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Establishing meaningful relationships with families is a critical part of your work, and your communication is especially important when working with families with preschoolers with special needs.

The first step to establish strong relationships with families of children with special needs is to spend time discovering their wishes and concerns for their children and to learn about the meaningful activities they participate in at home. Maintaining this communication throughout a child’s time in your program is essential. Ask questions to learn about strategies that work at home and consider using them in your classroom.

In your collaboration with families, acknowledge and respect their strengths and unique background, while realizing their ability to make decisions that are right for them (Hanson & Lynch, 2004).

excellent resource in helping teachers develop challenging curriculum for gifted and talented students in their classroom. The book is unique in that it focuses exclusively on curriculum development and is geared toward all grade levels. Three curriculum models are emphasized throughout the book and each is explained in detail in the first chapter.

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) was a champion of what’s known today as critical pedagogy: the belief that teaching should challenge learners to examine power structures and patterns of inequality within the status quo.

Remember that teachers and children are both learners:

Develop their critical literacy

Gifted children often lead double lives. Intellectually, they may seem like small, eccentric adults, and they may prefer the company of adults, but in many ways they are still children. For this reason, many gifted education experts have doubts about letting gifted students start college several years early. In this talk, you will hear about my experience entering a college environment at age 13. You’ll hear about my successes and failures, the way I interact with the professional and academic world, and what I am learning now as an ex-gifted adult. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

If your child has an Individualized Education Program (IEP), the IEP team will meet every year to bring it up to date. One of the first steps is to update your child’s present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. Some states/school districts refer to this as PLAAFP, some as PLOP and others as PLP.

What does PLOP include?

To write the PLOP, the IEP team draws information from several sources. They should include teacher observations and objective data, such as test results and scores.

First Review

Second Review

ASD begins before the age of 3 years and can last throughout a person’s life, although symptoms may improve over time. Some children show ASD symptoms within the first 12 months of life. In others, symptoms may not show up until 24 months or later. Some children with ASD gain new skills and meet developmental milestones, until around 18 to 24 months of age and then they stop gaining new skills, or they lose the skills they once had.

Examples of social communication and social interaction characteristics related to ASD can include: