New Laminated Reference Guides for Educators

Specially Designed Instruction for Co-Teachers

By Marilyn Friend and Tammy Baron

This guide is a roadmap to help teachers, administrators, other school staff, and parents understand the requirements for specially designed instruction (SDI). It outlines versatile and validated strategies and techniques well-suited to co-teaching, although it is a small sample of the many SDI interventions available. 

Teaching Reading to Multilingual Learners

By Carrie McDermott Goldman

Using a combination of approaches, including phonics, comprehension strategies, orthographic mapping, and fluency, helps multilingual learners develop the skills they need to become confident and competent readers while also building language and literacy skills that enable them to understand and retain information. This guide explains the what, why, and how of teaching multilingual learners to read and offers evidence-based strategies for implementing effective reading instruction.

Using MTSS to Help Low-Income Students Succeed

By Angel Barrett

This guide presents Tier 1 and Tier 2 multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) strategies that are proven effective for meeting the needs of low-income students. It also describes ways educators can prime these students for success, such as cultivating their self-confidence by building on academic success, aligning daily activities to long-term applications, and creating a culture that instills hope, where all students believe their potential is unlimited.

Educational Terms and Acronyms

By Joseph Casbarro

Whether you are a teacher, paraeducator, support staff, or educator-in-training, it is essential that you know important educational terms and acronyms. Even parents need to know many of these terms and abbreviations as they try and navigate the educational system for the benefit of their children. This reference guide provides a comprehensive list of those used most often in the field.

Autism Bundle - Set of 3 Guides

This set of three (3) tri-fold laminated guides equips teachers, specialists, and support staff with practical, evidence-based strategies to use with students with autism to help them achieve their full potential.

English Learner Bundle - Set of 3 Guides

By Carrie McDermott Goldman

This bundle of three (3) tri-fold laminated guides will equip classroom teachers with practical, evidence-based strategies for meeting the needs of the English language/multi-lingual learners in their K-12 classrooms.

Dyslexia Bundle - Set of 3 Guides

By Sandra Rief

This bundle includes three (3) tri-fold laminated guides by dyslexia expert Sandra Rief. The guides will help classroom teachers and support staff understand dyslexia and learn practical, evidence-based strategies to meet the needs of students with this common learning disability, which affects as many as 25 percent of all students.

Using Assessment Evidence Formatively

By Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Assessments are not inherently formative or summative. What makes an assessment formative is how and when it is used. When assessment data are used to make decisions about what should be taught next and how it should be taught, the assessment is formative in nature. This guide presents a four-step process for using assessment evidence formatively. It includes examples from both elementary and secondary classrooms.

Using the Circle Technique to Build Classroom Relationships

By Rufus Lott III

This guide describes The Circle technique, a powerful and systematic way of engaging with students and building authentic relationships with and among them. It includes step-by-step instructions for conducting various types of Circles, sample questions to use with students in grades K-12, guidance on what to look for during Circles, and how to use information shared in the Circle to develop individualized supports for students.

Dyslexia: Best Practices and Strategies for the Early Grades

By Sandra Rief

This quick-reference guide by Sandra Rief provides an overview of what teachers need to know about dyslexia and the structured language approach. It also shares multisensory instructional strategies for teaching phonological awareness and early literacy word-level reading and writing skills that all teachers (Pre-K through Grade 2) will find beneficial integrating into classroom and Tier 1 small group instruction/intervention.

Beyond Disability Awareness: An Educator’s Guide

By Diana Pastora Carson

Now more than ever, with a push toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education, educators are often unsure about how to update their disability awareness initiatives. This guide will give you clear and respectful guidelines for including disability within DEI frameworks.

MTSS & Mathematics for Middle School

By Jennifer Caton and Mary Little

This guide provides critical information, practical strategies, and evidenced-based interventions about middle school mathematics instruction within MTSS. It offers an array of ways to use this highly effective framework to meet the needs of students who struggle with mathematics.

Teaching English Learners: Strategies for Classroom Teachers

By Carrie McDermott Goldman

This guide provides teachers with information that will help them understand and set expectations for language development. It also provides strategies that incorporate best practices for helping English learners develop content knowledge through language.

Chronic Absenteeism: Prevention & Intervention Strategies for Schools, Families, & Communities

By Sharon Bradley

This guide examines the widespread problem of chronic absenteeism in schools, from why students fail to show up to school, to how to prevent excessive absences, to how to find missing students and re-engage them so that they are able to get back on track and ultimately graduate and reach their full potential.

