Young Children with Special Needs: A Developmentally Appropriate Approach Book

This book takes the approach that children with disabilities are more like their peers without disabilities than they are different and that educators need to provide programming from that perspective. Both pre-service and in-service teachers are facing the reality that their classes will reflect increasingly more diverse children as time goes on. While child diversity in terms of race, culture, religion, experience, family and national origin is, and will always be a part of a class make-up, the practice of inclusion promises to add another level of complexity to teachers' decision making processes. This book is designed to provide readers with the skills and knowledge to make curriculum decisions in order to care for and foster the development of young children with special needs in normal early childhood settings. This book blends the best of early childhood and early childhood special education practices and helps the practitioner understand how to modify the classroom and the curriculum to make them accessible to all children. The focus is on developmentally appropriate practice as the basis for designing programs that enable children to become active participants in the learning process. Chapter One presents three case studies of real children with disabilities. Readers continually re-visit the children as they explore IEP's, IFSP's, formative and summative assessment, room arrangement, curriculum development, and behavior management. Pre-service and in-service early-childhood teachers.Read More