Early Childhood Special Education and Assistive Technology Blog

By:  Caitlyn Pagnottaro, ECSEAT Scholar So much has changed since I was a young child starting school. Looking back I can see what we valued then compared to what we value today. I remember that I played a lot. If we had circle time and other structured parts of the day I don’t remember it. I remember playing. I remember playing with my friends at the time inside and outside of the classroom. The preschool/kindergarten that I attended was private and the play area that we had behind our building was amazing. At least from what I recall as a small child it was because everything around me seemed so much bigger. There was a huge climbing structure that I used to hang off of, or climb to the highest point as if I were on the top of the world. We had this playhouse that you could climb up to which my girlfriends and I would all go up to together and hangout and giggle. I can’t remember anything academic that we ever did in preschool unless it involved a book and that was a...

By: Kerri Hughes , EC-SEAT Scholar In my experience, social and emotional learning (SEL) has been an emphasis in public schools. Teachers and administrators’ accountability of student success on statewide assessments encourages teachers to instruct a large amount of academic content to students. SEL is pushed aside to make way for academic performance, leaving behind many students who have social and emotional needs. Google images Overview A variety of research supports SEL in kindergarten (Catalano, et al., 2003; Payton, et al., 2008; Sklad, et al., 2012). Social and emotional instruction for young children can improve children’s social skills, emotional well-being, and academic achievement (Catalano, et al., 2003; Payton, et al., 2008; Sklad, et al., 2012). Supporting students social and emotionally at a young age can help facilitate academic and social success which creates a better quality of life and decreases the likelihood of behavior difficulties (Payton, et al., 2008...

New York Times Article - Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom By: Kyleigh Pharris, EC-SEAT Scholar As a certified preschool through third grade educator and a special education kindergarten intern, I am constantly in search of new research that will assist me in creating a classroom environment that is respectful to young learners. Stumbling upon The New York Times blog article Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom by Jan Hoffman, really got me thinking about what our classroom environments really say to children. In the article, Hoffman describes a study conducted with 24 kindergarten children through the Carnegie Mellon University. To broadly sum up the findings in the study, researchers discovered that classroom walls that were highly decorated in teacher bought posters of bright colors and cartoon characters, meant to inspire children to learn, really distracted them from learning. The research supports austere classroom aesthetics for young lea...