The book “Strategies for Including Children with Special Needs in Early Childhood Settings” by Cook et al. serves as a resource for educators and parents to work with children having special needs. This resource provides a detailed review of a variety of topics that are critical to creating an inclusive environment and making sure that children can access them. Early childhood educators need support in learning relevant information and implementing it into their practice.
The identified resource consists of three parts, including special education foundations, the adaptation of daily activities in inclusive early childhood settings, and work with the early childhood special education team. The first part contains five chapters that cover such topics as the origin of ESE, instructional strategies, important curriculum adaptations, physical environment arrangement, and the management of challenging behaviors. For example, depending on their special needs, some adjustments may be required for deaf or hard hearing children, those who have autism, and students, who have motor, cognitive, or language issues. The authors rationally state that by designing unique activity centers, educators should accommodate visibility, noise control, lighting, accessibility, and other factors.
The second part about adapting the early childhood education settings for exceptional students includes valuable knowledge about the theory and practice. There are eight chapters that focus on how to monitor student progress, manage arrival and departure, engage in free play, and provide music and rhythm activities, tabletop activities, outside play, mealtime, and language literacy. This part of the book begins with the review of the Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) and Individualized Education Program (IEP) as the foundational programs that guide ESE.
In addition, Cook et al. stress the role played by the ability of exceptional children to engage in free play, stating that their such opportunities as one-on-one interaction, playing with toys, self-initiated exploration, and so on (124). The value of tabletop activities is discussed in terms of developing motor skills, cause and effect relationships, and task sequencing. Self-feeding learning and outside play lessons are also taken into account.
The third part of the book contains two chapters on collaboration with families and disability specialists/paraprofessionals. The lessons about building parent-professional partnerships and intervention teams are provided. For example, educators can master their skills in recognizing stressors faced by families with exceptional children to help them in building coping skills (Cook et al. 228). In their turn, the effective work with different specialists is explained with an emphasis on collective problem-solving, teamwork, and communication. This part seems to be especially significant for Early Childhood Special Educators (ECSEs).
The design of the identified book is well-structured and easy to understand intuitively. Every chapter has an introduction and Chapter-at-a-Glance section that shows the readers the key topics. All chapters have headings and subheadings, which makes it especially convenient to navigate across the resource. On the one hand, it is possible to explore this book from the beginning to the end, which is valuable for students, novice educators, and parents.
On the other hand, the book can be used as a guide to find the required topic and specify some information, which is often necessary for those who work with children and need to constantly learn to remain competent. A variety of examples is used by the authors to strengthen their arguments and show real-life cases. Moreover, read-and-reflect questions at the end of chapters make readers ponder over thought-provoking ideas, which promote developing critical thinking. The lists of helpful resources and websites, helpful hints, appealing images, and practical exercises make the book a significant resource for parents and educators.
One more strength of this resource is that it pays attention to diversity awareness in every chapter. Social class, culture, exceptionality, and language are included in diversity discussions, the main goal of which is to encourage the recognition and acceptance of differences among children. For example, gardening and a reflective environment are noted as opportunities to speak about cultures and celebrate diversity. However, a lack of references to the authors used while writing this book is the weakness of this resource. It would be better if more references would be provided so that readers can find them and study for an in-depth understanding. Another weakness refers to limited attention to coping mechanisms that can be used to address appearing challenges.
The topics, guidelines, and examples of this book compose the basis of ESE in early childhood, the awareness of which equips teachers with pertinent knowledge about how to approach children. They can use all lessons, but adaptations are needed to benefit a certain class or child. The processes of learning planning and implementation are presented in detail, but educators need to clearly understand the importance of a child’s exceptionality, including challenges and ways to overcome them.
The individual features of family, background, experience, living area, social status, and special needs should be considered. To incorporate human diversity, teachers should adapt the environment and activities so that they naturally evoke children’s interest in understanding those who have special needs. Thus, this book seems to be a useful guide to understand not only the approach to Exceptional Student Education (ESE) but also adapting children’s daily activities and working in a team with other involved specialists.
Work Cited
Cook, Ruth E., et al. Strategies for Including Children with Special Needs in Early Childhood Settings. 2nd ed., Cengage Learning, 2018.