Negotiating the Special Education Maze

Kinneret feels terrible-she can’t concentrate in class, she’s having nightmares, and her teachers think she is lazy. She fantasizes that a big, white bird will come and carry her away from all of her troubles. Fifth-grade brings someone else to help her, though - a new special education teacher who recognizes that Kinneret is neither lazy nor irresponsible.

This important resource is an update of the best-selling book The Special Educator’s Resource Guide to 109 Diagnostic Tests. The greatly expanded second edition contains 301 new and enhanced tests, which are vital to understanding assessment in special education. Designed as an easy-to-use, hands-on resource, the book is filled with practical tools, information, and suggestions. Step-by-step, this practical guide explores the various stages of evaluation, interpretation, diagnosis, prescription, and remediation.

This book is an engaging, reader-friendly work which guides parents through the formative years of a child’s life. This well-regarded book is now available in paperback, newly revised to reflect the most recent studies. The new edition features information from the latest research, including traumatic events in the news, television and learning skills, physical activity, and temperament.

With a specific focus on the brain, the book takes the reader through specific phases of child development beginning with Life in the Womb an going through the first six years of life. Each chapter ends with a section “To Think About,” addressing such practical matters as good-night rituals, reading books together and coping with conflict.

“Bad” Helen is in trouble. If she can’t improve her reading skills, she will be stuck in the sixth grade forever! An ace baseball pitcher and class clown, Helen must now face the fact that reading is not one of her skills. With the help of a sympathetic teacher, Helen decides to brave her classmates’ teasing and enter a special education class.

Research shows that if these children do not “close the gap” before they finish third grade, they are likely to remain functionally illiterate throughout their lives. See Johnny Read! is the first book to offer practical, proven, and timely ways for parents to help their boys with this critical skill. Written by an expert teacher and educational consultant, this much-needed book answers essential questions, including: When does a reading delay become a reading problem? How, when, and where should I look for tutoring? How can I get the best help from the school? How can my son avoid (or overcome) the “Bad Boy” label? How can I help my son learn to read — and enjoy reading — at home?

How and when does a child begin to make sense of the world? Why does a lively preschool child so often become a semiliterate and defeated school failure?

Developmental psychologist Margaret Donaldson shows that much of the intellectual framework on which we base our teaching is misleading. We both underestimate the astonishing rational powers of young children and ignore the major stumbling block that children face when starting school.

Given a setting and a language that makes sense to them in human terms, very young children can perform tasks often thought to be beyond them. The preschool child learns everything in a human situation. Only in school is he asked to acquire skills―reading, writing, arithmetic―isolated from a real-life context. This transition is difficult.

The author suggests a range of strategies that parents and schools can adopt to help children. She argues that reading is even more important than we have thought it to be, since learning to read can actually speed children through the crucial transition.