IEP Transition Plan Student PDF Workbook for High School & Transition

I love a really good transition assessment.  I love when parents/family members give quality feedback.  I love when staff share their ideas and insight about a student’s future.  But, I really love when students are open, honest, and (most importantly) realistic* about their dreams and goals for their future.  

I’ve crafted some quality, relevant transition assessments in the past, but sometimes what students need most is best pulled from them through small, incremental check-ins instead of a single conversation.  

When I taught high school I remember talking with both parents and staff about their desire for students to have a more firm grasp on the ‘real world.’  As you know, that can be really hard to replicate in a system that, by law, is built on providing every support for students to be successful.  

The only way to help students better understand the ‘real world’ is through conscious communication that increases their awareness of themselves, their own strengths, and the life they desire or think they desire.

These wishes, needs, and realities are what pushed me to create the Student Transition Workbook.

While transition planning may begin for some states in middle school, most begin at the high school level and continue the transition IEP through until the student graduates or exits due to age from transition services.  

The Student Transition Workbook makes the four IEP Transition Plan pillars, Independent Living, Employment, Education, and Training, relevant to a high school or transition student’s life through carefully chosen questions that build upon individual desires.  This resource quickly becomes individualized while exposing the realness of the student’s dream through their own research.  

Let’s review a sample page.  

Students will answer questions about independent living, employment, education, and/or training. The questions will ask the student to draw from previous responses, making the activity differentiated to meet the needs of various students.  

The Questions

The questions will also allow students to think through and research common struggles that staff and families typically define as ‘the real world.’ 

• For example, in the Employment section, there is a question about entry-level jobs that will provide experience in the field where the student wants to pursue a career.  This is an important first step, especially if the student needs to complete a degree program to be qualified for a specific job.  
• For the Independent Living section, a question asks them to identify what areas they need to learn more about to feel comfortable and confident living away from family. Don’t worry; I’ve listed the skills they would need to possess so they can self-reflect on each area.
• For the Postsecondary Education section, there is a question about how grading looks different from high school, specifically fewer grades; therefore, each grade holds more weight. 

From community participation to self-determination skills, the questions touch on so many important parts of preparing for life postsecondary life.  

How To Use

For Classroom Use

This digital download has 36 pages and is designed for students to complete 1 page per week for a full school year.  However, an educator can shrink this down to 1 page per week over the course of 7 weeks to gather meaningful feedback for an upcoming IEP meeting or to show progress towards IEP transition goals.  

Each worksheet is appropriate for students to complete as independent work after a whole class lesson or when meeting 1:1 with students.  

Thankfully, students grow and change over their years in high school and transition and so you could be part of yearly lesson plans for special education teachers.  Also, the repetition will be good to help cement some key ‘real world’ realities.  

As a Non-Standardized Transition Assessment

The best practice is to use at least two IEP transition assessments when developing a transition plan, so a special education teacher and IEP team want an assessment that addresses vocational education, post-secondary education, and life skills.  The best part of this resource is that it can be used for those small check-ins during class, but it can also be used to gather quality feedback to help draft the most accurate post-secondary goals for high school students and transition young adults. 

Do You Need This Resource?

This is the perfect resource for you if:

• You need a resource that hits all key parts of the IEP transition plan
• You want your students to think about and mentally prepare for life post-school without lots of prep work for you
• You need a resource that can serve as both a transition assessment and evidence for goal progress

Then yes, grab this resource for your student, caseload, or resource class! Or get 1 page of the Student Transition Plan Workbook for free to see for yourself how awesome it is! 

The Studen Transition Plan Workbook is part of an IEP Resources bundle, which includes Vocational Skills, Safety Skills, Cooking Skills, Functional Reading Comprehension, and Functional Math weekly worksheets.   This bundle is perfect for educators in special education programs who want consistency and predictability in their class routine without boredom, as no question in any of the worksheets repeats!  

*The % of students who actually become NBA stars or veterinarians is very, very, very small.     .