As educators, it is important to remember that parents/guardians may not have prior knowledge about learning disabilities, their risk factors, or early intervention strategies for exceptionalities in children of various ages. Additionally, parents/guardians may not understand how specific learning disabilities affect students in educational settings as well as everyday life. As educators, we can communicate and collaborate with parents/guardians to provide information and resources that help them understand learning disabilities, define the roles of the state, school, and the parents/guardians in accessing and providing intervention services, and navigate the acquisition of information and support agencies and services provided to students with disabilities.

Consider students in the grade level that is the focus of your field of study. Select a specific disability category (intellectual disability, specific learning disability, emotional behavior disorders, autism spectrum disorder, traumatic brain injury, or orthopedic impairment).

Create a 250-500 word digital brochure that could be given to families and provide information about services and supports for individuals with disabilities.

The brochure should include the following:

• Short rationale explaining how you will use the brochure to communicate with parents/guardians and establish mutual expectations to help you work collaboratively to support child development and achievement.
• Short definition and explanation of the disability category including the developmental and individual differences typically associated with the disability category.
• Three developmentally appropriate, specially designed instructional strategies that can be used to address the educational needs of students with this disability.
• Three intervention strategies families can implement at home to promote communication skills, social skills, and literacy skills in their children affected by the chosen disability.
• Three communication/collaboration strategies that can be employed by the state, school, service providers, and parents/guardians to implement intervention services to support student achievement and development.
• Recommend local organizations families could use to learn more about the disability and community services that might be available to them. Provide contact information for the organizations and services.

Support the assignment with a minimum of three scholarly resources.

Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection—that is, the intentional attempt to synthesise, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.
(Di Stefano 2014)

In this assignment you are asked to reflect in more detail on your experience during this unit, the theories and practices you have learnt, and how this influenced your professional and personal development.

Consider the following points to get you started:

• How have your Future Work Skills developed as part of your experiences in this unit as a consumer, producer and sharer of online sources of information? Provide examples from your experiences in this unit to demonstrate.
• How has the development of an informational resource (your PowerPoint or video), or your work in the discussion board, helped you understand how to evaluate the credibility of online sources in an academic environment?
• Your progress towards your unit and course goals, as well as the factors which have helped and/or hindered this progress.
• What are the implications for your future endeavours (both academic and in your career)?

Use relevant literature from various sources to back up your writing.

Related learning outcome

This assignment assesses the following unit learning outcome:

4. Reflect on self as a learner.

Please note: COM10003 uses both Swinburne Harvard and APA referencing style. Please use the appropriate style for your discipline. Contact your eLA if you are unsure which style you should use.

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Work through the following steps to complete this assignment:

1. Reflect on the development of your Future Work Skills. Reflect on how your awareness of the online environment has changed.
2. Reflect on how the learning in this unit may positively affect your work in other units during the life of your course as well as in any future workplaces.
3. Don’t forget to include an introduction and conclusion.
4. Find relevant sources to back up your arguments, citing these within the body of your reflection and including a full Swinburne Harvard or APA reference list (not included in word count).
5. Compile and edit your reflection in a single Word document and submit as below.

The ideas that you generate as part of this process will help prepare your draft.

The following structure may help you to organise your work. Word counts for each section are approximate (as long as the total word count is between 1350 and 1650 words).

• Introduction (150 words).
• Main Point 1: How one to two of my Future Work Skills have developed since the beginning of the teaching period, the experiences and concepts that have helped and hindered this progress, and how this learning will impact my future studies and career (300 words and two paragraphs).
• Main Point 2: How my ‘current knowledge of the online environment’ section has developed since the beginning of the teaching period, the experiences and ideas from sources that have helped or hindered this progress, and how what I have learnt about myself as a learner as part of this experience will impact my future studies and career (300 words and two paragraphs).
• Main Point 3: My progress towards one to two of my unit goals, the experiences and ideas from sources that have helped or hindered this progress, and how achieving these unit goals will impact my future studies and career (300 words and two paragraphs).
• Main Point 4: My progress towards one to two of my course goals, the experiences and ideas from sources that have helped or hindered this progress, and how achieving these unit goals will impact my future studies and career (300 words and two paragraphs).
• Conclusion (150 words).

There is flexibility in how the information is sequenced, provided that essay-writing conventions are followed, the key points are covered and that the word count requirements are addressed.

Remember to draw on themes and readings from this unit to help support your ideas. Use Metzger’s criteria when selecting sources.