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Today I want to focus on fostering literacy with interactive books by sharing some IEP goals that can be addressed for beginning literacy skills.  To see previous posts with IEP goals, you can check out one on augmentative communication and receptive vocabulary.

The beginnings of literacy skills are learning how to use books, follow along with books, and fostering interest in books.  These skills start pretty basic and stops short of getting into reading goals, which I think people are often more familiar with writing.  However, we’ve been having a discussion in one of the Data Monster study group in the Special Educator Academy about writing goals that you are able to take data on as well as how to make them measurable and meaningful for more complex learners, so I’m going to focus on that a bit here.  (Also, see a message about the next group of clubs at the end of this post).  These goals can address adapted books as well as interactive ones.

Goals for Fostering Literacy with Interactive Books

Example of a goal that could include the skills following as objectives and you should adjust accordingly for your students.

• Given visual supports within the book, Sue will remain in the area listening to a story read by the teacher for at least 5 minutes, point to/ identify/ state with AAC the title and author of the book, and select pictures related to the content of the book for 4/5 books read.

Other goals or objectives

• Given visual supports within the book, Sue will locate the cover of the book and point to (or identify or state with AAC depending on your student) the title of the book [add prompting here if needed] for 4/5 books read.
• Given visual supports within the book, Sue will locate and identify (by pointing, saying it with AAC) the author of the book for 4/5 books read.
• Sue will turn pages of a book as it is read to her independently when the adult pauses at the end of reading the text on 4/5 pages read.
• Given visual supports within the book, Sue will identify 5 pictures that belong in the book when given a picture from the book and a picture not from the book on 4/5 opportunities.
• Given a pointer or a pen or pencil, Sue will follow along with a story read to her by pointing to the text as it is read on 4/5 pages read.  [You could also project a book on a projector or interactive whiteboard for the student to follow along with a pointer.]
• Given visual choices, Sue will identify at least 1 (or 2 or 3) characters in a book that is read to her with 80% accuracy (or 4/5 books).

So as always, these books are designed to spark ideas of potential goals that might help your students.  They would need to be individualized to your students.  However, I wrote them in a way that you could easily use a checklist when reading a book to take data (checklist might have title, author, and characters on it and you check off if she gets them correct).  I also tried to make the mastery criteria easy to track by making it 4/5 books if I could because some of these activities would only happen once per book (e.g., identify title).  And of course there are different methods of interacting with the book and giving information that would depend on your students.  You could easily incorporate AAC or other assistive technology into the goals as well (e.g., will hit a switch to ask the reader to turn the page).

Are there literacy goals you like to target with your students?  Share them so we all can benefit from the ideas!

Until next time,