Final Learning Portfolio
Foundational Knowledge
Are familiar with key eligibility requirements/common profiles, especially for the disabilities you are most likely to encounter
Sitting through class every Monday night I always thought, what really is the criteria to have a cognitive impairment? I have been going through my program learning many new concepts but it never crossed my mind until I was in this class. I now have a clearer understanding of what is considered a cognitive impairment. The cognitive impairment must manifest in the developmental period from birth to nine months, must be at or below two standard deviations below the mean, on a standardized test an individual must be within the lowest 6th percentiles in reading and math, which is about one and a half standard deviations below the mean, and lastly the individual must have an impairment of adaptive behavior. You would have thought I should have known this since this was my major, however I did not. I am happy that I did learn this because now in the future I will be able to better identify students who might be eligible for a cognitive impairment or rule out a cognitive impairment if needed. It was also interesting to learn the criteria for other disabilities because since I am not majoring in those fields, I really do not know what is needed for each, but going over them in class I was able to take notes that I can use in the future so I will be able to better assess students who are eligible for certain disabilities.
Application
Construct a criterion-referenced, curriculum-based multiple choice test emphasizing higher level thinking
When I was told I could make a test on whatever we wanted, I was ecstatic because I have a weird obsession with the movie Wreck-It-Ralph (I think this acquired last year when I was sick and watched it numerous times repeatedly). When I re-watched the movie so I could create questions it was a little hard to think of questions that were higher thinking. I was thinking of many remembering and understanding questions and then I realized that I can still use the lower level thinking questions but elaborate and change words around and I would have a higher level question either, applying, analyzing, or evaluating. When I submitted my rough draft I was confident that my questions were well written, which some were, but the questions that I thought were higher thinking were not. I thought I constructed a great evaluation question, but come to find out it wasn’t an evaluation question at all. This is when I realized that to create higher level questions I must think harder than on the surface. I looked at the examples that were posted online to see I could create similar questions. Once I did that and I was able to get the questions I needed and have a strong well written test.
Integration
Use the statistics of the normal curve to interpret results of norm-referenced assessments with different means and standard deviations
Before this class started I was intimidated by the normal curve. I had no idea how to use it and was always confused on what standard deviations meant. When I learned that most tests have a mean of 100 and standard deviations of 15, it was easier to interpret the scores. After all the practice we had in class with plotting them on the curve I am very confident in my ability to be able to determine where a student ranks. I know that the average range is from 85-115. Below average range is 70-85, severely below average ranges from 55-70. Above average ranges from 115-130 and significantly above average ranges from 130-145. Now I can teach this to parents and show them where their child falls on the normal curve. Parents sometimes don’t understand when you tell them your child scored an 80 in math calculation. Parents might think oh that’s nice 80%, no they are wrong, I can show them on the normal curve where 80 falls which is below average and tell them their student is at risk. I also learned about
