At CCMS, our Special Education department focuses on developing students’ knowledge and skills in reading, writing, math, social skills, organization, behavior, life skills, speech and language. We use the Common Core Standards English Language Arts and Mathematics as our curriculum focus. The curriculum resource students use as reference is individual to the needs of each student.

Teachers are constantly reviewing data to identify areas to reteach or differentiate and plan instruction and assessments in Professional Learning Teams during weekly late start professional development.

Student assessments provide students, parents, and teachers information about meeting proficiency standards to chart progress towards high school graduation standards. In our Special Education department, we use work samples, progress monitoring, rating scales, rubrics, performance-based and standardized assessments.

Technology is an important tool in teaching and learning, and we use Google Apps, i-Ready, Quizlet and Kahoot!. Digital citizenship is also important, and we emphasize safe and secure use, care for equipment, appropriate use, etc.

Students are consistently exposed to and expected to develop self-management skills through the use of planners, binders and StudentVue to improve time management, responsibility, and organization.

At CCMS, we believe the purpose of homework should be for students to practice skills, review what they have learned in class, and provide staff, students, and parents/guardians with evidence of individual student progress. The special education department does not assign homework, however we do provide weekly homework support for all student in our specially designed classes.