Determining Difference from Disability

What Culturally Responsive Teachers Should Know

This essential book offers clear guidelines for determining if the Culturally Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students / English Language Learners (ELL) in your general education classroom are experiencing typical language differences, learning disabilities, or both. By combining helpful case-studies with insightful research, the authors provide a framework for differentiating instruction that uses culturally appropriate interventions to build upon student strengths while creating a foundation for further learning and achievement. You will discover how to:

• Connect your own and your students’ cultural assets to classroom content;
• Review language acquisition stages and design corresponding instruction;
• Collaborate with peers and discuss the realities of reaching out for support and problem solving;
• Choose effective and appropriate instructional strategies based on documentation of data through progress monitoring;
• Move from a traditional behavioristic perspective to a more culturally responsive perspective;
• Identify patterns in formal assessments and informal instruction in order to distinguish between language differences and learning disabilities.

In addition, the book includes a number of activities and graphs that can be implemented immediately in any classroom. Many of these materials can be downloaded for free from the book’s product page: www.routledge.com/9781138577756.