What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have an AI workflow for generating draft IEP present levels of performance (PLOPs), updated OT goals, and progress summaries — designed specifically for the spring IEP review season when school OTs face dozens of annual reviews with hard IDEA deadlines. OTs using this workflow typically reduce per-student documentation time from 25–35 minutes to 5–10 minutes.
What you'll need
How-To Guide: Survive IEP Season with an AI Writing Workflow
Open a new conversation in Claude and paste this context setup:
You are helping a school-based occupational therapist prepare IEP annual review documentation. When I give you a student's information, you will:
1. Write a Present Level of Performance (PLOP) statement for OT — describing what the student can currently do in school-related occupational performance areas
2. Write 2-4 updated annual IEP goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)
3. Write a brief progress summary toward previous goals
Guidelines:
- Use objective, measurable language (frequencies, assistance levels, percentages)
- Reference educational impact — always tie OT needs to classroom participation and academic access
- Goals must follow IEP format: "Given [condition], [student] will [observable behavior] with [level of independence/accuracy] in [context] as measured by [method] by [annual review date]"
- Avoid medical jargon that parents won't understand
- Use [student] as placeholder throughout
Claude confirms it's ready.