Response to Intervention: A Practical Guide for Every Teacher

This book helps school-based practitioners develop a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation for a child. The book has: a) a clear framework for assessment and evidence-based intervention planning under the revised IDEA guidelines; b) empirically supported treatments for each problem; and c) discussion practical issues involved in Response to Intervention models. LD is discussed as an administrative rather than clinical category. Conditions are described that often result in referrals for learning disabilities. A step-by-step flow chart and 12 detailed case studies explain patterns that identify specific learning problems related to IQ, information processing, and classroom performance.

Approaching literacy development as a complex process that unfolds over time, this book gives educators the guidance they need to help students continuously advance and deepen their reading skills — not just in the early grades, but into the upper grades as well. All the suggested ideas and approaches are evidence-based or identified as best practices in reading, so educators can use them with confidence in their classrooms. Equally effective as a text for preservice educators, a manual for in-service teachers, and a resource for administrators wrestling with different approaches to reading instruction, this in-depth, accessible book will lead to sharper skills and better outcomes for a wide range of struggling learners.

This book provides an understanding not only of dyslexia but also of the broader population of weaker readers and presents information on how to help them. Understanding Dyslexia and the Reading Process presents dyslexia against a background of normal reading development, and in the context of child development, taking into account multiple factors that affect how well a child overcomes or compensates for dyslexia. Case examples are presented throughout to illustrate specific skill weaknesses. Dyslexia research provides considerable knowledge about how to help all children who do not learn to read on schedule. The final two chapters of the book deal with the history and nature of reading instruction, and how we can improve the teaching of reading in our schools. For anyone interested in reading development.

This book uses the Building Blocks model. The Building Blocks model is practical, supported by research, and easy to implement. It identifies ten areas important to school success (the building blocks), divided into three levels:

1. the foundational level includes attention and impulse control, emotion and behavior, self-esteem, and learning environment blocks
2. the symbolic processing and memory level contains the visual, auditory, and motor skills blocks
3. the conceptual level comprises using strategies and thinking with language and images

Dale Borman Fink, the author of the only book on inclusion of youth with special needs in after school child care, now presents the first book to examine the experiences of children with disabilities participating in youth programs alongside their typical peers. Using a case study technique, he probes into the issues and dynamics that influence the increasing participation of kids with disabilities in such activities as Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and park and recreation programs.

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.