Have you walked into a classroom lately? Bright colors everywhere you look, posters filling the spaces on every wall, brightly lit LED lighting, loud noises coming from every direction, and stacks and stack of books, movies, papers, crafting tools, and toys piling high in every corner. It can be quite over stimulating for even a grown adult such as myself. Just imagine this same situation for a child that already has difficulty paying attention for more than ten minutes at a time. What a nightmare!
Now, just to be clear, bright colors and posters on walls is not inherently bad. However, many modern classrooms have become much less sensory friendly in the past decade.
Many people are disinformaed about our senses, as I learned from the presentation, we do not just have five senses! We also have vestibular and proprioceptive senses. Vestiubular senses focus on the position of the body and its movement. For example, feelings of balance and movement. You may not like fast roller coasters or sitting in the back seat of your aunty's minivan while she drives quickly down a curvy road. Propriopceptive senses process information through contraction and stretching of our muscles and by bending, straightening, pulling, or compressing joint between bones. For example, when you're stretching in your hot yoga class or hanging from the pull up bar at the gym, these movements help to refocus your attention.
Solution Ideas:
- Provide students with frequent opportunities to move!
- Provide a variety of space for individual and group activites
- Provide with opporutnity to choose between a variety of activities, both physical and mental.
- Natual lighting instead of LED lighting
- Flexible seating options
- Opportunity for active and unstructured play
Orton- Gillingham
Created by Samuel Torrey Orton and Anna Gillingham. They brought listening, speaking, reading, and writing together so that students would have the optimal help needed to enhance their learning for all of the language skills. This approach is an action-based learning.
Resources:
- Orton Gillingham Online Academy
- Making Teaching Fun
- ABC Magic Phonics
- Starfall
- Reading Eggs
- Special Words
Montessori Education
Maria Montessori developed specialized mareials after she realized that children understand complex concepts better if all of their senses are engaged. She also realized that the role of the teacher should be to facilitate student learning and not dominate student learning. She focused on the whole child with the goal of developing responsible adults. Components of Montessori education should include freedom and autonomy of the child, structure and order should be cale and chaos free, reality and nature should be included regularly.
