Spotlight on Some New Additions to the CDR!

Choosing Education Goals– Teacher’s Manual and Student Lessons

“The lessons and materials in each package provide students school and community-based experiences to help them identify their interests, skills, and limits. The lesson sequence is flexible to fit into the school's existing curriculum and schedule. A student video entitled, Choosing Goals to Plan Your Life, introduces the concepts by showing high school students using the choosing goal process across the three transition areas.”

Choosing Personal Goals– Teacher’s Manual
"The lessons and materials in each package provide students school and community-based experiences to help them identify their interests, skills, and limits. The lesson sequence is flexible to fit into the school's existing curriculum and schedule. A student video entitled, Choosing Goals to Plan Your Life, introduces the concepts by showing high school students using the choosing goal process across the three transition areas"

Take Action: Making Goals Happen, Grades 6-12
“Educators use the Take Action lessons to teach students the crucial skills for attaining their goals. The lesson package consists of a student video, Take Action, teacher lessons plans, and student worksheets. Students learn to break their long-term goals into short-term goals that can be accomplished in a short time period. Lessons teach students to plan how they will attain their goal by deciding: a standard for goal performance. a means to get feedback among other goals"

Transitions to High School:DVD and Instructional material for students with learning differences

"In an unscripted interview format, five high school students with specific learning disabilities and/or attention deficit disorder speak about their school and transition experiences. Juxtaposed with their comments two years earlier, the students outline the steps to a successful transition from elementary or middle school to high school.”

Health, safety, and Nutrition for the Young Child
"Research-based information has been used to make practical suggestions. for promoting the well-being of young children in this best-selling book on the subject. Health, Safety & Nutrition for the Young Child emphasizes the critical relationship that exists among these three areas and the important role teachers and parents play in helping children establish healthy lifestyles.”

Steps to Self-Determination - Helping Adolescents Learn to Achieve their Goals
"Steps to Self-Determination is focused on helping students gain knowledge and skills that will allow them to increase their ability to achieve their goals in a variety of environments. This Instructor’s Guide for the Steps to Self-Determination curriculum includes an introductory section and lesson plans”

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link

Spotlight on New Additions to the CDR Library

New Additions to the CDR Library 

Improving Speech and Eating Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (2008)

Intellectual Disability: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports (2012)

The Development of Children (2009)

The Exceptional Child: Inclusion in Early Childhood Education (2004)

Child Development Third Edition (2004)

Observing and Understanding Child Development: A Child Study Manual (2007)

To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Asperger's Bestseller Earns £1.2m Advance for Debut Novelist

Asperger's bestseller earn

£1.2m advance for debut novelist

International publishers and movie producers rush to sign up Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project

A first novel about a man with undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome has become a publishing phenomenon, snapped up by publishers in more than 34 countries, from China to Portugal.

As a comic story of disability, it is an unlikely hit. But publishers believe that with its strong main character, the book will challenge perceptions of people with the disorder.

The Rosie Project tells the story of a socially challenged genetics professor, Don Tillman, who decides to look for a wife, drawing up a "scientifically valid" questionnaire to assist his quest for the perfect woman. Tillman lectures on Asperger's without realising that he displays its symptoms himself – in his use of language, difficulty in reading social signals and obsession with detail.

The novel is being described as a cross between Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, about a teenager with Asperger's, and David Nicholls's One Day, a bittersweet love story – both huge bestsellers.                                                            

Its author is Graeme Simsion, 56, an Australian IT consultant with a British father. He told the Observer that he was "flabbergasted" to learn of frenzied bidding by publishers worldwide. Until recently, he had never even dared to imagine that he had the ability to write a novel. Advances of more than £1.2m so far have already allowed him to become a full-time writer.

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To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Author Kathy Lette Reveals What it’s Like to Raise an Autistic Child.

Kathy Lette: Raising a child with Asperger’s is like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle

Author Kathy Lette reveals what it’s like to raise an autistic child.

My son Julius was diagnosed with autism aged three. The word ‘autism’ slid into me like the sharp cold edge of a knife. This is a diagnosis that drags you down into the dark. The doctor had reduced my cherished child to a black-and-white term. But to me, my little boy was full of the most vibrant colours. I felt disbelief, followed by dismay and then by a fiercely protective, lioness-type love. Finally, many, many experts, tests and schools later, my son was rediagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.

Jules was my first born, so it took me a while to realise something was different. Before Jules was born, all I knew about autism is that it’s a lifelong disability chiefly characterised by an inability to communicate effectively. I now know that it means not getting a joke, not knowing what to say then saying the wrong things, being told off but not understanding why, doing your best but still getting it wrong, feeling confused, frightened, out of sync all day, every day. As a mum, well, sometimes I feel I didn’t give birth to Jules but found him under a spaceship and am raising him as my own. It’s like trying to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle, without the benefit of the coloured photo on the box. There is no owner’s manual.

My new book is a work of fiction but inspired and informed by my own experiences. I only write because it’s cheaper than therapy, so it has been a relief to finally talk about the heartbreak and hilarity of raising a child on the spectrum. As the mother of a child, your guilt gland throbs. Was it something I ate while pregnant? Soft cheese? Sushi? Was it the glass of wine I shouldn’t have drunk in the final trimester? If only I’d feng shui-ed my aura in yogalates classes chanting to whale music like Gwyneth Paltrow and Organic Co. But then you come to accept your child for the exceptional little person he is. I no longer think people are normal or abnormal. I think they’re ordinary and extraordinary. And people with Asperger’s are quite remarkable. My own son is Wikipedia with a pulse.

The increased awareness around Asperger’s is helpful. And I hope my own novel helps de-stigmatise the condition while also promoting tolerance and understanding. And that it gives some comic comfort and much-needed camaraderie to the thousands of parents struggling to raise special children. Because trying to cope on your own is as effective as standing up to Voldemort with a butter knife.

