IEP Bins to Collect Data in Special Education

I’m excited to introduce this week’s guest blogger: Nicole from Adaptation Station to talk all about how to create IEP bins and use them to track data in special education!

Why should you use IEP Bins?

A special education classroom is fast moving. If teachers don’t have IEP goals ready, they will not get them done in the moment. We all know how difficult it can be to collect IEP information without the proper tools. IEP data is becoming increasingly harder for teachers to collect. Teachers need to have the materials ready at their fingertips. An IEP bin is the perfect solution for you! What is an IEP bin? An IEP bin is a container with materials needed to run IEP goals.

The first thing to do is to go through every IEP to determine what goals would be good for the bin. You do not need to create a bin for every student. Some of my students have goals that don’t need tangible materials. For a student that has behavior, communication, reading, and language arts goals-that data is collected naturally during a content area lesson.

When looking at each goal, a teacher needs to consider if an adult needs to present with the child to work on the goal (i.e. giving them a patterning board to work on a pattern goal) and write it on a list. Once you have all the materials for each goal you want to target, you could start assembling materials. I also got a bin for each student. I love the bins from Costco because they are latch closed. This makes it easier to transport without worrying about materials falling out.

Put them in action!

We use IEP bins every morning. My students rotate between doing independent morning work and working on the IEP bin with me or an assistant. I try and rotate out activities at least once a month to make sure students are generalizing the skill.

If every morning sounds too much for you, you can always grab these during down time in your classroom, or schedule time once a week to rotate through the IEP goals.

We are collecting more data than ever-I love love love this system! I hope this post helped you get ideas on how to set up an IEP bins system in your classroom!

Looking for more tips on how to organize your IEP Data – check out this post!

Want to be more confident in your digital data collection? Click this!