Survey for Children with Exceptional Needs

Survey of Children with Exceptional Needs, also known as SPED 389, fulfilled my special education concentration and the Cormier Honors College requirements. This course introduces diverse disabilities in special education and their characteristics, legislation, and the classroom teacher’s role as part of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) team. This course serves as a substitution for my Introduction to Special Education, or SPED 202 course.

This course fascinates me because I enjoyed learning about different types of disabilities I might encounter as a special education teacher. This course challenges me to think deeper and ask questions about the concepts I am learning in the classroom. There were moments during this course where I would work in a small group to complete a discussion project. One of my favorite things about these discussion projects was diving deeper into a specific chapter of our assigned textbook, developing discussion questions to ask our peers to follow our presentation, and hearing their thoughts and experiences with our selected disability. While this course serves as an introductory course for my concentration, I genuinely learned a lot of information about special education and the different disabilities and legislation associated with this field. The knowledge I learned in this course will benefit me as I continue with my major and later my teaching career.

The artifact I chose that exhibits the work I have done in Survey of Children with Exceptional Needs is my research project, which also served as my honors enhancement for this course. The research project focuses on how the picture exchange communication system (PECS) enhances the communication skills of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. With this research project, I worked with another Honor student to conduct research, write the final paper, and create the poster to present at the research symposium. As we worked on this research project, we defined and described autism spectrum disorders and their characteristics. We also explained the picture exchange communication system. We also examined other research journals to support our argument that the picture exchange communication systems support the communication skills of individuals with autism. This research project was interesting, and I learned how assistive technology could help individuals with special needs. I have included the research paper I worked on with my peer below: