Anna Demlow Phase 4 Johnell Bentz/Cheryl Light-Shriner April 24, 2013 E-portfolio: Integrated Reflection Standard Areas Characteristics

of Learners: Throughout Phase 4, I have furthered my education in the various standards areas throughout my assignments and practicum experiences. There were quite a few assignments and experiences this semester that enhanced my ability to plan for instruction. This semester I gained experience in understanding the impact of emotional/behavioral disabilities on the cognitive, physical, emotional, social, and communication development of students. Currently, I have two students with emotional disabilities that greatly impact their learning. One of these students was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was classified as having rage fits. Because of this, my cooperating teacher and I changed his behavior intervention plan. We began implementing this in the general education setting, but because he had a behavior chart, he thought he stood out as different. There are a number of other kids in the class that have some problem behaviors, so I developed a behavior contract for some other students in the class. I decided to use it for my managing the learning environment assignment and it proved to be very successful.

Instructional Delivery: One type of instructional delivery that has been very beneficial for me this semester has been creating learning experiences that make content meaningful for my students. I did this through the opening activity of my lesson every day while I co-taught reading and language arts. An example of this was when I was teaching a reading comprehension unit on sequencing events in a story. I had the students write on a post-it note the sequence of events they did in the morning to get ready for school. This got them excited to talk about themselves as well as relate sequencing to their real life. The co-teaching model the general education teacher and I used every day was station co-teaching. We came up with four different groups of students based on their reading levels. This way, we could differentiate instruction based on the students needs. Throughout the semester, I used a number of scripted curriculums to facilitate errorless learning. My instructional program highlights the use of errorless learning through the SRA Expressive Writing Curriculum. Through my social skills assignment, I was able to assist my student with an emotional disability in learning as well as self-monitoring his own social skills. I informally assessed his selfregulation skills throughout the semester and he ended up mastering the program! I also was able to learn a plethora of behavior management skills and strategies while being at Dr. Howard. I used these skills and strategies to implement my students behavior intervention plans in the general education classroom. This allowed my students to be in their least restrictive environment.

Reflection and Professional Growth: As stated in Standard 9, a learning behavior specialist should be one who evaluates how choices and actions affects students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community and actively seeks opportunities to grow professionally. The self-reflective journals through SPED 426, helped me with this tremendously by working on collaboration skills. The skills I worked on with other professionals through this assignment were giving and asking for feedback as well as dealing with conflicts/confrontation. I became very competent in these skills by collaborating with paraprofessionals, general education teachers, related services, and the principal. I also reflected on my own practice to improve instruction for two of my students receiving a tier 2 math intervention. I was using SRA Connecting Math Concepts with them and started to realize after a couple of lessons this wasnt an effective intervention for them. I decided I needed to AIMSWeb the two students to see where they were currently at in order to find a better curriculum. I also evaluated my own performance to make sure I was implementing their current intervention correctly. I determined the students were functioning at about 1st grade in math. Because of this, I decided to start with the basics and teach them single digit addition/subtraction using Touch Math. General Education Standards for Special Education Teachers: Through co-teaching 3rd grade reading and language arts I gained competency by understanding reading instruction in the areas of assessment, teaching, and supporting the education of students with disabilities. I used a variety of formal and informal assessment of my students reading comprehension

throughout the semester. I also connected my teaching to the 3rd grade common core standards. The curriculum based assessment assignment helped me learn how to do these things. By grouping students together by their reading levels, I was able to provide more individualized and group instructional interventions. I focused on my students interests and learning styles to keep them actively engaged in the content.