Learning Disabilities: Characteristics, Identification, and Teaching Strategies

Although much has changed in schools in recent years, the power of differentiated instruction remains the same — and the need for it has only increased.

Today’s classroom is more diverse, more inclusive, and more plugged into technology than ever before. And it’s led by teachers under enormous pressure to help decidedly unstandardized students meet an expanding set of rigorous, standardized learning targets. In this updated second edition of her best-selling classic work, Carol Ann Tomlinson offers these teachers a powerful and practical way to meet a challenge that is both very modern and completely timeless: how to divide their time, resources, and efforts to effectively instruct so many students of various backgrounds, readiness and skill levels, and interests.

With a perspective informed by advances in research and deepened by more than 15 years of implementation feedback in all types of schools, Tomlinson explains the theoretical basis of differentiated instruction, explores the variables of curriculum and learning environment, shares dozens of instructional strategies, and then goes inside elementary and secondary classrooms in nearly all subject areas to illustrate how real teachers are applying differentiation principles and strategies to respond to the needs of all learners.

This book’s insightful guidance on what to differentiate, how to differentiate, and why lays the groundwork for bringing differentiated instruction into your own classroom or refining the work you already do to help each of your wonderfully unique learners move toward greater knowledge, more advanced skills, and expanded understanding. Today more than ever, The Differentiated Classroom is a must-have staple for every teacher’s shelf and every school’s professional development collection.

Organized according to the sequence mental health professionals follow when conducting an assessment, Groth-Marnat’s Handbook of Psychological Assessment, Sixth Edition covers principles of assessment, evaluation, referral, treatment planning, and report writing. Written in a practical, skills-based manner, the Sixth Edition provides guidance on the most efficient methods for selecting and administering tests, interpreting assessment data, how to integrate test scores and develop treatment plans as well as instruction on ways to write effective, client-oriented psychological reports.

This text provides through coverage of the most commonly used assessment instruments including the Wechsler Intelligence Scales, Wechsler Memory Scales, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Personality Assessment Inventory, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, NEO Personality, Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and brief assessment instruments for treatment planning, monitoring, and outcome assessment.

Until the 1960s a learning disability was a hidden handicap wearing many guises and treated ineffectively. Today, shows the author, founder of the unique Lab School in Washington, D.C., and herself the parent of a learning-disabled child, there is growing evidence that such difficulties can be either overcome or modified by teaching strategies that address the student’s specific strengths. The stories of adults—some of them celebrities like Cher, who suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia—who coped with learning problems throughout their school days illustrate the depths of the disability said to afflict more than 25 million Americans. Distilling her experiences with learning-disabled students, their parents and teachers, Smith demonstrates that a variety of approaches to learning can yield later career success, thus offering hope to children and adults so burdened.

The Achievement Test Desk Reference is the first book to link the practice of academic and learning disability assessment within the context of a broad-based psychoeducational evaluation process that is grounded in the widely accepted and well-validated CHC theory. The completely revised Second Edition includes detailed descriptions and critical reviews of more than 50 published achievement tests and features a comprehensive, innovative framework for evaluating learning disabilities.

Written by leading special education researchers with the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities and the University of Kansas, this comprehensive yet accessible reference provides administrators with practical guidelines for launching RTI in their schools. Highlighting the powerful role that RTI can play in prevention, early intervention, and determining eligibility for special services, the authors cover the three tiers of RTI, schoolwide screening, progress monitoring, and changes in school structures and individual staff roles.

Hallahan and Kauffman continue their tradition of presenting the latest trends and issues in this edition with over 400 new reference citations dated 2000 and after. Theory and research is presented in clear and concise language, and practical teaching suggestions are based on sound research. There are good reasons why Hallahan and Kauffman has been the best-selling introductory book in special education for generations of general education and special education teachers. Depth, lucidity, clarity, and coherence combine to make a text appropriate for readers at all levels: graduate and undergraduate, from introductory to advanced. Hallahan and Kauffman bring readers information they can trust. For anyone interested in education, specifically special education and human exceptionality.