Label-Free Learning: Supporting Learners with Disabilities Book

Teachers as well as students benefit when reliable, proven teaching strategies are applied. The area of special education is not an exception, and as more classroom teachers are becoming involved with children who have learning disabilities, they are finding ways to extend their teaching techniques to reach these students and make them part of the classroom community.

With a focus on literacy development, Charlotte Keefe uses the principles of whole language to view these learners and their learning needs from a positive perspective. With a rich combination of theory, demonstrations, teaching strategies, methods of evaluation, and real teachers' experiences, she demonstrates how to view children with learning difficulties as readers and writers without measuring their worth against arbitrary standards of "average" or grade-level performance.

Using real classroom examples, she discusses ways of establishing a learner-centered literacy program that supports individual learners' needs without resorting to traditional labels for those who perform "below average" in reading and writing. By avoiding the deficit model, she provides a new viewpoint for evaluating progress and writing IEPs. And, extending the idea of community beyond the classroom, she offers suggestions for collaborating with other teachers and parents to ensure continuity of support.

Here are ideas as well as encouragement for teachers who want to change their reading and writing programs from a curriculum-centered to a learner-centered approach and who are looking for alternatives to traditional curriculums. Label-Free Learning is a valuable resource of practical, hands-on knowledge, whether it is used in an inservice workshop or as a text in preservice special education courses.