CEC+Standard+4


 * CEC Standard 4: Instructional Strategies **

Special educators posses a repertoire of evidence-based instructional strategies to individualize instruction for individuals with ELN. Special educators select, adapt, and use these instructional strategies to promote challenging learning results in general and special curricula [|3] and to appropriately modify learning environments for individuals with ELN. They enhance the learning of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills of individuals with ELN, and increase their self-awareness, self-management, self-control, self-reliance, and self-esteem. Moreover, special educators emphasize the development, maintenance, and generalization of knowledge and skills across environments, settings, and the lifespan.

Reflection:

One of the most important concepts that I learned through my program was that most of the students with multiple and severe disabilities need a functional as opposed to an academic curriculum. This is mostly because students with disabilities usually do not assimilate many of the skills that typically developed students learn by copying or imitating adults. The main reason is that the students with disabilities require a different set of instructional strategies that is adapted to their learning needs. For example I might use real objects to demonstrate a concept instead of talking or lecturing in front of the class. I may also use different levels of prompting to assist the student in completing a task (e.g. breaking the skill into multiple steps, using multiple levels of prompting such as verbal, partial physical, full physical, etc.).

A concrete example to illustrate this standard was an intervention I used with a 6th grade student to teach him to make sandwiches. His mother mentioned to me in an that her son enjoys ham and cheese sandwiches. The instruction was delivered through a task analysis that contained 12 steps for making grilled sandwiches.

Artifact:

For this standard I chose an instructional unit I developed for an 8th grade student. The main goal of the project was increase social interaction by teaching initiation, maintaining and contact ending skills. For this purpose I chose a set of skills that the student was familiar with already: playing games on Ipad and assisting school staff with different chores.

The main reason I chose this project is because it illustrates a different set of instructional techniques such as prompting hierarchies, task analysis, visual support.

Instructional unit

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