Autism Strategies A-Z for Level 1 & 2 Learners

By Wendy Ashcroft, B. Joyce Keohane, & Sue Argiro

This guide offers general and special education teachers, parents, and paraprofessionals quick-access to practical tips and effective ABA-based strategies for teaching children with autism who need support (level 1) and substantial support (level 2).

Autism Strategies A-Z for Level 2 & 3 Learners

By Wendy Ashcroft, B. Joyce Keohane, & Sue Argiro

This guide offers general and special education teachers, parents, and paraprofessionals quick-access to practical tips and effective ABA-based strategies for teaching children with autism who need substantial support (level 2) and very substantial support (level 3).

ADHD & LD: Classroom Strategies at Your Fingertips

By Sandra Rief

This guide is an invaluable quick-reference classroom tool for teachers, paraeducators, and all who serve students with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and learning disabilities (LD). It is also an excellent teacher-training/professional development resource for educators in both general education and special education classrooms.

Addressing Equity Through Culturally Responsive Education & SEL

By Maurice Elias & Larry Leverett

This guide is designed to provide educators with tools and strategies to integrate social-emotional and character development (SEL) and culturally responsive education (CRE) into your classroom or school’s equity strategies. 

Mental Health: A Parent's Guide - Elementary Edition

By Christine Ditrano

This guide provides parents with helpful information for understanding mental health in children, including myths and warning signs, and taking concrete action to improve their child’s mental health.

Also available in Spanish

Mental Health: A Parent's Guide - Secondary Edition

By Christine Ditrano

This guide provides parents with helpful information for understanding mental health in children, including myths and warning signs, and taking concrete action to improve their child’s mental health.

Also available in Spanish

Salud Mental: Una Guia Para Padres - Edición Secundario

By Christine Ditrano

This Spanish-language guide provides parents with helpful information for understanding mental health in children, including myths and warning signs, and taking concrete action to improve their child’s mental health.

Salud Mental: Una Guia Para Padres - Edición Primaria

By Christine Ditrano

This Spanish-language guide provides parents with helpful information for understanding mental health in children, including myths and warning signs, and taking concrete action to improve their child’s mental health.

By Joseph Casbarro

This quick-reference laminated guide provides an overview of UDL and recommends UDL strategies for providing multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement to meet the wide range of individual learning styles of students who are leaning entirely virtually, in a hybrid model, or in-person.

Dyslexia: School-Based Screening, Assessment, and Intervention

By Sandra Rief

This guide provides educators easy-access guide to evidence-based tools and programs for catching dyslexia early, developing effective interventions, and helping students with dyslexia thrive in school and beyond

A Trauma-Informed and Culturally Responsive (TICR) Approach in Classrooms

By Isaiah Pickens & Schenike Massie-Lambert

This guide provides an overview of the three tenets of a TICR approach for maximizing students’ social-emotional and academic well-being, gives you the tools to understand the underlying reason for behavior issues, identifies common trauma triggers, and outlines how to adjust the classroom to become more responsive to the needs of students with trauma, and more!

Addressing Student Mental Health: Teachers as First Responders

By Joseph Casbarro

This guide will help teachers learn more about common mental health disorders, how to recognize warning signs, how to support students in need, interact with students in crisis, and cultivate a classroom climate conducive to good mental health.

The ACT Matrix: A Mindful Process for SEL, Mental Health, Collaboration, and Achievement

By Phil Tenaglia

The ACT Matrix walks students through a process of identifying values, regulating emotionally challenging experiences, and achieving greater satisfaction and success academically and socially. It can be used at all grade levels (K-12).

Transporting Students with Special Needs: A Guide for School Bus Drivers and School Bus Monitors

By Tony Spruill

This quick-reference laminated guide is designed to help school bus drivers and bus monitors understand the unique transportation needs of students with disabilities. It provides bus drivers and monitors with quick access to on-the-spot support and strategies as they transport students safely and pleasantly on a daily basis.

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support: A Flowchart for MTSS, RTI, SWPBS, Social-Emotional RTI, and Suicide Prevention & Intervention

By Gary Schaffer

This quick-reference guide presents detailed MTSS flowcharts for academic RTI, behavior (school wide positive behavioral support/SWPBS), social emotional RTI, and suicide prevention.

