Universal Design for Learning

This practical guidebook shows elementary school teachers how to make this systematic instruction part of their classroom. Educators will find a wide range of specific strategies.

As a teacher in a typical classroom, there are two things you know for sure: Your student… and you’re responsible for helping every one attain the same high standards. This book is the first comprehensive presentation of the principles and applications of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) — a practical, research-based framework for responding to individual learning differences and a blueprint for the modern redesign of education.

Here is a model of reading ideal for striving readers, focused on their personal interests, topic-specific reading, deep background knowledge, contextual reading strategies, and mentoring support. More important, the model moves away from a deficit approach to conceptualize striving readers in a new way. Chapters share success stories of readers who overcome their struggles and highlight instructional strategies and materials you can use to develop activities and lessons for children and adults. Use this research-based model in the classroom or at home to help your striving readers achieve high levels of literacy.

Life is good for Jenna Bianchi. She’s just started her second year of teaching English at Morrison High School, a job she loves. She has a pet parrot with attitude. And there’s a handsome math teacher who wants to be more than just friends. But everything changes when a defiant, disruptive tenth grader walks into her classroom.

With a smart mouth and a swagger to match, Michael Tayler is a problem for Jenna from the very first day. His school record screams troublemaker, and Jenna wonders if the new year is already doomed. But when she reads Michael’s first poetry assignment, she recognizes it for what it truly is: a cry for help.

Michael’s presence sets into motion a chain of events that turns Jenna’s perfect life upside-down and threatens to destroy her career. Faced with a challenge unlike anything she’s ever known, Jenna commits to doing what no one has done for Michael Tayler before.

The third edition of this classic resource is a comprehensive source of information, strategies, and activities for working with learning disabled students. The book offers special educators, classroom teachers, and parents a wealth of new and proven suggestions and ready-to-use materials for helping LD students of all ages learn and perform at their fullest potential.

The LD Teacher’s IDEA Companion Grades 6-12 is designed to help you translate the impact of IDEA into how you work with the students, their parents, regular educators, and the general curriculum itself. This book provides materials that correspond to the major IEP changes resulting from the reauthorization of IDEA.