Expanded Core Curriculum Assessment

The Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) is the body of knowledge and skills that are needed by students with visual impairments due to their unique disability-specific needs. Students with visual impairments need the expanded core curriculum in addition to the core academic curriculum of general education. The ECC should be used as a framework for assessing students, planning individual goals and providing instruction. (The Expanded Core Curriculum, Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired)

Because of their developmental levels (48 months and lower) many teachers of students with visual impairments find it challenging to assess and to see that instruction is provided in the ECC. Active Learning approach and the Functional Scheme assessment are great tools to address this challenge. Remember at these early developmental levels children are building foundational concepts and skills that will be necessary for any learning or activity that follows as they develop.

Nine Areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum

There are nine Expanded Core Curriculum areas which include:

Nine Areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum for Visually Impaired

There are nine Expanded Core Curriculum areas for students who are visually impaired which include:

    1. Activities of Daily Living or Independent Living: the tasks and functions people perform in daily life to increase their independence and contribute to the family structure and include personal hygiene, eating skills, food preparation, time and money management, clothing care, and household tasks.
    2. Assistive Technology: can include electronic equipment such as switches, mobile devices, and portable notetakers; computer access such as magnification software, screen readers, and keyboarding; and low-tech devices such as an abacus, a brailler, Active Learning materials and equipment (e.g., Little Room®), and optical devices.
    3. Compensatory Skills: include skills necessary for accessing the core curriculum including concept development; communication modes; organization and study skills; access to print materials; and the use of braille/Nemeth, tactile graphics, object and/or tactile symbols, sign language, and audio materials.
    4. Career Education: information about jobs, assuming responsibility, punctuality, and staying on task.
    5. Orientation and Mobility: enables students of all ages and motor abilities to be oriented to their surroundings and to move as independently and safely as possible, learn about themselves and their environments and incorporate skills such as basic body image, spatial relationships, and purposeful movement.
    6. Recreation and Leisure: have opportunities to explore, experience, and choose physical and leisure-time activities, both organized and individual.
    7. Sensory Efficiency: includes learning to use vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste efficiently; addresses the development of the proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and vestibular systems.
    8. Self-Determination:  includes choice-making, decision-making, problem solving, personal advocacy, assertiveness, and goal setting.
    9. Social Skills: awareness of body language, gestures, facial expressions, and personal space and learning about interpersonal relationships, self-control, and human sexuality.

Understanding the Expanded Core CurriculumPerkins School for the Blind

Eight Areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum for Students who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing

The ECC areas for students who are deaf or hard of hearing include:

    1. Audiology: Understanding hearing loss, amplification management, and managing the environment to improve auditory and visual information.
    2. Career Education: Career exploration and planning, occupational skills training, soft skills training (use of interpreters, interviewing, etc.), job seeking skills and money management. 
    3. Communication: American Sign Language development
    4. Communication: Auditory and speech skills development
    5. Communication: Expressive and receptive communication skills development
    6. Functional Skills for Educational Success: Concept development, reading comprehension, and study and organizational skills
    7. Self-Determination and Advocacy: Self-determination skills, community advocacy, community resources and supports, cultural awareness (deaf and other), and using interpreters and transliterators.
    8. Social-Emotional Skills: Self-awareness (personal qualities), self-management, support networks, personal responsibility, decision making, social awareness, social interaction including conversation skills, and conflict resolution. 
    9. Technology: skills necessary to access technology.

The Expanded Core Curriculum For Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
Iowa Department of Education, Bureau of Student Family Support Services

The Functional Scheme assessment tool can be very useful in evaluating or assessing skills related to the Expanded Core Curriculum.  Below is a chart showing which parts of the Functional Scheme might be useful in evaluation for the Expanded Core Curriculum and to help guide the development of goals and objectives for the ECC.

General  Area of KnowledgeExpanded Core Curriculum AreaFunctional Scheme
  • Self-concept, emotional skills
    • Social Interaction
    • Self-Determination
    • Social Perception
    • Emotional Perception
  • Fine, gross motor skills (especially use of hands, arms, legs, feet, mouth and body awareness)
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Orientation & Mobility
    • Recreation & Leisure
    • Independent Living
    • Gross Movement
    • Fine Movement
  • Foundational concepts related to all subject areas – object properties (size, shape, density, temperature, flexibility, color, weight, height, texture), functions
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Orientation & Mobility
    • Recreation & Leisure
    • Independent Living
    • Functional Skills for Educational Success
    • Language non-verbal, verbal, comprehension
    • Play and Activities
  • Receptive, expressive communication (speech, signs, symbols, print, braille, pictures, drawing), literacy, writing
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Auditory Perception
  • Audition – recognize, identify, localize sounds
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Sensory Efficiency
    • Orientation & Mobility
    • Audiology
    • Auditory Perception
  • Tactile exploration (including oral motor) and use of tactile sense
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Sensory Efficiency
    • Orientation & Mobility
    • Haptic-tactile Perception
  • Vision – perceive, locate, identify and track objects, people
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Sensory Efficiency
    • Orientation & Mobility
    • Visual Perception
  • Oral motor (related to speech and eating)
    • Independent Living
    • Compensatory Skills
    • Haptic-tactile Perception
    • Smell and Taste
    • Mouth Movement
  • Life Skills (related to being able to live independently)
    • Independent Living
    • Toileting Skills
    • Undressing & Dressing Skills
    • Personal Hygiene
    • Eating Skills