Starting With Their Strengths

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 then provide tools to determine, organize, 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 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 behavior challenges and support positive behavior.
• Sample lesson plans that reflect children’s interests and developmental needs.
• Forms for data collection, communicating with parents, identifying sensory challenges, behavior analysis, and more.
• A strengths-based Individualized Education Plan (IEP) guide.

Deborah C. Lickey is project coordinator for the Virginia Paraprofessional Early Childhood Project with the Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Denise J. Powers is the early childhood specialist in The Circle Preschool Program, a therapeutic program of Greater Richmond Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) for young children and their caregivers. To join the authors’ online community of inquiry and practice, visit their website at www.startingwiththeirstrengths.com.

“This is the right book at the right time.... Lickey and Powers bring us back to developmental reality.”
—From the Foreword by Lesley Koplow, Bank Street College

“This book captures the essence of development. It is a journey of discovery for the child and a guide to educators, therapists, and families who want to tailor their interactions to each child’s individual differences and strengths while providing the essential experiences that move development forward. The focus on establishing the foundations for learning is infused with respect, engagement, and the promise every child holds.”
—Serena Wieder, founder, Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders