a lot, as SLPs. So that makes sense that there are definitely cases when we do want to do things a little bit differently.

Karen (25:04.525)

Mm-hmm.

Karen (25:12.365)

And that's another way that you could, when people are like, how do I avoid writing the same goal every year? Is, you know, then you might specify, like for the example that I gave, define and describe using the category or take the prompts away. Like that's another way you can make the goal harder, but still be working on the same skill.

Marisha (25:17.358)

Mm-hmm.

Marisha (25:31.886)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And we do want to see change in our goals over time. We could also increase the level of accuracy or like the trials, like providing one out of five descriptors or whatever, however we want to word that. But yeah, so we have, and we have so many options and we get to be problem solvers and figure out all the things. Okay. So that makes sense.

Karen (25:41.057)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen (25:47.885)

Mm-hmm.

Karen (25:54.007)

Yeah.

Marisha (25:58.71)

I love that distinction between the goals versus the accommodations and that as a strategy to consider. So the third thing you mentioned was, we addressing a strategy or teaching a specific task? So can we dive into that a little bit?

Karen (26:15.201)

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I have changed the way that I teach this over the years. So I went, so I had my, again, communication sciences and disorders where we are very much like, you know, 80 % accuracy and it was very structured. And then in the special ed program, it was very much about smart goals and observable. And so that idea was reinforced.

in me and, you know, multiple programs. And I, when I first started teaching my language therapy framework, I even went to the level of specificity, which I actually still use this explanation, but I give additional context. But I would say, here's a bit, here is a verb that you can observe. And here is a verb that is a little bit clearer, but not as much. And then here is something that is really vague. Cause people would say things like,

will demonstrate understanding, which is kind of vague. Instead of saying, well, point to a picture, we'll identify a picture, we'll say a word, things that you can actually observe. Those principles still apply for many things. With language, we can often define those observable behaviors, like are they saying a sentence, are they writing a sentence or a word?

Are they saying sentences with certain sentence types or giving you specific attributes? Or I'm trying to think of a couple other ones. Again, even following directions, which again, following directions goals that can be a whole conversation about the purpose of them and when they're appropriate and whether you're just focused on vocabulary or compliance, whole other conversation. But again, you can still observe somebody doing that. And if you understand what you're working on, that could be appropriate because you're assessing comprehension now.

So all of those things, and that's where I start with language. But where it gets trickier is with executive functioning, because when people think about executive functioning, they're so focused on the external behavior. Is the folder organized? Did they complete the steps? Are they able to wait their turn? And are they able to stay on topic? Which it's not that those things are irrelevant, but

Karen (28:37.227)

They are very, again, external symptoms of things that are internal processes. And if you're focused on those behaviors and you don't really understand that really when we're working on executive functioning, we're thinking about our ability to use self-talk, our ability to sense the passage of time and think into the future and utilize episodic memory to go back, think back on past experiences and apply them to future and then use language to visualize steps.

and say language to ourselves about those steps to engage in that goal, directed behavior and envision this end goal and figure out what should I be doing now to get myself to this end goal. So it's very internal. so while I used to be a person that was like, just like I used to say for writing, which is something that involves a lot of executive functioning, I would say, so a graphic organizer and the getting ready is just like,

That's the process, the end goal is that we want to have the five paragraph essay or whatever it is. And I used to say, this is your end goal, this is what you should write on the IEP. And, cause I would see goals for like, we'll fill out graphic organizer or, know, things like that. And I used to say, don't worry about the process, just worry about the end goal. Now I say, think about both.

especially when you're working on executive functioning, because the reason that kids can't get to this end goal is because they have a difficult time with the planning and the thinking and the brainstorming and the gathering of materials and the articulating the steps in a process. So that's where I have changed how I explain goals and where I, I would say it's even more important to think about the external end product that you want.

and the process and the strategy that you use to get to the end goal. Now you could use the same philosophy for language as well, but it is really important with executive functioning because people tend to be very focused on the wrong things if you only focus on the end or tend to be so focused on writing this essay that you don't realize that you're prompting your students so much with constant questions when they should be.

Karen (31:01.341)

using self questioning and planning and using strategies to do that themselves. And that's where we get into, you know, either making students, not giving enough support for students and leaving them very frustrated or prompting them so much that they never learned to be independent. So yeah, that's the soap box there. So where we want to think about both, but again, you always want to ask yourself the question, what is the point of what I'm doing? Like, does it make sense to focus on

a strategy to get to this end product or do I focus on the end product or do I focus on both?

Marisha (31:38.338)

Yeah, that's great. and so, cause I love how your, your, like what you teach has kind of evolved over the time, over the years. And as we get new information and as we get to see more examples and all of that, but yeah, that makes sense that we want to think about the, the process and the end goal. And we may.

Karen (31:50.829)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Marisha (32:06.784)

or may not want to include both of those intervals.

Karen (32:09.033)

Mm hmm. And sometimes you might be, you know, collaborating with your team members, like writing. A lot of times the special ed teacher was working on that, but I knew she was working on it so we could figure out who's doing what. And, you know, how are we both supporting this in different ways?

Marisha (32:27.118)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So was there anything else that you wanted to add around...

Karen (32:34.34)

well that could be a whole other podcast, I mean, can share what I wanted to do. I can share a couple of resources to just give some more specific examples. Cause we've talked a little high level. I know I've given some examples of goals, but it really does help when people can see what are specific examples of executive functioning goals and tasks and frameworks. So.

What I can do is that I can share some resources where people can start to learn about the framework, which is where I always start. And then I can also share some links of articles and things that will give some specific tips about goals and specific examples, which is what I also do after I teach the framework. So I do have my language therapy training. People can sign up for that at drkarenspeech.com backslash language, and then the executive functioning training.

People can sign up for that at drkarendudekbrannon.com backslash EF leadership. And those are both free trainings. And then there's information about some of my paid trainings at the very end for people who are interested in learning more.

Marisha (33:43.694)

Perfect. So we will add those links to the show notes. Yeah, I think I love a good framework and I think you've got some really great resources for SLPs to help them because you're so right. We need to have that framework built and then we can implement the strategies. And I think it'll just make this whole conversation make just a little bit more sense. Cool. So.

Karen (33:54.957)

Thank you.

Karen (34:06.101)

Right, exactly.

Marisha (34:10.976)

Yeah, no, this was super helpful. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It's always a pleasure to get to learn from you. And then, yeah, thank you to, if you've listened this far, thanks for joining us and hanging out with us as we nerd out about IEP goals.

Karen (34:20.151)

Thank you.

Karen (34:29.537)

Thanks for having me.

Marisha (34:31.052)

Yeah, have a good one.