Instructional Strategies for Learners with IEPs

By Toby Karten

This compact yet comprehensive guide provides K-12 educators of students who receive special education services with a brief overview of the purpose and essential elements of an individualized education program (IEP), along with adaptations, interventions, and supports to incorporate into the IEP as part of specially designed instruction (SDI).

LGBTQ Youth: An Educators Guide, Second Edition

By Vincent Pompei

This guide provides K-12 educators with the knowledge and skills to create safe and inclusive school environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. In recent years, more national attention has been focused on the unique needs and challenges facing LGBTQ youth.

Teaching Students How to Use Self-Management

By Margaret King-Sears

This guide presents a 10-step instructional sequence for teaching students three types of self-management: self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement. Each type can be taught to a whole class, small groups, or individual students (grades K-12). Any type can be used with both learning and social behaviors.

Mindfulness in the Inclusive Classroom

By Toby Karten

This reference guide, for teachers of grades K-12, presents strategies and tools to help students and the staff who instruct them in inclusive classrooms develop and advance mindful practices. It includes activities which can be used with the whole class that will benefit all learners, as well as recommendations for exercises to address challenges specific to certain learners, including those with specific learning disabilities (SDL), intellectual differences, executive function difficulties, emotional differences, autism, and physical disabilities.

High-Leverage Practices (HLPs) in Special Education: Guide #1 - Collaboration

By Council for Exceptional Children (CEC)

In partnership with the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability and Reform (CEEDAR), the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) has developed a set of High Leverage Practices (HLPs) for special educators and teacher candidates. HLPs provide those involved in special education teacher preparation and professional development with a set of practices that were identified through consensus among special educators.

Implementing Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in Classrooms and Schools

By Marc A. Brackett, Nicole A. Elbertson, Dena N. Simmons, and Robin S. Stern

This 6-page, quick-reference laminated guide by Marc Brackett and colleagues at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, provides educators with with an introduction to SEL, guidelines for effective implementation of SEL in your classroom and school, an introduction to the RULER approach to SEL, strategies to promote your own social and emotional wellbeing, and a classroom SEL evaluation tool.

Social, Emotional, and Character Development: For Teachers, For Students, For Parents

By Ed Dunkleblau

This newly updated guide (2019) is designed for teachers and other school professionals who agree with Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” It provides an overview of what social, emotional, and character development (SECD) is, why it’s so important, and how to infuse simple character-building lessons throughout the curriculum and all aspects of the classroom and school.

Making and Makerspaces in Education

By Sylvia Martinez

This guide helps educators get started with making, offering a framework for planning the logistics, student experience, and space design, with an eye toward building inclusive makerspaces. It provides practical guidance on planning a makerspace and makerspace program, with detailed recommendations for projects and logistics, tools and materials, space design, and more.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset in Students

By Jacob Williams

This quick-reference laminated guide looks at the two mindset types identified by Carol Dweck (2006): fixed mindset and growth mindset. It reviews the characteristics of each mindset type and how a person’s mindset impacts the way that person deals with challenges, responds to criticism, relates to peers, and approaches learning tasks.

Amazon Alexa in the Classroom

By Brian Friedlander

This quick-reference laminated guide introduces teachers to Alexa and presents ideas for how to use it in the classroom to engage students, support and reinforce learning, and make the most efficient use of their own time.

Restorative Practices: An Outside-the-Box Approach to Building and Sustaining Relationships in Schools

By Rufus Lott III

This new quick-reference laminated guide provides an overview of restorative practices and offers a three phase model with concrete strategies for implementing RP in the classroom. This compact yet comprehensive guide will help educators begin their journey toward transforming school culture through implementing restorative practices.

Transition to Adulthood for Students with Disabilities

By Thomas Gibbon and David Bateman

This quick-reference guide will help ensure that students with disabilities, and the families and teams that support them, set appropriately ambitious individual goals for life after high school and develop and execute a plan to achieve these goals.

English Learners: Strategies to Adapt Instruction in Content Areas

By Carrie McDermott Goldman

This all-new laminated reference guide is designed to serve as a valuable resource for teachers working with English learners in diverse classroom to help them address their students’ complex needs by unpacking learning. It offers proven strategies that make learning more accessible for English learners and help these students meet rigorous standards and achieve their greatest goals.

STEM Strategies for the Classroom (Grades K-8)

By Nancy Heilbronner

This quick reference laminated guide provides an overview of best practices in STEM education for teachers of grades K-8. It addresses what STEM literacy is and why it’s so important, and provides an overview of best practices in STEM education.

