Tag Archives: education

Language and Literacy Development for Deaf Students

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The difficulty that deaf and hard of hearing students have in attaining language and literacy skills has led to postulations that attribute their struggle to a development deficit. Recent research reveals, however, that deaf students acquire language structures, produce errors, and employ strategies in the same fashion as younger hearing students, though at later ages. The ability of all students to learn language and literacy skills in a similar manner at different stages forms the foundation of the Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis (QSH).

This volume describes the theoretical underpinnings and research findings of the Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis. It presents the educational implications for deaf and hard of hearing children and offers reason-based practices for improving their English language and literacy development. This collection also stresses the critical importance of exposing educators to the larger fields of literacy and second-language learning. Providing this background information expands the possibility of differentiating instruction to meet the needs of deaf students. 

Tips and Strategies for New and Experienced Teachers

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Designed for professionals working in a resource room, self-contained special education classroom, or inclusive setting, this step-by-step guide helps new teachers in special education get their careers off to the right start and offers experienced teachers supportive information to help improve classroom practice.

Experts Roget Pierangelo and George Giuliani review all aspects of special education teaching, from how to get to know your students before school starts to writing end-of-the-year reports. Aligned with the reauthorization of IDEA 2004, this guidebook provides practical guidelines for appropriate classroom design, includes a complete glossary, and examines critical issues such as

      • Gathering information on students’ educational and medical backgrounds and Individual Educational Programs (IEPs)
      • Meeting with parents, aides, mainstream teachers, and service providers
      • Addressing and evaluating factors that affect learner’s performance and adapting the curriculum
      • Managing a classroom of students with specific disabilities and applying instructional interventions
      • Understanding grading options

Unleash the Science of Learning

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Powerful Teaching, written by a noted cognitive scientist and a veteran classroom teacher, offers evidence-based recommendations that can be implemented in less than a minute without additional prep time or grading. Decades of research demonstrate that these few powerful—yet intuitive—strategies dramatically raise student achievement.

Readers will learn how to harness four dynamic “Power tools”:

    • Retrieval Practice: Boost learning by pulling information out of students’ heads, rather than focusing on getting information into students’ heads
    • Spaced Practice: Boost learning by spreading lessons and retrieval opportunities our over time so learning isn’t crammed all at once
    • Interleaving: Boost learning by mixing up closely related topics and encouraging students to discriminate between key concepts
    • Feedback-Driven Metacognition: Boost learning by providing students with the opportunity to know what they know and know what they don’t know

Powerful Teaching provides the rare opportunity to adapt the science of learning for diverse students, parents, and professional development programs. With this interactive guide, think critically about teaching from a research-based perspective and transform learning in your classroom.

Multicultural Approach to Education

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Michael Vavrus helps readers better understand why issues of diversity and difference are so highly contested in the United States and across the globe. Vavrus incorporates specific education examples throughout the text to examine six contested areas: race and ethnicity; socioeconomic class and culture; multicultural and ethnic studies; language; religion; and sexuality and gender. In each of these areas, the author explores how contrasting worldviews found in social conservatism, liberal multiculturalism, and critical multiculturalism influence our understandings about difference and diversity and the educational policies we develop as a result. Diversity and Education is designed to help educators move beyond the “how can they believe that?” knee-jerk reaction toward a more informed, strategic understanding of belief systems and political affiliations. 

Educating the Blind/Visually Impaired Students

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“Making It Work is destined to be the definitive guide for years to come on how to make the regular school education a successful experience for blind/visually impaired children. With chapters flowing logically and full of detailed, useful information, it will be an essential handbook for school staff, specialized service providers, and parents of blind/visually impaired children. This is an exquisite, enlightened guide for the education of blind/visually impaired children in the new millennium.” Joe Cutter, Early Childhood O&M Specialist

Improve Student Behavior and Achievement

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In Designing Effective Classroom Management, Jason E. Harlacher gives teachers and school administrators a research-based look at instructional strategies that can improve student behaviour and achievement in the classroom. Harlacher presents a step-by-step, practical guide to proactive classroom management, specifying five components to help enhance student achievement and decrease classroom problems. Each chapter details a different necessary component of the proactive approach to classroom management.

