Linda K. Elksnin and Nick Elksnin

Teaching Social–Emotional Skills at School and Home is designed to provide teachers and parents with strategies for teaching children and youth to become socially and emotionally competent.

This book is research-based yet practical and easy to read. The authors examine all aspects of social–emotional learning, including emotional literacy, social problem solving, and the social skills essential for making friends and succeeding in school—making this text the most comprehensive available.

Readers will learn how to teach social–emotional skills at the individual, classroom, schoolwide, and districtwide levels by integrating instruction within the academic curriculum and how to make social–emotional learning part of school and family life.

Special Features

• Includes assessment approaches to identify children who need social–emotional skills instruction
• Contains practical activities to help children of all ages understand and regulate emotions, make and keep friends, solve social problems, and succeed in school
• Addresses the importance of social–emotional skills for gaining and maintaining employment
• Incorporates real-life vignettes that connect theory and practice
• Provides numerous useful forms, checklists, and planning sheets

Contents

1. The Importance of Social–Emotional Competence
2. Identifying Children and Youth Who Need Social–Emotional Skills Instruction
3. Teaching Children and Youth to Understand and Regulate Emotions
4. Teaching Children and Youth Social–Emotional Problem-Solving Strategies
5. Teaching Children and Youth Peer-Pleasing Social–Emotional Skills
6. Teaching Children and Youth Teacher-Pleasing Social–Emotional Skills
7. Teaching Occupational Social–Emotional Skills
8. Parents as Teachers
9. Getting Children and Youth to Use Social–Emotional Skills

Appendix A: Books for Parents, Children & Youth, and Teachers & Administrators

Appendix B: Children’s Books Chosen by Children

0603/352 pages/2006
Paperback
ISBN 978-0-89108-316-0
$60.00

This is an excellent book that addresses the policy shift in special education from procedural compliance to standards-based accountability and the changing conditions of practice under reform. It covers the major problems of implementing reform and presents several practices and models to improve the conditions of special education practice.

The authors support a collaborative environment for service delivery and inclusive work atmospheres with research-based instructional practices. The book gives prevention and intervention strategies including specific reading, writing, and mathematics instructional techniques. Other topics include transition, self-determination, school violence, health needs, and literacy instruction for Latino students.

The focus in the last part of the book is oriented to human needs and opportunities that will shape special education practice in the future including individual and environmental conditions. These include welfare of children working across social contexts and providing a planning framework for achieving integrated services.

Special Features

• Clear explanation of policy shifts from procedural compliance with federal and state law to academic performance of students with disabilities
• Recommends strategies for improving academic learning for students with disabilities
• Considers human needs and environmental conditions that contribute to educational achievement of children
• Provides an action-oriented planning framework for achieving integrated services

Contents

1. The Context of Special Education Practice Today

Part One: Standards-Based Reform and the Conditions of Practice

2. The IDEA Amendments of 1997 and the Conditions of Practice

3. Standards-Based Reform and Students with Disabilities

4. To Ensure the Learning of Every Child with a Disability

5. Special Education Teacher Supply and Teacher Quality

6. Access of Adolescents with Disabilities to General Education Curriculum

7. Supporting Beginning Special Education Teachers

8. Collaboration to Support Students’ Success

9. Students with Disabilities and Paraprofessional Supports

Part Two: Prevention and Intervention Strategies

10. Crossing Boundaries:What Constructivists Can Teach Intensive-Explicit Instructors and Vice Versa

11. Balanced Literacy Instruction

12. Self-Regulated Strategy Development in the Classroom: A Balanced Approach to Writing Instruction for Students with Disabilities

13. Balanced Perspectives on Mathematics Instruction

14. Searching for the Best Model for Instructing Students with Learning Disabilities

15. Fostering the Literacy Development of Latino Students

16. Post-Secondary Education and Transition Services for Students Ages 8–21 with Significant Disabilities

17. Self-Determination and Quality of Life

18. Supporting Students with Health Needs in Schools

19. School Violence and Disruption

Part Three: Risk, School, and Society

20. Risk, Families, and Schools

21. Integrating Services, Collaborating, and Developing Connections with Schools

592 pages
2004
Paperback/ISBN 0-89108-310-3
$72.00

This comprehensive text establishes an exciting curriculum design model that caters to the unique needs of the gifted learner. While giving careful consideration to the current climate of educational reform, the text is able to preserve and enhance the invaluable enterprise of gifted education.

