Building Blocks for Teaching Preschoolers with Special Needs

by Susan R. Sandall, Ilene S. Schwartz, Hsin-Ying Chou

Updated for today's educators—especially those new to inclusion—the second edition of this bestselling guide is the lifeline preschool teachers need to fully include children with disabilities in their classrooms. Easy to use with any existing curriculum, including Creative Curriculum and HighScope, Building Blocks gives educators three types of practical, research-based inclusion strategies that promote progress in critical areas like behavior, emergent literacy, and peer relationships. A must for professional development, this revised edition helps teachers thrive in the era of accountability with NEW material that reflects the six years of changes in early education since the first edition. Teachers will Through clear and instructive vignettes woven throughout the book, teachers will also meet four young children from diverse backgrounds and learn from their teachers' examples of successful interventions. A perfect training tool for teachers and an ideal textbook for college and university courses, this revised bestseller will help today's preschool educators start all their students on the road to lasting school success. Promote inclusion and improve child outcomes through A featured book in our

Genres: Read For School, Nonfiction, Education

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing resource for gen. ed teachers with students with special needs, or sped teachers alike. It has a ton of fantastic forms, strategies and information to use directly in the classroom. This isn't a particularly well covered topic for most books about children with special needs so it was definitely refreshing to have something that was entirely relevant and useable for my classroom.

[Kaia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Includes practical examples and specific methods for designing instruction and solving problems, as well as many forms that teachers can use. A great resource for teachers who work in early childhood.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I read this book was during my undergrad work when I was getting a pseudo double major in regular and special education for early childhood. When my local CESA (who graciously purchased this book for me) said this book was going to be the focus of the next book study I honestly did not remember reading this book until I cracked it open.

The interesting bit with this book is that there is so much valuable stuff in here for new teachers, yet you don’t fully appreciate it until you go out into the field, have your fair share of hard knocks lessons and come back to this book. Reading this book a second time I found myself nodding along and agreeing with it more than I did in college but back then I had little first hand experience with teaching and all the back end policies that go with it.

The organization of the first section is nice and the only thing that truly dings this book in terms of functionality is that you have to make your own digital copies of the forms so you can use them in your classroom over and over again (a process my book study group undertook so yay! I have digital copies of the forms I can’t lose now). The suggested modifications aren’t super in depth but they are practical. However, if you’re looking for something you haven’t tried yet there’s a 50/50 chance the book isn’t going to list off something you or a colleague haven’t thought of yet. Overall it’s a good reference/refresher book. At the very least you need access to the forms and the modification tables available to you if you are a teacher.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Building Blocks for Teaching Preschoolers with Special Needs is an excellent resource book for all preschool classroom educators. Inclusion is now the most common way that we place children with special needs so the classroom teacher, despite experience needs to be supported and find resources to give them information on various disabilities in young children and how to help these children to part of the classroom. At the same time they need to help the rest of the class include children that are different and accept and help them make all children a part of the classroom and individualize instruction to meet the needs of all the children in the classroom. I have found Building Blocks for Teaching Preschoolers with Special Needs to be a great source for idea and information to improve my teaching of all children in my classroom over the years.

[Amber]

1 Copy available