Learning to write Measureable IEP Goals for organization can help you write a goal for ANY instruction your child needs, including organizational skills.

Organizational skills CAN be taught, but they require you or your child’s teacher to give your child specific, step-by-step instructions, each and every day, day after day, until the process becomes natural to your child. IEP goals for organization won’t miraculously be met without direct teaching of organization skills.

For some reason, organization skills, even when goals are included in an IEP are overlooked in the teaching portion of the day. You can set goals for reading, writing, spelling, etc., and everyone clearly sees a child needs to be TAUGHT. However, people assume a child will “just pick up” on the organization skills. He won’t.

Your child won’t miraculously be able to track his homework or self-correct errors he’s over-looked in his work. Part of having an executive functioning deficit involves NOT being able to figure out how to do things correctly by simply picking up on what others do. Therefore your child will have to be taught the skills directly. Your child needs IEP goals for organization.

Learning to Write great IEP goals for organization for your child is as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1) Read the information below to understand 3 Ways Your Child can be taught to be more organized;

2) Read the linked articles to better understand your child’s needs; and

3) Create goals using the sample IEP goals for organization as your starting point.

If your child has ADHD, Executive Function Disorder, or other learning difficulties, he needs direct instruction to learn organizational skills.

There are three areas of instruction needed for your child to learn organization and planning skills:

1) Establish Routines for the beginning and end of the school day, or arrival and departure from school. – Routines must be performed with assistance DAILY until your child can walk through the habit without thinking. Routines can be handled for the entire classroom or by checklist. Learning consistent routines for arrival and departure will help your child handle his schooling with  more consistency.

If your child is going to remember his books and homework each day, his teacher(s) will have to tell him, “<child ‘s name>, put your assignment paper in the front of your notebook. Put your biology book in your bookbag.”

Eventually, when your child consistently follows the directions, your child’s teacher can shift to reminding your child to work through his routine procedure. Eventually, with enough consistency of practice, your child will know what to do all by himself.

Your child may need to be told that every single day he has a paper with assignments for years before it becomes a natural process for your child to put both the paper and the book in his bookbag when he has homework.

2) Teach your child to use printed checklists for common routine activities.  Your child will need to learn to use checklists daily for arriving at and departing from school and home.

Going through the checklist will require you or your child’s teacher to walk your child through the list to make sure he thoughtfully considers each item before checking it off.

Make sure routine lists are printed on laminated, heavy card stock or are kept inside a page protector to keep them from getting lost or torn.  Your child can use a dry erase marker to mark off items, then the list can be wiped clean for the next day’s use.

3) Your child will also need direct instruction about how to break large school projects or papers into smaller steps. Your child needs to know how to schedule the small steps, and to see how dividing a large assignment up into small pieces will help him complete the assignment in a timely manner.

Make sure your child’s teacher helps your child see and understand the smaller steps within a project.  His teacher or you can help with the small step scheduling. Learning how to break down large projects will help your child tackle each step in the project. It will also teach your child how to handle increasingly complicated planning.

The three areas of skill above are essential skills for your child to become more organized.  To learn more about tools for directly teaching your child these organization skills, check out the book “Organization Information and Tools for the Disorganized Child” on Amazon.

As another skill example, for a child who easily overlooks spelling errors, it can be helpful to implement a self-correction spelling method. The process requires adult assistance, but self-correction is proven to be one of the best methods for helping a child learn to self-correct spelling errors.

A Word About Pre-written IEP Goal banks used by schools:

If every child were the same, the one-size-fits-all banks of prewritten IEP goals for organization which some schools use would work well for all children. Having ready-made IEP goals for organization makes it easy for the IEP team to plug goals in, but if your school is using ready-made goals, how “individualized” is your child’s IEP?

You may also want to include assistive technology items in your child’s IEP. There are assistive technologies your child can use to help with organization. Check out the available options for Organizational Assistive Technology.

It’s somewhat individualized based upon the goals chosen from the data bank, but often IEP goals for organization need to be modified to fit your specific child.  Read the following steps to learn how to know whether your child has good goals and to learn to modify goals to fit your child’s individual needs.

I’ve provided examples of some  IEP goals for organization in Part I of this article to help you understand more about the types of data included in specific, measurable goals so you’ll be able to tell if your child is actually making progress.