What About Me?: Strategies for Teaching Misunderstood Learners

This book is about people and about the challenges and rewards of living with dyslexia. The author’s goal is to give the reader encouragement, and to de-emphasize the negativity that comes with a learning difference. The 142 interviews are packed with practical coping strategies that will help you get through your journey with dyslexia.

This guide offers specific tips and strategies especially for unique learners like you. Use these “school tools” to help build confidence in reading, writing, spelling, math, and more. Learn to organize time, set goals, stick up for yourself, handle conflict, stay out of trouble, cope with testing, and get help from adults.

The author lays out a clear vision of what responsive middle level teaching should be. This is a book for all reasons - help for the novice teacher, support for the mid-career teacher wanting to improve her craft, and inspiration and confirmation for the later-career teacher as well. Part I creates a culture of learning, leading to Part II and many specific ideas on promoting higher student achievement through innovative and accomplished practice. Part III cycles back to the middle school context - effective teams, teacher-student advisories, outdoor adventures, and working with parents.

Approaching literacy development as a complex process that unfolds over time, this book gives educators the guidance they need to help students continuously advance and deepen their reading skills — not just in the early grades, but into the upper grades as well. All the suggested ideas and approaches are evidence-based or identified as best practices in reading, so educators can use them with confidence in their classrooms. Equally effective as a text for preservice educators, a manual for in-service teachers, and a resource for administrators wrestling with different approaches to reading instruction, this in-depth, accessible book will lead to sharper skills and better outcomes for a wide range of struggling learners.

Since the first edition was published, author Susan Winebrenner has spent eight years using it with school districts, teachers, parents, and kids across the U.S. and the U.K. this revised, expanded, updated edition reflects her personal experiences and the changes that have taken place in education over the years. Her basic philosophy hasn’t changed, and all of the proven, practical, classroom-tested strategies teachers love are still here. But there’s now an entire chapter on identifying gifted students. The step-by-step how-tos for using the strategies are more detailed and user-friendly. There’s a new chapter especially for parents. And all of the forms in the book are also on CD-ROM (sold separately) so you can print them out and customize them for your classroom.

Brain chemistry, not bad parenting, is responsible for the 12 percent of children younger than 18 who have diagnosable brain disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), or enuresis (bed-wetting). Through case studies, scientific data, and information about children’s development and brain chemistry, Koplewicz helps parents understand the obstacles their brain-disordered children face. A practicing psychiatrist, he also suggests means, including therapy and medication, by which families may lessen the difficulties posed by those disorders. He devotes the final section of the book to considerations of the nature and treatment of problems including, besides those noted above, depression, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, and autism. Presented with compassion but in no-nonsense style, his effort offers a wealth of scientific information in a format easily accessible to parents, extended families, and friends of “difficult” children.
—Kathryn Carpenter from Booklist