Part of The Classroom Strategies Series, this clear, highly practical guide follows the series format, first summarizing key research and then translating it into recommendations for classroom practices.

The Social-Emotional Learning Approach Children Deserve

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“I’ll show you detailed strategies that prevent and minimize difficulties with students, so you can focus on constructive action that will have a lasting, positive impact.” Gianna Cassetta

Positive, supportive relationships with children help them develop socially and emotionally and helps you to effectively manage your classroom, Gianna Cassetta states. Her approach creates a positive environment that can actually be planned, taught, and supported from the first day of school—or anytime.

Classroom Management Matters shifts you away from draining rewards-and-consequences systems. Instead of tips and techniques for controlling the uncontrollable, Gianna presents a plan for explicitly teaching children how to be effective learners and accountable members of the classroom.

With reflection questions, classroom examples, and summaries of supporting studies from researcher Brook Sawyer, Classroom Management Matters helps you be a learning leader in the classroom instead of an authority.

Learning and Growth of Students Themselves

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Teacher research is an extension of good teaching, observing students closely, analyzing their needs, and adjusting the curriculum to fit the needs of all. In this completely updated second edition of their definitive work, Ruth Shagoury and Brenda Miller Power present a framework for teacher research along with an extensive collection of narratives from teachers engaged in the process of designing and carrying out research projects to inform their instruction.

This edition includes a greater variety of short contributions from a wide range of teacher-researchers—novices and veterans from all backgrounds and parts of the country—who speak to the growing diversity in today’s classrooms. Threaded throughout the chapters and narratives is a discussion of the emergence of digital tools and their effect on both teaching and the research process, along with an expanded number of reacher designs.

Living the Questions: A Guide for Teacher-Researchers will take you step-by-step through the process of designing, implementing, and publishing your research. Along the way, it will introduce you to dozens of kindred spirits who are finding a new passion for teaching by “living the questions” every day in their classrooms. You will be reminded of why you became a teacher yourself.

Academic Literacy in the Social Sciences

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Academic Literacy in the Social Sciences is an indispensable resource designed to help students succeed in academic contexts. Highly engaging and brimming with practical tools, this comprehensive how-to guide uses evidence-based studying and research strategies to help students better understand and critically evaluate social science research in a world of mass media and misinformation. Vital discussions on issues such as evaluating junk science and fake news help students further navigate the contemporary academic classroom. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the social sciences, the complete introduction to academic literacy includes the following features:

APA Guide and Examples – how to cite research and understand (and avoid) plagiarism

Study Tips – how to save time and develop more effective studying strategies based on the latest research

Practical Advice – how to develop a topic for a research paper, conduct a thorough literature search, effectively summarize information, and successfully present findings

The Brain is not an Attic, much to Sherlock’s chagrin

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From the moment we enter school as children, we are made to feel as if our brains are fixed entities, capable of learning certain things and not others, influenced exclusively by genetics. This notion follows us into adulthood, where we tend to simply accept these established beliefs about our skill sets. These damaging—and as new science has revealed, false—assumptions have influenced all of us at some time, affecting our confidence and willingness to try new things and limiting our choices, and, ultimately, our futures. Jo Boaler has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education. In Limitless Mind, she explodes these myths and reveals the six keys to unlocking our boundless learning potential. Her research proves that those who achieve at the highest levels do not do so because of a genetic inclination toward any one skill but because of the kyes that she reveals in this book. Our brains are not “fixed,” but entirely capable of change, growth, adaptability, and rewiring. The truth is anyone at any age can learn anything, and the act of learning itself fundamentally changes who we are, and what we go on to achieve.