The author’s extensive experience in the field of gifted education makes this text an invaluable resource for students and teachers alike. Ambitious and impressive in scope, the text gives thorough attention to crucial issues such as effective curriculum delivery, implementation strategies, and learner-outcome assessment.

Special Features

• Provides a comprehensive framework for curriculum planning
• Designs an effective planning model for instruction
• Outlines specific instructional strategies and curriculum units
• Presents guidelines for learning assessment and curriculum evaluation

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Research on Curriculum Models in Gifted Education
3. Standards of Learning and Gifted Documents
4. Developing System-Wide Curriculum Documents
5. The Nature of Curriculum Needs of Gifted Learners
6. Developing a Philosophy and Goals for a Gifted Program
7. Developing Learner Outcomes
8. Designing Activities and Selecting Resources
9. Selecting Instructional Strategies
10. Employing Appropriate Curriculum Management Strategies
11. Implementing Curricula for the Gifted
12. Assessment of Learning and Evaluation of Curriculum
13. Toward Coherent Curriculum Policy in Gifted Education
Appendix: Sample Curriculum Units

360 pages
2003/paperback/ISBN 978-0-89108-292-7
$62.00

This book is designed to show how to create specialized instruction based on the individualized needs of students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The book demonstrates throughout how to plan a curriculum based on a diagnostic prescriptive approach.

The authors stress that teachers must know as much as possible about each student. This includes strengths, deficits, interests, and behavioral functions. Teachers can then plan an appropriate program based on effective, direct instructional approaches.

Special Features

• Shows both social and academic interventions
• Includes ideas for becoming partners with community agencies
• Gives techniques for planning communication with parents
• Helps teachers to plan engaged time in learning activities

Contents

1. The Teacher as a Catalyst for Change
2. Assumptions Underlying Quality Educational Programming
3. Life Skills and Transition to Adulthood
4. Role of the IEP in Education of Students With E/BD
5. Meaningful and Relevant Curriculum
6. The Central Role of Teaching Social Skills
7. Multicultural Education for Students With E/BD
8. Curriculum of Hope: Focusing on Helping Others
9. Engaged Time in the Classroom
10. Student Self-Management
11. Higher-Level Thinking Skills
12. Learning Strategies and Study Skills
13. Access to the General Curriculum
14. Effective Inclusion of Students With E/BD
15. Working With Families of Students With E/BD

256 pages
2002
paperback/ISBN 978-0-89108-287-3
$39.95

 This book has checklists, forms, activities, and dozens of practical ideas for planning curriculum K-12. It covers strategies and management techniques plus materials and differentiated activities. Sample units are included to provide practical applications of the ideas. Disadvantaged students and learning disabled populations are covered.

 Contents

1. Curricula for the Gifted
2. Correspondence Between Gifted Learners' Characteristics and Curriculum
3. Philosophy and Goals for a Gifted Program
4. Gifted Learner Outcomes
5. Teaching-Learning Activities and Resources
6. Instructional Strategies and Management Techniques
7. Assessing and Evaluating Curricula
8. Implementing a Curriculum for Gifted Learners
9. Special Populations of Gifted Learners
10. Identifying and Nurturing Disadvantaged Gifted Students
11. Serving the Learning Disabled Gifted Student Through Collaboration
12. A Perspective on Curriculum Development for Gifted Learners
13. Curricula for Exceptional Children: A Special Education Perspective
14. Gifted Children with Specific Learning Disabilities
15. Bridging Family and School: A School Psychologist Perspective
16. An Individualized Plan for Diane Bradford

402 pages
1992/paperback/ISBN 0-89108-218-2
$49.95