Ronilyn Aquino 5/6/14

EDUG 789 Spring 2014

Final Growth Statement EDUG 789
This course, Methods of Teaching the At Risk and Disabled Student,
otherwise known as EDUG 789 was another course that I have been fortunate
enough take part in due to the scrupulous and specialized graduate program offered
as part of Manhattan Colleges five-year Special Education program. This course was
an extension of EDUG 787 Psycho-educational assessment for the At Risk and
Disabled Student. The knowledge and strategies that have been presented in this
first course, have been bolstered and implemented in the demo-lessons that we
have presented in EDUG 789 as well as within the classrooms in which we all work
in every day. These two courses together will be particularly beneficial to me when I
have my own classroom, and take on the role of evaluating the learning process of
my students and best differentiate in order for all students to be successful within
the classroom community that we create together.
In EDUG 789 we were able to use the information we gathered about our
student that we assessed in EDUG 787 and use this data in order to develop IEP
goals. We took a deeper look at example IEPs, the many different components, and
our main focus, the actual IEP goals. With the IEP as our guideline, we constructed
our own goals for our student based upon our students most outstanding needs. We
learned the most well written goals are those that are extremely specific and
measurable. We took these several goals that we developed and used them in order
to develop appropriate activities that we were to work on during each visit with our
student. Throughout our ten weeks with our student, by working on this carefully
designed compilation of activities, my partner and I were able to effectively move
our student closer to meeting these goals. Base on our work thus far, we have also
been able to create recommendations for what strategies and approached should be
implemented during instruction in order for our student to successfully meet his IEP
goals. By working so closely with our student and in constant collaboration with my
partner and my peers in this course, I have been able to better recognize specific
needs of students and how to differentiate through product, process, or procedure
most effectively based on the individual student and their skill set.
This course allowed us to take a deeper look at many different resources and
documents that we need to be familiar with when working in the field. The
professor in this course gave us access to various texts that offer strategies and
approaches within each of the different content areas with specific focus on the
many different needs of the students. As a class we have also taken a very close look
at the Common Core standards. We made sure to align our lessons and activities
with the standards, even when differentiating, we made sure to hold all students to
the same possible potential. There were many class discussions regarding the new
standards as well as parents withholding their children from the test. These text-to-
self and text-to-world connections made it extremely relevant to what I as a student
teacher witnessed within the field each day.