My name is Janna Seifert. I am currently a graduate student at the University of South Carolina working towards a Masters of Arts in Teaching degree in the area of Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities. I thoroughly enjoy the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling and believe that is an extremely effective way to get students with disabilities to enjoy reading. Learning with Harry’s magical world as well as learning about technology simultaneously can be a very productive means of gaining knowledge.

This technology unit on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is based upon South Carolina’s standards for 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grade students in the curriculum areas of language arts, writing, mathematics, and technology. Writing about and discussing Harry’s adventures is a common theme throughout the lessons in the unit. The ideal goal to the conclusion of the unit is for the students to complete a computer-generated report (very short- 3 paragraphs) on Harry Potter and/or on a common theme in the book.

I have chosen to use the standards from the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th grade levels because it is likely that I will have a self-contained classroom of 4^th and 5^th grade elementary students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. Some of the activities will no doubt be challenging for the younger students especially, but the teacher of the unit is able to modify the lessons for students who have greater difficulties. Also, the Lead/Guided Practice section of each lesson is intended to be very thorough so that the students will have sufficient practice with the educator in completing the objective of the lesson. Some of the lessons are longer than others and thus may take several class periods to complete. In the 2^nd lesson, the students will work on copying and pasting materials into a word-processing program, which is essential to the continuance of the unit and thus should be taught meticulously.

Units that use technology as a teaching and learning tool, such as this one, are essential to academic and professional success of students with exceptionalities. Teaching technology skills to these types of students will similarly teach them different strategies for learning and may even help them to succeed more in school. For example, a student who has trouble writing may not have as much difficulty word-processing. Thus, by teaching word processing skills we are also eliminating frustration in the area of writing for that student. This unit is an example of how both literature and writing can be fun through technological applications.