I teach in a public Pre-K special education self-contained classroom with some amazing kiddos. They love to listen to stories, sing songs, and play in our dramatic play area!
90% of my students come from low-income households, most still dealing with the financial aftermath of the traumatic labor and delivery of their child.
Due to the variety of medical challenges the students have had in their first few years of life (lack of oxygen at birth, cleft palette, hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, extreme premature birth as early as 24 weeks, low birth weight as low as one pound, and fetal alcohol syndrome) many students are using diapers, and need assistance with feeding and dressing as well as using devices in order to communicate or walk in the classroom.
My Project
In Reggio Emilia schools, the learning environment is viewed as the third teacher. The layout of the space, furniture, available materials, and visual stimulus in the room show the children what is important about their work as students.
For my students, visual stimulation can be overwhelming and distracting; this is why the Reggio approach to a classroom visually inspired by nature is perfect for them.
Instead of brightly colored rainbow rugs with letters and numbers, a simple textured brown rug cuts down on the amount of visual information they have to process in order to sit on that rug and focus on the read-aloud story that the teacher is holding up for them to see. For a child with autism, an abundance of visual stimuli can be so distracting that they can become obsessed with a certain light fixture or cartoon shape on the carpet that they find it difficult to focus on anything else when in the same area. By donating to this project you will help me provide calming table lamps and floor lamps so that we do not need to use the bright overhead lights, a rug free of busy patterns and bright colors, and dramatic play structures free of large mirrors.
My students' brains are so busy, requiring them to work harder than many other students in order to process language, complete executive functioning tasks, and attend to directions. Cutting down on visual stimuli is one universal way for us to lead students to focus on what we want them to; the content, curriculum, and work that they create through play.
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