Inclusion Succeeds with Effective Strategies and Collaboration, Grades 6-12

By Toby Karten

This newly updated and expanded laminated reference guides by Toby Karten is designed to assist general education (GE) teachers, special education (SE) teachers, and school staff in implementing inclusive practices and effective strategies that focus on students’ strengths and abilities.

Inclusion Succeeds With Effective Strategies & Collaboration, Grades K-5

By Toby Karten

This newly updated and expanded laminated reference guide by Toby Karten is designed to assist general education (GE) teachers, special education (SE) teachers, and school staff in implementing inclusive practices and effective strategies that focus on students’ strengths and abilities.

MTSS & Reading: The Elementary Essentials

By Karen Kemp

This quick-reference laminated guide is designed to provide elementary educators with critical information about reading within an MTSS framework. It also offers practical strategies to use in the major areas of reading for students who require additional exposures within the core reading program.

MTSS & Reading: The Middle School Connection

By Karen Kemp

This quick-reference laminated guide is designed to provide educators with critical information about MTSS as a framework for reading instruction in middle school, and give teachers practical techniques to implement within the general education classroom.

Differentiated Instruction: Creating Inclusive Classrooms

By Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa

This quick-reference laminated guide by Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa, authors of The Inclusive Education Checklist provides a framework, examples, as well as technology and print resources to help classroom teachers differentiate their instruction using Retrofit and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approaches and Multiple Intelligences theory.

Classroom Academic Support Using an RTI/MTSS Framework

By Jim Wright

From Jim Wright, founder of the definitive online RTI resource, www.interventioncentral.org, and author of several best-selling books on Response to Intervention, comes this new quick-reference laminated guide for teacher at any grade level.

Teaching Students on the Autism Spectrum in the Inclusive Classroom

By Paula Kluth

In this six-page, quick-reference laminated guide, author Paula Kluth presents simple, effective strategies for supporting students on the autism spectrum in inclusive pre-K through 12th grade classrooms, and helping all learners succeed.

The Paraeducator's Survival Guide

By Kent Gerlach

Written by Kent Gerlach, author of Let's Team Up: A Checklist for Teachers, Paraeducators & Principals, this quick-reference laminated guide helps paraeducators survive and thrive as important members of school teams.

Target-Based Grading in Collaborative Teams: 13 Steps to Moving Beyond Standards

By Tom Hierck & Garth Larson

This six-page, quick-reference laminated guide is designed to help schools move beyond standards to target-based grading and reporting. It includes examples of proficiency scales, proficiency targets, progress trackers, and summative rubrics.

Managing Classroom Behaviors using an RTI/MTSS Framework

By Jim Wright

Designed for use by teachers, this 6-page, quick-reference laminated guide by Jim Wright, founder of Intervention Central (www.interventioncentral.org), describes a range of evidenced-based Tier 1 (whole class) RTI/MTSS strategies and interventions to prevent and manage disruptive or inappropriate classroom behaviors.

UDL and ESSA:An Educator's Guide to Effective Planning, Instruction & Assessment

By Stacy Dean

While UDL is not a new concept, many teachers need support to plan, instruct, and assess students under this framework. UDL and ESSA, by Dr. Stacy Dean, provides this support in a handy, quick-reference tool for K-12 teachers.

English Language Learners: Rigor for Language and Academic Achievement

By Estee Lopez

This quick-reference, tri-fold laminated guide is designed to increase educators’ ability to make teaching and learning decisions based on research-based best practices for the academic and language achievement of English language learners (ELLs).

Mindfulness for Teachers and Students

By Elizabeth McAvoy & Jacqueline Thousand

This six-page, quick-reference laminated guide is designed to help busy teachers easily access a wide range of basic mindfulness practices that help them return to the present moment throughout the day. It also guides teachers through the process of teaching mindfulness to students (K-12) in the classroom so that students are calmer, more confident, more self-reflective, less reactive, and better able to manage relationships and problem solve.

Gifted Education: Using Enrichment Clusters to Provide Challenging Strategies for All

By Joseph Renzulli & Marcia Gentry

This six page, quick-reference laminated guide by Dr. Joseph Renzulli and Marcia Gentry guide provides an overview of Enrichment Clusters, an innovative component of the Renzulli Schoolwide Enrichment Model, along with seven steps for implementation.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the Florida State Standards (FSS)

By Joseph Casbarro

This six-page, quick-reference laminated guide is a convenient tool for teachers charged with implementing the Florida State Standards (FSS). It explains how and why to use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to ensure students with diverse backgrounds and learning needs can succeed.

