Special Education 389

Special Education 389: Honors Survey of Exceptional Children

I took Special Education 389 with Dr. Khan during my fall semester in 2019. I really enjoyed this class as I have always been interested in Special Education and have always wanted to learn more. Previous to this class, I had helped in a first grade inclusion class and from this experience, I was able to begin learning about the different needs of each student.

Throughout the semester, I was able to learn about a variety of topics including educational legislation related to Special Education, characteristics and needs of different disorders, as well as various resources for students such as an IEP or a Section 504 Plan. This class was very interesting and crucial because, as a teacher, I will use the information that I have learned in this class every day.

Throughout the semester, my partner Julie and I worked to create our research paper, attached below, and a poster to be presented at the research showcase. Our paper and poster “RECALL: A Dialogic Reading Approach for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder” is a literature review of a variety of professional and peer-reviewed articles. For our research, we looked at the use of the RECALL approach, which is an altered version of the Dialogic Reading approach for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. From our research, we found that younger students benefitted from the use of this approach as they are more engaged with the text and engaged for a longer period of time than they would be without using this approach. This engagement helps students with Autism Spectrum Disorder with a variety of skills including oral and writing skills as well as social and emotional skills or development.

Creating both this paper and the poster, as well as the presentation, was one of my favorite experiences from this class and the semester. Dialogic Reading is an approach that I have learned about before and used briefly, so I was interested in learning more about this approach, especially how it has been adapted into the RECALL approach to benefit students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I was motivated throughout the entire semester for this assignment as I was interested and passionate about the topic. I loved being able to create this paper and present my research to others as I was proud of and passionate about my work. I loved hearing questions from my classmates and other students and faculty at the research presentation that showed that others were also interested in this approach and how it can have numerous benefits for all students, specifically students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.