Collect data on your classroom community-based instruction activities using an outing-specific community-based instruction rubric. When you know your students, you tend to know whether or not they are progressing, it's gut instinct. You watch, listen, and just have an overall sense of where they are at with their goals more often than not. But when it comes to quantifying and sharing that information for an IEP meeting, you need numbers.
This can get especially tricky when it comes to the topic of social skills. Capturing a general feeling or an “overall disposition when in the community” and making it measurable is difficult. But I have a solution! You need a rubric. Yes, I said the dreaded word. I know, it is tedious, but it is necessary and once you make yours, you can reuse it time and again. Better yet, you never have to worry about collecting data for your student's upcoming IEP meeting because you can rest assured you've already got it.
A Community-Based Instruction Rubric will:
Make your observations measurable
Highlight success and areas of opportunity
Allow you to pre-teach expectations
Involve students in their own learning.
Before our Community Outing:
I created a community-based instruction curriculum for the places we visit most often on our community outings. Each item aims to teach five skills necessary to be successful in a specific outing location.
For my students, this includes the following places: restaurants, libraries, public transportation, stores, workplaces, and community centers. I try to pre-teach as many community-based instruction ideas as possible before we ever leave the school with a community-based instruction curriculum. I use YouTube videos, workbooks, and writing assignments that help students understand what community-based instruction is and how they can be successful during trips! (You can read more about how I use workbooks to teach life skills here!)
I like to show my students the rubric ahead of time so that they think about their goals and ask questions about my expectations. Also, I give students a brainstorming form that helps them create a personal and specific goal around the outing.
My students share their goals during our social skills group. This allows students to hold each other accountable during the outing. In general, it keeps us more on track as a group. The students take our outings more seriously when we take the time to set our intentions.
Rubrics for Data Collection
During the outing, I bring a clipboard with a community-based instruction rubric for each student. I float between students and watch them intently in each category listed. I assign a preliminary score and complete one rubric for each student.
Then, immediately following our outing, I pass out the student self-reflection rubrics. Each student completes the rubric assigning a score to their own behavior on the outing. Meanwhile, I complete my teacher assessment rubric. I fill in details and make any adjustments or notes required.
How I use Data from my CBI Rubrics
I keep my teacher assessment rubric and the student self-reflection rubric in my student’s data files. Students track their growth from month to month and participate in goal-setting conversations. I use the data to progress monitor community-based IEP goals, independent living goals, and life skills goals. Also, I compare the student’s rubric to my own. This allows me to see areas of misunderstanding and address them in upcoming social lessons or community-based instruction curriculum.
Community-Based Instruction Data Collection Rubrics
FREE Community-Based Instruction Rubrics
