Strategies for Including Children with Special Needs in Early Childhood Settings

"Each of the Read-Reflect-Discuss activities is useful. I can see them being quite useful in prompting class discussion and involving students. The Helpful Resources are also useful and seem to have effective citations and links associated with them." "I think the EESS approach [featured in the text] would be very helpful to my students. It makes accommodating for the needs of children with special needs easier to do and understand. I feel that a lot of students are a little hesitant when it comes to thinking outside the box and coming up with individual and creative ways to accommodate. The EESS approach makes it easy and I think will help students to feel more confident in taking the first step toward coming up with useful, cost-effective, and creative ways of accommodating."

Ruth E. Cook, Ph. D., is a Professor Emeritus of Special Education at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. She is also a licensed Educational Psychologist and School Psychologist. Dr. Cook was formerly the director of two inclusive campus preschool programs; one at Mount Saint Mary's College in Los Angeles and the other at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Currently, she is an instructor in the EPIC (Education Preparation for Inclusive Classrooms) program at the Santa Clara County Office of Education in California, which offers credentials in Early Childhood Special Education and Moderate Severe Disabilities. Anne Marie Richardson- Gibbs, M.A., is an inclusion specialist working with preschoolers, transitional kindergarteners, and kindergarteners with special needs enrolled in typical early childhood programs and elementary schools in El Monte, California. She was a program specialist for the California Department of Education SEEDS Project, providing technical assistance to early intervention and preschool programs throughout the state. She was also the program director of Centro de Nios y Padres, an early intervention program at California State University, Los Angeles, for eight years. During this time, she pioneered a consultant position providing inclusion support for young children with disabilities in inclusive settings. Laurie Nielsen, M.A., is an adjunct faculty of Child Development at Mission College. She was the former Inclusion Training Specialist for Santa Clara County Office of Education in California, providing inclusion coaching and professional development trainings to school districts, preschools, and community agencies. She is an Early Childhood Special Educator and a person living with a disability. (Assistive technology, in the form of a voice-recognition system, was used by the author as an alternative form of writing for many of the updates in this edition.)

Preface.
Part I: SPECIAL EDUCATION FOUNDATIONS: UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL NEEDS AND UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES.
1.The Origin and Dimensions of Quality Inclusion.
2. Instructional Strategies Supporting the Inclusion of Young Children with Special Needs.
3. Adaptations for Children with Specific Disabilities.
4. Arranging the Physical Environment to Support the Inclusion of Children with Special Needs.
5. Preventing and Managing Challenging Behaviors.
6. Monitoring Individual Child Progress.
Part II: ADAPTING DAILY ACTIVITIES IN INCLUSIVE EARLY CHILDHOOD SETTINGS.
7. Managing Arrival, Departure, and Other Transitions.
8. Engaging Children with Special Needs in Free Play.
9. Circle Time, Including Music and Rhythm Activities.
10. Tabletop Activities.
11. Outside Play.
12. Mealtime.
13. Supporting Emergent Literacy in Children with Special Needs.
Part III: WORKING WITH THE COLLABORATIVE TEAM.
14. Communicating and Collaborating with Families.
15. Collaborating with Disability Specialists and Paraprofessionals.
Appendix A: Selected Questions from Commonly Asked Questions about Child Care Centers and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Appendix B: Developmental Skills Chart.
Appendix C: Sample Lesson Plan with Adaptations.
Appendix D: Sample IEP and IEP Summary Form.
Appendix E: Blank Recording Forms.
Glossary.
References.
Index.