Tuesday, May 11, 2010

IFSP: Six Month Review and Goals

When will they make mud-proof hearing aids?

Nolan's six month review for his Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) through Early Intervention is due this month. We held the meeting yesterday, and nailed down some new goals for the little guy prior to transition to the school district setting.

Early Intervention meetings are very informal, consisting of the service provider, the family, and the service coordinator. I love these cozy, low-key meetings. The process to create an IEP through the school district is far more bureaucratic and formal.

We reviewed Nolan's test scores, which are as follows (an average score is a percentile rank of 50, for the math-impaired):

Chronological age at the time of testing: 2 years, 8 months

Auditory Comprehension:
3 years, 5 months (Percentile rank of 82)

Expressive language:
2 years, 11 months (Percentile rank of 55)

Total language:
3 years, 1 month (Percentile rank of 70)

Articulation:
Standard score 79, 100 is average (Percentile rank of 8)

He is excelling with his auditory comprehension, is age appropriate with his expressive language, and is now showing a moderate impairment with articulation.

We reviewed the goals from his former IFSP, to see which ones he has met and which ones need to be continued:

  1. Nolan will engage in appropriate turn-taking in conversation without additional prompting. Goal Met.
  2. Nolan will continue to use sign language in addition to verbalizations to express self. Less emphasis has been placed on signing because he is excelling with language skills/prefers to speak. He recognizes familiar signs- goal to be continued.
  3. Nolan will auditorilly discriminate sounds in structured activities from a field of six: Goal Met. Nolan can discriminate many environmental sounds including bird calls.
  4. Nolan will identify objects by function: Goal Met.
  5. Nolan will use plurals: Goal Not Met. This goal is emerging and will be continued. Some of the expressive fluctuations may be related to the fluctuating hearing loss.
  6. Nolan will answer simple "wh" questions: Goal emerging and will be continued. He is still noted to repeat a question at times instead of answering it.
  7. Nolan will discriminate and use "inside voice" and "outside voice" appropriately. Goal Met.
We created goals for the next six months, which are:

  • Nolan will use sign language in addition to verbalizations to express self.
  • Nolan will use plurals.
  • Nolan will answer simple "wh" questions.
  • Nolan will produce age appropriate consonants and words.
  • Nolan will produce the verb plus "ing" in conversational speech.
  • Therapist to provide suggestions and ideas and provide written and oral updates as available.
This is our last Early Intervention meeting- the next meeting will be in August, to transition Nolan to the school district and implement an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

6 comments:

Apraxia Mom said...

Yes, those IFSP Meetings are so warm and fuzzy when compared to the IEP with the school.

Great scores, Nolan!

Can you believe our baby boys are going into preschool?

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Wow! Great language development!

rouchi6 said...

Hi Leah, Thanks a ton for your concern and wishes, means a lot. A lot has happenened in my life these 2-3 months, I have relocated to Germany with my husband and so was running around for learning language and the visas, etc. i have just shifted to Germany Y'day and am trying to settle down. i have been thru your blog 3-4 times and read all posts but could not comment as I had literally cut off my time to 10 mins for checking in a day.I think Nolan is doing very well. About the plurals , we need to stress on the "S" at the end of the word for them to hear as it a voiceless sound.We hear it thru turbulance created by it, as told to us by my speech therapist.Empasise it a couple of times he will pick up.GOOD scores by Nolan thx to you, look fwd to more.

Danielle said...

Not asking to attack or anything but I'm curious, when Nolan goes into maybe middle school or elementary school do you think he would use a sign language interpreter?

leah said...

I highly doubt he would use a sign language interpreter, because he is very oral. We use sign in places where he can't hear well, such as the pool or in noisy restaurants. In these situations, he likes us to sign to him and he speaks back to us. We do what works for him, and right now that is mostly speaking, with some sign for situations where he can't hear as well. We're going to fight for an FM system for the classroom so that he can hear well in background noise.

tammy said...

Wow Leah! He's really trucking right along! Way to go little man! I love reading other's goals too, so I can jot down ideas for Aiden as we go along. Thanks for sharing!