CBI Goal Setting- How to Improve Your Field Trip Outing Game
Jan 16, 2021
It’s a lovely Friday morning during the school year. You hop on the bus with your class, head to your destination, enjoy the activity, stop at a fast food restaurant for lunch, then head back to your school/program/center. It was a great day, you planned and planned and the CBI went smoothly, but what did your students get out of it? What were they working on? Did THEY decide the goal they wanted to work on or was it only tied to their IEP goals (written by adults)? Did they reflect on the outing and how it went and how they personally did?
Sorry if that was a little in-your-face, but I had those questions when I first started working at my District’s Transition program and it triggered me to start making outing goal sheets. Every Friday was our CBI or ‘outing day’ and we engaged in a variety of activities and visited a wide range of fast food and sit-down restaurants. However, our bus would come back, student’s would pack up, and then head home. There wasn’t time before or after for preparing or reflecting on what each student was going to work toward achieving during the outing.
How I Set Outing Goals
I added a ‘Goal Setting’ step to my Friday morning Community Based Instruction (CBI) Prep lesson. Students got to choose their own two things to work on during the outing from a list of 3 pre-made choices or they could write their own in on a line. I carried the goal sheets with me on outings to remind students what they were working on. I then handed them back out after we returned and students reflected on how well they achieved their goal. We celebrated when they achieved their goal and had a brief discussion of how they could improve and meet that goal in the future if they didn’t.
If you are new to teaching transition age students, have been teaching for a while and want to improve your CBI game, or want to increase student choice and help build meaningful outings and relationships, then consider adding Outing Goals to your repertoire!
What's included in the Setting Outing Goals resource:
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4 versions of goal setting worksheets (checklist style to an editable option)
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Up to 10 different goal setting areas
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Personal Materials
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Stay with Group
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Expected Behavior
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Communication-Initiate
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Communication-Respond
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Communication-Place an order
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Communication-Ask a question
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Stay on Budget
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Pay for a Purchase
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Try Something New
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Make Your Own Goal
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Up to 10 different skills to focus on during the outing
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Versatile enough for students to choose 1 goal or 10
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Visual supports
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Easy to fill in section for goal achievement
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Space for student reflection
What to do with the Results?
I always saved the Outing Goals sheets and would file each student’s sheet in their respective folder at my desk. You can use the outing goal sheets in two ways:
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Save them to inform discussions with the IEP team on areas that students need to improve upon
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Save them to share the positives with families during parent/teacher conferences or positive phone calls home
Setting Outing Goals sheets can help to elevate your CBI’s, offer student choice for self-improvement, and help inform decisions about future IEP goals. I hope you see an advantage in adding them to your field trip outing prep lessons!
