Goal Writing

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Goal Writing
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To improve our goal writing

• Remember goals are statements about the power or
  impact of our instructional programs.
• Goals need to be clearly defined.
• Identify specific skills deficits through
  screening measures using CBM.
• Target a few, but important goals and objectives.
• Ensure goals are measurable and linked to
  validated progress monitoring approaches.

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CBM to write RTI goals

• CBM scores are easily translated into goals for
  RTI intervention.
• Using CBM to write goals lets us accurately
  compare performance because
• Test administration of CBM is consistent (and
  quick!)
• Scoring procedures are consistent
• Difficulty level of test is always consistent

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Components of Goals

• Current/Present Level of Performance
• What the student is currently able to do in the
  targeted area.
• Can be taken from Fall, Winter, Spring Universal
  Screenings or separate screenings.
• Intervention Goal
• Growth anticipated for specific time period
• Should be ambitious
• Must be specific
• Must be measurable

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Setting the Goal Level

• Determine an appropriate goal!
• Be ambitious! Select the level that you want to
  see the student achieve within a specific amount
  of time.
• Research has shown that ambitious goals can lead
  to better student achievement
• How ambitious you are should depend on
• How often you can feasibly provide services
• How confident you are in the power of your
  instructional programs and resources
• Age of the student

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Ambitious Goals

• Using the Realistic Rate of Improvement (ROI) is
  not ambitious
• Based on progress made by students in general ed.
  classroom who are NOT receiving additional
  intervention.
• Point of RTI is to help kids catch up
• Realistic ROI will never be help students catch
  up because they will be learning at the same
  pace as students receiving no intervention
  students receiving intervention need to learn at
  a faster pace.

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Determining Ambitious Growth Rates/ROI

• Identify the realistic rate of improvement
• For AIMSweb, this would be the 50thile rate of
  improvement.
• Add 0.5 to 1.0 to the realistic rate of
  improvement to get the ambitious growth rate.

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Selecting Length of Time

• Determine how much time to allow until the goal
  can be feasibly reached.
• RTI goals written to reflect length of
  intervention
• Depends on how long interventionist needs to
  effectively teach skill.
• Individualized based on student need.
• Recommend six, nine, or twelve weeks

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Use Growth Rate to Determine Goal

• How much growth students make in a weeks time.
• Formula to determine how much growth you would
  like to see in a specific amount of time.
• Goal ________________________________
• Current Performance Level
• (_____________________ X ____________________)
  
• weeks until goal reviewed Ambitious
  Growth Rate

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Basic Format for writing meaningful progress
monitoring goals
Area Goal Format
Reading In () weeks (Student name) will read () Words Correctly in 1 minute from randomly selected grade () passages
Spelling In () weeks (Student name) will write () correct letter sequences and () correct words in 2 minutes from randomly selected grade () spelling lists.
Early Literacy In () weeks (Student name) will read () Nonsense Words Correctly presented with randomly selected list of nonsense words.
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• Although there may be variations in specific
  wording, or word order, these goal formats form
  the basis for frequent progress monitoring.

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• If you need further assistance, contact your
  school psychologist or an instructional program
  facilitator.