The book "Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Settings" is a standard text on the topics which are equally useful for general teachers, special educators and researchers in the field of inclusive education. It is a comprehensive book that makes use of a 'categorical approach' to explain both the opportunities and challenges in creating inclusive classrooms and differentiated learning.
The book "Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Settings" is a standard text on the topics which are equally useful for general teachers, special educators and researchers in the field of inclusive education. It is a comprehensive book that makes use of a 'categorical approach' to explain both the opportunities and challenges in creating inclusive classrooms and differentiated learning.
Authored by Tom E Smith, Edward A Polloway, James R Patton and Carol A Dowdy, the book has 16 topics that dwell on inclusive education, school-home collaboration, IEP coverage, response to Intervention, elementary and secondary classrooms as well as features of differentiating instruction.
Published by PHI Learning, the book running into 581 pages, provides an extensive coverage in the field of the instructional processes for general education. It is also equally beneficial for special educators to address the needs of individual differently abled learners.
According to Anukanksha Prakash, a user of the book, a postgraduate student in clinical psychology at TISS, Mumbai, who was on an internship training at Disha Foundation in Jaipur, found it useful for reference work in connection with games as therapies for differently abled students.
She says that certain game strategies suggested in the book can be used by teachers or parents while interacting with children such as appreciating their talk, expanding on their words, asking open ended questions and taking long enough pauses for allowing the children to initiate talking.
Additionally, an emphasis on taking turns gives the children an opportunity to clarify their messages as well as practice the unspoken rules of communication (listening, gesturing, pointing out, talking and communicating).
Further, the use of play has been emphasised since games that require language comprehension and expression skills of the child must be played in order to better the communication skills. Everyday games could be modified to fit the needs of the children.
She articulately mentions about games such as musical chairs (passing a ball around and when the teacher says a magic word, the child with the ball is out), which could be played with words rather than music. Also, using key words to identity and organise children (all the boys with green bottles to stand, everyone who has a sister sit down etc). Similar procedure can be applied for board games as an extension to suggestions given by the authors of the book
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