Content Standard

I believe that being a future special education teacher is beneficial because we are not tied to certain content areas/subjects of expertise. As a special educator, I need to be familiar and an expert in all subject areas. The subject that has always been most appealing to me would have to be English, and I would like to work with elementary school children.

Reading and Responding

Content Standard 1: Students will read and respond in individual, literal, critical and evaluative ways to literary, informational and persuasive texts (http://www.ctcurriculum.org/list_standards.asp?taskid=&dis=LA&grade=4&disname=English%2FLanguage+Arts&gradename=Grades+K-4).

Using Inspiration: I can implement this standard through technology by using Inspiration. For example, my favorite book in elementary school was Charlotte's Web. Through out the course of the book, the students can use content mapping with the main characters and how they are linked with one another. I believe that this is a helpful exercise/assignment for students especially when there are multiple characters in a story. Through content mapping, students will be able to organize the characters in Charlotte's Web into order (by appearance). Along with an important explanation of each character, and if any of the characters have anything in common with one another. NOt only exercise will this help the students understand the characters better, but it will also help the students understand the story and the impact each character plays in the storyline.

Using Digital Imagery: The book Charlotte's Web touches upon important main events. What I would do with the students would be to have the students act out 3 important scenes from the book, and capture it as a picture. The group of students will then have to explain why they chose those 3 scenes/pictures and why were they so significant in the story.

With that being said, I will be working with children with special needs, so I would need to modify these assignments to the students' abilities. I do believe these two things would be beneficial, especially if a child can't write or speak, he/she is still able to understand it and communicate his/her knowledge in a different way. This ideally is what we want from special education students.