Using SDTP
High School educators, university faculty and students, and others teaching the Student-Directed Transition Planning lessons (SDTP) may do so freely and without charge. Educators using SDTP may modify the presentation files, activities, and Teacher’s Guide to better meet the needs of their students. Please send your modified versions to Dr. James Martin at jemartin@ou.edu so that they may be posted for others to use.
Getting Started
Students need to understand themselves in terms of their family, cultural community, and disabilities (Valenzuela and Martin, 2005). We recognize that the individuality of the transition planning process requires specific student knowledge and skills in certain areas; while other areas may not be relevant based upon the interests, skills, and needs of students and family members. The sequence of the Student-Direct Transition Planning (SDTP) lessons reflects this dynamic quality.
Time for teaching the lessons
We estimate that it will take approximately 20 hours to teach the SDTP lessons. You may schedule the lessons in any manner that best meets your needs. Some teachers use the SDTP lessons for 45 minutes a day until finished, while others use the SDTP lessons once or twice a week. The more time between lessons, the more time needed for review. Lessons may be taught as part of existing curricula, or as a stand-alone course. Teaching the SDTP lessons in before and after school formats has been suggested
Order of instruction
Regardless of the format for teaching the lessons, we suggest the lessons be taught in a designated order. We recommend that students complete the first two lessons (Awareness and Terms/Concepts) consecutively. Educators can choose to teach the next three lessons (Vision for Employment, Vision for Postsecondary Education, and Vision for Adult Living) in whatever order that best matches the students’ educational needs. The Course of Study and Connecting Services lessons must be completed prior to building the Student Summary of Performance. Thus, we recommend these final three lessons to be taught consecutively to all students.
Before opting out of teaching two or more of the SDTP Vision lessons, educators should read the NSTTAC) Indicator 13 checklist used to evaluate IDEA 2004 transition compliance (http://www.nsttac.org/). The U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs supervised the development of this checklist. To be in compliance with IDEA 2004 transition requirements, the IEP document needs to include an employment and an education/training goal.
Teaching the SDTP Lessons
Prior to teaching each lesson, download the presentation file and the Teacher’s Guide. Glance over the Teacher Guide to look at the scope of the lesson and needed material. The Teacher’s Guide includes sequential screen shots of each presentation slide to provide the teacher ample instructional information. We recommend that educators follow the Teacher’s Guide step-by-step the first couple times teaching the lessons. After that, we encourage teachers to modify the lessons to better meet the needs of their own students. This is why we provided the presentation files, activity pages, and Teacher’s Guide in an open format.
Student’s participation in the SDTP lessons:
When teaching the SDTP lessons, we recommend that each student keep completed materials together for easy reference and review by family members, or relevant community members. We suggest using one three-ring binder per student with dividers for each set of lesson. Dividers labeled by lessons would allow the students easy access to the materials. It is hoped that students will use this portfolio as a primary transition reference source. While most of the activities can be done on line, students will be able to download activities, print, and share activities with their parents, or other adult family members. Each lesson has activities that require students to talk with their adult family members about their transition plan.
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