Summary: In her youth, Barbara Arrowsmith struggled with a severe learning dysfunction-until she designed a self-improvement regimen aimed at strengthening areas of her brain. This film profiles Arrowsmith, takes viewers inside the school she founded, and follows the progress of four cognitively challenged students enrolled there. Psychology and special education experts articulate diverging opinions of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Assistance is rapidly developing for parents of children with special needs. This video examines the role of science and technology in helping challenged kids enter the mainstream learning community.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: It's often difficult to determine a solution, unless you know all of the symptoms. This is especially true for parents who see their children less than does their child-care provider. In these cases, it is essential that you, as the child's primary caregiver, not only recognize their special needs, but additionally respond to them. This video describes a wide range of special needs symptoms...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this classic program, internationally known learning disabilities expert Richard D. Lavoie leads a group of educators, psychologists, parents, and children through a series of exercises that vividly illustrate the daily classroom reality of LD students, an experience fraught with F.A.T.: frustration, anxiety, and tension. After the workshop is done, participants discuss strategies for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: How could a child be a top math student yet not be able to read? Why can another child read well but not be able to write a paragraph that makes sense? While watching children being taught new ways to learn, this program offers expert insight into the nature of learning disabilities, why learning disabilities may also be accompanied by ADHD or social disorders, and what can be done to help...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: F.A.T.-frustration, anxiety, tension-are three all-too-familiar feelings for children with learning disabilities and their families. In this program, Richard D. Lavoie, creator of the original F.A.T. City Workshop, reviews the history and philosophy of that project, the major trends and issues in the field of learning disabilities since the late 1980s, and the challenges ahead for educators and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Beginning teachers often don't anticipate the challenges that high-needs students present. This video provides supportive strategies that boost the success of special needs learners. Exploring verbal and nonverbal communication through immediacy behaviors, the program shows how teachers can reduce the psychological distance between themselves and challenged students, with tangible benefits in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Dyslexia, a learning disability that affects oral and written language, often masks the presence of a gifted mind. People with dyslexia learn differently. This program from The Doctor Is In explores that cognitive difference by examining how dyslexic students learn, and how new teaching techniques are helping them succeed in school. These teaching approaches are explored at the Washington Lab...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As an educator, working with a learning-disabled student requires being adept at problem-solving, analyzing tasks, figuring out different ways to teach the same thing, and tailoring the method to fit the child. In addition, the teacher must be able to communicate to the student how he or she learns most effectively and what techniques and methods best enhance that learning process. In this...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: One in 25 people are dyslexic, but the teenagers involved in making this program would say that 24 out of 25 people miss out on dyslexia. This program approaches dyslexia from a new angle, exploring how the so-called disability might prove an advantage in an increasingly image-based world. Educational experts from America and England discuss aptitudes of dyslexics, while video diaries show how...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Often viewed as a weakness, dyslexia actually means that a person processes information differently, and many with the disorder have learned to see it as a strength. This program illustrates the challenges faced by Amanda, Carmen, and Gio-three young people living with dyslexia-through personal interviews with them and those close to them. Viewers are guided into their unique and often...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Reudiger Gamm performs complex arithmetic instantly and without help-his brain stores numbers like a calculator. Orlando Sorrel remembers exactly what he was doing on any date, at any hour, and can accurately predict the day of the week thousands of years in the future. Kim Peek-the original "Rain Man"-has read 12,000 books and hasn't forgotten a single word. What lies behind these astonishing...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this classic program, Sally L. Smith explains how to teach students with learning disabilities and ADHD. The techniques include challenging the intellect and tapping the imagination; using concrete objects, the body, and pictures to communicate abstract ideas; using object-centered learning by attracting the attention visually; limiting the amount of words used; using stimulation, choices,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program from The Doctor Is In shows how a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is made and what treatments are working. The program follows children at home and school, both on and off medication. An innovative private school specializing in alternative education for children with ADD is profiled, and the program explains how best to structure school and home environments....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Mute until the age of nine, Stephen Wiltshire learned to communicate through realistic, richly detailed drawings. Alonzo Clemens sculpts clay animal figures with great precision, even though he can barely form a sentence. Matt Savage faced extraordinary developmental problems as a child but has become a teen prodigy among jazz musicians. What is the relationship between creativity and autistic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: For people with special needs, augmentative communication technology is opening the door to fuller expression, better education, and higher self-esteem. This program illustrates the positive impact of augmentative communication technology on the lives of Adam and Mike. Adam, once considered mentally retarded by school staff, has become a college-educated professional-thanks in part to an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This classic program featuring Sally L. Smith provides a detailed composite description of children with learning disabilities. Strengths typically include originality, imagination, talent in the arts, and a love of nature, technology, color, movement, and building things. Weaknesses tend to include neurological immaturity, disorganization, distractibility, short attention span, poor motor...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: This is the story of an eight-year-old boy with Down syndrome who was part of a battle over "inclusion," the practice of placing mentally or physically challenged students in regular classrooms. Teachers felt inadequately trained; teachers and parents asked whether "inclusion" was in the best interests of all students-those with and those without disabilities; and the future of special...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Every teacher has been there-staring in the face of a difficult student or group of students threatening to thwart the progress of the day's lesson. But how can the teacher handle the conflict in a way that benefits everyone? Frustrated back-and-forth shouting between teacher and student should not and does not have to take place in the classroom. This program suggests practical classroom...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: A common error made by new teachers is attempting to impose authority on a classroom rather than encouraging students to manage themselves. In this program, acclaimed presenter Dr. Richard Curwin and noted educator and school psychologist Dr. Allen Mendler argue that students can develop internal controls and self-responsibility when teachers alter their traditionally adversarial classroom...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the subject of anger from the student point of view while presenting some strategies for managing it. Dramatizations of school-oriented confrontations, candid interviews with children and teenagers, and insightful commentary by psychologists, a youth counselor, and a social worker serve as windows into a disruptive and potentially destructive emotion. Issues such as the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: To fully prize diversity, a school must embrace differences in students' abilities and learning approaches as well as in race, gender, ethnicity, and so forth. And to reach special needs children, teaching styles themselves must also be diverse. This classic program with Sally L. Smith stresses the importance of individualized instruction for students with learning disabilities and ADHD and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: What does it take to be popular? Quite often it has nothing to do with being nice. In this ABC News special, correspondent John Stossel visits middle and high schools to discover why kids dish out abuse, why they take it, and what parents and school administrators can do to make it better. He also visits schools with successful anti-bullying programs. Discussions with students, as well as with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Teenagers are running away from home, dropping out of school, having babies, taking drugs, committing suicide, and going to jail for violent crimes. This program discusses normal adolescence and today's too-frequent scenarios: a juvenile delinquent whose drug use led him to criminality; an eighth-grader whose drug use completely altered his personality; a young girl who became severely...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008