Individual Program Plan

All students in Edmonton Catholic Schools who are identified as having special education needs must have an Individualized Program Plan. Students with special needs are identified using the Alberta Education Special Education Coding Criteria for Early Childhood Services to Grade 12. The IPP is located in PowerSchool and parents have access to collaborate with your child’s school team on the plan through the PowerSchool Parent Portal.

An IPP is: 

• a plan of action to address your child’s specific education needs
• a collaborative team effort involving the student, parents, and school team 
• a planning document that supports your child’s access to curriculum and relevant learning experiences by removing barriers within the learning environment 
• a document for communicating student growth and progress
• a summary of the individualized goals that your child will work towards achieving 
• an ongoing record to ensure continuity of programming from year to year 
• a guide for transition planning

• strengths, interests and learning preferences – ask your child’s teacher about completing an interest questionnaire 
• assessment data – make sure the school has all current assessments and recommended strategies 
• accommodations – these changes work within grade level curriculum and do not change the learning content. If your child is on an IPP and requires accommodations, these will be identified in the IPP. Examples include: extra time to complete a task, graphic organizers, shortened directions, alternate formats for assessments, adjusted seating, fidget tool, movement breaks or the use of technology. 
• functional impact– highlights the barriers that your child is facing due to their diagnosis or disability. The barriers need to be identified to ensure that we are supporting the needs as best as possible with targeted instructional supports and strategies.
• goals and strategies – may include focus areas such as: literacy (reading, writing, communicating), numeracy, physical development (fine motor, gross motor), awareness of self and others (work/community skills, self-care, executive functioning) social emotional behavioural (self regulation, social interactions, safety to self and others). 
• progress reporting – this is used to report your child's progress on the goals and objectives on their IPP.
• transition planning and year end summary – summarizes your child's growth for the school year.  Highlighting areas of success, areas requiring ongoing improvement and supporting smooth transitions for next year.

Adapted Programming means programming that retains the learning outcomes of the Program of Studies and where adjustments to the instructional process are provided to address the special education needs of the student.

Modified Programming has learning outcomes that are significantly different from the Provincial Curriculum and are specifically selected to meet the student’s special education needs. 

All students identified as having special education needs and receiving adapted or modified programming in Edmonton Catholic Schools require an Individualized Program Plan (IPP).

Typically, IPPs are developed at the beginning of each school year. Although some information will remain the same from year to year, many components will change from one school year to the next, including assessment data, current level of performance, functional impact of the diagnosis, focus areas and goals, transition plans, and year-end summaries. 

A typical timeline to develop an IPP will look like this:

Parents can access Special Programs documents, including your child’s IPP in the PowerSchool Parent Portal.  Accessing these documents from the comfort of home allows parents to always have access to their child’s Individualized Program Plan and supporting documents for the IPP.  Access to this digital document does not replace the face-to-face IPP meeting with your child’s teacher and/or school team – this is still a critical component of the creation of these documents.

Steps Include:

1. Log into PowerScool – Parent Portal.
2. Click on student (if there is more than one student attached to the parent account) who has a Special Program. Then click on the Special Program Home link on the left menu).
3. This will open the Special Programs page. ***If no documents are visible, please click on 3 the arrow to the right of Quick Access. ***
4. When the document(s) listed under the current year are selected, there are different sections of the document that can be viewed separately. Use the Section area to choose which section to review.
5. If your child’s school has reviewed the Individual Program Plan and/or Behaviour Support Plan with you, after reading through the documents, parents need to provide their digital signature on the last page of the document(s). Find this by clicking on the arrow beside the Section and choose the Signatures option.
6. Once the Signatures page opens, click on Edit this Section. The document will then show the checkboxes beside the names. Follow the directions on the page and once completed, click on Save, Done Editing or Save, Continue Editing.
7. Should you have further questions regarding Special Programs and/or access to your child’s documents, please contact your child’s school.
8. Parents can also view videos for support in accessing their child’s IPP on our ECSD.net website.

Your child’s teacher will be contacting you to be part of the team developing your child’s IPP. Although the IPP in Edmonton Catholic Schools is accessible all the time through the PowerSchool Parent Portal, it is still important to be part of IPP meetings either in-person or through Teams. IPP meetings should happen throughout the year as needed, but at a minimum, there should be three meetings: November, March and June. 

As you meet with your child’s school team consider the following tips for effective IPP meetings:

“For children without disabilities, technology makes things easier. For children with disabilities, technology makes things possible.” 

Mary Pat Radabaugh

Assistive technology for learning helps students work around learning challenges and build on their strengths. 

Your child may need assistive technology such as word prediction, text-to-speech, 
or speech recognition to fully participate in learning. While developing your child’s IPP, your child’s school team may trial a few assistive technology tools to collect information on its effectiveness and fit for your child’s strengths, needs, and preferences before implementing the most effective tools on a consistent basis to support your child’s learning, independence, confidence, and success.

The SETT Framework

The SETT framework (Student-Environment-Task-Tools) may be used by your child’s school team to make decisions about which specialized assistive technology tools and related strategies will make a difference for your child’s learning. Parents are key members of the SETT framework and if a SETT meeting is needed for your child, you will be invited to participate in the meeting and the decisions that are made from reviewing your child’s programming needs.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is a set of tools and strategies that can be used to solve communication challenges. If your child has severe verbal communication challenges, division staff will support your child’s school team in assessing your child’s needs and determining an appropriate program plan including technology devices/options for trial. AAC devices may include PODD, iPad/Apps, or dedicated devices such as Nova Chat. If a communication device is needed and found to be successful, division staff will support families in applying to Alberta Aids to Daily Living (AADL) to purchase the AAC device for your child.