People with Asperger’s may not contribute to society in conventional terms but that doesn’t make them less valuable and it’s up to us to help them flourish, starting with stamping out the bigotry that excludes people with disabilities from mainstream life. It’s criminal to squander their considerable talents. People with Asperger’s often feel they’re drowning in their own brain waves. I hope this novel, in its own small way, acts as a small literary life raft.

The Boy Who Fell To Earth is published in paperback on April 11. Kathy is promoting Quick Reads, which produces bite-size books to encourage people to read. www.quickreads.org.uk

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New E-Book Takes Aim at Understanding Autism

New E-Book Takes Aim at Understanding Autism

The term “autism” comes from the Greek word “autos,” meaning self, used to describe conditions of social withdrawal—or the isolated self. Around 1910, a Swiss psychiatrist first used the term to refer to certain symptoms of schizophrenia. Later, in the 1940s, physicians Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger independently used that name to describe what was a newly discovered developmental disorder whose primary symptom was social withdrawal. Today, autism is just one of three diagnoses that the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) includes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While medical and neuroscience’s understanding of this condition has grown exponentially, research has been fraught with controversy. Autism appears to be on the rise, depending on how you define it; and research findings suggest that its causes are more complex than previously imagined. In Scientific American‘s newest eBook, Understanding Autism: The Search for Answers, we’ve gathered the most current information on autism—how it’s diagnosed, who’s at risk, genetic and environmental causes, treatments and therapies.

In Section 1, “Diagnosing Autism,” we take a look at the symptoms, or traits, of ASD, which include three main disabilities: lack of social skills, lack of communication skills, and repetitive behaviors. Symptoms typically don’t show up before two years of age, yet  early recognition might help alleviate some of the developmental problems that can occur later in untreated kids. In “Early Intervention,” Marissa Fessenden writes about toddlers who received speech therapy and continued to benefit years after it had stopped. Section 2, “Autistic Savants,” analyzes the phenomenon of savant syndrome, in which people with disabilities, including autism, possess extraordinary mental abilities.

Subsequent sections examine autism’s complicated genetic and environmental causes, the nature of the condition and current therapies.* Changes to diagnostic criteria for ASD in the DSM-5 have caused understandable concern and are reviewed in two important stories by Ferris Jabr, “Redefining Autism: The New DSM Criteria” and “By the Numbers: Autism Is Not a Math Problem.” Finally, in discussing available therapies, two companion pieces by Nancy Shute, “Desperate for an Autism Cure” and “Alternative Treatments: How Good Is the Evidence,” take readers on a journey through the minds of parents, many of whom are desperate to help their autistic kids lead easier, productive and more fulfilling lives. While science rushes to discover better options, this eBook gives a synopsis of the state of the field—what is known and what remains unknown about this challenging condition.

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To access the CDR Library catalog, please click on this link.

Check out this New Title: Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs

From the Publisher: "Uses biopsychosocial, contextual, and developmental research to address needs of children.

Integrates broad spectrum of research on children with special health care needs and children with disabilities.

Combines research, clinical, and policy expertise from public health, child psychology, and medicine

Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs David Hollar, editor Children with chronic conditions, developmental disorders, and birth defects represent a sizeable minority of American children—as many as one in five. Often their families have financial or other issues limiting their access to appropriate care, thus limiting their adult prospects as well. Compounding the problem, many valuable resources concerning this population are difficult to access although they may be critical to the researchers, practitioners, and policymakers creating standards for quality care and services. In response, the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs assembles research, applied, and policy perspectives reflecting the range of children’s problems requiring special services. Widely studied conditions (e.g., communication disorders, substance abuse) and those receiving lesser attention (e.g., tuberculosis) are covered, as are emerging ideas such as the “medical home” concept of continuity of care. Contributors offer screening and evaluation methods, research guidelines, and diagnostic and treatment interventions to inform the greatest spectrum of readers, including: Quality of life in children diagnosed with ADHD or specific learning disabilities Evaluating school-aged children with visual impairments Deaf culture advocates on deaf learners’ education Oral health access issues in children requiring special services Diagnostic and treatment issues in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders Addressing and preventing bullying of children with special health care needs Its interdisciplinary outlook makes the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs a vital, forward-looking text for developmental psychologists, pediatricians, early childhood and special education researchers and practitioners, disability researchers, policymakers, and advocates, and providers for children with special health care needs."

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Public Library Summer Reading Program

The South Carolina State Library is proud to announce the statewide kickoff for the state’s public library summer reading programs to be held in Columbia on June 4, 2011. StoryFest SC is a new literacy event which introduces South Carolina’s children to literature and story in a family fun setting. The event celebrates the 2011 Collaborative Summer Library Theme One World, Many Stories by bringing together two well-known award-winning authors, Chris Raschka and Alan Katz, along with South Carolina’s own Brian McCreight, in a free event for families to be held at the State Museum in Columbia.

StoryFest SC exposes families to children’s authors and the art of story and fosters an excitement for reading, especially throughout the summer. All of South Carolina’s public libraries participate in the State Library coordinated summer reading program.

Events will be held at the South Carolina State Museum at 301 Gervais Street from 10am to 6pm and is free to the public. There will be two presentations by each author, a craft area, storytelling sessions, bag lunches in the Congaree Room, bounce houses, visits from characters such as SCETV’s SmartCat and University of South Carolina mascot Cocky, and a Reader’s Theater presentation.

Families are encouraged to come together and each child will receive a literacy bag with two signed books by the authors and the State Library’s South Carolina Day by Day Family Literacy Activity Calendar. The day’s events will bring families from across the state to participate in fun, learning activities in a safe, family friendly setting.

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