Coast Goals Occupational Therapy Examples

What Coast Goals Actually Is

Coast Goals (coastgoals.com) is a goal bank built specifically for occupational therapists working in educational settings. It wasn't created by a software company running ads. It was assembled by OTs who were tired of rewriting the same goals from scratch every fall. The site organizes measurable, student-friendly goals across multiple domains — fine motor, visual motor, sensory processing, ADLs, handwriting, and executive function — and each goal comes tagged with the appropriate baseline language and measurable criteria.

The core problem it solves is real: writing IEP goals that meet state and federal measurability standards takes time most therapists don't have. A single well-written goal can take twenty to thirty minutes if you're starting blank. Coast Goals cuts that down significantly because the structure is already there.

Coast Goals Occupational Therapy Examples

Let me walk through how this actually works in practice, not the brochure version.

When you first land on the site, you pick a domain. Say you're working on fine motor for a second grader who struggles with pencil grasp and letter formation. You'll find goals like "Given a pencil and lined paper, the student will form uppercase and lowercase letters with correct orientation and size with 80% accuracy across 3 consecutive sessions." That's the format. The measurable portion is explicit. The conditions are stated. The benchmark is baked in. Here's the thing most people don't mention about this resource. The goals aren't copy-paste ready. They're templates. If you submit a goal exactly as written without adjusting for your student's actual baseline data, your IEP team will flag it, and rightfully so. The baseline numbers need to reflect what you've measured, not what the example shows. I've seen therapists spend twelve minutes changing a single percentage point because their kid's current performance level was 45%, not the 60% in the example goal. Another edge case that trips people up: the goals assume a certain scope of practice. Some of the handwriting goals reference curriculum-aligned benchmarks that may not match your school district's writing expectations. Before you drop one into an IEP, cross-reference it with your district's curriculum standards or ask your supervising SLP or OT if the benchmark aligns. I learned this the hard way when a goal I pulled about "legible handwriting at grade level" got pushed back because our district uses a specific handwriting rubric that Coast Goals doesn't account for.

How to Use the Examples Effectively

Start by pulling three to five goals that are close to what your student needs, not exactly what they need. Then rewrite them. Take the measurable structure and swap in your student's baseline data. Change the conditions to match the actual environment — if your student works at a standing desk, write that in. If they use a adaptive grip, specify it.

The measurable criteria portion is where most people cut corners. Don't. "With 80% accuracy" is fine, but add the measurement method. "As measured by clinician scoring using the Motor Assessment Scale for Children" is better. It removes ambiguity during IEP reads and makes progress monitoring straightforward. For visual motor integration, Coast Goals has solid examples around copying shapes and letters. One goal template reads: "Given visual models, the student will copy geometric shapes and letters with 85% accuracy as measured by direct observation over three sessions." You'd change the accuracy number to your baseline, add any accommodations your student uses, and specify the exact shapes or letters relevant to their grade level.

What Coast Goals Doesn't Cover

Be honest about the gaps. The resource skews toward academic and classroom-based goals. If you're working on community mobility, postural control for feeding, or complex sensory diets for students with significant neurological differences, you won't find much there. The sensory processing examples exist but they're surface-level. I've had to supplement Coast Goals examples with references to OT Practice Standards and the AOTA Framework for those more complex cases.

Also, the goals tend to be written at an intermediate level of complexity. For students with significant cognitive disabilities or those who are nonverbal, you'll need to adapt the language substantially. The framework is there, but the content often needs heavy modification. Don't force a goal into a template it doesn't fit. It's faster to write one from scratch than to retrofit. The download or export functionality varies by subscription tier. The free version lets you browse and reference examples. Paid access typically includes export features and the ability to filter by grade band and disability category. If your caseload is heavy, the paid version usually pays for itself within a couple of weeks because of the time savings on goal writing. I keep a personal document where I paste modified goals from Coast Goals that I've successfully used in IEPs. Not for reuse verbatim, but as a reference for phrasing and structure. It's saved me maybe twenty minutes per goal over the course of a school year. Small savings, but they add up when you're writing fifteen to twenty goals per student across a semester.