Notes
Becca has identified a fourth-grade student she works with one-on-one as the focus of her coaching goal. The student previously had a fluency-based IEP goal, but after assessing his phonics skills, consulting with the SLP, and examining his sight-word knowledge, Becca identified foundational phonics gaps that may be contributing to his fluency difficulties. She plans to shift instruction toward explicit, systematic phonics using UFLI and has aligned his new IEP goal with the UFLI progression. The targeted skills include ending spelling patterns, diphthongs and silent letters, suffixes and prefixes, and additional affixes, with 80% proficiency as the criterion for mastery. Because the coaching cycle covers only one semester, we discussed narrowing Becca’s coaching goal to the skills she expects to address during this timeframe rather than trying to encompass the student’s entire annual IEP goal. Becca will use UFLI materials to monitor progress, beginning with isolated word reading and later incorporating decodable text to measure application of targeted skills. She appreciates UFLI’s systematic structure, predictable routines, and integrated phonemic-awareness component and typically adapts lessons across multiple sessions to provide the intensity and repetition her special education students need. Our next step will be to select and refine a coaching goal that complements the student’s IEP while focusing specifically on Becca’s instructional practice.