Special Needs Advocacy Resource Book

The child with a nonverbal learning disability presents a puzzling and challenging profile to teachers, therapists, and parents. This resource translates the research into an understandable manual for the identification and treatment of children and youth with nonverbal learning disorders.

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.

Cutting edge scientific research has shown that exposure to the right kind of environment during the first years of life actually affects the physical structure of a child’s brain, vastly increasing the number of neuron branches—the “magic trees of the mind”—that help us to learn, think, and remember.

This revised and expanded edition of To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled offers up-to-date information on identifying and meeting the needs of gifted and learning disabled (GLD) youngsters. Part I discusses the patterns of accomplishments and failures that many GLD students present as well as identification and diagnosis issues. Part II explores the contemporary psychological theory and research that guides educational applications for GLD students. And Part III offers practical strategies for teaching GLD students and helping them plan and explore options for their future. Three new chapters in this resource cover self regulation, developing comprehensive IEPs for GLD students, and the roles parents and counselors can play in meeting the social and emotional needs of GLD students.

Written for educators who work with special children and teens, this second edition of a best-selling classic offers a practical guide to every facet of the special education teacher’s job, from teaching in a self-contained classroom or resource room to serving on a multidisciplinary team. This easy-to-follow format, takes you step by step through the various stages required to understand the referral process, parent intakes and conferences, evaluation, interpretation, diagnosis, remediation, placement, individual education plans, classroom management, medication, educational law, and more.

This 2007 book covers key legal topics — Who is a person with a disability under the ADA and Rehabilitation Act? What accommodations are required? What documentation is necessary? How do the ADA and RA apply in higher education and in the workplace? What are the courts deciding? What about state law? How to advocate for your position?