Beth

Montick 1
SPED 741: Literacy Interventions for Struggling Students with High Incidence
Disabilities
Common Core Assignment - Reflection

1. Purpose:

The Common Core Assignment was included as part of the final module for

SPED 741: Literacy Interventions for Struggling Students with High Incidence

Disabilities. This final module focused on the Common Core Curriculum and how to

support students who are struggling with English and Language Arts (ELA) skills

within this curriculum. The assignment was to identify a student who struggles with

ELA tasks and to identify a task associated with the Core Curriculum. The next step

was to determine what areas of the task would be a struggle for the student.

Following this, the assignment was to determine what supports the student would

need to be successful with this task. The purpose of this assignment was to become

familiar with the Common Core Curriculum, to analyze an assignment through the

lens of one of our struggling learners, and to determine appropriate areas of support

and intervention for the student to be successful.

2. Approach to assignment and revisions:

For this assignment, I used an 11-year-old student that I worked with

providing individualized Applied Behavior Analysis therapeutic services. In addition

to social skills and independent living skills, we frequently worked on his academic

skills, especially ELA tasks. This made him a good student to focus on for this

assignment. Based on my knowledge of the student, I was able to work through the

task to identify where the breakdown would occur if he were given the task to

complete independently.

Beth Montick 2
SPED 741: Literacy Interventions for Struggling Students with High Incidence
Disabilities
Common Core Assignment - Reflection

My revisions to this assignment were minor. I did not require any major

revisions based on the feedback from my professor who had graded my assignment

and I had received full credit on the assignment rubric. Upon reading through my

assignment, I decided to add some additional information to make the assignment

more complete. Some of these changes included: adding a link to the assignment

task, adding additional information regarding the student, and expanding the plan for

intensive personalized instruction.

3. How the assignment contributed to my development as a special educator:

This assignment and the module that was associated with it gave me the tools

to develop greater insight into the Common Core Curriculum. Not being a traditional

classroom teacher, I have a very cursory understanding of the Common Core

Curriculum. This assignment helped me to delve deeper into the curriculum. At the

time that I completed this assignment, I was working with older students and I based

this assignment on one of those older students. Since last summer, I have been

working with preschool-aged and kindergarten-aged students. I would be interested

to explore the tasks that are for younger elementary students to see how I would

provide supports for my younger students.

I always say that so much of my job is problem solving and this assignment

supported that notion. The student has a problem that he is unable to complete the

task as it is designed. The problem solving process starts by identifying areas of

strength and need for the student and identifying ways to support the student to

improve these areas of need so that he can be successful in the classroom.