"Educate Every Child According to His Way"
(Proverbs 22:6)
Educating Jewish Children with Special Needs
The following is a curricular publication put out by CAJE, the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education.
Do you have a great Special Needs program you'd like to share? Do you have questions about Special Needs education? Do you want to respond to any of the on-line articles? Post your thoughts at our Special Needs Discussion Board.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Project Sir: Success in Reading: The Interactive Strategies Approach to Beginning Reading
by Jed P. Luchow and Martin Schloss
A research project directed by the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York in day schools and yeshivot in the New York area focuses on early intervention for those experiencing difficulty in learning to read and write. Through structured training in phonemic awareness with kindergartners and first graders, the percentage of children diagnosed as “learning disabled” can be greatly reduced.
Modifying Our Classrooms to Meet the Needs of Students with Learning Disabilities
by Ilene Strauss Bayar
How a classroom teacher can modify reading assignments and class discussions to accommodate a student with visual perceptual problems, auditory processing issues, or ADD/ADHD. (Read the Article)
The Resource Room Model
by Joy Kuchinsky
Special needs children in a Hebrew school setting are identified and taken out of the classroom part-time to receive one-on-one or small-group tutoring in reading skills. Includes practical suggestions.
Sh’lom Kitah: A Model to Train Congregational School Learning Specialists
by Lenore Layman
The Board of Jewish Education of Greater Washington developed a mentoring program to train teachers in congregational schools to work with students having multiple learning difficulties within regular classrooms, self-contained classrooms or resource rooms. These specialists then provide support and expertise for other classroom teachers in their school.
M’silot-Pathways: A School Within a School for Students Who Learn Differently
by Phyllis Rosenthal
A new program at the Greenfield Hebrew Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, for children with moderate learning disabilities will provide remediation in a self-contained classroom, using an Individual Educational Plan and state-of-the-art materials, within the environment of a warm Jewish day school. (Read the Article)
Teaching to Diversity: A Model for the Inclusion of Children with Developmental Disabilities in Jewish Day Schools
by Beth Jawary
Full inclusion means educating all children within their home school in a regular classroom, regardless of the nature of their disabilities. This article describes how inclusion can be made to work for developmentally disabled children in a Jewish day school, with the roles of the inclusion coordinator, the classroom teacher, the inclusion aide and the parents dilineated. (Read the Article)
The Etta Israel Center Inclusion Model for Day School Students: Inclusion That Works!
by Michael B. Held, Anne Arenson Kemp, and Richard L. Goldman
The Etta Israel Center works with 15 Los-Angeles area day schools to provide referral, assessment, consultation, direct services and teacher training for special needs students. This collaborative, multi-faceted model allows and advocates for inclusion of learning disabled students in mainstream classrooms.
Working with Parents of Special Needs Children
by: Luisa Latham and Sally Weber
Parents of special needs children can be helped by identifying areas of difficulty, providing access to professional help, setting up parent support and dialogue groups, and making resources available.
MetroWest Jewish Education Association’s Response to the Need for Special Education Services
by Wendy Chesnov Dratler, Maurice Elias, and Bruce Ettinger
The MetroWest JEA’s Center for Special Education works to ensure that learning disabled and developmentally disabled students have access to educational and communal Jewish experiences. They have created problem-solving, conflict-resolution workshops to address the children’s social/emotional issues. (Read the Article)
CAJE encourages you to make reprints of articles on the website and share them with your colleagues and lay leadership. All we ask is that you tell them that these articles originally appeared in a CAJE Publication and that articles on this and other topics, and information about CAJE can be found online at www.caje.org.