Resources for Educating Children with Diverse Abilities

Resources for Educating Children with Diverse Abilities by Deiner, Penny. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781401858162.

The strength of this text is that it is a resource for students. It has something for now and something to come back to. Teachers today may have a child with cp included in their class this year and next year a child with ADHD. They may be asked to help in the diagnostic process of a child with a learning disability. They have to be prepared to do all of this. There are entire books written on these topics that have greater depth in each one area than this book. However, this book will give them the foundation to include these children while they make themselves experts in the area they need. There are few specialists in special education any more. We must all be special generalists. The demands of the field require that we can plan for and teach children with and without diver abilities in the same classroom. This book provides the coverage of disabilities that is as extensive as many Introduction to Special Education courses but it does not stop there. It takes that information and helps students apply this information through guidelines, vignettes, and program planning. It helps students move from identifying the annual goals for a child to embedding these goals in the regular classroom routine. It connects the knowledge to the practice. It is set up to provide information and then to ask "So what"? (Implications for Educators, in text) to make the obvious point of what you do with this information. It is current and responsive to the changing population in early childhood. As a textbook it may look large but it is designed to carry student through their first year of teaching. It is a reference and a resource.