Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HDFS 421
Breawn Colen
Objective: Understand the roles of assessment for children with special needs, and what makes an
assessment appropriate for children with special needs
Being able to recognize how assessments aid with children that have special needs and
distinguishing what makes an assessment appropriate for children with special needs will be important in
my future career. It will be essential for me to provide the best service possible to the children in my
classroom. Therefore, if any of my children have special needs I should be able to give them the resources
they need to exceed in their developmental progress. Knowing which assessment tools work best for each
special need situation will help ensure that the children are receiving the appropriate care. It will also
show that I understand each child has a different learning style and I am dedicated to giving each
I learned that some of the children in your classroom could possibly need special services and it is
the job of each professional to ensure they are receiving the care they need. Conducting assessments can
help pin point where each child is struggling as well as which subjects the children are excelling in. There
are certain standards that are required to be met in order to qualify for special needs. Assessments allow
you to see the standing of the child in comparison to the standards and take action accordingly once you
receive and interpret the results. In order for an assessment to be appropriate for children with special
needs you need to ensure that there is an aspect of the assessment tailored to give you results that can be
analyzed and applied to the situation at hand. Case study 3 allowed me to analyze a situation in which a
childs actions caused a concern that she may have special needs. I was challenged to examine the case
figure out which actions caused the concern, come up with an assessment plan and tell how I would
communicate this information. To get more practice with using assessments I completed Lab 5 which
allowed me a chance to evaluate externalizing and internalizing behaviors in the social-emotional domain.
After evaluating the scores I had to interpret them and code them in the appropriate category in respect to
if the scores cause clinical concern or not. By completing these assignments I was able to get experience
with coming up with special needs assessments implantation programs and seeing how scores can be
Objective 3
HDFS 421
Breawn Colen
interpreted to decide if special needs intervention is needed. I feel as though I still have more to learn
about identifying special needs within children because each child develops at their own pace and I would
need to be sure that I act at the appropriate times to prevent and intervene. The assignments in 421 helped
me get an understanding of how important assessments are in the classroom especially when it comes to
detecting special needs and providing the necessary resources to provide quality care.