Co-Teaching and Technology: Enhancing Communication & Collaboration

By Marilyn Friend and Brian Friedlander

This reference guide provides practical strategies on how technology can facilitate co-planning, expedite sharing of student data, and streamline many other tasks that ultimately assist in accomplishing co-teaching’s goal: improved student outcomes. Whatever your preferred computer platform, co-teachers can apply these strategies and applications to accommodate all learners’ needs.

Using Data to Improve Student Learning: Making it Meaningful to Classroom Teachers

By David Bateman and Jenifer Cline

This reference guide is designed for classroom teachers to assist them in deriving meaning from all types of data, both standardized and non-standardized. It explores how and when data can be used effectively to improve student learning, as well as how teachers can interpret different forms of data to meet students’ diverse needs and assess ongoing progress.

Test Anxiety: Strategies to Improve Student Performance

By Joseph Casbarro

This reference guide is specifically designed to provide teachers with practical, evidence-based strategies for reducing test-related anxiety and improving test performance and overall well-being in students ranging from elementary to high school age. The guide includes recommendations for teaching effective study skills & habits, as well as specific test-taking skills, and much more!

Executive Function: Skill Building and Support Strategies, Grades 6-12

By Sandra Rief

This new quick-reference laminated guide provides practical strategies to support and enhance the developing Executive Function skills of students in grades 6-12. Readers will learn about performance difficulties and academic challenges executive function weakness can cause. You'll also gain specific strategies to help strengthen a variety of executive function skills.

Executive Function: Skill-Building Support Strategies for the Elementary Classroom

By Sandra Rief

This new quick-reference laminated guide provides practical strategies to support and strengthen the developing Executive Function skills of all elementary students. Teachers will learn about performance difficulties and academic challenges executive function weakness can cause. You'll also gain specific strategies to help strengthen a variety of executive function skills.

Schools of Social Emotional Competence and Character

By Maurice Elias and Marvin Berkowitz

This new quick-reference laminated guide is designed for school leaders, staff, and educators who seek not only to educate students, but also to promote character, social-emotional competence, and a schoolwide climate of safety, caring, challenge, support, respect, and inspiration.

Assistive Technology: What Every Educator Needs to Know

By Brian Friedlander

This reference guide is designed to help educators better understand the value of assistive technology (AT) in increasing all students’ access to the general education curriculum and improving the teaching/learning process for students with special needs.

ELLs: Co-Teaching and Collaboration

By Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove

This new quick-reference guide is designed to support all educators of ELLs (ESL specialists, classroom teachers, paraeducators) as they engage in a complete collaborative instructional cycle consisting of co-planning, co-teaching, co-assessing, and reflecting on practice. The guide identifies and describes the four phases of the collaborative instructional cycle.

Social Skills: Effective Instruction for Exceptional Learners

By Wendy Ashcroft, Anne Marie Kolb Quinn, Angela M. Delloso

This guide provides PreK – 5th grade teachers with evidence-based, practical, teacher-friendly, strategies for helping children with special needs build social skills. Written by experienced classroom teachers, this guide recommends interventions for strengthening important social skills, including communication, conflict resolution, and team building skills. These ready-to-use strategies will help classroom teachers promote social competence in diverse learners.

English Language Learners in Preschool: Language, Literacy, Cognition & Social Emotional Development

By Estee Lopez

This six-page laminated reference guide by Estee Lopez provides Pre-K teachers of ELLs with specific evidence-based strategies for promoting a strong language and literacy foundation. It focuses on family engagement, oral language and literacy, cultural awareness, social & emotional growth, learning and cognitive skills, and program models and strategies. Using the strategies and methods outlined in this guide, teachers will set the foundation for long-term success for young ELLs.

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports

By Christine Ditrano

This reference guide by Christine Ditrano provides both school wide, as well as classroom strategies for preventing disruptive behavior and enhancing a school's organizational climate using Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, or PBIS. The multi-tiered PBIS problem-solving model is proactive and flexible, and provides a unifying framework for all school improvement efforts.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

By Padmaja Sarathy

This new six-page laminated reference guide by Padmaja Sarathy presents seven steps for maximizing academic, social, and life outcomes for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), while minimizing the impact of some of their complex behavioral and learning characteristics. Packed with practical and proven strategies, this guide is an invaluable resource for all those who work with children with ASD, including classroom teachers, paraeducators, support staff, and parents.