Starting with Their Strengths

P/B • 176 pages
ISBN 9780807752340

This book provides a comprehensive and practical guide to using the project approach when teaching young children with special needs. While focusing on children’s individual strengths, which include their interests, intelligences, and unique styles of learning, this resource demonstrates teaching strategies that address multiple areas of development. Using scenarios from their own practice, the authors examine the process of accessing children’s strengths to facilitate social, emotional, cognitive, and motor development, including concepts and skills. The authors provide tools to determine, organise, and plan with children’s strengths and demonstrate the use of documentation as an authentic assessment of children’s skills and goals. Teachers will use this book to create learning environments that enrich learning for all children.

Book Features:

• Classroom vignettes that demonstrate the project approach in action.
• Examples of children’s work and photos of projects.
• Approaches to both determine the sources of behaviour challenges and support positive behaviour.
  Sample lesson plans that reflect children’s interests and developmental needs.
• Forms for data collection, communicating with parents, identifying sensory challenges, behaviour analysis, and more.
• A strength-based Individualized Education Plan (IEP) guide.

Contents:

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Using Children’s Strengths to Create Invested and Curious Preschool Learners

Chapter 1:  Imagining the Possibilities of Strengths-Based Learning
Wesley’s Story
Using Strengths to Promote Development
Social-Emotional Development
Embracing Risks: Adopting the Project Approach
Following Children’s Interests: Mallory’s Story
An Interest-Based Project: Is Miss Stephanie a Pirate?
Summary

Chapter 2:  Identifying Each Child’s Strengths
Scheduling Time to Learn About Each Child
Strategies for Learning from Families
Learning from the Collaborative Team
Creating Systems of Information
Oh! What an Empty Bulletin Board Will Inspire
Summary

Chapter3: Getting Started: The Vital Role of Observation and Documentation
Learning About the Children: Observe, Observe, Observe
Supporting the Process of Observation
From Observation to Documentation
Use of Documentation to Determine Skills and Concept Knowledge
Observing to Document Social/Emotional and Adaptive Abilities
Summary

Chapter 4: Developing Play and Social Skills Through Emotional Regulation
Supporting Emotional Regulation
Creating an Environment of Emotional Connectedness
Summary