IEP is a process in which regular interaction of parents and teachers is important. To make necessary decisions, having just a list of IEP goals may not be enough. Often, other details like recent evaluation, inferences, and progress reports are crucial.
Accordingly, it is crucial to bring all these relevant documents to one place. IEP Organizer is a file where parents or teachers can pile up all these needed documents in one place.
In this post, we will dig deeper and understand what are the various components of the IEP that are crucial for the parents or guardians and the teachers.
Components of IEP organizers- What should parents include?
As discussed in the previous lines, an IEP binder is divided into multiple sections. Each of these has distinct importance. While the number of sections can be often subjective, here we listed out important and most commonly employed components in IEP binders:
1. Cover Page
This is the first page of the file, which contains the details of the child, grade, and other basic details. This page can also be attached to the cover of the binder to identify the file easily. Ideally, to make it look formal, school staff or parents can adhere to a definitive format of structure and details that need to be mentioned here. This page is going to be the label of the entire binder.
After this page, the user can access other sections through respective tabbed dividers. Choosing one of these, they can directly skip to the relevant section.
2. Communication Section
As the name depicts, this section encompasses all the documents that are related to communication. This part is the official record and proof of all contacts that happened between parents and teachers. The parts of the section can be divided into:
- Contact page: This page contains the contact details of all the IEP stakes. This includes school staff, the principal, the IEP team, and other facilitators.
- Communication letters: These include all the official notices and letters that the school has sent to the parent regarding/ related to the IEP of the child.
- Printouts of digital communication: If the school communicates/notifies parents through emails, messages, or apps, then these are documented as a printed hard copy. If not all, some recent and important messages are ensured in this section to refer to later.
3. Evaluation section
This section consists of all the documents and proofs related to the evaluation of the child. Starting from initiation to the implementation, all the relevant files can be found here. Digging deep into it, the evaluation section contains the following:
- Request letters: In case the parents have requested for evaluation in the recent past, then these request letters are chronologically arranged here.
- Referral letters: If any of the school staff has requested for evaluation of the child, they need to submit a referral letter. These letters are also documented in the evaluation section.
- Evaluation reports: The recent evaluation report from the school is added to compare these with the requests and referrals in the meeting when needed.
If any snippets of information are to be added to or in between these sections, sticky notes can be used. Note that these do not come in the way of tabbed dividers.
4. IEP goals and Parents’ rights Section
This section encompasses all the IEP goals approved for the child, and relevant documents pinned together for easy reference. Broadly, there are multiple subcomponents of this section:
- IEP Goal List: This part lists out all the approved IEP goals and may be divided into easily understandable parts.
- Rights of the child: This page contains all the rights that are subjected to the students. These usually encompass all the FAPE regulations along with special services that are assigned to the child.
- Rights of the Parents: Regulations like the right to information and the right to advice in meetings are listed out here. This can be a quick reference for parents and teachers.
- List of school-provided safeguards: This part contains all the provisions that the school has already engaged for the student in detail. Contact details of respective service providers too may be added here.
- List of Goals to be approved: If parents or the teachers have appealed a new set of goals but are not yet approved, then these goals are listed here.
- Pre Written notices: These files include all the letters and notices that the IEP team shared with parents to intimate about new goals to be implemented.
5. Progress Reports
Be it the latest tests, exams, or other activities like games and arts, the performance is recorded in a chronological and organized manner. These insights can be adorned with notes of the teacher’s timely feedback too. In a nutshell, this section gives out an easy reference about the child’s level of progress in recent times.
6. Behavior section
The Behavioral aspect of the child is an important area to ponder apart from academics. This section is all about behavioral analysis and inferences. It covers the following areas:
- Provisions of behavioral intervention plan are applicable
- Behavioral intimations from teachers in the recent past
- Details about behavioral development strategies
The contents of these sections may be changed with every meeting or update. Also apart from these basic sections, parents can also add other documents like sample work and other relevant documents if needed. They can attach a binder checklist before them to make sure all the contents are up to mark.
Components of teacher’s IEP organizers
Not only parents, but teachers can also maintain an IEP organizer to make sure they are just a file away from all the relevant IEP information. The stance and organization of binders for teachers may look the same as that of parents, but the sections vary based on their needs. Here are common components that IEP teacher organizers have apart from the cover page:
1. Acronym list
As a special education teacher, an individual may come across multiple regulations, provisions, and new pieces of text. These resources may often use multiple acronyms to depict something repeatedly. To avoid confusion in these areas, teachers can come back to this section to refer.
The acronym list acts as a dictionary of abbreviations whenever the teacher is dealing with special education and related concepts. The instructor can draft a list of acronyms on a page or two for easy reference in alphabetical order.
2. Communication Section
This section covers all the insights related to communicating with other members of the IEP team. This part of the organizer encompasses all the communication details and proofs for future reference in IEP meetings. Getting deeper, the section covers the following things:
- Contact Page: This area contains contact details of all parents who are part of the program and other IEP team members. Provisions like contact numbers, email IDs, and addresses are recorded here.
- Communication letters: Teachers may have to communicate with parents regarding various aspects of IEP. The copies of the letters, emails, or messages are documented in this part.
3. List of accommodations
Students under the head of IEP can be equipped with accommodations to make their learning smooth in the school environment. There may be some common accommodations among the children in the class, while some may be specific to a child.
This section should make a detailed note of all these accommodations. Teachers can make use of this information at any time to implement provisions appropriately for all learners. The format of mentioning them is subjective, but tabulating the list can make it look organized.
This section can also have IEP goals for each student if the teacher insists on referring to them regularly.
4. Concept charts
Every subject in school has multiple concepts to cover. Teachers often plan to teach these in a planned order. They can create a tabulation or a chart for each subject with topics written in each part of it. With this interpretation, they can easily plan what concept to be taught next. Also, they can track the progress of course.
For instance, math for early learners can be broken down into number sense, symbols, and different operations. The teacher can list them down in a concept chart and make a plan to cover all concepts in time.
5. Tracking Calendar
With a good idea of the objectives, accommodations, and time span, teachers should be able to track the performance of the child. To facilitate the same, they can maintain a tracking calendar to make notes of updates at regular intervals.
This Calendar can be prepared by tabulating various months or days on a sheet in a tabular form. Teachers can write updates in a few lines in each box/cell to refer to later. These are often for future reference of the instructor only.
6. Progress Reports
Improvement of the children can be depicted easily by looking at their performance in the recent class tests and examinations. To refer to them later, the progress reports of children are documented.
7. IEP meetings schedule
A teacher can be part of an IEP team for multiple students. Retaining the span and dates of annual meetings can be easy when they are properly maintained in a document. This section consists of a list of IEP meetings, their schedule, requirements, and other details. With this information ready, the instructor can attend meetings effortlessly.
Before we wind up…
Having an appropriately organized IEP organizer makes tasks easy for both parents and teachers. With the idea of its essence, we here explained about what are things that need to be included in an IEP binder for parents as well as teachers. While the above-said components are merely mandatory, one may not confine the list to these. Based on subjective needs and requirements, both parents and teachers can add more sections to their binder to ensure it is handy in IEP and parent-teacher meetings.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,