Reference no: EM133969787

Assignment:

Mr. Ramirez is the teacher in a community preschool program. His classroom is in a small converted room in an old house. He has been frustrated about the fact that he really does not have enough room to design a good classroom environment. Two new children have joined the classroom, both of whom have some specific challenges. Sung has very limited vision, though her glasses enable her to be mobile and she can move around the room fairly safely. However, with the crowded space and clutter, she is unable to identify specific play areas or favorite toys. To solve the space problem, Mr. Ramirez has placed several bins of toys and materials on movable carts, which tend to be placed wherever is convenient at the moment to get them out of the way.

Rafik is a boisterous child in constant motion. According to his mother he is currently being evaluated for ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder). He wanders around the classroom and is rarely able to focus on one activity. He may pick up an object, but then he throws it down and moves completely away from the area to another part of the room. Rafik particularly has trouble with circle time. It seems impossible for him to sit more than two minutes, after which he gets up and begins moving around the room as usual. Because there is not enough room for a separate area for circle time, Mr. Ramirez conducts his circle time in different areas: sometimes in the block area, sometimes outside, sometimes at the snack table. With the addition of the two new children, the classroom space now seems intolerably small.

Mr. Ramirez is very concerned about meeting the special needs of Sung and Rafik. He asks Ms. Thomas, the inclusion support provider, if she has any suggestions for supporting the two children. After observing the children on several occasions and talking at length with Mr. Ramirez and the assistant teacher, Ms. Thomas suggests several strategies. First, the movable carts need to be housed in one place until they are needed. Moving the carts into the appropriate area as they are needed has been incorporated into the daily schedule as a predictable, separate task with which children are assigned to help. Rafik especially enjoys pushing the cart from one place to another. This keeps the carts from just being part of the clutter.

Another strategy is to use colorful reflecting tape to mark off specific areas of the room-the block area, the library corner, and the dress-up area-each with a different color and one with a contrasting broken line pattern. Mr. Ramirez has also reduced the toys and materials available by a third, eliminating the less preferred or broken toys. This makes it easier to arrange materials on shelves, with more space between them, and to label the shelves so the materials can be consistently stored in the same place.

Finally, Mr. Ramirez decided that his class will have circle time each day in the library corner, because he often includes reading as a circle time activity. He has also noted that this is the area where Rafik seems to be the calmest, perhaps because it is a fairly enclosed space.

With some assistance Sung has learned to use her residual sight to move quite confidently around the room and to find her favorite toys, which are now stored in a consistent place. Rafik seems calmer and has begun to prefer the block area and the library corner, where he spends at least a few minutes focusing on a single activity.

Read-Reflect-Discuss Questions

1. Which accommodations were most helpful for Rafik? Why?

2. Which accommodations were most helpful for Sung? Why?

3. If Mr. Ramirez were given $5,000 to improve his classroom environment, how would you recommend he spend it?