​One of the more challenging things about special education teaching is that the undergraduate work focuses so much on needing to cover a broad field which includes legal paperwork, and navigating different disabilities, of which there are many but that is just one aspect of the job.  You just don’t get out of college with a special education degree able to thoroughly understand the core curriculum you must support.  Then, it is vice versa for regular education teachers who have clients in their classrooms with significant needs.  The Cooperative Association for Special Education Cooperative (CASE) has assisted in closing this gap with their professional development. 
 
They hosted a literacy professional development that encouraged research-based reading strategies to help engage students in language and reading activities.  They also made it extremely relevant for those teachers whose students utilize Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC).  This population of student has increased in the last half decade as many have found the ability to overcome communication skill barriers with low (eg. picture cards) to high (eg. ipad with word app) tech. 
 
They started the event right off the bat reminding attendees of the statistics that show that persons with non-intellectual disabilities have a poorer outcome when it comes to their reading skills.  For example, that 1 in 10 individuals with severe communication and physical disabilities is able to read at the same level as same age peers without disabilities.  That’s right, NON-INTTELLECTUAL disabilities.  So many assumptions are made by sight, which makes sense since that is where many of us take in most of our info.   
 
These instruction motivators then hit on one of my favorite points, that rote repetitive curriculum may not be the best the way.  I loved this as one year I was asked to use Early Literacy Skills Builder (ELSB) with a student one year and it was, well, just plain awful.  The same lesson over and over, just like some of those ‘task boxes’ that might go well for your cognitively challenged but might just push other students into a severe wish to never enter the classroom again.
 
So yes, this special education cooperative then conducted their hours long professional development in an organized manner that kept their audience rotating around the learning space so that none of us suffered from butt fatigue.  Strategies for sharing stories, phonological development, language acquisition and direct teaching of core words for meaning were shared.  Personally, I was lucky, as when I was given my complex needs assignments I had already completed two undergraduates in education, one for ‘reg-ed’ (which includes the pedagogy of all the subjects) and one for ‘SPED’ which focused more on interventions and procedures.  But again, not every special education teacher comes out with great subject pedagogy and here is why CASE is the Greatest Of All Time in supporting its staff with the tools it needs to make progress with the clients they care for.
 

​A well written IEP goal can be crucial to making meaningful progress with students.  Ensuring the goal is specific, measurable, achievable, replicable and time bound allows data collection that shows rates and patterns of progress and can be continued even if their teacher changes throughout the year.  Identifying and writing that essential educational support are just the first steps.  Next you must ensure you have a way of monitoring progress.  This is where I investigated whether AI could help me.  You may have already done this and if so kudos and please share your learning through comments.
 
A lot of special education positions, especially for low incidence students in systems with limited resources are extremely challenging.  There is not a truly outstanding curriculum when you are working with students below the 1% as measured on standardized tests.  So many teachers have no choice but to become behavioral and learning scientists.  Learning what works for each student and attempting to provide materials that are meaningful is at the core of special education.  These then tend to translate into student’s goals for the coming year.
 
 

Having had a lot of experience as a classroom scientist trying different strategies for different situations, I continue to foster openness to new ideas.  Recently I took this mindset and tried ChatGPT.  I decided to use the service for creating IEP goal assessments.  If you are like me, you may write a goal and want to have all the assessment items and sets laid out for the year, ensuring that your assessments are reliable and valid.  Sometimes a goal doesn’t come with ready-made assessments that fairly cover all variables.  So, I wondered if ChatGPT could help me out with this tediousness.  I was pleasantly surprised it was spot on.  The generation of answers was swift and exactly what I was envisioning.
 
I mostly prompted for sets to cover some unique IEP goals.  For example, one goal involving a student’s acquisition of consonant-vowel-consonant word reading required novel 10 item lists for formative assessments.  Therefore, the prompt I put in was: Can I have 15 sets of pre primer and primer cvc words that do not repeat words and are composed of all short vowel sounds.  For this prompt the AI delivered to me 15 ten-word lists of cvc words representing all vowel sounds using only pre-primer and primer words. 
 
 I tried it out again in math.  This time I prompted for: Create 15 sets of 10 equally mixed addition and subtraction expressions where the sum and subtrahend are within 20.  Ta da!  It quickly generated 15 lists for the formative assessing towards the student’s goal.  With this success I continued and the amount of time that I saved is invaluable.
 
I recommend trying this tool out while it is free.  Albeit it did not format the worksheets, providing the continuum of assessment items was exactly what I was looking for on this particular venture.  Comment and share your experiences with AI and supporting students with unique needs.
 
To try this tech out in the area of special education goal assessment sets I used the following site and created an account.  I recommend using it while it is still free and encouraging its continued use at a discount to assist educators in areas of public teaching.
https://chat.openai.com/chat
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